My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, I’ve been reading The Narrator by Michael Cisco, one of the most brilliant writers putting down words today. I’ve been reading The Narrator for… awhile. For me, Michael Cisco doesn’t write the sort of books one flies through. At least, I definitely don’t fly through them. His prose are thick, the words are almost heavy in your head, but this is because the images he creates with the words are so vivid, and real, and often yet so very dream-like, or nightmarish. He takes scenes of dream and nightmare, with all the inherent incoherence and impossibility that the human mind can create intimately, in the dark, and puts those scenes on paper in words. I don’t rush through words like that, I want to take them all in, to see the images they’re creating.

When I do finish The Narrator, I’ll review it, but really, just go buy it. I don’t think Cisco will fall on his face during the second half.

Tattoo by Fish, Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

This is my first foot tattoo, it’s from one of my favorite Elliott Smith songs, Angel in the Snow, off his posthumously released collection, New Moon.

I’d say you make a perfect

Angel in the snow

All crushed out on the way you are

Better stop before it goes too far

Don’t you know that I love you?

Sometimes i feel like only a cold still life

That fell down here to lay beside you

Don’t you know that i love you?

Sometimes I feel like only a cold still life

Only a frozen still life

That fell down here to lay beside you

It’s such a beautiful little song, and sad. Falling so hard, feeding so… apart.

People keep telling me, especially during and since yesterday, how amazing I am, that I’m so smart, I push assistive technology forward. I hear about all the good I do, the people I have helped and will help, with the way I show technology, with my writing. I’m told I should be proud of myself.

Helping people is great, and I seem to be born into it. I have the intellect and I’m ridiculously blessed with access to technology. I have always managed to have the best gear. NeuroSwitch, this software, SwitchXS, their developers pretty much designed both solutions for my specific desires, to my specifications. The thought being, design for the high-end and you help everyone, novice to advanced.  I take the technology and show vast possibilities, people get inspired. I want to help people, I’m glad to do it. I can’t imagine not helping as long as I’m in a position to do it. I just don’t see why I should be proud of myself for doing something that’s simply right. You help people who need it, especially if you’re suited to do so, period. That’s what community is all about. I need plenty of help, so it’s just right to give back. I remember not having technology, nobody should feel trapped. When someone’s alone in the dark, all I want is to pull them out and make them feel safe, because I know alone, and I know dark. Helping people isn’t anything to praise oneself over.

Also, and this is just me… When I can’t sleep at 4 AM, knowing that I help people, it doesn’t make me any less lonely or any less scared. When I’m really down, I get a lot of “You should be happy that you help people, you should embrace that, you should let that fill you up. Happiness comes from within. Stay busy, work to help others.” I do help people, even when I myself feel dead inside. I can’t just quit, and I really don’t. The thing is though, I’m not Jesus, I’m just a fellow with a few hopes, a few dreams, certain things I want so very badly before I’m gone, and while I honestly desire to help people, and do so willingly, a life of service can’t be “it” for me. I’m supposed to be filled with this… peace, but I’m not. Really, almost nothing I do makes me feel pride or genuine contentment or genuine happiness. It’s all temporary, at best. I have my own, deep-rooted wants that go beyond service and being glad to simply exist.

There’s this scene in Cool Hand Luke, my favorite Paul Newman movie, where Luke (who has really done nothing remotely worth death, his original two year prison sentence for getting drunk and destroying parking meters), after escaping prison, is in a church surrounded by cops who want him dead. He starts talking to God, calls Him “Old-timer.” He basically says, Well, Old-timer, you made me this way (headstrong, smart, kind, rough, willful, at odds with everything), then you stacked the deck against me (put him in a position of service, obedience, a mundane “do as you’re told, don’t want for anything” life). So, what am I supposed to do? I know I’m a screw up, I make plenty of mistakes, but help me… Luke just feels stuck, and lost, and wanting. In prison, before his chat with God, the inmates looked up to him. All Luke’s courage, defiance against the system, all the times he got beat down (literally) only to get right back up again, it fed everyone else’s hope and strength. This role is basically fine for Luke, he wants to help, cares about others, but after getting the shit beat out of him in a particularly brutal way, with everyone looking to him to make them feel better about the situation, Luke finally breaks down and screams, “Stop feeding off of me!” They see Luke as this larger than life, break the rods of our taskmasters, Christ-like figure, but he’s not. He’s just a man, a basically good man who wants to do right, but who has flaws, who makes mistakes, who gets tired, who needs help himself sometimes. I know how he felt.

I mean, I’m completely grateful for all the spectacular, unique things I’ve gotten to experience, for all my “stuff.” I’m blessed, I know I’m blessed. I’m thankful for all of it. It’s just, no matter how many famous people I meet, or places I go, or people I help, or compliments I hear, or how well I write, none of it fixes the cracks that hurt at 4 AM. I’m missing something, I’m missing the one thing I’d trade everything else to have. It’s really nothing shocking, it’s not even unique within the human condition, it’s practically boring, yet to me it’s completely everything. No, I don’t want to be able to walk, or breathe and talk without machines, it’s nothing silly and pointless like that. I just want to go home, what feels like home to me, at least. It seems that the harder I try to have the only thing that’s truly important to me, the further away it gets. I’m so tired and uneasy. Being tired and uneasy makes me screw up, it’s this sickening infinite loop. I’ve screwed up so much. People tell me I’m amazing, all I see is failure, and time flying by.

