Off Topic

The Books that Go in the Box

To the Future Discoverer:

If you’re reading this, I am long dead. I was no one of consequence. There were seven billion of us at the writing of this letter, and my name was common. My home was a decent place with decent people, people I loved, but none of us rich or holding any real power whatsoever. We left no discernable impact, positive or negative. We lived our lives, we paid our taxes, we did what we could. We protested when necessary. We assimilated when it mattered. We cried and laughed, celebrated and mourned, just like everybody. I don’t know what your life is like; it could be much different. I wonder what your language is, whether there is such a thing when and where you are.

I worry the books you’ve found you will be unable to decipher. I don’t know if that is better or worse than the possibility that once you’ve developed your cipher to decode these messages that you’ll only be able to discern the glossy surface and not the layers of words become flesh below it. Your ability to read me is not the same as speaking the same language as me.  Regardless, this is a message, and I hope you can receive it. The worst that can happen is that your code is flawed and you translate me backwards – this is nothing abnormal or unique; I’ve come to expect it.

My own life is not important, so I’ll skip the details. When I was gray and growing weaker, I took a keener interest in the history and future of humanity. My own future and history were certain and their conclusions drawing near. I lived all of it, mostly loved it. I knew who I was, even if why or how I was was as murky as the histories of our race. When history gave up all its ghosts I turned toward imagining you, Dear Reader, as some image of myself balancing in the sands of time, looking back at me and wondering as though through some cosmic mirror. Lots of things happened before me, the vast majority of it so long before me any fiction created about it is as acceptable as it is impossible. Out of 4.5 billion years, we only have records for 6,000 or so, all of them highly biased and suspect, many of them completely indeciperable. Sometimes it seems there may be only one true record, though people argue and wage wars over which it might be; many assume it to be lost forever; others dig in the earth in search of it. I scanned the documents I had access to, assuming there must be some discernable and absolute pattern (I still assume this.), but the only pattern that emerged was this: history always begins with the burning of a library. Both the unfathomable present and the fantasy of its eventual maturity were truer than things that had already happened and for which there was ample evidence.  Somewhere in those uncountable years were beings like us, though seemingly magic.

In my youth a new mode of communication was developed with the hope that knowledge might be preserved and, I imagine, that a combined and universal knowledge might be made manifest. To date, this dream has not been realized, for though the medium is remarkable and democratic, it can hardly be said that the line between truth and fiction is any clearer. Only the image is clearer, closer to a whole but still subject to memes and mimesis. It wouldn’t be wrong to say it’s a perfection and perpetuation of the prehistoric oral traditions, a way of storytelling via a material both more flexible and solid, more water than wind, and without the eerie esoteric permanence of marks on paper or stone. The spontaneous, decentralized, and anonymous ordering of the universe I found at first very satisfying. Later I longed for books. Books had endings. I began to think there was no sweeter comfort than death and rebirth, no better or truer truth than the dead ends of imagination.

I don’t know if or how you read or tell stories. I don’t know if your civilization developed some infallible mind that can answer all questions or whether you ask questions at all, or live them. I don’t know if your civilization found and managed to articulate the ineffable name and thereby bring peace to the earth – this outcome seems unimaginable to me. I don’t know if you think about the things we thought about. I don’t know if the sky is still a mystery that makes you feel hollow like it was with us. I only know that if you exist there are only three possibilities: we changed, we didn’t, or both. The only other variable is whether you are more or less advanced than we, whether you are at the start or end of your age, whether libraries are being built or burnt to the ground. The technology we invented, our new holographic stone, has numbered days – it’s much easier to wipe that slate clean, as though with your finger you can unwrite history once the chaos of democracy is removed from it.

This is why I bought the boxes. There are eleven others besides the one you found, buried in different places. One I threw in the ocean. None held the same combination of books, but they did hold the same types of books: fiction, so-called nonfiction, an overview of the sciences we developed, poetry, and philosophy. Probably in your time math remains, so I saw no need to include an explanation of our version. Generally, we used a base of ten and assumed a finite universe within which it might operate; as simple and absurd as that might sound to you, this method was very useful and spawned much progress. I didn’t know which order of books was the correct one, except the one tossed from the boat might have been the truest to me. I only hoped that whichever collection surfaced at whichever time was relevant to the finders. It seemed to me this might be the only way to correct the past. But at that mysterious intersection of randomness and order, the distilled remains emerged in a very small number of words; the summation of the books is as follows: you can be a child of light or an agent of darkness; you can create heaven and hell but heaven is real; every age has a hero and a villain; every age confuses the two; faith, hope, and love are the most important; the details of each are the least; when people need help you give it; and above all learn to love anyway.

I hope you find these stories relevant. I hope the truths in them still ring. I hope I put them in the right order for you. I hope you understand the difference between fact and truth. I hope the words transubstantiate correctly and nourish you. I hope by now you’ve stopped searching without and have turned within.

Sincerely,

A person thoroughly integrated into the soil beneath you.  

 

 

The Necessity of Symbols

And by extension metaphors, stories, pictures, and math. During my lunchbreak today, I read about Kurt Godel, a mathematician close friends with Einstein. The story was about Godel's discovery of a flaw in the US Constitution that would allow the government to shift to a dictatorship--this flaw he began to explain during an interview for US citizenship. This fun historical nugget led me to learn other things about Godel, the most intriguing of which was his mathematical "God proof." 

Before we go on, let me explain that my lunch break is often filled with a sort of random and fragmented search for entertainment and knowledge, and one never knows where one will end up. This takes just enough of the mundanity out of the day to make it bearable. This mathematical (ontological) proof was succeeded by a YouTube video explaining Graham's number, inexplicably larger than the inexplicably large googolplex.

Mind effectively blown, this was followed by a quote found via Wikipedia while attempting to understand the ontological proof better, a quote by mathematician Georg Cantor that in such a strange way tied the other two discoveries together. What follows below was a quickly typed up explanation to myself so as to make the connections.   It rambles a bit, and likely the logical leaps are perilous without being in my head or without the proper time to pound it out. It became for me a kind of validation of my path choices, of my obsession with words and symbols, and thus a validation of my choice to be a writer and storyteller. Explaining to yourself on paper is something I suppose writers do. 

The explanation to myself begins with the Cantor quote.  I make no guarantees as to the accurateness of the newly discovered information, nor as to the tightness of my logic. I'm not sure I even vouch for the sanity of it.

“The actual infinite arises in three contexts: first when it is realized in the most complete form, in a fully independent otherworldly being, in Deo, where I call it the Absolute Infinite or simply Absolute; second when it occurs in the contingent, created world; third when the mind grasps it in abstracto as a mathematical magnitude, number or order type.”  -- Georg Cantor, mathematician

Mathematicians struggle with infinity because math doesn’t work so well outside of finite (created) bounds. This led Blaise Pascal to say some crazy shizznit like: "Nature [God] is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” This fries his mathematical noodle and he is launched into the metaphysical abyss (see Borges's "The Fearful Sphere of Pascal"); you just can’t do good, end-game math in a world like this.

For example, a googolplex is so large a number that there isn’t enough space in the observable universe to write it out one number per atom.

 Graham’s number is crazy bigger than that, rendered in certain ways, like below, though these aren’t the only ways because nobody can find the right symbol to represent it. Graham's number hold's the world's record for largest number used in real math.

The number's so big we only know the last 10 digits, and we know it ends in 7--the rest is a mystery, or as I render it: 

…2464195387

In Graham's language, it looks like this: 

 

 In another, similar language, like this: 

 

 

 

 

 

And yet another: 

 

Naturally, there are in infinity higher numbers, existing currently only in computer science and apparently represented as TREE(n). TREE, it appears is magnitudes larger than G (Graham’s number) and also larger than another computer number magnitudes larger than G: A^A(187196)1. Whatever that means.

You see the absurd symbolization difficulties we get into when we try to stretch our chimpanzee math out into infinity, then, right? Once we reach certain numbers—which certainly are real if incomprehensible—we reach equivalent god planes that must be rendered in other absurd symbols like G-O-D. Real but inconceivable. Expressible, but not. 

Now, this Godel character, Einstein’s pencil-neck buddy, wrote in weird math logic Greek symbols what translates as the following:

"God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist."

 Just happens to be a nearly exact match of the argument of an 11^th Century Catholic Saint named Anselm of Canterbury.

Anyway, you might say we can’t conceive of a bigger number except within contexts we have created, and even though the context is imaginary, the bigger number is real because we must be able to count into infinity. God exists in our minds, but we could conceive of a greater existence than just in thought, which is in reality, and God existing in reality would be the limit of how we might conceive him, the inconceivable and real number. Bang, thanks to the holy semantics of ontological word play and the laws of argumentation by definition, God exists within this weird paradox, one where imagining God to exist creates the existence in perpetuity represented by inadequate symbols, one where God is composed literallyof everything, and the standard scientific requirement that a demonstration of a posteriori negative proof is necessary to prove an existence—if indeed existence can be proved--is moot because a thing that is everything naturally encompasses its impossible opposite, which is nothing, because even the tiniest essence of nothingness is immediately a somethingness and God; circular as it is--with a finite circumference arrived at via infinite constant, i.e., pi), here we are again at the limit of that which we might conceive, which is where God and some absolute infinite lives.

In other words, see John 1:1, which says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God; and note the Genesis is brought forth with (not literally) speaking the universe into existence, in essence telling a story, in essence slapping symbols (metaphors) on that which is beyond symbols, which is what writers, poets, storytellers, musicians, artists, and mathematicians do in pathetic and plastic imitation. John used a generic symbol, "word," to stand in for what cannot be expressed. Before and after him, thinkers, storytellers, and mathmaticians have done the same by substituting their own symbols.  

And that, my friends, is perhaps for me the incarnation of Borges's "Vindication," of which he wrote the probability of finding was zero. I write because stories and symbols are how we find God, who lives inexplicably within and without us.  

Response to the Critic's Critic

Nobody likes a critic. I knew that before I became one, and it was also not surprising that a recent (only half-negative) book review I wrote was not well received by the book's author. I totally understand; you work so hard, you have such high hopes, and then somebody just comes and pops your balloon. I hope one day to be in a similar situation to this author, who took time out from his book tour to weather a not-so-glowing review. I took no pleasure in the criticism--because I do sympathize. The first email had the tinge of hurt I expected and dreaded back before I decided honesty and journalistic integrity were more important than sweet talk and empathy. The book's author, to the editor, said:

"...kinda laughable. is this kid right out of high school? all he can reference to wrap his head around the novel is catcher in the rye and stephen king and postmodernism, which doesn't even mean anything and which he fails to define. are you planning to review, to give the book a more legit read? it's not a book for kids, after all. I'd love it if you'd direct this guy to [another review] in [another mag], which digs in deeply and gets what's going on. "

The message didn't sting as much I thought it might. I took it as the words of someone with hurt feelings. I hoped he felt better. But then, a week later, there was a second message with the same theme, and I wondered at this point what exactly the author was now trying to accomplish. An admission of wrongness? Of not getting "what's going on?" Of being a stupid and half-literate kid? Did he want the review scrapped and retraction issued? Would this be considered honest/professional? The second message read as follows:

"I know it's bad form to dialogue with 'critics' who, um, reference Catcher in the Rye (high school), Stephen King (pablum) and 'postmodernism' (without ever explaining it?)... for starters... so many holes in this so-called review... I don't have time or interest in getting into it, honestly, but I'm on a break for a minute from the tour, compiling reviews for the web site, and I just had to say that it's clear to me that a certain level of maturity and, I guess, life (not to mention literary) experience is needed to read [my book]. I hadn't considered that before, but... well, check out the links below, if you like. These writers dig in deep and manage to understand and explain the book on its own terms. Literary Criticism 101. Feel free to share these links in the comments on your site, you know, for balance. Let your readers decide."

