October 28, 2009
When someone asks you how you feel about immigration, say that you’re strongly for controls on immigration. Then before they can say anything else, add “The Kingdom of Hawaii is a good example of what happens when a government allows in immigrants who do not care to learn the cultural values of the nation, and have stronger allegiances to their homelands than their adopted country.”
This works no matter what political affiliation. Well, in the USA at least.
October 13, 2009
Yeah, I know, but I gotta try, right?
Anyways, November is Nanowrimo, and I’ll be giving it a shot again. I’m putting up two choices for those who are interested to vote on. The winner is the one I’m gonna try to write.
1. A loosely linked series of stories set in modern Japan, the locus being a nondescript milquetoast salariman.
2. A cloak and dagger spy story set in an alternate history Hawaii. Oh, and the protagonist is a suicidal interdimensional drug case.
And here’s your niblets.
“Johan was happy when he heard Alf was coming back. His surprised terror was mitigated by learning Zombie Alf Landon feasted solely on Barbeque flavored Sunflower seeds.”
Sometimes I think I woulda been better off as a cartoonist, you really need to see the picture in my head to get the funny.
“Everyone was surprised when the Nomiburger chain took off. Who know a Klaus Nomi themed fast-food chain would succeed? The owners credited the drink and dessert bar.”
“You know what Bismarck said about how laws are made? Well, publishing books is also like making sausages. You really don’t want to know how they’re made, cause they’re not just any sausages. They’re the freaking chorizos you… get at the 99 cent store with the Tagalong label.”
October 4, 2009
I went down to the storage unit and pulled out three boxes of books. I ain’t got room to store ‘em, but right now I need them. To write, you gotta read as much as you write, plus all my language books and ahem, books on “self-improvement” were there.
Afterwards, I went to the Kava Festival. While I enjoy Kava, I don’t enjoy hippies or slam poetry and I especially don’t enjoy hippies doing slam poetry, and I really really want to punch mainlander trust-fund hippies that assume to speak for Hawaii and Hawaiians through their crappy slam poetry. (Self-disclosure, in my misguided past I did slam poetry and did it well, without trying very hard at it, which goes to show you the inherent worth of slam poetry.) Other than the folks manning the booths, I don’t think there was much real Hawaiians there. They all must have been at the Queen Emma Summer Palace taking in the show there.
I don’t regret going. Kava is that good, though I tend to overindulge and just bliss out in horizontal position for a couple hours. Really, when you’re like me and your deadly sin is Sloth, you gotta be careful with what you do with yourself. Still I found the energy to smoke my pipe and read a damn good manga. Solanin by Inio Asano. I guess it’s rather immature of me to still be moved by stories of twenty-somethings trying to carve a space out for themselves in the world, being as I’m now past my 20s.
Fuck it, I say. I finally have the courage to do what I want, and succeed or fail by my own terms and not anyone else’s. What should I care what any damn fool thinks in my life, much less anonymous fools on the net? To quote Lewis “Part of being grown-up is putting away the desire to be seen as grown-up.”
October 4, 2009
The last post below was actually written two weeks ago. I forgot to post it. My bad.
I’ve been busy in the meanwhile. Started a new writing experiment. Not exactly Hemingway’s six word stories, but something in a similar vein. I’ve been posting them on my facebook. I figured I should post them here. Not like anyone who reads here hasn’t already seen them on my facebook page. Are there any readers here who aren’t on my facebook? I get maybe like 4 hits a day. Not complaining. Just curious as to who you all are.
So, most of these have been kinda jokes. Obscure jokes, but that’s just how I’ve been feeling lately. Maybe some of these will become full stories, maybe not.
“What you must remember, that nobody who wasn’t born and raised here could ever understand, is that living in Hawaii is a long slow death sentence for those of a certain cast of mind and soul. Like taking a bottle of vodka and Xanax on a sunny day, only extended over 30 years.”
