A Writer's Rant.

"The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails."
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Stephen Dedalus


Forgive me, but, it had to happen.

Sitting here, I find myself at a terrible impasse. As a writer, one who makes use of the written word as his primary means for expressing himself and his art, I realize I am at the mercy of a time and a place where visuals mean everything, leaving words hollow and meaningless.

Through language I strive to paint pictures, and beyond that arrive at various personal and perhaps universal truths. Through a range of tools like metaphor, simile, and punctuation like ellipses or a question mark, I rub two words and then three and then more together to make fire burn on a page.

With my own audible voice, I try my best to communicate the trueness of a feeling, garnishing it with various tones, and pantomimed actions.

I dig deep inside myself for the quintessence of that feeling. I dig it up, and sift it through all the choppiness of inner dialogue and confusion of cascading emotions. I cannot demand quiet because this is a place that is perpetually saturated with sound, that never truly sleeps.

With my eyes closed, I methodically and deliberately string syntax together. It becomes a monologue spoken semi-aloud; no, more so a dialogue I actually have with myself over and over again until it is refined, until the beauty of the feeling shines bright, and I am hopefully liberated by the truth discovered within it. Sometimes the beauty is measured in exquisite pain, and the truth is difficult, irrefutable and permanent.

By that point the voice announces: "I need to write this down."

I sit to process an understanding of the pain I am feeling in order to derive some form of hope if possible from a hopeless situation

I have organized something. Untangled a frustrating knot.

I have given something a name.

I have uncovered reasons for something, and dear God, I think I can change something for the better of myself or maybe others.

It’s my gift. My proclivities lie HERE. It’s what I’m good at.

It’s also a bit of a curse, in a world when everyone asks "What have you DONE for me lately?"

I review every image in my mind; revisit every memory, over and over. It is as though I am traveling back to the past with an aim on changing the present with what I find there. Each time however, I am hopelessly observing from the sideline, like watching a time reel.

The words fall short. Words are forgettable. Words can’t change a mind, no matter how true or poignant. Promises and odes don’t move hearts, no matter how much vindication they are spoken with. Rarely can one argue for another chance at anything.

Strike three is usually always, in most contexts, strike three, and words can’t change it.

Dylan Thomas wrote and recited poems to the woman, or women he loved. His work spoke not just for itself, but for him as well. Perhaps he was the exception to the rule in a world where symbols stand taller and louder than words. Men have painted ceiling masterpieces, and grown hanging gardens. They’ve waged ten year wars, commissioned the building of palaces and pyramids and the world’s first and only automatic Lamborghini in the name of love, devotion and adoration for someone or something. It seems a losing battle however to pit the medium of the written word up against stone, steel, stain-glass, gardens, near human sacrifice and Italian auto mechanics.

Shakespeare’s characters could move nations and fickle hearts alike with their soliloquies and poetic proclamations. What they say is emotionally powerful, unselfconscious, and honest. They bare their hearts and minds to lovers, comrades, ghosts, faeries and the audience, and that’s more than enough. Their words read off a playbook like magic.

Only in fiction...

Everything we do is steeped in some kind of magic. Our minds are like a terra-forming universe, explosions and chaotic bright flashes of light against a sheet of blackness. Out from that we pull something magical, something that is steeped in love.

We draft new worlds or opaque representations of this one, and populate them with characters and animals and other things, giving them a history. The drive to create something and then interpret it is probably the last divine cord connecting us to paradise. We actively steer the destiny of these worlds and peoples. Though they are guided by our hands, we discover just what that destiny is at the same time they do.

When asked why he came to the decision to kill off the little boy in his novel Cujo, Steven King said that he did not actually decide to have the boy killed in the end, but rather, he found him there dead.

Life as a writer can be one of constant anxiety and self-doubt because it is almost entirely dependent on the free flow of a process that is so often interrupted and distorted by, as Robert Lowell once described, the balance of ‘salt’ in the brain. Due to certain physical and emotional dams, certain receptors may become dulled, and desensitized almost to the point of shutting down.

The lifeblood of the process lies in discovering the numerous shades of color in the world, recognizing a melody in the even the simplest tone, and moving fluidly to that special rhythm of cause and effect. We take all these pieces singularly, and put them together into one fluid kaleidoscopic color sequence, lyrical progression, or rhythmic waltz.


We have to find the pieces behind the scenes. Hidden, beneath the leaves.

However, it’s from behind the scenes that we conduct it. With one leg there, and another back here, we plug away at a typewriter, and make something that then seems to exist free of us, as though it spontaneously willed itself into existence. In comparison with what we writers create, we ourselves don’t seem nearly as bright or colorful. So we remain in its shadow

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."

No problems there. No one usually does.