Hmmm. Condescend much? Assume much? Still I wondered if I should dignify with a response. I've been hit before. Heck, in the past there've been whole campaigns launched against me, death threats from CEOs, blog comment lynch mobs of teens angry with me because I didn't like their band. And after years of grad school and professional rejection, I've become thick-skinned enough to handle somebody getting pissy or not liking me. My pride wasn't scratched by the comments--obviously they are ridiculous and immature comments--but the author was suddenly very irritating. I hadn't mentioned in the review that same irritating tone in the book, where the narrator seems to look down on others for not liking the "right" music, though I did mention the constant authorial lecturing as one of the primary downfalls. I got it just fine, especially with all the dumbing down and explanation this author seems to think lots of people need. 

Sometimes, I think I'm too nice. I tried pretty hard to be diplomatic in the review, tried to cushion the blow as much as possible, you know, out of sensitivity. I wonder how he would have reacted if I had been harder than I was. Even now I'm too nice because in this instance I've refrained from naming names or criticizing directly; and though I've penned a snarky response, I sent it to the editors first to let them decide whether it should be sent on. Holy smokes, I hope they do. That response is below, sans identifying language:

Dear Mr. ___________,

I wondered for a while if I should respond to your concerns. I thought maybe you were just upset. I understood that. A guy writes a book, wants people to like it, and some idiot craps all over it. But since you emailed a second time, I thought maybe I should explain myself so you might feel better.

But you know, being a recent high school graduate, I’m not sure there’s much I can tell you that you don’t already know. Maybe this will be a “from the mouth of babes” moment, since we’re busy assuming anyway. I’m sorry I compared your book with the great Catcher in the Rye. I was wrong to do that. Your book is positively nothing like it. It was just that the iconic book was fresh in my mind from Senior English. I went to an odd high school, one where students graduate in their mid-30s with an MFA. And unfortunately, I became one of those southern statistics: married young with kids before finishing school, and writing book reviews barefoot while wiggling yet another loose tooth. Getting learned has been difficult, what with trying to keep my jaw un-slacked during dissertations.

In general, I share your distaste for Stephen King’s writing. The eighth-grade level his stories are written on can be fatiguingly lofty and verbose, and the man has zero sense of rhythm—I wrote about that in my critical essay “Quantum Fiction,” where I tried really hard to apply the theories of quantum mechanics to message transmission via prose rhythm; I even BSed it well enough to get it by some snooty Harvard types I studied under. Sometimes I wonder how such an inaccessible writer like King has sold so many books. I mean, that story about Lard Ass and the pie eating contest kind of rocked, but what was he on when he wrote The Langoliers? Not that I read either of those stories. Thank God for Hollywood, you know? But anyway, what does King know? Just because a writer spends two consecutive decades at the top of the New York Times best-seller list doesn’t mean he knows squat about anything. Haven’t both Sarah Palin and Snookie been on that list, too? Rest assured, Mr. __________, you and your book will not be associated with the likes of them.

And correct you are that “postmodern” is not so well defined. I hear Derrida (who I’m told was like the authority on postmodernism) had difficulty defining it, too. Maybe it’s like when Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, when asked to differentiate art from pornography, said he knew [obscenity] when he saw it. I share that viewpoint, I think, as well as the ability to know trash when I see it. In high school (just last month!) we were talking about postmodernism, and the best the teacher could do was point to certain patterns and certain authors and say things like, “Well, Stephen King’s not one of them.” During these discussions, writers like Faulkner and Borges and Barth were brought up, and I like them very much, but I have to admit (sheepishly) it was embarrassing for me not to share the enthusiasm of my classmates (many of whom have finished their own books recently) for writers like Carver or Murakami or David Foster Wallace. I knew I was supposed to like them, but invariably, I’d end up saying something stupid and naïve like, “But how great was JD Salinger?!” Obviously, as you have pointed out, this was a ridiculous thing to say.

Often I seem to run into this problem of differing tastes; so often are my personal preferences just plainly incorrect. All my life, I’ve tried to correct this, to adjust my taste to suit others. My mother always insisted I eat my toast with my eggs and not after them, and wouldn’t accept that I didn’t like cole slaw. Recently, because it was Father’s Day and I thought I could get some marital leeway in movies to rent, I brought home and enjoyed very much the modern re-warming of the A-Team saga; my wife clearly stated this was such the wrong kind of thing to enjoy; we had a similar conversation about the movie Precious, but in reverse. It happens as a parent, too. I’ve tried to be a very cool parental unit, Mr. _________, but when my stepson plays Christian “death core” music I’m tempted to join a satanic gospel choir, but most of the time just go to the other side of the house and crank up some Jason Mraz.  I know I’m not supposed to like him, but the young man can really scat, you know?

I became so concerned when you pointed out other positive reviews of your book from contemporary fiction critics who seem to “get it,” I went and read every one of them because I’d like to be hip and with it too. It’s possible I don’t have enough maturity, life or literary experience—as you mentioned—to understand them all the way you do. I wasn’t sure what to make of [this one critic’s] review (in the link you provided), for example, for though she recommended the book for readers of contemporary fiction, she also, in that introductory paragraph, indicated she didn’t know if the story was narrated from jail or the grave, or whether it was a thinly-veiled autobiography or what. Wow, you’d think a person who calls herself a “critic” would know things like that. I didn’t know those things either, but didn’t want to reveal my ignorance. Guess I did anyway since I didn’t get it and referenced Salinger and King. I’m not sure what she meant by “stroke book” either, but after consideration of the context where she contradicts the idea by talking about “decidedly unappetizing” sex scenes, I’ve decided it must be something filthy and sinful—and that she must be some kind of repressed prude.

This other reviewer I found must be equally as naïve and ignorant as [this one critic] and I. Plus he cusses a lot and only goes by [blog handle]. He has the audacity to say what I said about it: “Thing is, story-wise, [this book] just kind of hangs there for two hundred pages then abruptly ends.” All set up, no pay off, he says. Bet he liked the A-Team movie, too. Moron.

Anyway, thanks for pointing out my personal shortcomings. I hear nobody likes a critic, and I know we’ve never met, and I’ve never until today told you the least bit about myself, but you sure are good at guessing how people really are based on the tiniest bit of information. Some might call that a ridiculous amount of insight! I wish it wasn’t too late to retract everything I said about your book. People might get suspicious about our journalistic integrity, even though it’s clear I’m completely wrong for not liking it. You’ve taught me a valuable lesson, Mr. ________, and a green quote-unquote critic like myself needs all the life lessons he can get. Next time, whether or not I like a book I’m reviewing, I’ll pretend like I do so nobody gets upset. And if anybody says to me some book I recommended was crap, I’ll just reply, “But the author meant for it to be good.” Because, I mean, clearly some people (Snookie,  Ann Coulter) write books they know will suck from the outset. And only those types of authors should be punished with tepid, mixed, or negative reviews.  Besides, as an aspiring novelist myself, I found your book incredibly instructive. Thanks for that.

So my advice to you is just ignore me and my silly point-of-view. Just collect the positive commentary in a basket and float forward as though so-called critics like me don’t exist. The only advice a guy like me can give you for the future is this: Send a quick email to reviewers to see if they softball their reviews out of respect or whatever. If they say no, just move on until you find a person who strokes you like you like it. That way all will be Skittles, Mr. ________.

Sincerely,

 

Jason Lee Miller (recent high school graduate)

 

 

PowerPoem #1

At work I learned that when creating a PowerPoint Presentation, one should follow the "rule of sixes"--six words per line, six lines per slide. And I thought this is the closest the corporate world gets to poetry--because, you know, poetry requires a soul. I also thought that all it needed was a third rule--six syllables per line--and you'd have the Devil's presentation crafted according to the rule of 666. The first in this PowerPoem series (an experiment) doesn't follow the rule of 666, but expect the CEO of Evil's presentation once his demonic little lackees make one for him. This first one is titled, "Best Practices."  I'm trying to figure out a way to post it without it being blurry. (Thanks Microsoft! You do this to me at work too.) There's a download link below, where it may look better. 

  Download Corporate Poetry_001_001

 

    
 

 

In Chicago

My first short story to be published, "In Chicago," is now live at Dew on the Kudzu. I'm very thankful to Idgie for the recognition and support. This piece I have somewhat mixed emotions about because I'm not sure I can say it's representative of my usual work. My usual work is complex and wordy, rather cerebral with touches of magical realism here and there, some metafiction, some dream logic, yada yada. Comparatively, this piece is spare, straightforward, kinda easy-breezy. 

Suppose I'm supposed to say something deep and artistic about it. Not gonna. Just gonna sit here and be pleased with myself. Fear and desire, reluctant transitions of the South, those confusing In-Betweens, humanity in its adulthood--as Borges might say--new frontiers...sure, it can be about all that if I want...It might even look like I meant to do that.

On Self-Publishing (a.k.a. Pride and Prejudice)

Not too many weeks ago, at the Brown Hotel in Louisville where some fine writers periodically gather, a seasoned and beloved writer and mentor conversed over beers with a small troupe of beginning and emerging writers about the prospect of self-publishing. He relayed how he understood but gently rebuffed his son’s hammering on the simple business of ROI, because, he said, “I still have my pride.”  Or maybe I said that. Somebody said it. I’ll pretend he said it. He said something like that, and the level of respect I have for him prevented me from waxing self-righteous about there being no place for pride in art; after all, this is the same man who, after I attempted to defend my fiction, told me “the truth is no excuse”—besides, obviously, I felt the same way. But I wonder if this feeling—this aversion—is akin to preferring a horse and carriage to these faddish “automobiles” a century ago.

I want to say this debate, like capital punishment or abortion, is done to death, and we should find some new thing to argue about. But here we are anyway, groping around in that amorphous and awkward In-between. Amazon says e-books are now outselling even paperbacks. A literary agent, not too far from the Brown that day, cautioned that Amazon doesn’t go into enough detail about those numbers. Newspapers are still gallantly and romantically fighting the cancer of a new age, and still yet other romantics mourn the hefty scent of aging paper as though submerging their noses into the lingeringly aromatic pillows of lost lovers. It may indeed be time to bury them and go on with our lives though pride and sentiment hold us close.