“Her stocking cap smelled of strawberries and ozone. She twirled around and leaned forward, with her hands behind her back. ‘Wanna know a secret?’ she said. Her tone softened and she grinned. ‘I’m from the future.’ “
“He sighed. If only he could get past his first love. The one imprinted on him when he was ten years old. His life would have been so much less painful then. He let his fingers skitter across the iron bars.”
“It wasn’t easy playing classical music. Most of the audience would be there just to demonstrate their membership in the cultured classes. Yitzak looked at their faces. The music swelled. His part was coming up again. All his thoughts disap…peared, consumed by the music written by maistros turned over to the ages. His voice filled Ganymede’s Bradbury Music Hall. ‘We be… big Pimpin’… we spendin’ Gs…’”
“Willard was disappointed. He kept on boring his guests to death. He supposed that next time he would have to pay better attention and not get so wrapped up in his own pleasure. He washed off the bit and put the drill back on the shelf before going upstairs.”
“Bill had always wanted to be there when they put his name up in lights. He regretted that wish when he saw that the light was from the flames burning him in effigy.”
“‘Dad, I’m gay’ would have been an infinitely preferable revelation when he caught his son in greasepaint pulling an invisible rope on a streetcorner.”
“Jed has always wondered what he would see as he was dying. Would it be his life flashing by quickly, his dead grandparents, or simply a tunnel of light? His last moments in Iraq were filled with confusion as he was subjected to every episode ev…er made of ‘Three’s Company’ compressed into several seconds.”
“Inviting Michio Kaku and Michiko Kakutani to a dinner party seemed like a good idea on paper. However, they were sitting awkwardly looking at their food rather than having a lively debate about the philosophical implications of their respective… careers. Who knew they could be so shy? Thankfully Tila Tequila was taking up the slack. And then some.”
“Long thought dead, Doo-wop music actually reached it’s apotheosis in the music of the all-lesbian group “Sheila and the She-Ras” of Hoboken New Jersey. Unfortunately, this revival was cut short by the asteroid which collided with the earth in 2033.”
“Ivan was drunk when he entered a query into his computer’s search engine. He wasn’t able to get it to return a list of hits, but later he found them in his loaf of bread and then again wandering the streets dressed as a DMV supervisor…. When he returned home he realized he had mistyped Google’s web address.”
“While technically correct, no one would personally accept Petru Ionescu’s self-designation as a harried Latin lover.”
“It was the rarest of the rare, the holiest of the holy. It was the Kalevala as illustrated by Tom of Finland. Never had Väinämöinen ever been so lovingly rendered as beefcake. It appealed to a very narrow subset of people.”
October 4, 2009
Tomorrow I’m doing yardwork at my grandparents, then hitting the Portuguese Festa. Bacalao. Yum.
Love doing yard work. This case will be removing masses of maile pilau (think a woody flowery smelling kudzu) off a hillside chain link fence and then digging up a dead ornamental. Nothing like wielding a machete and pickaxe under a subtropical sun, then unwinding with some Douro wine and Fado in the evening, don’t you think?
Going to be hitting the storage unit sometime soon. Maybe next Sunday. There’s some books I need there. Also thinking of some other things too. More on that later as I find out more.
Paring down on the net time and getting rid of the TV is already reaping benefits. Just need to get more organized. More space and a more reliable care would help too, but first I need to work on the basics. But now, sleep, as induced by an anti-energy drink.
I’m thinking of whipping up a non sugary concoction that has much of the same effect, and then some. I’d really need to find quality sources for herbs. Most places are hit and miss.
September 16, 2009
From about 8:30 to 9:30 in the morning and about 10:30-12:00 at night weekdays and from early afternoon to early evening on Sundays, I read exclusively print material. I’m trying to hit a goal of about 150-200 pages a day on days I don’t write.
I’m not really reading anything particularly heavy. No Hegel or Hofstader. Yet. Just trying to get to a state where I read quickly but reflectively from a wide variety of materials.
