Friday, the Last Day of January

Reflections first: I am pleased to announce that the first order of business for me in this class has been completed to satisfaction. I have organized all of my relevant writing projects into a group of approximately ten folders on a new Dropbox account that I set up after asking around and arriving at a consensus that this is the best overall utility for the job. I am already beyond thrilled with my ability to access Word documents from any computer in a matter of seconds. I wish I had figured this out earlier, as it would have saved me a lot of stress last year, but I was too busy writing. Not an entirely bad outcome, all things considered. 

I have two new, rough pieces I’m going to post momentarily. I have been sick for over ten days now and having extremely bizarre lucid dreams on a nightly basis. One of these provided the bulk of the text for the piece I am tentatively naming OCD Dream. The second piece “The Rake Thinker” was directly inspired by the Dahlen readings, and is my attempt at floating on a free stream of consciousness to allow an inner voice to speak out in passages not entirely intended and certainly not overly examined (as of yet). I found this passage to be thought-provoking “The Relational poet constructs by way of a collection of gathered materiel, an “accumulation of sediments” that may contribute to an “apprehension of the world not as an unshaped bundle of of materials waiting to be formed,  but rather a diverse and extensive patterning that is already formed and transforming, already imbued with a logic.” 

This speaks to me loudly in two main ways. First, my experience as an alcoholic-turned-sober in 2008 and the journey since then to present seems to continue to make sense to me in ways that are not readily apparent, but continue to show pieces of an emergent puzzle that seems to make a bizarre/beautiful form of sense. If I had one main abstract goal this semester, it would be to somehow effectively convey this in a series of essays, poems, songs or otherwise.

Secondly, that Dahlen quote resonates with me as I continue my unexpected journey through the creative writing program here at EMU. I never saw ANY of this coming, in fact I used to despise the type of writing I often find myself reading and enjoying these days.I know now that reading pulp and fantasy, while a pleasant diversion, was never going to help me with the long transformation from light to darkness that I am living my way though with no map and little guidelines. These thoughts presently cause me to make a mental note to add a profile section to this blog to give any potential readers access to my back story. More on that soon.

OCD Dream 88

If one has a partner, then two has two more, 

and every four is a dance in an ocean of fours 

from wall to wall, from ceiling to floor.

And how did I ever arrive at time with so many 

numbers passing idly by?

How did I ever love rhyme and embrace off-rhyme,

or open arms to 3/4 time?

Did I ever feel close to 1/3 with half of 

my mind’s eye? 

Is it loud in the night,

when I thrash around and disrupt the pillows 

I set just right before a thoughtless,

dreamless tempest?

 

The Rake Thinker

Observe the second. The stent was a success and we blew it. If the Rake Thinker came though you knew. In a place, wet, dark. Over the occasion, out with the break. In, or if, hell, even then.  When the rows connect nose to nose, you’re a you in your own.  The Rake Thinker puts time in rows.

Here is your chorus, cloven. She got me good. When building, avoid the acrobat. Arc. Park. Dark hearts fumbling start. This is the way to jail a male, free a mile. This,the your-fist-and-free-smile combo. There was no cloudy mood, if it’s a wrap. I was connected, you bought rows, she brought whatever those were, and the Rake Thinker did.

Tear is no sounds like. A glare is above usually. There is where it is no run and no running and no nun run-ons.

I’m no baby. We got in freezing. I lit a twitchy bit instantly and. A curious scarecrow got the lead. She’s done. Crops in, work out. Turn, swerving softly, won’t repeat unless in rows.

Welcome to the baked faker. You have a clear. I’m up and ready to IM. We are probably.

 

 

 

 

Group Prompt #1

I met with Ryan and Shaun at 5pm onTuesday in Halle Library , and after discussing a couple of different ideas we agreed to try a writing prompt limit of one syllable words with an emphasis on sound. I wrote quickly and freely, and composed the following:

Hi…do you think you could turn that thing down? At first it was OK but the more I tried to tune it out the loud- hey! Yeah, you! I need to read and I can’t think straight with all that noise. I know you are on the job but I’m here too and I need some space to think.

