Aimless travels; journeys from place to place

Wanderings. A good traveller is one who is in no hurry to reach any particular destination. Slow travel has the scent of a marketing construction however. Because the longer one takes to arrive, the more one spends. In terms of tourism, slow travel may be just another way to separate the foolish from their money. Still, the idea appeals. So why not do it where you live?

When I was new to Warsaw I could take any route to my destination and see something beautiful and previously unknown to me and the random walk was a game I enjoyed to multiply that newness.

Warsaw is still beautiful even now that I know what lies behind most corners and yet I still take the time to be in no hurry to reach any particular place.

When I catch myself in a hurry, it's an opportunity to remember that ultimately it is death that rushes to meet me. So what's the rush? The past and future only exist when we think about them. Only the present moment is real without our projections.

I've heard stories of people who suddenly relax when they get a terminal diagnosis, in these stories, the relief stems from the fact that the worst they could imagine has now happened. The shoe has dropped, so to speak. They feel unburdened of any necessity to pretend for others. They can live as they choose in the time remaining and no one will begrudge them and even if they do, it won't matter.

It's a sobering thought that some people need such a diagnosis to give themselves permission to live according to themselves.

The degree to which a nervous, unreliable, noncommital, anxiety and terror-prone person (who isn't, to some degree from time to time) could work towards countering these tendencies through wanderings.

Stop & Keep Going. A message so important I put it on a shirt because the state of mind in which I do things is more important than what I do, or where I go, or how I get there.

In my preferred state, I wander.

Masculine and Feminine Telepathy

In the fiction I read, there are two kinds of telepathy which I often run across. There are others but these two may have something to say about gender.

One kind of telepathy which I cal Masculine Telepathy, is a penetrative telepathy like that of the Scanners (1981) of David Cronenberg movie of the same name. In this form of telepathy, your mind can be forced open and entered and all its contents can be accessed by the telepath. The most extreme forms enable total physical possession of the victim's body.

Whether this forced penetration of the mind and body is accomplished by magic, technology or some other method lies beside my point here. Because there is an alternative form of telepathy I often encounter.

This other form of telepathy is more akin to making a phone call only mind to mind. words, thoughts, images, memories, feelings, experiences, in sum, all the cognitive processes of which a mind is aware, can be selectively shared. If the telepath wants to send a message, the receiver has to be willing. This other form of telepathy which I call Feminine Telepathy extends to creations who cannot read the minds of others, either willingly or otherwise but instead have the power to open their own minds to those around them like human television sets.

The affinity link of Peter F. Hamilton's Edenists is an example of a technological version of this second form of telepathy where those with the affinity gene can selectively share their minds to whatever degree they are willing. Of course in Hamilton's universe there are other ways to join minds and not all of these methods are consensual and kind. Still, given the human imagination for the varieties of telepathy, I hope that should people find some way to make telepathy a science fact that they choose to pursue the second form. Sadly, I think the military would prefer to have the former first.

The Man & The Machine

22.09.2019 Warsaw.

In 2007 right around now I started and did not finish a strange story. The consequences of the initial conditions were beyond me and I dropped it. The premise below is interesting and I do not know if I will touch it again. Was I just a coward to not submit more often or do I simply have the sense to not peak too soon and die by overexposure?

Writing rewards the patient fulfillment of concrete tasks and punishes the wistful dreamers.

Yet I should consider whether my submission history is cowardly or prudent. This despite always having the ambition to publish only what I could be proud of and so far, very little has measured up to my taste but recently this is slowly changing.

The following remains a someday/maybe project. Looking at it today, I find it derivative of Doctor Manhattan and my ambitions lean towards brand new sentences with wholly original ideas.

But to be comprehensible the new thing must overlap somewhere with the old thing. This overlap is the extent of what can be absorbed. Sometimes, a work of art cannot be absorbed until society has moved on in the direction of the new thing by which time the author may be dead.

But good artists get themselves out of the way. It's a state of being.

So cryptically, I close with these words. "Do the work, leave the rest to me."