I just finished the last couple volumes of Gardner Dozois “Year’s Best Science Fiction” anthologies. In general, I enjoy the majority of what he selects, as his tastes walk the fine line between hard and soft without going too much either way. I own about half the anthologies and have read back to the original 1984 one. It’s rather interesting as more and more it seems we are living in the future, narratives of the future are less in demand (outside crappy Hollywood blockbusters).
Right now I’ve been plowing through piles of magazines Asimov’s, 2600, The Believer, Pipes and Tobaccos. There would be more if I had more money, but I’m starting to feel that I need to focus on books more. Still, DIY and SEED would make good additions to the list.
Right now, I’d like to focus on one of them. The Believer.
I’ve got something of a love-hate relationship with the magazine (as opposed to the all-hate relation I have with n+1, it’s ‘rival’ of sorts). I love its inquiries into the incredible minutia of culture. Just the recent issue with its article on the long forgotten musical notation for all sounds made by William Gardiner and it’s inquiry into the otherworldly aesthetics of the Lawrence Welk Show is worth the price alone.
Then there’s the fairly interesting articles on how writing about music is like dancing about architecture complete with various literary examples.
Then there’s the shit that makes me want to throw the damn thing against the wall. A godawful paean to the lyrics of some Indie rock sensitive artist that reads like a Pitchfork review sans the snark and with triple the unearned importance. The almost painful centerpiece article about Beth Ditto, who apparently is a stereotype of all the annoying aspects of the painfully cool, from the “famous for being famous” done hipster style, to the definition of “punk” which includes acting like an ADHD child while amongst the general public, mouthing the political and sexual platitudes that is Puritanism wearing Burroughs’ dirty raincoat as a disguise, to just general pointless self-indulgence and excess that doesn’t even try to be tasteful, witty, or even self-aware.
If a hot chick with barely any musical talent strips down during a show and acts like a vapid fashion show hopping party girl offstage, she’s a trashy Pussycat Doll. If a fat dyke does the same damn thing, she’s the darling of the hipster media.
Often even with the good articles, like last year’s inquiry into Bill Fox has that certain myth-building, “my-aren’t-we-profound” sorta feel to it that grates. It’s no wonder, Bill Fox reputedly said he’d like to punch the writer in the face.
Add to that the PC lip-service that ruins perfectly good articles like the Karl May one, which while factually fascinating, did the great disservice of thematically linking the depictions of the Wild West written for Germans that were actually pretty progressive for its times (with old Shatterfist helping bring the Indians into Christianity and restoring peace on the frontier) to the genocidal visions of May’s most infamous fanboy, a certain Adolf Hitler.
Frankly I’m torn. Where else can I get articles about the obscurities, the artists and writers that fall through the cracks of history, the odd takes on pop cultural things without the whole social and political subtext I find obnoxious?
And no, it’s not the leftward slant of it either. I find traditionalist monologues that refuse to accept anything culturally or aesthetically avant-garde pretty grating as well. It’s the whole interpreting art through a lens of social peer group enforced norms rather than on its own merits.
September 14, 2009
I ain’t got any.
No, I do, but I don’t really talk about it. I’ve always believed a gentleman never mentions political and religious stances in mixed company.
If so, then gentlemen are regular Thylacines nowadays, fit to be mounted in museums. No, I commit a metaphoric crime, most people bemoan the death of the carniverous marsupial and all other sundry beasts, but the gentlemen? They’re positively retrograde.
Their willingness to die for country and honor, their courtesy towards women, their personal practice of regulated sports, both deft and bloody. Their belief in civilization, their mannered ways and cultivated minds. Their masculinity, yet the tight white gloved manner in which they kept it in rein.
Completely and utterly obsolete.
The learned classes of today revel in living in some sort of endless cultural Jacobinism, where youthful indiscretion and idealistic fervor are sanctified. Thought, learning, the idea of each generation placing it’s brick in Humanity’s great Cathedral of Knowledge has been replaced with those who would tear down the whole edifice because they believe they can do better than all the benighted ones who came before them.