So, I met with the Vice President yesterday. He was in town doing a fundraiser for Senator Bill Nelson, who I also met, along with his lovely wife, Grace. After Vice President Biden gave his talk on how backward the Republicans are, the Secret Service led us to a private room, skipping the always tedious receiving-line. The room didn’t have a table, so this fellow from the Secret Service had to hold my MacBook Pro so I could see it, which he did, minus the part about me being able to see the computer. He stands what seems like sixty feet away, at an angle to where I’m looking at my screen from under my glasses. My screen is a big, glowing blur. My mom’s talking about the importance of technology, whilst I can’t see said technology. Fortunately, I’m a spectacular blind typer. I have my keyboard memorized, I have a sense of how to time the locations of my letters and what-not. I made NeuroSwitch look as stylish as it should, while not demonstrating that I’m blind as a ninety year-old man.

I wrote this note to the Vice President…

I have used assistive technology for communication most of my life. After losing my ability to speak four years ago, assistive technology became especially vital. If I can’t type, I can’t talk. If I can’t talk, I may as well not exist. If I can’t talk, I’m furniture, I’m nothing.

For over fifteen years, I tapped a little switch with my thumb to access my computer. This was fine until a routine blood-draw injured my hand, and my thumb. Communication became harder and harder as my muscles got weaker and weaker. I felt trapped, terrified. Then I found NeuroSwitch, the best computer access solution I’ve ever used. NeuroSwitch allows me to access my computer with any muscle in my body via completely portable wireless hardware. With NeuroSwitch, I can communicate any time, any place.

Technology is everything to me, it’s how I live as a productive American citizen, it grants me what our founding fathers promised anyone who makes a home on U.S. Soil, the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It’s that promise that makes America beautiful, access to assistive technology, like my NeuroSwitch,  is the best way for our government to keep that promise to its disabled citizens.

Also, and I’d kick myself if I don’t say this… I have this unusual collection, a collection of odd and unique neckties.  I have quite a few, but I don’t have a Vice Presidential Necktie…

I’ve been reading lots of Sarah Vowell lately, The Wordy Shipmates, Unfamiliar Fishes. Her love of history, the way she talks about America at its best (and worst) is contagious, I think I channeled her in writing my note to our Vice President.

Anyways, Vice President Biden was very generous with his time, and very receptive to the need for providing technology to the disabled.

So, I listen to the New Yorker: Fiction Podcast. Every month, a writer from today chooses a story to read that was previously published in the New Yorker, then there’s a discussion about the story. I’ve been listening for awhile, but the one story that really sticks out for me is Day-Old Baby Rats by Julie Hayden, published in 1972. It’s a short-story about a day in the life of a young woman in New York City. She’s an alcoholic, we’re there for her first drink in the morning, we see the city through her eyes, we hear her thoughts on everything she sees, and doesn’t see. It’s a gripping story of a woman, stricken by loneliness and anxiety, surrounded be millions of people.

Julie Hayden created a beautiful story in Day-Old Baby Rats, but Julie Hayden’s personal story is also sadly moving. She lived in New York City, had a story collection published, did regular writing for the New Yorker, she was doing things just about every writer aspires toward, definitely what I aspire toward. Still, today you can barely find a trace of her on google, by the time of her far too early death in 1981 her work was largely out of print, largely forgotten. Anxiety and phobia fueled her own alcoholism, she’d carry a flask, taking nips to numb her worries. Cancer ended her writing and her life. forever. She did these great things, but she still slipped and fell and ended badly. Her sad writing mirrored the sadness in her head, people found it beautiful, compelling, and yet for some reason, she died pretty much unremembered. It scares me how that can, and does happen. We all want our stories to end well, but sometimes, no matter what, they don’t. They just don’t.

I worry about my story.

Well, now that I know of her, I’ll remember Julie Hayden, and maybe this post might put her work in some new minds. It’s not much, but it’s something. She, and her work, are definitely worth remembering.

So, I’m not entirely not writing. Us Mac people recently got the Mac App Store, it’s built into OS X and it’s a one stop shop for buying Mac software. It’s basically just like the iPhone App Store, click, buy, run.  Anyway, the day the store opened I HAD to try it, I get ridiculously excited about these things. The first app that caught my eye was Evernote, it’s this cloud-based notebook app. You can create different notebooks for different subjects, like, I have “Thoughts,” ” Writing fragments,” “Dreams…” All your notebooks are stored online, so you have access to them on practically any computer, or smartphone, anywhere. It’s a really stylish, easy way to turn thoughts into words that you can always keep with you. You can also create shared notebooks that people can read and even write collaboratively. I totally hadn’t planned on writing this little review, I just think Evernote is so fucking cool.

