Like a Lover's voice, misquoting the mountainside, stay in line

Listen, this is my Holiday, and my blog. And I will name my entries as I well please!
..As I WELL PLEASE!

hello, hello, hello. It's Christmas Break for those of us who count it, and Sarah and I have been in St. Louis long enough for it to feel right and comfortable.

I wish this could be a long, well written and magical endeavor for the both of us, but I have been away from my words too long, and --alas!--I'm sure you see right through me. I can barely string together a sentence. I am but a jeweler, with a handful of pearls and crippled fingers.

(Do not worry, I am not without my tricks and whispers, I will guide you through these halls of broken thought)

Still, I write to you with purpose and splendor, though my words flash like backfired fireworks and half sunken sparklers. I can still rock it, as they say at the grammar hall of Rock n Roll.

Look at that last sentence, even. It's like a fucking lightning bug parade.

See? I'm also sayin' shit like that. Shit like smart shit.

***

My novel sits in it's resting place, awaiting my jibs and jabs and curses. I have left it alone for the Holidays...FOR IMPORTANT SHIT IS AFOOT.

***

I will tell you more later when I'm ready. WHEN I CAN TYPE A COMPLETE THOUGHT WITHOUT CAPS OR ASTERISKS. Just know that I am excited. Important things are being done. Things with index cards and newborn mechanics. Things of ink and magic.

A tabletop game to rival the unknown God of such things is being built and broken into a life of slavery before my fingers. I have toiled over it's scribbles and white fields of index card blankness every day, and every night.

It is a shambling, rasping, motherfucker who stares up from beneath my hands. I am a surgeon of index cards, and he is a newborn King.

***

These words are a time capsule, and you're eyes are the shovel.

-mE!

( ^uwjo Y0r t05 708;

Possibly the Second to Last Post Before Christmas

Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's been long enough since the last entry that I'm bursting with words to scribble down and show you. I'm so overwhelmed by the many choices of tone that I've started, erased, restarted, erased again, and restarted one last time the last three fucking sentences.

Your eyes are nothing less, than a boon (or a bone!) and I am nothing short of full of wishes, (or a small and hungry beast)...

We got our Christmas tree up. It's gorgeous. Every year we pick out an ornament together, and this year was a TALKING, Muppet Swedish Chef. God Bless you Hallmark store in the nearest mall.

I mentioned to Sarah that it was a shame we didn't have more colored lights on the tree, as we both grew up in the eighties, were everything was the color of Every Color Invented. (See Rainbow Bright)

When I came home last night, it was to find our tree strung up with an extra two set of rainbow lights, and the feeling that a sneaky wife is a fun thing to have indeed.

***

I'm a few rough pages into the next chapter of my novel, and things are going well, I think. It's weird not being too sick to write. It's even weirder being too busy to write, as December is a month of vagabonds and villains, time traveling Snidely Whiplash motherfuckers who appear just behind you, stealing time out from under your stumbling sneakers.

But all goes well.

I spent Saturday stuck in bed with the worst possible headache imaginable (I'm almost certain I need glasses, thank you Nintendo DS and Aunt Cindy's knowledge of the human body); and in between passing out and wishing I was passing out, I had a lot of time to think.

Mostly of pain.

But sometimes that pain would ebb, and flow, like tidewaters of pure psychic horror. And with this horror (as with all horror) came knowledge.

(I could write to you about sandcastle thoughts, on a flooding beach, but I won't bore you.)

Suffice it say, something about the pain awakened a very important train of thought--of knowledge! A steam powered freight of Author's Necessity (Which I suppose is some sort of drinkable elixir they sell to Authors in Metaphors. Are trains really the best way to ship some a product? IS such a notion for a metaphor even feasible?)

--I'm sorry. I've lost you. I switched bands on my iPod, and that's my fault...

What I am trying to say is that, lying in bed, suffering in waves of terror, I came across a thought I never knew I would get to. And this is thought was about writing, specifically, about how I will write better. And it's very exciting for me.

Thank you for reading this.

..I love you.


--See?! The song changed AGAIN! And so did my prose. Christ, I'm sorry. I'll try to be more professional next time.

Oh Dammit! We're almost out of TIME, and I forgot to tell you all about my exciting plan for next year. (I told you, December is a beast on the prowl, and he will eat up every piece of time I find in my hands) Lemme see if I can tell you quickly, before--

-mE!

T9re6 kw5594r Fu59e6kwe!

Fossils

I am so bone tired. There is nothing but a restless wonder, buzzing though my head.

We could say that I'm in a desert, and maybe you're here too. I can't tell. I'm tired. You could be a shadow, or a well formed dune for all I care.