Then I took a call. Her voice was like a bag of glass and she spoke so fast that I had to beg her to pause. I tried once more to get the guy to knock it off- now they were both in my ear he with the loud gears and she on the phone- could I hold please?

Yeah, I can hold. What I can’t do is think. His thump hit the wall and shook a shelf near me.  I saw a small crack form on the wall. Then she came back on the line and I must have said the wrong thing…she swore twice in a quick chirp, then hung up.  I was in a tight spot. Every time he hit the wall I jumped.  My nerves were shot and all I could do was stare at the phone and beg the gods to make her call back.

The thing was…I knew that sound and I knew the crack would only spread. If you grew up where I did you’d know it too. People ask why I am so tight, how I can get good grades if a loud noise puts me two steps into a flight? And what can I say to that? Not much.

Some get it, some don’t.  The bell rings, I run. The phone rings, I pace.

Reflections: as I typed my piece, I realized that although it was relatively easy to write in this manner, it was hard to dig into any depth of description of sounds without adjectives or multi-syllabic verbs.  Instead I chose to describe more of a circumstance caused by sound and ended up accidentally depicting the onset of an audio PTSD episode. This interesting development will merit further thought at a later date…

After Shuan, Ryan and I shared our work, we spent a while talking about different ideas and goals of ours for this semester as writers.  We discussed self-censorship and the ways in which we edit ourselves for fear of offending others, or not being understood. We talked about some different methods to hopefully break past boundaries, including chap books, which are encouraging to me because they seem to be a more attainable amount of words to complete a project than an entire novel.

We also reflected about our experience presenting in Christine’s class, and we all felt that it went well. I suggested that the three of us all set a goal of getting at least one piece published this semester, regardless of the size or scope of the media outlet, and we talked about submitting pieces to EMU’s Cellar Roots lit magazine. All in all, it was a productive and encouraging exercise/meeting.

First Friday, an Afternoon Dispatch, Hook and Catch

I spoke to my roommate Melissa last night and told her I was excited by the shift in my routine that this class is providing (and forcing). I like the idea of getting up on Fridays with a 5 pm deadline because it gives me a large wedge of time to begin working on my thoughts and ideas. Of course, my plan is to write as much as possible the rest of the week- in fact, the number one external issue on my plate the past week has been my hunt to locate and buy a small laptop that I could keep with me constantly. The idea was to get myself to sit down and write more than once a day, with no technological issues to set me back. Write, learn, write, learn, repeat.

As I spent the better part of a week thinking about this intermittently, my focus shifted and dragged me onto a more pressing issue, that of dipping the initial toe in the water with this class and creating a new project. I considered a few things, in this exact order, between 7am and 4pm today:

1) I realized I was already overspent and thus, don’t NEED a new laptop right now, even if it only costs a hundred bucks. My current one will have to do, issues and all. I will keep saving all of my work to dropbox so I don’t have to be paranoid about losing everything if it crashes, and I will make use of the computers conveniently located EVERYWHERE on campus.

2) I needed to re-read the syllabus for this class and spend some time making loose plans/documenting ideas and maybe a little more research. I began doing this two hours ago (mental note- edit this entire post later on and address tense issues).

3) I realized that increasingly, my research time has involved me looking around at MFA programs online and asking students for advice. I need to ask some folks in the creative writing department (henceforth referred to as the department) if this is a task I should be investing time in now, or if I can put it off until this coming spring/summer after the semester concludes.

4) I feel like I will have much better odds of getting into an MFA program if I do some inspired writing this semester through the Fall of 2014. This seems to be as close to fact as anything else right now; present tense important.

5) Upon further reflection, I still felt a bit overwhelmed by the course work for the semester, but only in the sense that I was hoping to spend more time writing original work and less time writing papers. I haven’t had much time to go through them, but it’s a safe bet that the four assigned books aren’t going to magically read themselves either! I went through each assignment and decided that the one that pissed me off the most was the annotated bibliography (I despise bibliographies but don’t want to get off topic so I’ll just leave it at that.)