I mean, hell, this is supposed to be a digital age blog post, and I’m too busy thoughtfully essaying to do it right; and by right, I mean quick and dirty. I still have my pride.  I still have decades of (mostly 20^th century) teaching and skill development pressing on my psyche. I have a fancy degree and letters behind my name. And that means I can’t just slap some words down and push the publish button.

Silly, right?

That same agent told a story about a well known writer leaving his publishing company to do it himself. On the same day, a writer who’d built a large internet following by self-publishing took the aforementioned writer’s place at the same publishing company. This appears to be the modern state: a free-for-all of flux. Meanwhile, across the Web somewhere, as new literary mags pop up all over, CJ West, who has five books under his belt already, writes that giving away his latest ebook for free on the Internet boosted sales of his other books six fold.    

I’m sitting on two chapbooks of poetry. Aside from cover art and formatting, they’re ready to go. I’m ready to go, ready to ship these children off into the mean world and make new babies. I don’t know if the books are any good, what literary philosophy is behind them—they are what they are: my creations— if anyone would buy them, if anyone would take the financial risk to print up a few hundred dollars worth and pimp them. Up until this point, I understand I’ve been all art and no business, all pomp and no street smarts. And street smarts in this day and age might mean signing up with Amazon or some other DIY company and believing in yourself and your work instead of waiting for somebody else to do it, so long as you’re not too worried about the next time you meet up at the Brown and have to face the question: Who’s your publisher?

Because saying you are your own publisher is like listing your mother as a reference on your resume. Would my pride be able to stand it?

As of this moment, my pride is beating me to death. I haven’t sent my collections anywhere yet—well, once, last summer, to a chapbook contest. I lost. So I can’t really speak to the horrors of publishing the old-fashioned way if I haven’t really tried. Of course, there’s also some psychological protection inherent in that, the kind of psychological protection a young man gets by not asking his secret crush out on a date. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, but nothing ventured, nothing hurt, either.

And, well, silly, right?

There may be some consolation in the nature of poetry publishing, a safer ground than, say, the ground fiction publishing rests on, at least for now. Poe self-published. I chatted with one young representative of a small, indie press who told me her only goal was to sell enough chapbooks to cover the cost of printing: about $250. Naturally, she has to put in a lot of sweat equity, running around pimping her new authors. Poetry still seems the most purely artistic of the genres. There’s no money in it anyway, it’s especially prone to modern styling and philosophy and the austere judgment of the adherents of those styles and philosophies; and I imagine poets carry with them the same weighty acceptance painters do: the possibility of languishing in obscurity until death, and by the cruel irony of art, then they make it big.

So what’s your pride worth, anyway? Is there really that big a gap between pride and $250? My family spends that much on weekly groceries, and chances are digitally self-publishing will cost far less, depending on the price of your pride. In the end, it may just be a matter of how effectively you’re able to market yourself and how effectively you can believe in yourself despite the down-the-nose looking you fear. It’s a new world, man, a vain world, a (hopefully) screw-the-Man world where the fabled Machine of the 20^th century is choking and sputtering its last.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bone Silence Review Live at Gloom Cupboard

My review of Peycho Kanev's poetry collection, Bone Silence, is up at Gloom Cupboard. First paragraph is below, to whet you're whistle:

Peycho Kanev’s poetry collection, Bone Silence, evokes a theme repeating throughout: Our bones outlast us and remain our only testament in the world, even the greatest of us. Over time we are forgotten, our words are lost, and in the soil a story bones can’t tell. The writer pushes against death, strives for immortality in a temporal and zero-sum world, or as the author puts it: “as the tomb rock rolls among/the skulls of the geniuses of the past.”

Prologue?

I keep rewriting an intro for my never-finished novel. I've probably written a dozen of them. The beginning is the hardest part, I keep hearing. The middle and end, too. I've got most of the middle, not so much of the end, and an ever evolving beginning. This morning I wrote this new beginning. I'm not sure if it is a beginning, or a separate thing. Aint that how it goes?

Prologue:

I danced for the Lord.

Earlier, I lay on my grandmother's sofa, feeding the dog chocolate, considering the televegangelized tears of the preacher. He was moving me. I was stirred. He asked the souls where he was and the souls at home if they wanted to be better, if they wanted God to bless them, if they wanted God to lead them, if they wanted a new life and a new soul and a new heart. I did. Raise you're hand if you do, he said. And I did. I cried with him. My grandmother smiled, told me chocolate would kill the dog, so I stopped feeding him. I cried with him, and then I went outside and I danced for Lord. I danced naked for that was how David danced. I was happy. He was moving me. I was stirred.

At church they told me to stop dancing. God didn't like that. I listened. I stopped. I wanted to be better. I wanted a new life and a new soul and a new heart. I wanted God to bless me. I picked up my guitar and I played for the Lord because that's what David did. I played my song and I sang. I was happy. He was moving me. I was stirred. I took my guitar to church, and they told me to smash it. I didn't smash it, just put it in the closet and started writing poetry. I was happy. He was moving me. I was stirred. I told them David wrote poetry, danced naked and played guitar, too, right in front of everybody. They told me poetry was nice. The Bible was full of poetry. Poetry was nice, they said, so long as it honored God. David played the lyre, and nobody danced naked anymore because what David did was sinful. Anyway, it was a different time, and guitars and tritones now were of the Devil. Go home and write, they said. Honor God in verse. Sometimes poems are prophecies.

Well, that's true, my mother said, stroking my hair. But you can dance in your room if you want to. She told me stories, my mother. She told me stories of love and chivalry. She told me one day I'd be a gentleman, that gentlemen were modern-day knights. I asked why. She said because of love. Knights believe in love. And ride white horses? Yes, and ride white horses, and open doors for ladies, and write them poems. I asked why. Because God is love and love is poetry. And sometimes poems are prophecies. Prophecies of what? Of what should be. Of what will be? No, she said, hardly ever of what will be.

My Plans for Sunday, 5/22/11

Drive round the steeples of the world

Wonder which reasonable explanation

                Has bound the peoples of the world from showing

Wonder if they went up or went home

                —If I’m still here, it’s foretold I will be—

Ponder what it means to be tethered to the ground

And leave them behind

Or pass beyond them in the beer aisle

Give my money

                —There’ll still be money, right?—

                        To some lonely mother defiling the Sabbath

Ask her if she misses them

Listen as she says misses who

Tell her I’m going home over yonder

                A place all are invited who can love enough

Go there, leave my door open to the least of lovers

                —And if they come by—

Scan the sky for soles and the paper for coupons

Check the tube and ask Brian Williams

Listen as he says he saw nothing

Laugh at the stupidity of it all

Cry at the stupidity of it all

Go on with my day

And hope this is the end of the end of the world

Filed Under # 5

Filed under Negative Buzz: It may be cell phone use is killing off the honeybees. This is only a problem if you like to eat things. In combination with pollution, climate change, and pesticides, nature’s best seed-spreader is in jeopardy. The solution sounds, erm, simple. To quote Ariel Schwartz, “unless we shut down all of our factories and power plants, nix international trade, stop using pesticides, and turn off our cell phones, we may need to find some other pollination solution.”

Filed under Get Your Fictional Weaponry Straight: New York Times prints correction about  baseball player’s bat misnomer. One can only imagine the breathless indignation that went into emailing the Times about the name of Thorin Oakenshield’s sword. Hint: It wasn’t Sting.

Filed under Things that You Should Be Really, Really Upset About: Potential miracle cancer drug isn’t being researched and developed because there’s no profit in curing things. 

Filed under Sticking It to the Man’s Homeowner Association: Don’t know if it’s true, but it sure is funny. HOA sues resident for painting house in a color not listed on the 7-approved-colors list. Resident responds by painting house ALL SEVEN colors listed. Nicely played, neighbor.

Filed under Why Isn’t This Bigger News? I know people have been a little busy with royal weddings and Dancing with the Stars, but when the governor of a major swing state seems as crooked as an Appalachian road, it probably should be talked about until he ends up on Celebrity Apprentice begging for forgiveness.  Newly elected (really, Florida?) governor Rick Scott wants to require all state assistance receivers to take drug tests at their own expense. He favors nationwide implementation of this. Though fuel for debate, that’s not as big a deal as the governor owning a chain of urgent treatment centers offering drug screening services and targeting uninsured clientele, meaning Scott stands to make a fair amount of money off the law if the ever-growing poverty stricken are forced to pony up. With 113,000 people receiving Florida welfare benefits, that’s $4 million if required to just do it once. Perhaps he needs some cash after running the hospital company slapped with the largest fines in US history for Medicare fraud. Really, Florida? This guy?

Filed under Told You Your Internet Girlfriend Was a Dude: Real people and their gaming avatars.

Filed under Big Brother Collects More Data than He Can Possibly Make Sense Of: The NSA collects more data in six hours than what’s in the entire Library of Congress.

Filed under If He’s Jesus then I’m the Queen of England: Former British government spook (00-crazy-8) says he’s Jesus and can control who wins soccer matches—so long as he’s not drunk.

Filed under Outrageous Fortune: Commissioner leaves FCC to work as Comcast lobbyist four months after approving the Comcast NBC deal. Imagined email between her and the biggest media company on the planet: Don’t worry. All that will happen is a few activists will get mad and write some really mean blog posts about you. After that, it’s easy street, baby, for us anyway.

 Filed under Far Worse Problems than Procrastination: A photo of a headline that reads, “Student sets out to write paper, ends up breaking world masturbation record.”

Filed under Wait, There’s a World Record for That? Sure is.

  Filed under New Zealand Has Weird Problems:As South Park previously illustrated, those ginger kids must be stopped.

Filed under There’s Funding for That? Screw the National Endowment for the Arts. The Air Force needs money to find out if you really can move “from location to location through mind powers.”

 

 

The Creative Spirit

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."--Stephen King

Over at Plumb, Rosemary Rhodes Royston estimates that writers are psychic. I don't think she's wrong, but I think the category should be extended to a more general “artists.” There's plenty of historical, theoretical, experimental, philosophical, and theological evidence for this. I'm not sure it's limited to writers and artists, but often the practitioners of the craft—who always have been led by the Creative Spirit—are adept at tapping into what some call the Universal Collective, or at least are tuned into what Plato called “the Real,” what many others have simply called Truth, even if what they are creating is fiction.

