The How and Why of Writing

The How and Why of Writing

Go out into this world and take its riches, drink its wine, and look upon its marvels. Swim in its
seas and walk tireless across its continents. Sleep in the darkness of its forests, dance in its deserts.
Find warmth in the high places were snow never leaves. Do this for as long as you can. When you
understand these things and their spender is lost on your jades eyes, and you see them as only
resources by which you might survive… travel to the cities of man. Become lost in culture, history,
and art. Learn their math, their religions, their methods of war, and their dreams of peace.

Love. Find another soul trying to take in the world and bursting at its seams. Grow accustomed to
the soul. Learn what it can teach you, and when you know all it has to teach, do not deny that love
can fade. Learn loss. Learn regret. Doubt yourself.

After all of this there will be a morning when you sit on the edge of your bed and the only
questions remaining in your head are the ones that one no can answer. You will want to lay back
down. You will want to sigh and roll back into the comfort of sleep, the addictions you have
accumulated, and the emptiness of oblivion. If you survive, you know everything that you need to
know to know everything that you don’t. What’s left. Nowhere to go. Nothing to see. Nothing to
hear. No new tastes.

The world can not create enough stimulus to sustain you, and so, you must write because there is
nothing left but to put away your inclination to consume and become a source.

It is a reversal of all that came before but unlike this world, it has no end.

A Little Yellow Bird

I fall. My back strikes a stone wall, knocking my last breath from my chest. The feel of it purging from my core it like a heavy pendulum clanging of the rim of a thick iron bell. I slump. The soft earth under me is a mixture of mud, hay, and there is some sort of cloth, a tattered pulled away from its whole.

Around me, the battle carries on, but now it seems distant and senseless. Strong men clash and bellow. Arrows streak from the south moving north. Women are screaming but their cried sound false now, the sound of ungrounded fear.

The sky is a crystalline blue, the memories of old sailor embellishing tropical waters. The clouds are a creamy white, not pure, not perfect, but more real and tangible than they have ever appeared before, as if I could reach up and run my fingers through them.

A bird lands on my knee. It yellow breast is pearlescent, blue then red, and then bold yellow once more. Its head cocks to one side than the other. I feel the words pass breathlessly.

“Hello there, little bird.”

It hops on spindled legs, light as a thought and equally quick. It’s well within my range of motion, my gloved hand dwarfing its diminutive wingspan, yet it shows no fear, only curiosity.

“Yep,” I say, for reasons I don’t understand, “I’m done for.” I point to an arrow rooted in a crimson river that flows from by chest.

The little yellow bird hops in place and somehow I know it understands. It looks to the sky.

I can feel the birds innate desire to leave the ground, so primitive and solid. I feel it too. I can almost remember swimming through the air. I had never thought of flying as swimming before but I know it to be true.

The bird hops closer and I can see my world reflected in its bright little eyes. It scrapes its beak on my muddy leather trousers and the sound of it is like a granite block being pulled over broken glass, impossibly close and terribly loud. I clench my eyes close for an instant than open them to the sudden pain of my heart beat.

A red banner arcs through my peripheral vision, not the colors of my kin, but I understand it as only color and motion, connotations have failed me, all meaning lost.

The bird hops further up my leg, coming to rest high upon my thigh. Its reptilian tongue extends from its glossy beak, dry, drier than a living thing ought to look. That greyish tongue drips into the red flow of my life and my pain sinks, not gone, but as if submerged in cold water.

I look again into the eye of the yellow bird and I feel wind between feathers and a need to push off. The sky is so wide, so welcoming, I know that it is. The bird laps again and I taste the color, as if red were a flavor and it resembles toil.

Another bird lands. A crow. Its beak seem large and imposing, a weapon tied to a feathered face. It caws. The sound is both gentle and harsh. It ripples out from my chest, taking what feels like hours but is done in a moment. The crow drinks from me and looks to the little yellow bird.

I feel my wings, sleek, black, and powerful. I remember pushing great waves of air, thick as sand, beneath me as I climb toward thin skies. I remember wakes shedding from my feathered crown, leaving not a single drop or dampness.

The birds drink again and I think of tradewinds high above the stinking mud and dusty roads, effortless speed and avian grace. I feel snow moved aside by pressure waves building up across my leading edges, while down tufts swaddle me in impenetrable worth.