There is an old wooden sign, and at first i think it's drawing closer to us, until I remember that we're walking. That we've always been walking. The sand below is blue, and dark. It reminds me of shaved crayons, int he bottom of a crayola box. It reminds you of eyeshadow, spilled on the bottom of a familiar purse.

You ask if it's nighttime here, or if we're maybe dreaming.

"No" I tell you. "This is dusk."

We keep walking. The sign draws closer. Something's written on it, but it's hard to look at. It looks magical, and I could never read this sort of thing. You tell me that it's beautiful, but I look away. This is followed by a great deal of remorse, as if I'm missing out on something and I don't have a choice.

We walk past the sign. Strange shadows swoop and twirl along the landscape, as if great winged creatures are dancing above us.

"What are those?" I ask, glancing up at the sky.

"I don't really know," you reply without looking. "...It's the last day of November."

"Oh." I say. And it's around this time I notice the bones, sticking up out of the blue sand. Maybe this is the end of the desert, I think.

As the fossils begin to grow into extravagant and unfamiliar designs, I drift off ahead of you, just a little. But enough to feel alone, and wonder if we should be holding hands.

"Where are we?" I hear you ask from behind me.

"Dusk," I reply. "We should keep walking."



-mE!



( 308pr h4 8e4p4ee 396u086 708;

Home

1

It's just a few moments until Sarah and I will start the long drive to my Father-in-Law's--I have a father in law!--for our first Thanksgiving as a married couple. I like Andy's house. It feels like home. It smells like home too. I don't know why.

Perhaps the years of home cooking have left the air bereft of anything but white flour and coffee. It's wonderful. I even like the drive up there too, since I listen to my iPod and think of stories.

Last time we drove up there it was the end of July, and I can't even tell you, how much that drive helped write the novel I'm working on.

2

I can't believe Thanksgiving is tomorrow. And it's only one month until Christmas.
Time moves a lot faster, the older you get.

3

I remember when I was a kid, my brother and I had these plastic white & rainbow colored pipes, that you could snap together. On some weekends, my father, who was young enough to enjoy the pipes just as much as we did--(if not more)--would snap together a wagon for us, and take me and my brother on a ride to the park.

4

Barely Breathing by Duncan Sheik just shuffled up on my iPod. I just wanted you to know that.

5

My father would spend what felt like hours pulling us up the highest hills of the park. These were staggering heights where Saurumon would attack us with wind and whispers. Uncomfotable journeys where people hunted deer, and died of dysentary. Then, after days of travle, he would give us a push, and we would rocket to our doom.

6

I think, once you hit a certain age, you're just screaming down the hill, and laughing, crashing to your death in one last burst of speed.

7

I laughed all the way to my death as a child, and I'm fuckin' laughin' now.

8

In one month it will be Chrismtas. ONE MONTH. And then it will be another year, another set of familiar holidays. I am Twenty-five. Everything feels like a downhill run...Like I'm trying to keep my footing--and laughing--and screaming--and slipping--and laughing some more.

9

It will be another year of perfectly grouping of words, slipping through my head like eels in a lake bed. Another year of moments passing as I try to keep from falling on my ass.

10

In November, everythign feels downhill.


-mE.

F0k9jy u0k4!

Celebration

1

A post, for you, and for me, in rancorous celebration of my good health. It seems that Sarah and I have finally shrugged off the dark cloak of mononucleosis.

If you have a drink in hand, you may clink it against your screen, and say a toast, or favorite line of lyric.

But make sure it's appropriate, I can't tell you how many Proper Functions I've ruined with a line from In A Big Country.

2

For those without a drink, but eating a hasty breakfast, it's alright to just whisper a "cheers', or clink that cinnamon toast against the screen in good spirit.

3

The novel has reached a Good Place, and as such, I feel like talking about it. Perhaps, if we are careful, it will not hear about this,
...Will not rear its ugly face and kill us all.

4

I spent nearly all day yesterday holed up in a library, and then my living room, finishing the SHIT out of a chapter. It took me weeks. And of course--it's still shit.

It's a first draft, it has to be rough and awful. The problem is not finishing it fast enough...if you take too long, the thing seems to get worse and worse as you think about it...and before long your knee deep in a mire of rewrites and terror.

5

There's a Marvel comic where Mr. Fantastic (he's the guy who can stretch his shape, remember?) Stretches his god damned MIND, in order to use psychic powers.

I feel like that's a good description of me, trying to finish these last two chapters while stuck in the throes of a passionate Kissing Disease.

6

So, there's another chapter done. And it's better than it was, and different than I planned, and I am happy.

-mE.

^uwjo Y0r ( uwg4 708 60 uwjy 086 396u;