How often is an actor or actress worshiped in the end based on the myriad of personae they step in and out of? How often is it that backstage, or once the music stops playing, the person with the guitar or microphone is still the impetuous rock star-poet? For that matter was he ever? Crowds seem to think so...

Our work doesn’t speak for us in the same way.

We want to take people to these places, but they choose to go by themselves. They forget that we conjured the magic they get lost in; took elements of life and made a story out of them, deciphered the most difficult emotions and brought them to the surface. They forget walking with us is to walk through the process with us.

If the process hits a muddy snag, they can help bring us back to neutral and offer a push. This may be a difficult time, but there’s a dedication in it for them.

Maybe even a character...

We can reveal nuances about the world they couldn’t previously see.
The pictures are up to them. We just help them to see. Help them use their mind’s eye, and open their heart.

How else can you yell without making a sound? Speak in different languages without moving your lips? Tell a secret without the need to whisper, or confess something utterly stutter free, without self-doubt?

Musings On Love: Attraction

There is something cathartic and ceaselessly amusing in simply sitting back, and watching a plump house pet. Whether impossibly cute or entirely repugnant, observing their hastened waddle across a newly mopped kitchen floor, the way they labor to keep up with the nimbler, more lithe animals of the neighborhood, chase around their zigzagging food bowl, slosh through their drinking water, or suffer through the heat of the day just makes my life seem suddenly less of a struggle.

With a wide grin I cannot fully explain, I pat its fur-coated back fat, and while ruffling its jowls with both hands I chuckle with affectionate empathy, and say in my baby voice, "Oh, you poor little bastard!"

And yet, when they rest their heavy, wet faces on your lap, or spin their awkward fuzzy bodies into a pile on top of you, you can’t help but be taken with the genuine enthusiasm for where they are and surprisingly warm, well meaning nature. There is nowhere in the world they would rather be, and it shows. Despite the drool and the sloppy kisses, you feel the same way.

I have witnessed relationships that seem to function in MUCH the same manner.

I have known guys far less than perfect who defied all shallow peer expectations by charming the hearts and minds of class-A beauties. From a distance it seems as though these women, intelligent, attractive, and talented have either based their choice solely on commodity, or that strange, love-pity hybrid. But up close, astonishingly, they are very much in love, or are well on their way. They connect on every level; enjoying each others company, and a mutual physical and emotional spark.

Over time I came to view the good fortune of these peers with a mixture of satisfaction and frustration. On one hand it was great to see people of real substance and goodness come away with something great, desirable, and meaningful. On the other hand, it has truly sucked to see other people hook things that were great, desirable and meaningful.

I suppose it’s because I came to view myself in the same light. While not fat, or hairy, I believe I too possess a certain ragamuffin dog appeal, like the male lead from Lady and the Tramp, or a canine Oliver Twist. A bit shy, ever loyal and well meaning, I’m the thin, possibly underfed, under loved pup with a heart of gold and a patch of dingy brown fur over his eye that you can’t fathom, because the rest of me is off-white in color. I’ve got the big eyes that howl "Take me home!" My nubs of ears suggest I made a little extra scratch wrestling raccoons in back alleys. If I had a resume attached to my makeshift, fishbone collar, it may read:

*Affectionate
*Works well with other pets (and children)
*Can herd sheep (and children)
*LOVES peanut-butter (...)
*Does not bite (too hard...)
*Guard Dog: will watch the house, the tv, the stove (and children)
*Toilet trained
*Proficient in sit, lie down, play dead, fetch, reverse-lie down, etc...

...Among other things.

There may be this desire for you to throw money at me. Perhaps that’s the reason I might be seen with a hobo at first.

So I lack the superficial purebred features of a Great Dane, or the intimidation factor of a Rottweiler. I can’t compete with a Golden Retriever in ruggedness either, but so what? Those are just images, is any of that honestly important? I’m the dog you really want. I can jump through all the hoops, and more.

Take me home, Dammit!

Repeatedly Reproached, or kicked to the roadside, I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. Were people really that critical, and elitist? Well, Some are for sure.

Then my mind got moving...

There is another familiar side to the image I’m channeling. It’s one of a dog that always seems to be cold, and shivering. It sometimes cloisters itself away rather than approach people. Upon being reached out to, it may quiver nervously, a clear sign it’s been hurt before. Disaffected, it projects itself as though there is something wrong with it, as though it were somehow aware that that brown patch doesn’t match the rest of it. Hopeful, it may follow you around after this.

The revelation that hit me was a bit painful.

If such an animal were to amble over to me seeking affection I would find myself thinking, "Hell, this thing needs SHOTS, not hugs and kisses." I would approach it from a strict distance with an obligatory kindness, and respect mixed with sprinklings of pity and discomfort.

I suppose if I couldn’t imagine letting my canine alter ego bury its head in my lap, I couldn’t much less imagine a woman allowing my less shaggy true self to do the same in hers.

...