The Man & the Machine. 2007-09-29

Breaking down. That’s what it’s called. A misnomer. It should be called breaking apart. Every molecule in your body suddenly antisocial and aware of its neighbours. The ever present magnetic hum that no amount of refinement has ever removed from the machine.

It’s called ‘The Machine.’ Researchers and scientists from among the best the world has to offer built it. While ordinarily highly creative with titles for their creations. This time, although many ridiculous names were floated in the early days of models 1 through 8, nothing stuck.

It is called the machine. It has one function. It breaks things down then builds them back up, only different, better.

The name of the current volunteer is Russell Yensik. He has already been in and out of the machine 5 times. He prefers to be called Russ or Rusty.

The machine has torn him apart and put him back together many times. But as he waits inside the machine for a sixth time, he wonders who it is who is being torn apart again.

Although careful not to mention it to anyone, he is convinced that since the first time, he has become a forgery of himself and with each successive experiment, he is becoming more and more a copy of a copy. As a test subject, he doesn’t know what the purpose of the experiment is, or even if each disassembly has taken place. Is he a real test subject or part of the control group? At the moment of disassembly, Russ is shocked unconscious. When he wakes up, it is usually in a hospital bed hooked up to so many monitors he feels like a grotesque christmas ornament.

Russ can’t know there is no control group. Russ is the only subject to have ever entered the machine more than once. Every other volunteer in this third phase of the experiment has simply vanished. Every molecule in their bodies shooting off at right angles to each other into the vacuum of space.

Russ is the only one who comes back.

And the scientists can’t figure out why.

“It’s got to be done.”
“It’s murder!” the last word delivered in a hiss.
“Funding’s gone, we can’t just cut him loose, there’s no telling what might happen.”
“We can’t do this!”
“Either he goes or we all go, that’s the word.”
“Jesus.”

“What happened! Dammit man! I order you to say something!”

The nervous operative responds to the command blankly, looking up at the faces of his interrogators without comprehension.

“I…shot him, I think…he was sleeping…I think…he’s not there…he’s gone.”
“He escaped?”
“I mean…he was there…I’m sure…I think?”

They rushed into the room, buried in a pillow still shaped by a head, a bullet hole neatly stamped the fabric of the cover.

Within 24 hours the entire experiment disappeared along with all documents, funding and the machine itself. The scientists involved were sequestered and interrogated. Warned that any mention of the project would result in disappearnces, both of themselves and their families. A single project file in hardcopy was stamped maximum top secret and all other evidence was destroyed.

The machine itself was disassembled. The research made to vanish.

Russ woke slowly from dreams he couldn’t explain, of the machine, of a man with a gun. Confusion. He opened his eyes and for many moments just stared. The familiar ceiling at the project was gone. The ceiling now above him familiar yet at the same time not.

This was his apartment, or had been at least. He had sublet to a friend while he participated in the experiment.

“Aieee!” a muffled whump of someone falling out of bed still struggling in their covers.

“Shit! Gloria? Gloria! It’s me! Russ! Russ!”

Gloria gets over the edge of her panic enough to ask in violent terms and ugly grammar what he’s doing sneaking in to her flat and getting into bed with her?

Only to listen with half an ear to his explanations, staring at him.

Russ follows her gaze and notices that he is fully dressed. As certainly as he was naked in bed a moment ago. As certain as Gloria that he hadn’t been there at all only moments ago.

Russ sits down at the edge of what was once his bed and puts his head in his hands. The voice that sneaks out is weak, confused.

“Glo, what’s happening to me?”
“Mmm, good coffee.”

Russ smiles despite his unease, they both know it’s terrible. Russ and Gloria used to spend a lot of time in this park drinking coffee from a machine an enterprising individual left chained to the snack bar year-round. It was autumn and the snack bar was closed for the winter.
“The coffee’s great,” Russ exaggerated the word, delivered it wrapped in treacle. laughed.
“That sound’s like the old Russ,” she looked down, embarassed for a moment by her reference, however indirect, at their failed relationship three years ago. Russ pretended not to notice, but the spell was broken, his thoughts returning once again to what had happened. He shook his head to clear his thoughts.