Rationalism, progress, all that? It’s empire building, scientism, colonizing, insensitive. All learning must be mitigated into proper narratives.
Not that the gentleman has his home on the other side. His love of knowledge, his ability to groom and dress himself, things all suspect to those who espouse a barbarous worship of their own apish impulses. Clattering swords and arms, and brandishing their totems, they resemble the painted Gauls sans the courage and physical strength, their bathetic tribal emotion being the sole determinant of their course of action.
They speak of religion, but it’s nothing. The Christ that inspired Bach, Michelangelo and Aquinas is replaced by clapping, thumping and glossolalia more akin to offerings to some snake god.
The Gentleman’s courtesy to women, both chavanistic and pathetically unsexualized at once. His love of sport, an act that is now a pointless mishmash of celebrity, avarice and passivity. His self-control is self-repression.
There is nothing that is not politically, aesthetically and socially obsolete about the Gentleman.
I am not a gentleman. It’s not the time of gentlemen and I wouldn’t have a full idea of what it takes to be one.
Subsequently, I am not bound to keep my views to myself. Now you know my political views.
September 12, 2009
I kluged my computer back to functioning semi-normally. The solution seemed to be uninstalling a whole bunch of shit like anti-virus and malware protection, deleting massive amounts of crap on my hard drive and honest-to-god, opening up my laptop with a screwdriver and pushing on chipset and wire connections to see if any were loose or faulty. No, I had not a clue as to what I was doing, and from past experiences, it usually leads to a very expensive paperweight. Go figure.
I see to be entering into a mood upswing. Why? Insomnia has returned. Freaking hate it. Some nights only three hours of sleep, the rest of it mostly anxious tossing and turning or furtive tasks to fill time. I do get a lot of reading done, though. Mostly fiction. Can’t bring myself to read non-fiction much anymore. I’m sick of the world of ideas. I desire only sensation and enchantment.
This intellectual fatigue. How can I explain it? It’s like all the philosophy in the world pales in comparison to a dance, or to a cormorant on the Ujigawa. How can you keep them in the classrooms when they’ve learned what sunburn and thirst are?
Let me put it this way: Words by themselves are ways of conveying information; one’s thoughts, experiences, or imagination. In every way, it is a secondhand thing. If I describe to you my time riding bike during the winter along the backroads of Japan, you’re not really getting my experience, you’re reconstructing it from my words. Your experiences of winter, bike riding and Japan (and lacking that, some mental image you have of any or all of the three).
Of course I’m not explaining anything novel or original here, but when you get down the meat of it, when your own words constantly ring hollow to yourself, lacking that essential kernel of what you’re trying to express, do you fault yourself for maintaining silence? It’s no mistake that the more I’ve lived, the less I care for sharing what I believe, what I’ve done, or what have you. The silence speaks better for it.
Concomitant with that is the ever growing lack of care for what others think of what I think. Despite my visible eccentricities and personal iconoclasm, I’ve never much cared for the attention of others. What I do is for my own bemusement and stimulation. When something is no longer interesting for me, I cease to do it. Sure, I might dabble every once and while, but nothing serious. Here’s a secret those who know me in person might be shocked to find out.
I’m almost paralyzed by stage fright, I have been since I was a kid. How does that jibe with the shameless ham? Easy. Not once have I considered what your reaction was. Oh sure, I wasn’t going to riff on your weak spots, but that’s just not being a dick.
Long story short:
If I’m not feeling it and I don’t care whether or not you’re feeling it, then why constantly recite that eventually I’m going to start saying something real-soon-now?
The answer is this: Filthy Lucre. I’ve gotten it by my writing before, and I’m pretty sure if I kept my chops up, I could do it again. Sure, it’s a freaking pittance in the grand scale of things, but I’m sure I’ve gotten more dough from my occasional publishings than 99% of all people who’ve ever blogged. Hell, and it’s not like I don’t enjoy writing… it’s always like I feel I just have something better to do than to fart around with words.