Theory: Artists live in the realms of the Subconscious, the biographical, experiential part of the psyche, and the Unconscious, the aspect of the psyche Jung theorized was biological, genetically and physically embedded with universal symbolism. In addition, as though philosophers in different tunics, artists dwell on humanity, what it is and what it means, noting its tendencies and mapping those tendencies along with their consequences on paper or canvas. When the chord is struck just right, it rings loudly, clearly, and devastatingly. When the chord is struck just right, it exists outside of time, seems to apply to all humans, and the product of the artist becomes immortal, far greater than the artist herself/himself. You can read, therefore, and find yourself in King Solomon's existential crisis in Ecclesiastes, in the tale of love and terror in the Gospels; you can laugh at yourself in Erasmus's Praise of Folly, suffer with the sinners and saints in the Divine Comedy, tremble with fear at the prescient similarities between the time you live in and the time laid out in Orwell's 1984. This isn't clairvoyance as much as it is getting in touch with the Self, as it is knowing thyself and being gutsy enough to shine a light on that.

Rosemary cites Carl Jung for support, and as a fellow Jungian, I think that's appropriate. Trying so hard to remain stoically scientific and rational, Jung soon found himself fighting his own romanticism on the divergent roads of the Psyche, where he discovered the Breath of God, and that breath was composed of symbolism—of metaphors—constant and universal within humans, seemingly implanted there in the womb. That may sound crazy, ye scientists who still proffer the recently outdated trope that science and spirituality are incompatible, but consider this: In a recent experiment with birds (forgive me, I'm not taking the time to find all my sources), scientists discovered what appeared to be “ancestral memory.” Male birds learn their mating songs from their fathers—Dad teaches his boys how to get the chicks!—and the researchers wanted to see what kind of songs offspring would sing if separated from their fathers before they could be taught the mating song. The songs were measured electronically, and the first generation of separated offspring produced some unmelodious and arrhythmic and pathetic verse. The second separated generation (the offspring of the offspring) did the same. But a few generations down the line, something incredible happened: The great-great-great grandsons found their special family rhythm again and produced mating songs identical to their original forefather.

Jung was right. All of us are connected by some strand of memory or symbolism, and a writer tapping into that effectively comes off as one stepping into your own head. The four archetypes, the universal metaphors, are present in all stories, all art stemming from the Unconscious realm. The Shadow: the dark but fascinating figure who thrusts the world into chaos, the one who must be defeated, the one very recognizable in others but frequently denied in oneself; Anima/Animas: the male and female aspects of the Soul; Syzygy: the divine couple, the (re)union of the aspects; the Self: also called the Real, the Truth, the Pneuma, or the vital, creative wind that carries us to God.

I'm surprised how many people I talk to who don't know much about Joseph Campbell, whose writings I think need to replace some of the Victorian twaddle still assigned in American schools. But they should know, especially if they're Star Wars fans; George Lucas gave express credit (and a private screening!) to Campbell for inspiring the iconic trilogy. Campbell considered himself a successor to Jung, and perhaps taking a cue from Jorge Borges, who said, “Perhaps universal history is the history of a handful of metaphors,” he dug around the myths pervasive throughout modern human history to see if he could identify those universal metaphors. And of course, he did. He found lots and lots of them, stretching across Middle Eastern messiahs, Chinese Cinderellas, and Native American Noachian floods.

Campbell discovered and wrote and said lots of interesting things before he died, and among them, the most interesting for me, was that as the modern world loses its rites of passage, as the modern Church fails to provide metaphors younger generations will be able to accept, as humanity strives for new metaphors with new (the same!) meanings, poets will become the shamans of mankind. And that's pretty retro, if you ask me, the idea we return to verse, but I suppose it makes sense because poets provide the metaphor, the deep layers of meaning within which we not only find ourselves, but the breath of God. Poets give us the symbols required for the Psyche to unlock the code. The writers of the Bible knew this. The Vedics did, too. Or how about this noodle-frying verse from John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then Jesus commences to telling stories.

Here too, Campbell displays the divine couple: the poet and the storyteller. The poet reaches up into the realm of inexpressibility, overlays imprecise symbols that come only very close to interpretation, and brings the inexpressible down to expressible earth, which was, it is said, spoken into existence, and the storyteller lays out the routes upon which incarnated characters will live out their questions and live out their symbols. We rely on parables—on finding ourselves in the story—to reach God because the ultimate Truth is this: Every single thing we know about the Universe and Ourselves stems from a story someone told us and the odd and loose amalgamation of metaphors, both experiential and biological, we use for understanding.

Writers aren't anymore psychic than anyone else. We just have the gumption and curiosity to dwell in abstract and spooky gardens of truth, and we have hubris and courage enough to present those truths to sometimes hostile listeners. We don't pave roads, and we don't build cars. We only draw maps, and if we get lucky, the maps lead someplace real.

Top 100 Writer-Friendly Literary Magazines (Short Fiction)

Well, it’s only 98 at the moment, but chances are I’ve forgotten, missed, or am unaware of at least two, and the list will grow to a nice even 100. People seem to like their numbers round, maybe because they’re easier to add. The list is far from comprehensive, apparently only a sixth of the lit mags and journals in the US alone. It applies only to short fiction publishers, so poetry, nonfiction, novella, and full-length manuscript publishers need their own separate list which I may get around to someday (more like week), maybe this summer. The list does not include flash or short-short fiction publishers just because I can’t write in that style. I have uber respect for those who can, though. To evoke Twain, I don’t have time to write a short story; I only have time to write a long one.

In addition, the list is specific to my own tastes, needs, opinion, and style. (Many) Lit mags not on the list should not feel dissed—though some should, for I dissed them with extreme prejudice; the list serves a very writer-specific function (i.e., a function for this particular writer), establishing submission guidelines on the other side of the publishing game. Anyway, the spread sheet (I hate making spread sheets) took forever to make, and I’m not accepting any guff about it. Feel free, fellow writers, to copy and adapt to your own needs if you like. This was a labor of love, and I don’t mind sharing.

Criteria for Miller’s List of Writer-Friendly Literary Magazines selection:

1.       The writing there rocks hard core. 

2.       Accepts simultaneous submissions.

3.       Accepts electronic submissions.

4.       Accepts submissions of at least or up to 4,000 words.

5.       Has a relatively open submission period (minimum 9 months of the year).

6.       Not a fledgling market. I want to be fairly confident the mag will be here next year.

7.       No reading or printing fees.

8.       Not wedded to any particular genre—though some have definite tendencies.

9.       Matches some particular quirk of mine.

10.       Doesn’t match some particular aversion of mine.

11.     Did or didn't like their "vibe."

When I say “writer-friendly” that doesn’t mean they publish just anything, and it doesn’t mean that submission guidelines were always sweetly worded. In fact, some editors were quite snooty and opinionated about what makes a good story and/or definitely what makes a bad one. I took those statements as dares. The selection process wasn’t entirely objective. The 99^th mag, a really good one, didn’t make the list solely because one of the writing samples there had, verbatim, the same opening line as one of my stories, and we just can’t have that, can we? If that particular story’s not accepted by the mag to which it is currently submitted, the first line must be changed. Cheers to unoriginality, eh?

So without further ado, here’s my list/spread sheet of the Top 100 (98) Writer-Friendly Literary Magazines. The list is alphabetical, though I'm just anal retentive enough to create a numerically ranked one for my own use. It includes submission methods, word limits, and special instructions, as well as fields for keeping track of submission status. Couldn't fit the whole thing here, so you can download the pdf version if want to see/use the whole thing. Download Submissions Worksheet-1