“What are you going to do?” asked Gloria.
“Go to the institute and try and get some answers I guess.”

A frustrated Russ returned that evening dazed and alone. When Gloria pelted him with questions his replies were either unintelligible or made no sense.

What she was finally able to get out of him was the following: the building remained but the institute was gone. Having looked up the company that managed the building, he was not too surprised to discover that there was no record of any scientific research having been conducted in the building at all. The paychecks issued to his bank account had also vanished. Without Gloria’s rent money his account would have been empty.

He felt his mind was slipping, he didn’t mention the other details. Fragments, a blur, certain that he remembered being attacked, masked men, a van, a needle. It couldn’t have happened. He was here, in his old apartment. He remembered walking here, having taken a taxi part way then abandoning it in the heavy sludge of rush hour traffic. Walking through the park.

He wanted to tell her she might be in danger, but knew it would sound melodramatic, affected. He dragged his eyes around his old apartment seeing prison bars instead of windows.

“We can’t just leave him alone! It’s too dangerous!”
“You heard the debriefing, they had him, they killed him.”
“They didn’t!”
“He hasn’t any proof, papers, evidence, the ravings of a lunatic, he doesn’t even know our names!”
“Fine, we’ll just watch him for the time being, he could even be trained, a soldier who can’t be killed or captured.”
“Let’s hold fire on that idea for now okay?”
“What for?”
“If he can’t be killed he can’t be trusted.”
“Hm, back burner him then?”
“What else can we do?”
“Appeal to his greed? His lust? Trust me we can control him.”
“You never really understood what the machine did to him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t take things apart, that was entirely a product of his own misunderstanding.”
“So what does it do?”
“Originally? It was just a new kind of MRI machine with greatly improved resolution, nothing unusual was detected, first and second phase trials went ahead smoothly. Third phase trials with human volunteers also went smoothly at first, then he stepped into the machine and every subsequent volunteer disappeared.”
“That’s not what you told the generals.”
“I know, but after the first disappearance, I contacted the police and almost before I put down the phone my entire research project had been appropriated by the government.”
The military scientist heard the bitterness in his unwilling colleagues voice.
“They wouldn’t believe what I told them at first so I had no choice but to change my story.”
“What did you tell them at first?”
“Russ wasn’t changed by the machine, the machine was changed by Russ. Don’t interrupt. However innocent a device it once was, whatever it did to the subsequent volunteers, all military men without a history or a future I might add, could only be guessed at from debriefings with Russ.” The military scientist wanted to urge him on but dared not intrude, his nameless collegue was losing himself in his own thoughts.
“Russ was convinced the machine did more than we told him, at the instant of maximum power, he must have believed with unbridled faith in his fixation. Without satisfactory answers from us…it was like a hard vacuum…of ignorance in his mind, suddenly filled.”
“Filled with what!?” The military scientist couldn’t contain the frustration in his voice.
“Filled with faith.”
“…”
“Every machine using the new resolving appartus we’ve built since has done the same. People disappear. There is an entire complex of physicists living without benefit of sunlight or freedom taking apart our machines trying to decide whether our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality is either seriously flawed or else, as some jokingly suspect, has been changed.”
“Jesus.”
“It may not matter, you see? Either we’re on the brink of a polar shift in the universe or at the edge of a precipice.”

Gloria had forced Russ to stay with her. Her sublet wouldn’t run out for months and Russ did not intend to force her out, he was a gentleman, he would find a place to live. Gloria wouldn’t allow it, he shouldn’t be alone right now. Not with what was going on. Although he slept on the couch after the first night, they settled into a peaceful version of their married life together three years ago. He bought groceries, she did his laundry, she went to work, he didn’t feel ready to go looking for a job yet so he wrote, read, walked in the park. There were no more disturbing double memories of assault and murder. His life settled into something like normalcy.

Except for his parlour trick.

He was holding an apple in his hand, but when she tried to take it her fingers slid right through the solid-looking apple.