I love the idea of writing in notebooks, pouring thoughts onto paper, it’s very romantic. It’s also something I’ve never been able to do. Aside from blogging, I’ve never kept any sort of notebook or journal. I mean, if I have a little one paragraph thought that only means something to me, I’m not going to blog it, and I’m not going to save it as a single text file. Before Evernote, that thought would simply fade until it disappeared. There are also thoughts, no matter how invested I am in transparency, that I just can’t share right now. Evernote lets me keep all my thoughts in a nice safe place, to be shared, or not. That’s where I’ve been of late.

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington is hard to classify, but I’ll call it dark historical fantasy. The story takes place in medieval Europe and follows the ignominious lives of Hegal and Manfried Grossbart, twin brothers, grave robbers, murderous bastards. Hagel and Manfried begin the novel with one goal, journeying from their European homeland to “Gyptland.” Being grave robbers, they see Egypt as their very own promised land, an entire country of graves and tombs loaded with riches almost too numerous to even imagine. Their journey will have them cross paths with witches, monsters, demons, mad clergy, royalty, and they’ll murder lots, and lots of innocent people before they reach their end.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t like this book until I actually finished it. The Grossbarts are simply not likable characters, at all. They’re evil, they murder women, children, anyone who gets in their way, and they’re really successful at their evil. It’s not the evil that bothers me, it’s that the Grossbarts are not smart men, they’re lucky. It’s not that the Grossbarts are brilliant, it’s that everyone trying to thwart them just isn’t that bright. The Grossbarts aren’t Richard  III, or Iago, they’re just really paranoid with a kill first, ask questions never sort of attitude. When everyone else is screwing up, it’s hard to feel anything but angry at the evil being perpetrated. I so wanted one person to smarten up and take the Grossbarts’ heads. Intelligent evil is, at least for me, fun to read, and it’s completely satisfying when that evil is at long last destroyed. When Hegal and Manfried finally bit it (their demise is revealed early in the novel), I was all, “Finally! Thank you!” I was relieved more than satisfied. Still, as negative as that sounds, I really enjoyed this book when all was said and done. The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart is epic in scope, by the end I definitely felt like I’d been on a journey. I’m not at all sorry I read it, it just wasn’t at all what expected.

Tattoo by Fish, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, my 600th post is about my 45th, and most recent, tattoo.

These lyrics are from what’s quite possibly my favorite Elliott Smith song, the not-so-known, Some Song. It’s part of a little three track collection, the Needle in the Hay – EP. The first thing that draws me to the song is that it’s written almost entirely in the second-person. If done right, second-person writing is so powerful, it pulls people into the narrative with such intensity. To me, it’s so underrated and under-used, in music and literature. It’s really difficult to pull off, but I think the pay-off is worth trying. The song itself sounds like it’s straight autobiography, Elliott laying out how he saw himself. It’s a very odd mix, he knew he had talent, that he could be who he wanted to be, yet he hated the songs he wrote, hated himself, and he knew he was broken and couldn’t get it together. I understand that odd juxtaposition of feelings toward oneself.

I know I write well, I have skill and my stuff resonates with some people. I know I have a lot of potential to write and do great things, the potential to be the fellow I see in my head. I also hate almost everything I create. I feel like a fuck up, piece of shit failure. I’m just about thirty and I haven’t really accomplished anything important, I’ve screwed stuff up. I’ve wasted chances, ruined things. I’ve made so many bad choices lately. I can’t seem to hold it together enough to be who I want to be. Maybe I’m stuck the way Elliott was stuck. I don’t know.

Tattoo by Colt, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo is from one of my favorite Nirvana songs, Blew, which is on their first record, Bleach. Nirvana songs don’t necessarily tell a story that goes, and then, and then, and then. Nirvana songs are often a mix of lines that mean something and lines that mean absolutely nothing, so it’s a matter of picking out the important lines and figuring out what they mean as a whole. That’s one reason I love Nirvana so much, every song is sort of a puzzle to solve.

To me, Blew is about being stuck, feeling intensely frustrated, and wanting it to stop. I’ve felt that way for so long… One night a few months ago, I felt like making those feelings something external, marking them as part of the story of me.

Tattoo by Colt, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo… The lyrics are from an Aimee Mann song, King of the Jailhouse, which is off her record, my second favorite, The Forgotten Arm. If you listen to the record in order, the songs tell a story about this alcoholic, washed up former boxer, and his girlfriend, and the arc of their relationship from beginning to end. Few albums are perfect, there are always a few songs that are just “meh,” but I think The Forgotten Arm is as close to perfect as an album gets.

As for the tattoo, well, I’ll just say that if I’m stressed enough, and lonely enough, I’m guaranteed to do something stupid. I’ll do the worst, dumbest thing possible, and I don’t know how to fix that about myself.