Magazine/Journal and URL/email	Submission Method	Word/Page Limit	Special Instructions	Submission Title(s)	Date Submitted	Status (A/R/P)	Rejected? Publisher comments
2 Bridges Review http://2bridgesreview.blogspot.com/2010/01/share-your-work.html submissions@2bridgesreview.org	Email	<5k	Keep it clean   Your email subject line should indicate the genre (poetry, fiction, nonfiction), your last name, and the number of pieces submitted. (ex. Subject: Poetry Jones Three)   writer contact info and a brief bio on a cover page
The 13th Warrior http://www.asteriusonline.com/asterius/submissions.htm theeditor@asteriusonline.com	Email attachment or pasted in body: doc, .txt, .rtf, .wpd,	<6k	“Submission” in subject line
971 Menu http://971menu.submishmash.com/submit	Submishmash!	None listed
5923 Quarterly http://www.5923quarterly.net/submissions.html 5923quarterly (A)(T) gmail (D)(O)(T) com.	Email, pasted in body	<6k	Magical realism/experimental subject line should be either "Fiction:" or "Poetry:" followed by the title of your first piece. The only things you need to include in the body of the email are your name and your piece.   Online formatting, straight not curly punctuation
Adirondack Review http://adirondackreview.homestead.com/submissions.html  editors@theadirondackreview.com	Email Body or attachment (.doc or .rtf)	<4k	Please format the subject line of your email as follows: FICTION Author Name, Title, Date   w/ bio
AGNI http://www.bu.edu/agni/submit.html	Online submission manager	none	9/1-5/31 only
Ampersand Review “…each time a vampire story is written, somewhere an orphan dies.” http://ampersand-books.com/guidelines/ ampersandsubmit@gmail.com	Email attachment, .doc	None listed	Fiction and word count in subject line
Annalemma  http://annalemma.net/contact	Submishmash!	<5k
Avery http://www.averyanthology.org/submit/	Submishmash!	<30 pages
Arcadia Magazine  http://www.arcadiamagazine.org/submissions.html	Submishmash!	None listed
Barnstorm http://barnstormjournal.org/about/	Online submission manager, .doc or .rtf	<7k
Barrel House http://barrelhouse.submishmash.com/submit	Submishmash!	None lsited
Berkeley Fiction Review http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~bfr/submit.html  bfictionreview@yahoo.com	Email attachment (.doc or .pdf)	<25 pages	12 pt. Times New Roman   Submission: Name, Title” in the subject line   Cover letters should be in the body of the email, include name, address, email address and the title
Bicycle Review http://www.thebicyclereview.net/submission.html  thebicyclereview@gmail.com	Email attachment (.doc or .rtf)	<15k >5k published in Stories Archive, not current issue	Bio also as attachment
Birkensnake  http://www.birkensnake.com/submit.php	Submishmash! .rtf, .pdf, or .odt	Short is better: whole issue is 20k max
Black Warrior Review  http://bwrsubmissions.ua.edu/	Online submission manager	<7k
Blood Orange Review http://www.bloodorangereview.com/submit.htm	Online submission manager	<5k
Blue Mesa Review http://www.unm.edu/~bluemesa/submissions.htm	Submishmash!	<30 pgs	brief cover letter. Please make sure your name is on the first page of your manuscript
Bluestem (formerly Karamu) http://www.bluestemmagazine.com/?page_id=10	Submishmash!	<5k
BULL http://www.bullmensfiction.com/submit.html	Submishmash!	None listed	Better be manly
Burnt Bridge http://burntbridge.submishmash.com/Submit	Submishmash!	<7k	Specify fiction in subject line
Caketrain caketrainjournal@hotmail.com http://www.caketrain.org/submissions/	Email attachment, .doc, .pdf, .rtf	None listed	include a cover letter with titles of submissions, a brief, press-ready biographical statement, and any relevant contact information.
Camera Obscura Journal http://www.obscurajournal.com/guidelines.php	Online submission manager	<8k
Canteen http://www.canteenmag.com/submit	Online submission manager, .doc or .pdf	<4k
Cavalier Literary Couture http://www.cavalierliterarycouture.com/about/#/submissions/	Online submission form	<8k	Okay with showoffs :-D
Chiaroscuro http://www.chizine.com/submissions_fiction.htm fiction@chizine.com	Email attachment, prefers .odt	<4k	They like it dark   name and the story's title in the Subject line
The Collagist http://thecollagist.submishmash.com/Submit	Submishmash!	None listed
Columbia Journal http://columbiajournal.org/submit	Online submission manager	None listed
Conte  http://www.conteonline.net/  prose@conteonline.net	Email attachment, .rtf	<8k	subject line "Prose Submission:" followed by the title
Corium  http://www.coriummagazine.com/?page_id=7	Submishmash!	<4k	Cover letter bio
Crazy Horse http://www.crazyhorsejournal.org/page.php?id=113	Online submission manager	<25 pages	9/1-5/31 2 per year
Danse Macabre http://dansemacabre.art.officelive.com/contactus.aspx	Online submission form (cut and paste, make sure formats correctly)		Magical realism tell how you found us...and don't forget to include a (brief) third person bio paragraph w/current domicile, recent credits
Dew on the Kudzu  dewonthekudzu@gmail.com  http://dewonthekudzu.net/	Email, attached or pasted, Word	<4000	Keep it clean   bio attached also that tells about you and gives out any contact info/website you care to share
Eclectica  submissions@eclectica.org  http://www.eclectica.org/info/guidelines.html	Email, pasted or attached	No length restrictions	include a cover letter/note with their submission   inform of simultaneous submission
Ear Hustler  http://www.earhustlermag.com/about.html  earhustlermag at gmail.com	Email attachment, .doc or .rtf	<5k
Electric Literature  http://electricliterature.submishmash.com/Submit	Submishmash!	<10k
Emprise Review  http://emprise.submishmash.com/submit	Submishmash!	<4k
Failbetter.com  submissions AT failbetter DOT com	Email in body, “Submission” in subject line	None listed
Fiction Circus http://www.reddit.com/r/fictioncircus	Submitted to Reddit	<7k	Weird Reddit Review process…send something experimental
Fiction Week  http://www.fictionweek.com/fwliteraryreview/submissions.html  literaryrevieweditor@fictionweek.com	Email in body	<5k	Post-modern/ Inform of simultaneous submissions/include bio and word count in email
FRiGG  http://friggmagazine.com/editors/editors32.htm  webmaster@friggmagazine.com	Email in body	<8k	Fiction in subject line
Front Porch Journal  http://www.frontporchjournal.com/submit.asp	Online submission manager, .doc or .rtf	<5500
Ginosko  http://www.ginoskoliteraryjournal.com/submissions.htm   GinoskoEditor@aol.com	Email, doesn’t specify	Listed as “flexible”
Gone Lawn http://journal.gonelawn.net/glj_submit.php  gonelawn at gmail dot com	Email attachment .doc or .odt	<15k	PROSE, name, title in subject line
Grey Sparrow  dsdianefuller@gmail.com   http://greysparrowpress.net/FALL2010Submissions.aspx	Email attachment, .doc or .rtf	<4k	Load of instructions, see site
Hayden’s Ferry http://www.asu.edu/piper/publications/haydensferryreview/submit.html	Submishmash! (.doc or .rtf)	No limit	Name and contact info on first page
Harvard Advocate http://www.theharvardadvocate.com/content/submit  fiction@theharvardadvocate.com	Email (no stipulation)		sometimes publishes submissions from outside of the Harvard community
Harvard Review  http://hcl.harvard.edu/harvardreview/Information/submissions.html	Online—Tell It Slant	<7k	9/1-5/31
Hunger Mountain  http://www.hungermtn.org/submit/	Online submission manager (.doc, .docx, .rtf)	<10k
JMWW  http://jmww.150m.com/Guidelines.html	Submishmash!	<25 pgs	Prefers shorter pieces
The Journal  http://english.osu.edu/research/journals/thejournal/submissionguidelines.cfm	Submishmash!	None listed
Joyland  http://www.joylandmagazine.com/node/5  joylandsubmissions@gmail.com	Email, pasted in body	<8k	Regional editors reviewing submissions associated w/ their regions…awaiting response as to whether Kentucky is Midwest or South—answer: Guess with a short bio, and your subject line should read: [CITY OR REGION][YOUR STORY TITLE]
Juked  http://juked.com/info/index.asp  submissions@juked.com	Email attachment, .rtf or .doc	No limit	Submission: (genre) by (your name) in the subject line
The Legendary submit@downdirtyword.com  http://www.downdirtyword.com/submissionspage.html	Email, both pasted and attached, .doc	None listed	Subject line: Submission, Your Name, Fiction
Los Angeles Review  http://redhen.org/losangelesreview/submissions/	Submishmash!	<4k
Louisville Review http://www.spalding.edu/louisvillereview/submission.htm	Online submission manager (.doc and .rtf)
The MacGuffin  http://www.schoolcraft.edu/macguffin/submit.asp  macguffin@schoolcraft.edu	Email attachment, Word doc	<5k	Include word count keep it clean
McSweeney’s http://www.mcsweeneys.net/submit/print.html printsubs@mcsweeneys.net websubmissions@mcsweeneys.net	Email submission, story title in subject line, Word attachment   For web, pasted in the body	No length requirement for print <1500 for web
Memorius  http://memorious.submishmash.com/Submit	Submishmash!	No length restrictions
Mid-American Review  http://www.bgsu.edu/studentlife/organizations/midamericanreview/guidelines.html	Online submission manager	<6k
Midwest Literary Magazine  http://midwestliterarymagazine.com/submissions/	Online submission manager w/ profile and email authentication	None listed
The Missing Slate  http://themissingslate.com/submit-work/  fiction(at)themissingslate(dot)com	Email attachment, Word	None listed	Author bio in body   Label attachment file: Your Name – TMS Fiction   1.5″-2.0″ line spacing, formatted in Georgia 11pt, justified
Monkey Bicycle http://monkeybicycle.submishmash.com/Submit	Submishmash!	No length restrictions for print   <1500 for web
Nefarious Muse  http://nefariousmuse.com/about/  nefariousfiction@gmail.com	Email, pasted in body	None listed	“Submission” in subject line   Cover letter and bio
New Plains Review http://www.libarts.uco.edu/english/newplains/editorial.htm   shayNewPlains@gmail.com	Email attachment	<7500	Fiction in subject line
Newport Review  http://newportreview.submishmash.com/Submit	Submishmash!	<7k
One Story  https://www.one-story.com/submissions/	Online submission manager (.rtf)	>3k, <8k	Story title and author contact info on first page 9/1-5/31
Painted Bride Quarterly http://pbq.submishmash.com/Submit	Submishmash!	<5k	Include short bio check themes
PANK http://pankmagazine.submishmash.com/Submit	Submishmash!	No guidelines	Wait a month between submissions
Prick of the Spindle http://www.prickofthespindle.com/pages/submit.htm	Submishmash!	<17,500	Submissions should be formatted to read title first, writer name, then text body.   Double-spaced, only one space between sentences.
Prime Number Magazine  http://www.primenumbermagazine.com/Submit.html	Submishmash!	<4k
Prism Review  http://sites.laverne.edu/prism-review/submissions/	Submishmash!	<5k
The Puritan  http://www.puritan-magazine.com/submissions.php	Online submission form, .doc, .pdf, .rtf	<10k
Ramshackle Review  ramshacklereview (at) gmail (dot) com   http://ramshacklereview.blogspot.com/p/submissions_25.html	Email, pasted in body unless there are formatting concerns	None listed
Redivider  http://www.redividerjournal.org/submit/	Submishmash!	<8k	The subject line of the submission must read Last Name, First Name, Story Title Cover letter, including title, name, address, phone, and email Paste first 300 words in cover letter
Rougarou  http://english.louisiana.edu/rougarou/submission/index.html rougaroufiction@gmail.com	Email attachment, ATTN fiction editor	<7k	name should appear as the subject line. The body of the e-mail can serve as the submission’s cover letter.   contact information (name, e-mail, address, phone number) in both your cover letter and on the first page of your manuscript
Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review  http://www.seahorserodeoreview.com/Submission-Guidelines.html	Submishmash!
Short Story America http://www.shortstoryamerica.com/writers_subm1.html	Online submission	<12k	Have to sign up keep it clean
Sick of ‘Em?  http://sickofem.com/submissions/  sickofem@gmail.com	Email attachment, .doc or .rtf	<5k	Name and contact in email
Sliver of Stone http://sliverofstone.blogspot.com/2010/01/submission-guide.html sliverofstone@gmail.com	Email attachment (.doc)	<5k	Cover letter w/ name, title, contact info, bio
Solstice  http://solsticelitmag.org/submit/	Online submission manager	<20 pgs	include a short bio.   name, telephone number and email address should be typed at the top of the first page of your piece.
SNReview  http://www.snreview.org/guidelines.html  editor@snreview.org	Email, pasted in body	<7k	Label the e-mail: SUB: Name of Story   No stories beginning or ending w/ an alarm clock ringing…which would have ruled out Native Son
State of Imagination  http://stateofimagination.com/submissions/  stateofimagination@gmail.com	Email, pasted in body	<6k	Keep it clean They like weird stuff   name, the story’s title, and the story’s length at the beginning of the e-mail   Online formatting: space between paras, no indentions   brief (try to limit yourself to six sentences max) blurb about the story: the inspiration behind it, interesting tidbits about the character and story, or details you’ve drawn from your own experiences, etc
Stirring Josh Webster at stirring.fiction@gmail.com	Email attachment	<5k
StoryGlossia  http://www.storyglossia.com/guidelines.html	Submishmash!	<5k
Story Quarterly http://www.camden.rutgers.edu/storyquarterly/submissions.php	Online submission manager	No limit listed	No flash fiction
The Summerset Review http://www.summersetreview.org/guidelines.htm   editor@summersetreview.org	Email attachment, Word doc	<8k	Fiction submission in subject line
Swill  http://swillmagazine.com/   editors at swillmagazine dot com	Email attachment, .doc or .rtf	<5k, up to 10k	Dark, gritty, deathly
This Is a Public Space  http://www.apublicspace.org/submit/	Online submission manager	No limit listed
Tin House http://www.tinhouse.com/magazine/submission-guidelines.html	Submishmash!	<10k	9/1-5/31 Note theme issues Name on every page   “End” on last page
Troubadour 21  http://www.troubadour21.com/submissions/   stories@troubadour21.com	Email, pasted in body	None listed	Register with site first
Umbrella Factory  http://www.umbrellafactorymagazine.com/submission.php	Submishmash!	<5k	a short bio—who you are, what you do, hope to be. Include any great life revelations, education and your favorite novel.   On the first page please include: your name, address, phone number and email.
Underground Voices http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVcontribute.htm uveditor@undergroundvoices.com	Email attachment, Word document, or pasted to body	<4k web <7k print	Print submissions due by 9/15 include bio
Whistling Shade  http://www.whistlingshade.com/submissions.html   fiction at whistlingshade.com	Email, complicated instructions, see guidelines	<10k
White Whale Review  http://www.whitewhalereview.com/submit	Submishmash!	None listed	Include a brief bio of not more than 200 words.
Willow Springs  http://willowsprings.ewu.edu/submit.php	Online submission manager	None listed	9/1-5/31
Word Riot  http://wordriot.submishmash.com/Submit	Submishmash!	<6500

My Poems Are Live at the Copperfield Review

Three poems find themselves in some really good company, honored to have a place:

The Copperfield Review

Drew Lackovic's Response to "Submission"

Drew Lackovic comments on the submission process:

There are few things I loathe more than spending several hours prepping and submitting stories for publication. I hate doing it more than taxes -- at least with doing your taxes you usually get some money back at the end. With the submission process I always end up feeling a combination of pissed and nauseous for having wasted so much time in doing something that has a 1 in 100 or so chance of doing anything for me.