Oh I get it; it’s a post about how his love life sucks!

Well, no, not entirely. This isn’t designed to be a bitter, self-loathing rant. I am not weeping with my hands in the air, beckoning the love deities yelling WHY?! If that were the case, I would have learned nothing at all. Instead, more so than being an outlet, I hope this shines a spotlight on an understanding I’ve come to that maybe will help other nice guys like me.

At almost twenty-four, I learned these lessons late. I’ve had my heart bruised many times to finally grasp them.

There is this loud and clear projection of something defined and unique, this confident embodiment of what people believe, BY those people. It is what attracts. Intrigues. Captivates. It is sexy.

In Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods, Loki, the trickster from the Norse pantheon illustrates this point perfectly when he describes the essence of god-hood to the novel’s protagonist Shadow:

"It’s not magic. It’s about being you, but the you that people believe in. It’s about being the concentrated, magnified essence of you. It’s about becoming thunder, or the power of a moving horse, or wisdom. You take all the belief and become bigger, cooler, more than human. You crystallize."

But what proof is there when you don’t believe it yourself? Or if the projector is broken or damaged, or the essence fractured somehow? People can’t believe in, or grow with something that isn’t whole.

Sure those awkward looking pets may seem pathetic at first, but on the other hand, a stately fat English bulldog seems to thoroughly enjoy the simpler things in its life, and in doing so, reminds and encourages you to do the same. They run about unselfconsciously with such vigor, unaware of any of the shortcomings or imperfections I or anyone else may perceive about them. Wherever they are headed, they’re well on their way.

It’s in those very subtle displays that they let what is best in themselves shine, and because of that, bring out the best in whomever they are around.

In the end, that’s one of the most meaningful, heartfelt compliments anyone can hear:

"I am at my best, when I am with you."

So, if the pieces are all in place, if you believe that you can breathe fire, then breathe it: brightly, fiercely, whatever shade or color it is. Maybe next time out proves greater than just another lesson to be learned. (Try not to burn anyone of course...)

Carrying the Fire, Part One

Years ago in the town of Hamden, CT where I live, there was a man named Gil Nagle. A veteran of the Second World War, Gil was a short, grizzled man with a solid, coiled physique. He was a Hanshi (master instructor) in the Shotokan Karate style, and I’m told, one of the hardest men around.

Mr. Nagle began his martial arts training like so many in the first crop of American martial artists had, as a member of the United States Military while stationed in Japan. The training must have been rigorous, often times bordering on brutal. While Squatting for great periods of time in deep, solid stances, Nagle's Sensei would no doubt have taken great pleasure testing the gai-jin soldier’s foundation with sharp kicks to his thighs, and heavy, downward palm strikes to each of his shoulder blades. After countless knuckle push-ups off the hard dojo floor, Nagle would have been made to execute techniques until perfection, signified by the snap of a karate gi made stiff by dried sweat following every punch and kick, resonating through the tempered pine of the dojo where he trained. But as a warrior by nature Gil embraced it, and over time earned tactical proficiency in the art, and an honorific title few outside of Japan possessed at the time.

The title granted him the permission to spread the teachings of Shotokan to his home in America. Upon returning home, Gil’s interests branched out to the art of Judo. He corresponded to the masters in Japan through several instructors he trained weekly with in New York. He set up a small dojo in Connecticut where he trained adults and teenagers alike in his own synthesis of Karate and Judo. Though far removed from the shores of Japan, Nagle’s training was no less fierce. His students, some no older than fifteen or sixteen, endured the many bumps, bruises, cuts and physical exhaustion synonymous with physical training on a nightly basis. They practiced until their muscles failed, until their voices ran hoarse from successive kiai, until the skin of their knuckles cracked and split, the balls of their feet blackened and calloused, their necks and throats tender from shime-waza (choking techniques) until that same gi snap that echoed with authority for Master Nagle in that training hall in Japan echoed for them as well.

I have never met Gil Nagle, though I would have relished the opportunity. He passed away many years ago, leaving behind a legacy only truly carried on the wind, through the shared collective of stories spoken by his former students and neighbors. Master Nagle carried the flame of a tradition (perhaps two) that at its very core was deadly serious. He engaged his students regularly, pushing them to their very physical and mental limits:

He would dart flawlessly across the dojo floor, cutting seamless angles with his feet, frustrating the attacks of his pupils. Their strikes and kicks were rendered impotent against the forearms and shins of their instructor’s blocks. Aggravated, they would lunge at him, clasping his gi in an attempt at a leg sweep or throw. As if he could render himself momentarily intangible, Gil slipped through the grasp of his students and, in a few deft movements would break their center of balance and send them hurling to the hard pine below. A “soft” technique.

He put the fear of reality in them, readying them for the inherent violence of the world:

“If I was a seasoned New York street fighter, you’d have ended up in the emergency room, or worse,” he would admonish, as he helped them up, and dusted them off, resetting their dislodged toe or finger.