A hawk lands. Its talons pierce into my shoulder but there is no pain anymore. I turn and look at it. Golden and pure as it holds a noble pose, looking down at the wound that is surely killing me.

“Hello Mr. Hawk,” I say, my words sounding strange to my own ears.

The hawk appears to nod but I soon realise it is dipping its head and taking small morsels from the red ring of my wound. I don’t begrudge him. It seems only right.

Once satisfied with its torn prize, it tilts its head back and guides the morsels of me down its throat, then looks into my eyes. A lifting sensation surrounds me, as if my once heavy frame is losing its mass. I can feel currents all about, high rushes of air, twisting eddies pushing their way between trees, and a cold front moving out at sea. These currents speak without words and in ways I don’t understand but the message they deliver tells of elongated days with my arms spread cruciform and proud.

The hark unhooks its talon and take to wing, I gaps. The crow drinks once more then lifts its streamline frame with a chaotic flurry of gloss and black. The little yellow bird hops back and forth, merry chirps pipe from its heart and I smile.

The hustle and tromp of the ground slips from memory. The sky, so wide. The sky is all now. Cream clouds and sapphire space.

Roof Top View

Boston looks a lot like most cities, once you climb a tall building and look out over it as a whole. Individual landmarks get lost in the crisscross of gridded blocks and freeway divisions.

From up here, I can see foreshortened thoroughfares disappear into singular points in the distance. The well defined antenna and satellite dishes of the surrounding roof tops shrink in the background, appearing like bristles or freshly cut blades of grass of a metallic lawn.

I’ve lived my whole life in this city, but from where I stand I can only pick out one or two landmarks. The bridge and an intersection three blocks down. How small it all seems.

I know that beyond the horizon there is an entire world but it seems like fiction, a chapter from some sci fi novel I read five years ago and have forgotten about. It’s out there, the world, but as far as I know it’s just a story people tell themselves to get by.

What if Boston is all there is? What if ‘the outside world’ is just a rumor that people convince themselves is real? This silliness flashes through my head and I let it go.

A plane is moving slowly across the sky. It looks like it’s barely moving. I know, thanks to a google search, that passenger planes fly around 600 miles an hour. The sky suddenly seems very big to me and I look away, back to the grid of humanity that sprawls below me.

Pigeons are flying in orderly figure eights. They swing around the tops of skyscrapers and back again. They can fly and that’s the best they can come up with? A figure eight leading nowhere.

The maintenance man opens the door leading to the roof.

He’s eyeballing me.

“You ain't one of those jumpers are you?” He asks.

“No. I don’t have the guts.” I respond.

“Good. Keep it that way.” He says and moves to an air conditioning unit that’s clacking differently than the others.

I hadn’t thought about jumping until now. It would solve some issues in my life, all of them to be realistic. But what’s the point? Everyone asks about the meaning of life but no one seems to be interested in the meaning of death. Life, we just pop into reality without being asked if we want to or not. Death, there’s a choice involved. Every day we don’t put a bullet in our heads is a day we choose not to die. Let the mopey high school kids worry about the meaning of life. Me? I’m a writer. I tackle the real questions. I trade in death.

Lights Out

When the power twinkled across the west coast, everyone assumed it would stop and that the lights would continue to glow as they always had. After the second day of darkness, people started filling the streets, which were too narrow for all the peoples that were normally so well ordered and stacked up in highrise apartment buildings and business offices.

The streets became a hard press that seemingly squeezed the frothing hate out of humanity like juice from a fruit. Violence was widespread by the third day.

Grey haired men with bald crowns raised their golf clubs on high and led raiding parties against the Whole Foods Co-operate, who had created a union with the offensive line of the San Francisco 49ers. Feminists were the first to form their own military, the ground work having already been done and the propaganda already running at full speed. Male hipster died by the thousands, golden glitter beards flashing under the sun.

Honest folk in the countryside didn’t notice until property tax and bills dealing with the government's need to protect land ownership against government interference didn’t show up in the mail.