That being said, I just finished my first stint doing an open reading period for Ontologica, and it was a very different experience. Since it was our first open reading period, the slush pile wasn't really all that huge-- I had about 40 stories sent to me over a two month span -- but the thing that struck me the most is that a lot of people submitting (I'm also guilty of this) don't really read submission requirements and/or the mission statement of the journal. With Ontologica being an essay first, fiction, poetry and art second kind of girl, you wouldn't really expect fiction submissions to outsell everything else, but over half of our submissions were for fiction, and all but three of them were rejected, largely for not fitting with the direction of the journal. What I'm getting at, is that if we as writers spend more time doing what editors suggest, reading some of the journal we want to submit to, we can all reduce the amount of chaff going into submission slush piles, and increase response times, hopefully reduce the amount of form rejections, and ultimately spend less time trying to place our stories.

For this to happen though, journals need to do two things: 1. make some back issue stuff freely available for people looking to see if the journal is a good fit. 2. journals need to really spell out what they want -- something I'm definitely going to work on a little more for my next reading period. 3. for Journals to streamline the submission process -- totally on the same page with you there, Jason. There is nothing worse than having to port 5 versions of the same story because you're working on simultaneously submitting.

You Can Reach Me at The Copperfield Review

I'm happy to announce my poems, "Julie Shrooms the Black Doombloom," "Smoke," and "Foottapping at the Door," will appear in The Copperfield Review on May 2. I really like their Hemingway quote at the top of their webpage:

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master."

Much thanks and happiness.

 

Update: I'd be remiss if I didn't link to Julie Nord's painting, "Impending Doom," which inspired "Julie Shrooms the Black Doombloom." 

On Saying What You Mean to Say

As a writer I’ve often wondered whose fault misinterpretation is. As a (mean) teacher I usually tell my students it’s the writer’s fault. If it’s not clear what you mean, if somebody takes some wild and unintended meaning from your words then likely you haven’t phrased it right. This is why we do workshops instead of just blogging everything that comes into our heads, so we can get a better idea of how our words are settling into other people’s heads. Workshops for me were always enlightening (and sometimes upsetting!) experiences, if people were as honest as they should be. At Spalding, where I got my MFA, authors had to sit back in silence and listen to reactions, which weren’t always the pretty pat-on-the-backs the authors hoped for. We had to stay quiet flies on the wall as the group chatted amongst themselves about our writing. This is a good process because it prevents the exit of the swelling and insistent yeah-buts and not-what-I-meants pressing against your lips. Because of that, I want to say disconnect is the writer’s fault, but that might be a bit self loathing.

I got my bachelor’s in communication. We learned there something else: any number of things can cause misunderstanding. The message sender takes an idea, packs it into a few words and shoots it over to the receiver. It sounds simple, but it’s not simple at all, and a lot can go wrong. The first and most common thing that can go wrong is the sender doesn’t find the right symbols for conveying the intended meaning. In between sender and receiver, there is noise. Dogs bark. Horns honk. Children scream. Those are distracting obstacles. And then there’s the mysterious land in the recipient’s head, an environment that can be hostile to a message. In the City of Thought, the citizens lurch up their wildly ornate emotional and experiential baggage and go conclusion-jumping over negative association quick sand, especially if the message flying at them has any self-referential glimmer of truth residing on its surface. The defenses go up, feelings get hurt, tempers flare. Sometimes it is the receiver’s error because the receiver dresses the message up in the receiver’s own wardrobe of perception.

 Sometimes the sender mixes his metaphors, and that’s the sender’s fault. I suppose the perfect writer never has this issue.

Monday, I whined a bit about the submission process. I wasn’t saying lit mags don’t have a right to dictate how they want work submitted. I wasn’t whining that I shouldn’t ever be rejected or that editors can’t like what they like. I was saying, and maybe I should have been a good deductively reasoning essay writer by stating my thesis up front, that some mags are out of date and out of touch when it comes to the submission process. I was saying that in this day and age, not accepting simultaneous submissions should be unacceptable to modern writers. If your career is lagging because of the difficulty of getting published, lit mags should understand writers have to fish the big waters, even if those waters are filled with a magnitude more writer fish than publisher fish. I was saying that snail mail submitting needs to stay in the 20^th century. I meant to say I won’t pay reading fees because I stay in perpetual broke-ness despite my four jobs and my volunteer gig at a litzine.  

But if I didn't say it right, I didn't say it right, and I can accept that. I was really just venting publicly and dramatically—hey, drama’s what I do best besides not looking cool— and some got all sensitive, thought I was unfair and sexist to boot. I’m okay with unfair; I’m offended at the sexism claim. I wondered if the criticism warranted response. Everybody’s got an opinion. It’s not necessary to field all objections and viewpoints. I wondered if responding would dig some deep hole of accidentally offensive remarks I couldn’t climb out of. And I know for a fact other viewers of this debate are scared to death of treading these waters. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve dug a hole for myself. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been a fool charging in. And it’s sure not the first time I’ve drilled out some flinching reaction via my writing.  I’m used to controversy.  When I was a journalist, there were whole campaigns launched against me, usually over something small. One plaintiff didn’t like my use of “chomping at the bit” instead of the older form “champing at the bit.” I remember one mouth-foamer emailed my editor in complaint—I don’t remember exactly why, but it had something to do with blue jeans—and my editor, who copied me on his backhanded defense, told her I was just being snarky and that it wouldn’t even be considered quality snark in most circles. Thanks for that I guess.

But sexist? It’s not the first time I’ve heard it. One recent commentator said what struck her about my writing was the “sheer maleness” of it. In grad school workshops I heard it more than once, usually regarding my character’s alarmingly detailed depiction of his girlfriend’s breasts. My intentions were innocent, even if my character’s thoughts were not. It makes perfect sense women want to be more than that, and they’re right, men are often pigs, just—if you’re of the Freudian mindset—grownup babies hopelessly nostalgic about the magic of mama. I depict that aspect and sometimes women get mad…even though it seems men ought to be angry instead. They’re the ones I’m giving the bum rap to, so my metaphor obviously missed.

I take issue with the sexist label because, accurately or not, I consider myself one of those rare male feminists. I have feminist friends. I went to Lilith Fair. (<--Those are high context jokes, in case anybody gets snippy.) When I learned about critical theory, I was all yeah!—throughout history men really have been “cock-man-oppressors” (PCU 1994).  Mary Magdalene was turned into a whore instead of a priestess, the Lady of Avalon was made into a witch, Delphi was crushed by Apollo, Lilith became a sex demon, and the Fall of Man rested squarely on the shoulders of Eve It’s not fair at all. Women still aren’t paid fairly, still aren’t being put in positions of authority proportionately. Men still crack jokes about menstruating women presidents with their fingers on the nuke button. I can definitely see how that can make someone sensitive. Heck, I’m still mad at the British for crushing my Irish high-king family a thousand years ago and preventing me from being a prince today.

And though I spent a fair amount of my youth helplessly and hopelessly thinking about very specific body parts, I’ve never oppressed anyone. I don’t think. I have said stupid male things. I picked a fight in high school once. He deserved it. I’m often rather mean to Republicans, throwing undesirable facts at their cognitive dissonance. But sexist? I think of an unsung physicist who discovered dark matter. I think of the sheer strength and determination of my mother and her constant fights with good-ole-boy systems. I think of the blinding success of my sister. I think of the wonderful, high-quality snark and razor’s-edge spirit of my wife. I think of my daughter, of how she’s draped in pink I didn’t buy for her, of how I fear one day she’ll have a Barbie complex or think it’s not okay to be a tomboy or some futrure neanderthol will put his hands on her and I'll be bound by chivalric daddy honor code to murder him. Sexist means I think women should conform to certain roles. And I don’t. Not at all.

 Besides referring to some literary magazines as “trophy wives”—a first-draft blog metaphor I suppose missed the mark but am not convinced is sexist—these were the lines that sparked the (misappropriated) controversy:

"That’s 600 different pretty girls at the bar with 600 different ways of getting down and a barrage of fumbling suitors trying to come up with the right lines to say to them and none of them knowing that each of those girls ‘has a boyfriend’ already, even if it’s clear that if she did have one he’d be dang upset his girl went to a Friday-night dogfight in a meat dress.”

Because I guess that never really happens. Suppose it could have gone a step too far, right up the meat dress. I called those fictional guys dogs and compared the metaphorical girls at the bar to lying sluts. And what a possessive jerk that twice nonexistent[1] boyfriend is! An equal opportunity offender, I was just having some fun with my metaphor, hoping to evoke the exasperated plight of the perpetually romantically ignored single guy by digging way back (not that far) into my premarital past. I can understand how that can be misconstrued as objectification, how a woman can think I’m suggesting women are not greater than the sums of their parts. I’m okay with being the big dumb male who stares blankly at a woman and goes, “What I say?” I’m okay with a metaphor not hitting right. It happens.

So call it a metaphor gone wrong, but pointing out those unfortunate aspects of reality doesn’t make me sexist. It makes me the jerk who points stuff out. I don’t think a term like “girl” does either, though that’s up for debate, especially between Northerners and Southerners and feminist scholars. In the right context, I equate “girl” with mademoiselle, a (usually unmarried) young woman, and not with belittlement, though there’s enough history there to support that idea if not my intentions. My wife likes it when I call her my girl, even if it seems to some possessive and dominating. I’m her man. What I don’t say to my wife or any other woman is shut up and get in the kitchen. I like women who go out and conquer the world, not like a man would, but like a woman would.

Was that okay to say? What is okay to say? I don’t want to come off as the guy who doesn’t know he’s sexist, like the guy at the office trying so hard to be un-racist he ends up saying stupid racist crap anyway. How about if I make it even? Here: Some guys mistake the whole bathroom for a toilet.