“Can you teach me to do that?” She had been plucking up the courage to ask for days, ever since he’d first showed her. But she’d had to overcome a lot of fears and doubts, in any other man, what Russ could do would have frightened her out of her mind. But this was Russ. Her once-upon-a-time husband who used to bring his socks all the way to the laundry hamper only to leave them on the hamper and not in the hamper. This was Russ. Goofy Russ, Boyishly charming Russ, Stupid and selfish Russ, thick­headed Russ. She turned her mind back from where it had drifted.

“Uh, I think so.” Over the weeks they’d become accustomed to the trick. Despite his efforts to keep busy, much of his day was empty. Having accepted that looking outward would not deliver answers, he’d begun looking inward, trying to discover what he could do. He rested her hand on his and placed the apple on her palm and did the trick.
“Did you feel how it kind of slipped in a funny angle? Think you can find it again?”
Gloria nodded and put the apple in her other hand and felt for the odd slide in geometry she had just felt.

The apple slipped through her hand and struck the wood floor with a soft hard thump.

“Wow,” she felt giddy, it wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind but it was a step in the right direction.
“You gotta twist so that your hand stays solid and only the apple goes the other way.”
“Russ…If I twisted my whole body like that, would I slide right through the floor?”
Russ regretted showing her how easy it was. He was afraid that she wouldn’t just fall through the floor but through the one beneath it, all the way down to the center of the planet. Until he’d perfected the trick himself, he’d been terrified when going to sleep. Convinced he’d fall through the couch in the middle of the night and wake up screaming in lava.
“Uh, let’s not and say we did? You might be too successful.”
Gloria suddenly had a vision of lava.
“Uh, yeah, I’ll­–”

Leonardo Da Vinci and The Last Supper.

Leonardo da Vinci, or so the story goes, painted The Last Supper with models. He found a beautiful young boy to use as the model for Jesus, he found models for all the disciples but he couldn't find one for Judas.

Many years passed, he found a man with all the marks of mean living on his face, greed, hate, vice, meanness in every line. He asked the man to be his model, the man accepted readily.

Only after Leonardo had finished The Last Supper did the man confess his secret, "Leonardo, don't you recognize me? It is I, the boy who modeled for your Jesus." Leonardo was stunned, but once he looked for the signs, they were there, beneath the wasted life, this was the same boy, aged by vice and meanness beyond what a few intervening years could account for.

None of the above is a true account and yet, this story stuck with me. In the mind's churning, some stories return to the surface with greater regularity. This is one of them.

A moral interpretation and a longer version of the story can be found here:
https://www.cjpwisdomandlife.com/davinci-last-supper-judas-jesus/

There are variations of the story but a casual internet search reveals none wich are older than the 20th century.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-last-supper/

[pasted from Snopes]

Claim:   The same person posed for the figures of both Judas and Jesus in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of “The Last Supper.”

Status:   False.

Examples:   [Collected on the Internet, 1999]

A story is told that Leonardo da Vinci painted “The Lord’s Supper” when living in Milan. Before he could paint the thirteen figures, it was necessary to find men who could serve as models. Each model had to have a face that expressed da Vinci’s vision of the particular man he would represent. Needless to say, this proved to be a tedious task to find just the right face. One Sunday, as da Vinci was at the cathedral for mass, he saw a young man in the choir who looked like da Vinci’s idea of how Jesus must have looked. He had the features of love, tenderness, caring, innocence, compassion, and kindness. Arrangements were made for the young man, Pietri Bandinelli, to sit as the model for the Lord. Years went by, and the painting was still not complete. Da Vinci could not find just the right face for Judas. He was looking for a man whose face was streaked with despair, wickedness, greed and sin. Ten years after starting the picture, he found a man in prison whose face wore all the qualities of Judas for which he had been searching. Consent was given for the prisoner to pose, and he sat as the model for Judas. Leonardo worked feverishly for days. But as the work went on, he noticed certain changes taking place in the prisoner. His face seemed filled with tension, and his bloodshot eyes were filled with horror as he gaped at the likeness of himself painted on the canvas. One day, Leonardo sensed the man’s uneasiness so greatly that he stopped painting and asked, “What seems to trouble you so much?” The man buried his face in his hands and was convulsed with sobs. After a long time, he raised his head and inquired, “Don’t you remember me? Years ago I was your model for the Lord, Jesus.” This miserable man had turned his back on Christ and turned his life over to sin and the world sucked him down to its lowest levels of degradation. He no longer loved the things he had loved before. And those things that he at one time hated and despised, now he loved. Where once there was love, now there was misery and hate; where once there was hope, now there was despair; where once there was light, now there was darkness. When Leonardo da Vinci was painting his masterpiece, The Last Supper, he selected as the person to sit for the character of the Christ a young man, Pietri Bandinelli by name, connected with the Milan Cathedral as chorister. Years passed before the great picture was completed, and when one character only — that of Judas Iscariot — was wanting, the great painter noticed a man in the streets of Rome whom he selected as his model. With shoulders far bent toward the ground, having an expression of cold, hardened, evil, saturnine, the man seemed to afford the opportunities of a model terribly true to the artist’s conception of Judas. When in the studio, the profligate began to look around, as if recalling incidents of years gone by. Finally, he turned and with a look half-sad, yet one which told how hard it was to realize the change which had taken place, he said, “Maestro, I was in this studio twenty-five years ago. I, then, sat for Christ.”