Me, I sat atop the roofs and watched it all like a Mormon kid finally allowed to watch TV, hooked on reality shows. I watched the vegans turn omnivore the moment grocery stores ran out of whole grain, low fat, gluten free --- whatever those people eat. I watched fat middle aged women kill girls in tiny yoga pants. The fat bitches finally taking their rightful place at the top of the mating ritual due to power of will and muscle, fat returning to a symbol of plenty.

I watched the tech elite crawl away from a world that no longer had a use for them, their keyboards held up like shields against the advancing low-techs. I watched rich men burn hundred dollar bills in campfires beside Ferraris with empty gas tanks.

The preachers didn’t change much, they still stole from the stupid and the desperate.

Next stop, the East Coast. I wonder how quick D.C. will get torn apart. They can’t distract the world this time.

Gnaw Root.

As an exo-botanist, it is often useful to have immediate and plentiful access to armaments of the most destructive kind. This point was most thoroughly evident during my last expedition to the northern Deadwood forests of Tamerdan, where I was commissioned by the good and rightful heir to the Belmeis Throne, the good Prince Cameron Kelveth V, to study and catalog the spread of a particularly vicious invasive species of gnaw root.

The root in question, invasive as previously stated, hails from the dream world. As trans-reality objects go, it is a insidiously stubborn cur, in that it is neither an inanimate object nor unable to sustain itself outside of the dream state. Quite to the contrary. It is a living organism and fully capable of sustaining itself and the conditions needed to reproduce. Reproductive dream fragments, of course, being the capital issue of its migration.

Upon reaching the Deadwood, I was prepared to spend restless months in pursuit of just one such specimen but quickly discovered that once removed from the main trade thoroughfare, one could not only find the dream originated genius in plenty, but one must also battle it unmerciful to remain in an upright and undigested state.

After a hasty and undignified retreat, accompanied by my sweeping grasp of profanity, my colleagues and I established a base camp ring in a bitter dental floss fence.

‘Dental floss’, you may be asking, inquisitive and doubtful of this stories validity as you are. Indeed.

It is long understood amongst exo-botanists that gnaw root dislikes dental floss, particularly floss of the mint variety.

After a fitful night's rest, I emerged from my tent with trowel in hand and grim determination in mind. I did not have to look any further than the floss fence to spot my prey, a gnaw root measuring two feet tall, attempting to drag its bulbous digestive sack under the floss fencing but to no avail.

The dream spawn plant was pulling its way along by means of its mouth, which is comprised of what appear to be two lower mandibles of a human male, one above the other. It pulled in its lower jaw and spiked its upper row of teeth into the ground then flexed its inhumanly long neck in order to pull the rest of its body, chiefy a round sack containing its digestive tract, forward along the ground.

Having pulled its mouth, surrounded with a five o'clock shadow above and below, under the floss fencing, and yet unable to pull its stomach under, was left prone to a swift and, without self congratulation, forceful shove blow, which rend the mouth from the stomach bulb.

With the first specimen collected, though in two pieces, research began in earnest and full. The gnaw root mouth was still snapping and gnashing its grey teeth, so proper precautions were taken in the form of thickly layered leather gloves and chain-mail gauntlets fitted up to, but not surpassing, the elbow.

The first incision was performed with a sterile size XXL scalpel along the gum line to separate the lips from the oral aperture. The gums themselves could be described as infectious, pustulent, ebrated, putrefied, and covered in extemporaneous vascularity. Where the gums divided to allow the growth of teeth, thick layers of silver and grey tarter congealed around the base tooth enamel, as if to protect the roots of the tooth from the plethora of mucus carried contagions of the oral cavity.

The scalpel, though new and sharp, proved inadequate for the task of removing the lips of the gnaw root and three such blades were bent in the process. The lips are apparently comprised of dense musculature, used by the plant to constrict around small animal that wander too close. This leads me to believe that the plant hunts in a similar manner to the revered venus flytrap, lying in wait, motionless, and endlessly patient.

However, where the venus flytrap waits for its prey to trigger its jaws through the stimulation of hair like sensors, the gnaw root hunts by olfactory stimulation, as evident by a ring of nostril like openings encircling the malleable and craggy lips. Indeed, even after the mouth, or heretofore listed head, has been removed, the nostril like apertures continue to cycle air via flexion of air sacks adhered to the interior lining of the esophagus.