And I don’t want cry reverse sexism. Guys do have it easier in some ways. But I do put up with lots of “men are pigs” comments in real life and on TV on almost a daily basis as if that’s not sexist, just let it roll of my broad manly shoulders as if it’s okay to assume men are insensitive animals who need women to shave them down and make those monkeys walk the straight and narrow (un-urinated) road. And yes, it is the modern right of the historically oppressed to be freer in the verbiage they choose. Such is one miniscule price of power, of which I currently have none, really, despite obvious and superficial advantages.

I don’t want to throw any support, either, the way of Camille Paglia, who back in the 90s lambasted drunken young women who wore meat dresses to fraternity parties and, in her estimation, somehow had the ensuing date rape coming to them for being stupid.   That’s horrible on a whole different level, not only because it suggests women should be aware it’s not okay to dress as they please and that they are powerless in their world, but also because of what it suggests about men: Men are testosterone-seething apes who can’t control themselves. Whatever you do, sexy ladies, don’t rattle the chimp’s cage.

It’s historically accurate. Virginia Woolf wrote about the acceptability of men flinging their defiant daughters about the room, about how if there ever were a female Shakespeare no one would have ever heard of her.  But all that's a horrible history I don't want to be a part of, and I'm offended someone would lump me in with it. Sometimes men act like chimps, but that’s clearly not acceptable in the modern age, and to assume the chimpishness of men nowadays should be off sides, too, right? But those assumptions and comments are made all the time and seem way more acceptable than a man ever making any kind of reference whatsoever about trends among some women.

Obviously, one paragraph not hitting just right can lead to several more paragraphs of awkward explanation and defense, even if you end up defending something you’re surprised was an issue at all. So there’s tension between men and women. Who knew? Somebody tell Hollywood to make a movie about it quick! I suppose some things are better left unsaid, that it might be better to leave them hanging in the air above everyone’s heads, but that doesn’t seem very writerly or manly now does it? One runs that risk as a writer, that his viewpoint will be deemed offensive in some way, that some won’t understand the difference between critical discourse and outright invective, that some stay so trapped in the dogmas of their personal philosophies the slightest hint of blasphemous barrier overstepping is cause for indignant word wars and dismissal, that some take themselves so seriously and have become so sensitive to good-natured ribbing that they’ve just plain forgotten how to have a good time.

And some just can’t take criticism, think criticizing some is criticizing all. I stand by my comments regarding some lit mags being unfriendly to modern writers. As for violating a social taboo about objectifying women…um, what I say?

 

 

 

---

[1] He doesn’t exist twice because the scenario was a metaphor and within that metaphor he also doesn’t exist. Bite on that, Borges lovers.

Submission

Here’s a word every fledgling author must deal with: submission. I suppose that should be a hint from the very beginning as to what the publishing process feels like. Official definitions are as follows: surrendering power to another; meekness; the feeling of patient humility; the stepped-on side of a gonad-busting fetishistic sex ritual; a wrestling position whereby an opponent is pained under threat of loogie into crying uncle. On good days, the first two definitions apply. On those days, you give up your snootiness about the process, you stop being a prima donna, submit to the will of the God of Literature, and you stop kidding yourself about getting into the New Yorker.

 On the bad days, it’s one of the other two, or worse, the a la Opus Dei cat-of-nine-tails flagellant mortification of the flesh.  You try your specially formatted best, submit, and hope the smell of your offering is pleasing. It’s not exactly great for one’s self esteem, especially the kind of daring nervy chutzpah self-esteem required for writing in the first place.  I’ve often thought it takes a certain amount of arrogance to want to be a writer, to want to write. As Dickens said, you write to be read, and writers have to assume what they write is going to be worth reading, that people will want to hear or consider what the writer has to say. It’s like the sidewalk preacher assuming people really like him. It’s a paradoxical conflict. Writing is holding a mirror up to the ass-end of humanity so humanity may become aware of itself, whether it would like to or not— and that’s bold and stupidly gutsy and requires an artist willing to be slapped for the sake of art.

But submission is different. Submission is anti-art. Submission is bureaucratic red tape. It’s snobby order on artistic chaos. Submission is an iconoclast begging for acceptance, acknowledgement; submission is paying club dues to a club that may never, ever let you in, sometimes just because the doorman asking you for the secret password suspects you have cooties.

Paradox is a natural condition for an artist, though, as is breathless indignation at traditional processes. It’s the classic vocational vicious circle. In the “real” world, you can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job. In the mirror world (the world where artists live) you can’t get published unless they know you, and they can’t know you if you can’t get published.

It doesn’t help that every single literary magazine/publisher on the planet wants you to submit in a different way. Some want email attachments. Some want your work posted in the body of an email. Some, even now, don’t take email submissions. Some want your name on every page. Some don’t want your name on it all. Some want bios. Some don’t care. Some only publish stories about nurses who work the third shift—except the ones in maternity (screw them!). Some demand cuffs, others ropes.

 One source estimates that at any given time there are 600 literary magazines operating in the United States. That’s 600 different pretty girls at the bar with 600 different ways of getting down and a barrage of fumbling suitors trying to come up with the right lines to say to them and none of them knowing that each of those girls “has a boyfriend” already, even if it’s clear that if she did have one he’d be dang upset his girl went to a Friday-night dogfight in a meat dress. Not having to play stupid games like that anymore is one reason I like being married.

It’s a far cry from how I imagined it, but how I imagined it is wildly stupid and romantic. How I imagined it, too, is an impossible reality oddly matching the expectations of some high maintenance mags, especially the big ones. Those high-maintenance mags want you to submit completely. As if they feel it is unfaithful, those trophy-wife magazines want you to submit to them only and give them six months to write you a one-line rejection. If they lower themselves to accept unsolicited advances, they want you to submit by snail mail, write a cover letter, use two-inch margins, not go over 1,000 words (or under 20,000), send them a $15 reading dowry, and mail it all in a #10 envelope addressed in very specific way so that it may be delivered by a pale eunuch on a jenny mule on Palm Sunday. Don’t write about love. Don’t write in diary format. Don’t even think about writing in verse (or not in verse). Make sure your submission is marked with chicken blood and is bound with the hair of a virgin.

I read the submission requirements, sit back, and think who has justification and time for all that? I have a full-time job, three part-time jobs, a volunteer gig, and a family, and I don’t think this is what is meant by “suffering for your art.” The writer those folks are looking for is reading over their requirements while sipping from a brandy snifter in front of a fireplace. The writer they’re looking for, after he finishes his breakfast mimosa and slips out of his silk pajamas and into his smoking jacket, leisurely writes out manuscripts by hand with a special pen and sends out his pure bred hound to get the mail, which may or may not have a long awaited and sweetly-worded reply within. When accepted for publication, he’ll throw a lovely dinner party full of very interesting people and have little impromptu poetry writing contests and tell Moby Dick jokes.

But those mags accomplish their purpose: weeding out hoards of wannabes. Just try to bring up ten literary magazine websites without three or four of them beginning a sentence with “Because of the volume of submissions….”  They have to be picky, and not everybody who’s in this game should be. Some are the highly unfortunate American Idol tone-deaf who can’t take a hint.

Aye, there’s the rub, right? How does one know which artist he is? How does one acquire humility and hubris simultaneously? How do you be humble enough you don’t assume you’re Hemingway but arrogant enough to believe you could be. If you’re going to play this game, you have to take on a certain reality about yourself. You have to, even if approval never comes, imagine yourself sipping brandy in your smoking jacket. You have to assume that arrogance and weather all storms of rejection. You have to be the guy who has no idea he's not handsome or cool. You have to remember that writers from Stephen King to Dr. Seuss got rejected a lot. And you have to be okay with the idea that you might not ever make it.  Because that’s what being an artist is: doing art because you love art, not because you get recognized for doing it.

And yeah, that bites. I informed my father yesterday if ever I reached the point I made 100 grand in one year just from my writing, I’d forever onward go forth to literary events dressed like 
Hannibal Means. I’d become the stereotypical crazy and high maintenance artist demanding bowls of green M&Ms because I’d feel like I earned the right to be nuts.

On the practical side, I’ve been streamlining the submission process, and hopefully maintaining some sane dignity because of it. I’ve weeded out those bent on weeding me out. I’ve broken up with them first, and it wasn’t mutual. If they play hard to get, then they don’t get the benefit of considering my unique brand of brilliance. Snail mail only? Rejected. Reading fee? Rejected. No simultaneous submissions? In half a year I’ll tell you that’s unacceptable in an age with fierce global competition and zero time for brandy sniffing. And I’m doing what I hate most, making a spread sheet, and only the pubs friendly to modern writers make the list. Every single one might reject my work, but at least by submitting more and being submissive less (<--awkward, eh?), it won’t feel so much like groveling at the boots of a few cruel mistresses.

 

 

An I’m-Not-Crying Reboot

It seems to me rebooting a blog a week or so in might be a bad sign for the future. But people who know me well, know this to be true: I have a tendency to stage grand protests, throw a middle finger up toward the sky and pitch little fits about the presumptions about how things should be done. Maybe it’s the artistic temperament within me. Maybe it’s good old-fashioned Miller family stubbornness. Maybe I’m just a cantankerous blowhard. I like to do things my way, even if my way is stupid.

Well, whatever. I am who I am.  Except the picture to the right is a lie. That was me seven years and 50 pounds ago.

I say all that because I’m at least willing to look at things objectively once the storm passes. My wife was wise enough to wait a week or so before saying my blog was too random, that she’d rather know what to expect when visiting it than be blindsided by drive-by content. She assumes most of the rest of the world is like this, too. She assumes most of the rest of the world prefers focused content with clear direction, and that doesn’t have to be a pigeon hole.

I understand this in the same way I understand a documentary on lions—that I am in general an outside observer and most of the time don’t want to be an actual participant. At the same time, I understand also that if I were myself making a documentary about lions, it would be difficult for me not to try and join them eating the side of a wildebeest. It’s a weird conflict, wanting to be outside the experiment and be the experiment at the same time.

That’s a bunch of cryptic and philosophical hooey, though. What you want me to do is get to the point. I know that. I’m the type who wants to examine every single point on the way to the point. So fine, the point is this: I’m choosing a niche.

I said I wouldn’t do it, that I wouldn’t be pigeonholed into writing about one thing when (almost) everything interests me, but as usual I find myself outside the game throwing rocks at the players. I’ve spent 34 years grappling with the idea that my personal reality and preferences are so far out of the ball park that they are effectively inhuman. It’s tough sometimes feeling like you’re the only one thinking something; usually I find comfort in reading, because that’s where I discover I’m not the only one thinking something, that many others have thought these things, too, and much of the time those others were mental outsiders in their own times.  Reading is a nice haven of familiarity, a place I can find others like me when it seems most of my contemporaries just don’t get it.