Oh yeah, and figuring out how to work tango lessons into my schedule, which would actually not be so hard if I didn’t live and work on the other goddamn side of the island (far enough that getting to the city is a pain in the ass, not far enough that I get the benefits of living in the countryside).
I was going to spend it on a blog subscription (to you-know-who of all people), but dance lessons seem like a better investment for a variety of reasons.
Okay…
September 4, 2009
I’ve kludged together a quickie solution to my dying computer that involves icepacks and a freezer to shorten time between crashes. That said, it’s still a temporary solution to a permanent problem. When this baby goes, so does my net access.
I have no money to get another computer, as my car is on it’s last legs and getting to work takes priority over having net access. I’m not as bothered by this as I would be in past times, in fact I’m fairly relishing it. I’ve dispensed with my television and DVD player, I have no MP3 player. Quite literally when this thing goes, the highest tech in my room will be my bargain basement cell phone.
Time enough to read, though writing will be a bitch.
On that note, I intend to increase my efforts at writing letters. Some of you have exchanged them with me before. If you wish to correspond with me in the old style, please e-mail me your snail mail address at pgomes at hawaii dot edu
See you all around, I suppose.
August 30, 2009
Went to the Greek Festival today. Ate, drank, and danced outside till my legs and lungs hurt (shouldn’t have bummed that cigarette, but alcohol without nicotine is impossible).
It was the most alive I’ve been since I’ve returned from Japan. Not a single thought of mine ever drifted from the pure sensory experience of it all, from the feta, kalamata, moussaka and baklava washed down with draughts of retsina, ouzo and Greek coffee to the sun burning my face, to clapping, shouting and dancing in time.
Later, when I returned home, I felt more like writing than I have in ages.
Then it hit me. What was it that I had done that made me so damnably joyful when but two days ago, I felt dead, both spiritually and creatively?
It wasn’t the wine or food, as I’ve enjoyed both since returning. It wasn’t just the music, since I’ve enjoyed that as well. Neither, in and of itself was able to damper the ennui, the ebbing of lifeforce within me.
No, it was the physicality of it all. The feeling of being out of doors and moving, of hunger and thirst being derived from my gut and mouth instead of specified feeding times on the clock.
Then it hit me, my favorite chore is yardwork, the more strenuous the better. Like hacking the climbing vines of the maile pilau from my grandmother’s hillside fence or digging out old banana tree stumps from my mother’s old place.
Yet since high school, I’ve been pegged and worked as an indoor type. A nerd, either of the computer or academic subspecies. Office jobs punctuated by graduate school. Working with “intellectuals” and always feeling like the odd person out because of my disdain for the pretensions and airs of the academic lifestyle (even as I love the books and sensation of learning and researching).
With teaching, I was able to move, to pace, gesture and vocalize energetically, between the mind-numbing lulls of sitting in the office and soul-killing paperwork. Perhaps if I had become a college professor I’d have been the type to teach outside on days of beautiful weather. Who knows. I digress.
What I realized today is that I’ve been running from what truly makes me happy my whole life, and forcing myself to live in a certain way (and always underperforming) because I have certain mental talents that it’s been deemed by society that I should use, and that what I enjoy is dirty bust-ass work fit only for idiots, immigrants and eccentric hobbyists.
Truth be told, I think I’d be happy right now with something that had me working hard outside all day long, preferably with plants.
And I should probably take up some sort of traditional dancing/music as a hobby. Most modern stuff leaves me pretty cold.
I guess what I’m saying is that at heart, I’ve been a blue-collar person in denial.
P.S. I realized that my problems have been exacerbated recently by the fact that I now own a car for the first time in over a decade. I think I really need to walk/bike as my primary mode of transport. I need exposure and don’t need the stress of driving. Too bad bike riding in this state is a death wish. No bike lanes, nonexistent shoulders, decaying roads and walkways and crappy drivers.