6) So I stewed about all of this for a good five minutes before I took a deep breath and reassessed things once more. I realized that the bibliography wasn’t really a hard assignment and that I should do my best to deal with all of the assigned writing enthusiastically. It’s the only way to do this, and I know that by now. I had four writing classes last semester; I can handle this. Around this time I realized at least one or two of the other assigned papers could be written in a hybrid form- falling somewhere between academic and creative writing in style- hopefully…

7) On this positive note I left the house to go write, with all of these ideas taking turns running across my consciousness. Oh, yeah, somewhere in the middle I practiced guitar for 2 and 1/2 hours, the relaxation of which probably helped me regain focus. Now I’m sitting here in the middle of the moment, with my stress on one line and my enthusiasm on the other. I think I’m going to TRY to do things this way:

I’m going to trust that if I do a good amount of quality creative work every week that maybe I won’t have to spend as much time writing introspectively (like this) and can lean enthusiastically into the course in such fashion. I’m going to keep placing faith in the department and the course program- in fact, I’ll likely continue to mentor younger students with advice about the higher level courses and writing habits, a role I accidentally stepped into occasionally last semester. I feel more at home (at Eastern in the Creative Writing program) than I have in many, many years. When I worry or start to falter, I will remind myself of this. Something came over me during the Capstone Presentation last semester and a thought landed in my lap, unbidden: I belong here, in this program, at this school.

It was an actual epiphany, a life-changer, and I was able to smile as I recalled my CRTW 201 teacher trying to get an unruly class to reconsider using epiphany to describe all good ideas or breakthroughs.

So I ‘ll square my shoulders, I’ll press send, and I’ll walk through the doorway.

Invisible Fences

L. Hyland

Invisible Fences

My experience in the creative writing program thus far has been a trip, meaning both an experience and a trippy journey at that.  I can still vividly recall talking to my CRTW 201 teacher Amanda Goldblatt and confessing my worries about being forced to learn a bunch of nonsensical poetry and high-minded literature.  I had been writing avant-weird comedy for quite a few years, and was convinced that all I really needed was mentorship to help get me into a more productive work mode. What I can see now in hindsight is that I was actually in a rut spanning more than twenty years, and had arrived at a lousy stall-out where my creative choice on any day was largely based on how offensive I felt like being for the sake of a laugh.

Having taken 335 with Halpern and 422 & 426 with Hume, along with several art and lit classes that played a role, my perspective has radically shifted- not just as a writer, but as a person.  I told a friend the other day that I felt as if EMU was a massive tower of knowledge that was leaning into me, behind me, lifting me up from below, providing me a chance to take steps on a journey that millions of minds have contributed to along the path of human history.  I’m referring here to inter-textuality of course, which I now see constantly and everywhere with by brain’s new eyes.

I have learned not to seek easy resolution, not to give up quickly on frustrating passages (while reading or writing), and I have learned to look at time from several different angles that I did not consider before. As a writer, my new focus on the spatial axis is breathing life and detail into my work, providing me a chance to break away from trying to see what’s next. This new habit seems to inspire a burst of creativity…and then the whole process repeats. Learn, break, fix, change, move, analyze, move, stay- this is a random snapshot of steps I might take on any project now.

Regarding the reading: “Literary vs. Genre Fiction- What’s All the Fuss About?” this is an area of thought that I have recently begun entertaining after taking Bruss’ postmodern lit class last semester. Prior to that, I was stuck (am likely still stuck) in a nasty rut. Whenever I even begin to think about fiction I seem to automatically put myself under pressure to come up with the most amazing plot the world has ever known. I’m realizing of late, that shifting the way I think about writing fiction may help me snap out of this swampy rut and find some new space to write. For me, thinking about plot is a huge burden that seems to stifle creativity, whereas form and trans-generic form often set my mind racing and open possibilities.

I love writing poetry, comedy, philosophy and songs, but my new area of great satisfaction has been essay work. I finally realized last semester that while many people may lack the attention span for essay reading, it is an amazing format in which to make points, discuss issues, and break new creative ground. I have also recently become enamored of the idea of chap-books, and am thinking about breathing new life into a project I wrote years ago with this form.