I’ve been:

A romantic in times of reason

A rationalist in times of romance

A Republican in the age of Democrats and vice versa

A saint among sinners

A sinner among saints

And so on…

Maybe I’m not alone in that. Maybe other people feel the same way, that they were born in the wrong time, born among the wrong people. Maybe my feelings of mental and emotional isolation are not so limited to myself (from research I know men in general have tendencies to feel isolated). I’m slow to understand things outside of my own head. Maybe lots of people are like that. Maybe lots of people walk around feeling alone while surrounded by people. Thank God for my wife. With her I feel I belong completely. I’ve told her so often that without her entering at the exact right moment, I’d be a hermit in the woods with a dog and a long beard and a shotgun by the door.

The point? I keep hearing you ask that in my head. I’m getting there.

Jenny (my wife) and I were watching Anthony Bourdain last night, and she noted how excellently he wrote about being a chef. And it’s clear, from his own musings, that he was never really a chef who could slip himself into mainstream chefdom. He is a writer first and foremost, writing about being a chef, and this is interesting to people. She envisioned my blog being something similar, a writer writing about being a writer.

This type of thing really tweaks my brain because I ask myself, who’d be interested in that? I made the same mistake about Twitter. Back in ’06, I think it was ’06, when I caught wind of this buzzy creation by a couple of Googlers, a “microblogging” platform, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Who’d want such a thing? What is it used for? Soon, the tweeted mundane minutia began. People were announcing their bathroom schedules, and which sandwiches from where had contributed to that bathroom schedule. Weirder than that, people seemed interested in it.

And I thought, am I so out of touch with humanity?

This is something I had to learn as writer, too, that people like those little details. The details make them feel normal.  They make them feel grounded. I was always the type who was generally comfortable being different, and maybe that’s where the disconnect is.

I understand wanting to be connected, but still I wonder: who wants to feel grounded? Being grounded sucks.

But this is reality. And I’ve never really liked reality. Reality shows, too, I could take or leave. Give me some finely crafted and well-scripted fantasy. I really don’t care what or who real housewives are doing (especially if it seems completely put on) or the moment-by-moment rendition of toddler beauty queen child abuse or the who’s-your-daddy moments on Maury Povich. I’d just as soon ignore all that and get wrapped up in The Lord of the Rings movies—all three extended versions in succession in one day as daylight turned to dusk outside.

And still I wonder who could possibly interested in the little details of my life. But I assume those people are out there, people who aren’t like me in that respect, but are like me in others. Personally, I couldn’t care less about the minutia in people’s lives. I can’t stand small talk, chatting about the weather, etc. I’d rather have a conversation about the nature of the universe, beat that horse to death and then some until all of us are lost in the annihilation of existence. I’m terrible at Zen. I’m terrible at pondering the lilies of the field. I want to know where God’s house is and I want to go there and check it out. But that’s the real point, isn’t it? The point is God’s house is in the lilies of the field and I’m too busy staring into space to see it.

I have problems spotting my shoes, too, even if they’re in plain sight. I’ll assume a poltergeist has stolen them before I think I’m just blind and stupid.

 Okay, so fine. I’ll pick a niche. This blog will be a blog about the writing life written by a struggling writer who has to learn to assume people are actually interested in that and may actually find a sense of identity and comfort in it. Fine, mundane world, you asked for it, the wordy minutia of some guy who takes just south of 1,300 words to tell you he’s changing his blog approach. It’s still going to be called Off Topic. I have a feeling I’ll always end up off topic no matter where we go.

 

 

 

Filed Under #3

Filed under Math = Awesome + Stupid: The awesome part of the term “yotta,” is that it allows one to introduce terms like “yottasecond” into the vocabulary, which is 32 septillion years. So you get to say pretentious sentences like “It only took a yottasecond for my husband to take out the trash.” The stupid part is—and probably I should have learned this in college at some point—is that my understanding of a number like 32 septillion (32, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000) can not only be computed as zero, but that in French, that number is 32 quadrillion, because the French think in terms of million millions, not thousand millions. In other words, 10⁹ (English billion, French milliard) is 10¹² in French, but only if using a base 10, and if using a different (Logic) system, the number is rendered 1000²⁺¹ unless in French, where a billion is 1000³⁺¹ because I’m guessing the French won’t allow being one-upped by the British, who gave us yards instead of meters, which is why Asian countries are killing the US in math. Well that only took a yottasecond to explain, didn’t it?

 Filed under Stuff That Makes You Want to Holler: Congress first passed the Civil Rights Act in 1875, which was subsequently overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1883. That’s four-score and twenty-odd years of devistating lost progress. The ultimate irony: That law was passed by Lincolnesque Republicans, back when Republican meant Democrat.

 Filed under Awesomest Bet Ever: Dr. Suess’s editor bet him he couldn’t write a book using only 50 words. The result: Green Eggs and Ham.

Filed under What Engineers Do on Friday Nights When the Rest of the World Is Distracted by Romance: Build ridiculous working Lego factories. This video goes on for eight minutes. Don’t knock it. While still in grad school, the Google guys built Lego printers.

 

Filed under Somebody Has Missed the Point Entirely: All Free Speech area postings must be approved by the Office of Student Retention and College Life.

Filed under Skills One Can Master When the Cable Is Cut Off: Olympic Bread Tossing.

Filed under Positive Fashion Contributions from Iran: In 2010, Iran barred men from wearing mullets. In related news, the Hijab and Chastity Festival might sound like a hoot, but with no Kentucky Waterfalls allowed, it’s like a party with no Natty Light.

Filed under Stupidest Thing I Ever Heard: Back in 1999, a federal judge dismissed a discrimination lawsuit filed by a man whose employment application to the local police was rejected on the grounds he was too smart. According the judge, it wasn’t discrimination because everybody with a too-high IQ test score was rejected. Well, duh, stupid genius! The article doesn’t mention why such a hiring stipulation exists to begin with.

Filed under Is America That Racist?: Black dogs get adopted the least.

Filed under A Long, Long Way from Misunderestimated: President Garfield could write with both hands at the same time in two different dead languages.

Filed under Beginning of the End Again: eBooks now outselling paperbacks.

Filed under I Want to Say About a Million Things But I Can’t Express Myself Monosyllabically Enough for You to Understand Them All, and Besides Nobody Will Know How Pithily I Just Insulted You Anyway: Two old men in Mexico are the last two people on Earth who speak the language Ayapaneco. Naturally, they’re not speaking to each other. 

 

Letter to an English Professor

If we're not going to pay teachers what they deserve, then we should at the very least give thanks and honor them whenever we can. I'm biased, of course, as a teacher, and the child of teachers, and the beneficiary of so many great teachers over the course of my education. Teachers let us in on worlds we might never have discovered on our own. That's such a special thing--so special to me I'd like to go on learning forever. I'll be looking into that...I smell a doctorate program wafting down from around the bend. Anyway, below is a letter I wrote about five years ago to a favorite English teacher of mine years after I learned to appreciate him and the new worlds he introduced to me. I post it here in hopes more will remember to thank a teacher. 

 

Dear Dr. D.

I’m sure there is little chance you would remember mine among the blank faces you’ve entertained over the years—especially one four years in the back of your mind from a brief summer session—but in light of things quite recent I thought of you and realized that what I interpreted as a brand of academic torture at the time was nothing of the sort. It was you, after all, who inflicted the tedious, labyrinthine musings of Jorge Borges on me. Who knew I would one day thank you for that sadistic rite and transform it to masochism?

In case you become lost in my verbose effluvia (yes, that is the right word, though I doubt you’ll have any trouble), this is a thank-you note that tries in earnest to sound extra intelligent—an English professor should have no problem wading through with pinched nostrils, as he is accustomed to it.

You clearly said, “this one is my favorite,” referring to Borges, to which I responded (silently), “this guys is nuts.”  You then drew messy diagrams of Reality on the board, which confirmed my thesis. I figured that John Barth’s cyclical madness had pushed you near the edge, and Borges’ ghost had spooked you over.

You had us attempt writing in the style of Hemingway, a task I miserably failed (you gave me a “B,” I think out of sympathy). To this day, I use that experience as an anecdote to explain why I like Faulkner better. But I still wonder why, given your proclivity toward torture, you didn’t have us give a go at rewriting Don Quixote like Pierre Menard.

I joke now, because I am further removed from the pain. That’s not true. I was joking then, even on my final exam, where after attempting a messy sketch of Reality like you had taught us, I resigned myself to draw a bunny instead. You got the joke, I think, because I did quite well on the test. In lieu of Hemingway, your next short story class should be challenged to B.S. with as much skill as I have demonstrated.

I had already exacted my revenge on you by asking you to suffer through a naïve, self absorbed, meandering, and somewhat arrogant Forward I had written about a four-year-long poetic fit of mine. You were kind to say, “it was quite fun to read,” but looking back at my own words I realize it was excruciating and confused. Thanks for that, too.

But I’ve strayed from the point. 

Recently, some event brought to mind "The Sect of the Phoenix." This was the only Borges tale I truly understood at the time of your class, primarily because you explained it. I’m sure the other students joined me in shock as we learned it was about sex. I fished out Labyrinths because I wanted to share this crazy Argentinean with my fiancée. I read it aloud to her and became as tickled as you must have been to inform her of what the hell he was talking about. I tossed the book aside again and forgot about it--that is, until this weekend.

It peeked at me from the hallway outside my bedroom (where I had left it some months earlier), and, being the masochistic type I’ve become (I find myself these days delving into some rather difficult and tedious things on purpose—treasures, it turns out, are not come upon easily), decided to pick it up and give another try at my nemesis, who discouraged me from the start four years ago with his dense tale of discovering Uqbar.

To my surprise, I understood it (mostly, I think). I even liked it. I was amazed at the loaded sentences, the importance of each paragraph, the exacting choice of words. Even more amazing: I had grown enough in four years to comprehend the genius of it, though I still had to read each paragraph more than once (a joy now, not a curse).

I’ve dizzied myself at the thought that rediscovering Borges was no Lottery of Babylon. Chance, or fate, or some in-between, meant for me to find it, and to enjoy it with my fiancée, who is much better at reading than I. She is now a fan as well. The words, especially those of the dreamy "Circular Ruins," I’m sure (and this is not so arrogant as my Forward), were written especially for me (to believe this you have to discount a certain rigidity to time and space and accept that a deceased blind Argentinean and I are intimately and cosmically connected).

I say that because the man whose goal it was to dream a man with “minute integrity and insert him into reality” couldn’t be any other than myself--the dreamt man too, as well as many other fantastic things!

I’m 29 now, barely a man, but grown nonetheless and able to examine with greater clarity the capriciousness of my youth. I see now what you were doing and I think it’s great.

Thanks.  

I’m a writer now. I write incredibly boring things about Google and Yahoo and Microsoft for an Internet news website. I thought and despaired for a moment that I would like to write as Borges did and felt it would be an impossible feat. My fiancée informed me that it was not important that I write like him, but that I should write like me. Also, because of you and a handful of others, I think I should like to teach once I’ve finished graduate school.

Thanks again.