He would then turn to the class and tell them to consider ripping off a car antennae and using it to get through a truly difficult violent confrontation. It was quite obvious that this man knew more than most people did about unarmed combat. A bit more subtle though was Master Nagle’s underlying message that under no circumstances were any of his students to become a part of that undertow of violence. Times have certainly changed.

Seventeen to twenty-five year olds everywhere glut themselves on images of a new generation of testosterone overloaded martial artists, puffed out, and muscle bound, their skin scrawled with war paint. They squat triumphantly over a defeated opponent, raining their bowling ball sized fists down on their exposed heads with a look of mania in their eyes. They flock to MMA gyms that peddle a strictly physical program usually lacking a character building component, highlighting power and strength over knowledge and perfection of technique and execution. After a few months they ride high on their newly inflated egos, sporting brand name logos on shirts practically painted on their chest and torso. It’s an excuse for many young people to fight; the most fun they will have feeding this drive without being arrested afterward.

Though I would personally like to see a certain level of technical growth in the training of combat sport as well as the attitudes and conduct of its participants, this post is in no way a crusade to condemn mixed martial arts or any other sport like it. I have been an avid watcher of venues like the Ultimate Fighting Championship and K1 Kickboxing for years. A good number of its participants are superbly talented athletes and fighters in peak physical condition, and actively contribute in a positive, inquisitive light to the evolution of the fighting arts. This is merely a microcosm of an issue of greater importance. So much emphasis now is placed on competition. We are constantly in contention with one another, laboring under the false pretense that “might makes right.” Our identities seem in large partly defined by who our enemies are.

A month or so ago, a neighbor and friend of my sister’s was over the house for a visit. Soon enough the subject turned to a friend of hers she used to work with at a local gym. He is a relatively young man, perhaps no older than thirty. He had served two tours of duty already in either Afghanistan or Iraq, which one specifically I cannot remember. Not surprisingly the man is very large, and quite strong. Apparently, he also boasts a severe temper, which at times interferes with the cordiality of everyday civilian life. He plans on re-enlisting soon, and returning to the war.

“I’m really good at killing people. It’s what I’m best at,” he confided in her. “I like hurting people.”

Not to worry though, “he’s really a nice guy.”

It seemed to make just as much sense to my sister’s friend as it did to this man. It’s what soldiers do after all. The root of the American soldier runs deep in the traditions of aggression and blood lust.

...

I took my leave of the conversation.

I had always understood the effectiveness of a soldier to be measured in, among other things, his or her ability to accurately assess threats, keep emotionally distanced from that threat and eliminate it with as much economy as possible, draw on their resourcefulness and untapped courage to meet any situation, all the while keeping emotions at a realistic medium. The conditions of war are incredibly harsh and take their toll on even the best people and I’m in no position to condemn this man I do not know, but I am weary of those who would perpetuate their own form of blind justice from the barrel of an assault rifle on a battlefield. They nurture some collective unconscious drive to subvert human beings. They are the ones who rape and pillage. They see it as an excuse to act on this.

I can’t say for certain, but in the center of a conflict that saw the most catastrophic loss of human life in recorded history, and in a theater known toward the end of that struggle as the most violent, I harbor no doubt that Master Nagle was forced to take life. He devoted his livelihood to knowledge and the perfection of his martial skill, and the passing of that knowledge. The man could fight, and fight well. He probably found certain exhilaration in the physical challenge of it. But he did not subscribe to a mantra that bred conflict. He was not a murderer, nor did he ever actively take some perverse pleasure in exacting his dominance over others. His skill in taking a life never equated to an enjoyment of it. He venerated strength, discipline and perseverance, but valued love and compassion above all things.

Martial traditions, at least those found in the east, all contain philosophical, ethical, and spiritual tenets weaved seamlessly in with the fabric of the physical ones. If the physical application and execution of techniques is the body, these invaluable precepts are the soul. To deny one is to deny the other; the removal of each from the other sacrifices the integrity of martial arts and martial traditions as a whole, upsetting an important balance and sending them spiraling into perversity. Shintoism, Zen Buddhism, Bushido, and even aspects of Christianity in some cases imbue martial doctrine with codes of conduct, temperament, altruism and restraint. But these are just ideas, intangible and so easily ignored. What it all comes down to, what these facets of control, respect, proper conduct, and discipline are all extensions of, is the overlaying concept of HUMANITY. To negate our humanity is to lose touch with the human race. One can’t foster a respect for life in this way, and once that is gone, what is there to fight for? One then isn’t a martial artist, or a fighter, or a policeman, a soldier, or a warrior at all. Without this respect for life, the fires of grand traditions are snuffed out, and the conquering hero is reduced simply to conqueror, a thug, and a predator.