With the lips removed it is clear to see that the upper and lower jaws of the dreamborn exo-plant are not connected by a common joint, as is found in most mammalian species, but rather by ligaments. Upon further investigation it was found that the jaws are not actuated by musculature, but rather by means of internal pressure through biological hydraulic tubules powered by the contraction of the stomach sack. At first I found this discovery peculiar in its inefficiency until further examinations of the stomach sack revealed that, without any skeletal superstructure to limit constriction, the stomach sack could produce over four hundred pounds of pressure per square inch of surface area. This, through the mechanical advantage of the gnaw root jaw, results in a bite pressure well exceeding that of an Egyptian river crocodile.

The dangers of such a bite were nullified, quite simply, by placing a ball of mint dental floss within the specimens jaws.

All seemed well with the research process until I was alarmed by a sound. Upon looking up from my dissection of the spine covered tongue of the gnaw root, I realized that other gnaw roots had encircled my camp site and taken it upon themselves to bite clean through the fence posts which held up the mint floss barrier.

I can assure you good friends, that having immediate and plentiful access to armaments of the most destructive kind is quite necessary in such instances. I highly recommend the Silverstein company’s rocket powered sledgehammer.

A full report will be delivered in the coming weeks. As to my conclusions, I believe that the gnaw root issue can be resolved with a liberal bombing of the infested area with mint mouthwash and lemon juice. As for the issue of preventing further dream deaths and the subsequent coalescence of dream matter into our plane of existence, I suggest  continuing the Nightmare Resolution Therapy campaign in conjunction with mandatory anesthetization of minors during the process of oral surgery.

As the old adage goes, “If a one bring the fears of a child into the nightmares of a man, the world must bear witness in the light of day”.

In closing, quell your fears and keep the coffee brewed.

Yours truly, Dr. Pointy Tools Mcthumping Esquire. Sargent Major, Private, Chief, Cheif, and DDS.

My Shadow Crawls

The bus stop lights glared down from overhead, like a teacher suspecting a student of cheating but unable to spot the method. I carried my guitar case by its loose and wobbling handle. It squeaked, long and hard against the bus stops chipped tile walls.

Those black and white tiles made the room feel smaller than it was, claustrophobic despite the wide circles people stepped around me. I didn’t blame them their obvious circumnavigations, my skin; a pale grey, wrapped like tinfoil over a thin frame, quaking fear lurching through my veins, and the unscented smell of looming cataclysm sloughing from the dusky rings around my eyes.

I felt it coming. I didn’t have to use my eyes. I didn’t feel the negative gravity of the thing. I simply pushed my dark sunglasses up the ridge of my nose and felt it.

I held still.

Running was laughably futile. If I couldn’t shake it with three trans-Atlantic flights, a bullet train ride under the English Channel and a cross continental bus ride, than flapping my twiggy legs under my body like some half-pantomimed half-cartoon icon of escape would bare not greater result.

The other bus riders passed by, out of the building, and out into the great wide world of normality that waited for them, leaving me motionless and alone.

My shadow crawls. It’s no bigger than I am, perhaps thinner, elongated, certainly deeper, but not bigger. Size is not required to… do whatever my shadow intends.

The crawling itself was noisy bit of stop motion. As my shadow crawled, across frigid tile and dusty ground, it rasped. Not like the chains of a Christmas Choral ghost, or the rusted hinges of a cemetery gate, but rather like an oily railroad spike across the surface of a bone which has been hollowed of its marrow by jagged toothed rats.

I didn’t have to look. I knew it was crawling.

The sound told me, even before the cold. The temperature drop felt much like a stranger’s uninvited hand, sliding a wet ice cube up my calf, around my knee, and along the inseam of my thigh, undefined intentions mated with unknown motives.

I pushed my dark sunglasses up the bridge of my nose again and listened to the sound of my heels clack against the tiles as I left the bus stop, guitar case in hand.

I play the Apollo Theater tonight. Afterwards, I’ll check into a hotel room, put the needle in my vein, and listen to it crawl to the foot of my bed, then I’ll sleep.

Maps

Here are two maps I created in Photoshop for the new book I am writing, City of Men

Reginal 

 Satellite