Origins:   We know so little about the circumstances surrounding da Vinci’s creation of “The Last Supper” that an account offering this much detail is immediately suspect. Certainly da Vinci didn’t take twenty-five years, or even ten years, to complete his work, as claimed in these accounts. Documentary evidence indicates

he began “The Last Supper” in 1495 and was finished with it by 1498. (At the outside, Da Vinci would had to have completed his work by the end of 1499; that year he fled Milan ahead of the invading French and didn’t return to the city until 1506.) Other details presented here are woefully wrong as well: There are no records of whom Leonardo used as models for the figures in “The Last Supper,” but he was painting on a wall, undoubtedly from sketches, so in no case would he have had models sitting in a “studio” for “days” while he “painted on canvas.”

This tale is simply a Christian religious allegory warning of the inner spiritual decay (as exemplified by an outer physical decay) that awaits those who spurn Jesus Christ. As with many other examples of glurge, the writer has housed his message within a historical framework to lend it additional impact, thereby achieving exactly the opposite of what he intended: readers now focus on the literal truth of the allegory’s details rather than its message.

The prose version of this glurge bears a strong similarity to the following bit of verse (of unknown origin):

Two pictures hung on the dingy wall
Of a grand old Florentine hall —

One of a child of beauty rare,
With a cherub face and golden hair;
The lovely look of whose radiant eyes
Filled the soul with thoughts of Paradise.

The other was a visage vile
Marked with the lines of lust and guile,
A loathsome being, whose features fell
Brought to the soul weird thoughts of hell.

Side by side in their frames of gold,
Dingy and dusty and cracked and old,
This is the solemn tale they told:

A youthful painter found one day,
In the streets of Rome, a child at play,
And, moved by the beauty that it bore,
The heavenly look that its features wore,
On a canvas, radiant and grand,
He painted its face with a master hand.

Year after year on his wall it hung;
‘Twas ever joyful and always young —
Driving away all thoughts of gloom
While the painter toiled in his dingy room.

Like an angel of light it met his gaze,
Bringing him dreams of his boyhood days,
Filling his soul with a sense of praise.

His raven ringlets grew thin and gray,
His young ambition all passed away;
Yet he looked for years in many a place,
To find a contrast to that sweet face.

Through haunts of vice in the night he stayed
To find some ruin that crime had made.
At last in a prison cell he caught
A glimpse of the hideous fiend he sought.

On a canvas weird and wild but grand,
He painted the face with a master hand.

His task was done; ’twas a work sublime —
And angel of joy and a fiend of crime —
A lesson of life from the wrecks of time.

O Crime: with ruin thy road is strewn;
The brightest beauty the world has known
Thy power has wasted, till in the mind
No trace of its presence is left behind.

The loathsome wretch in the dungeon low,
With a face of a fiend and a look of woe,
Ruined by revels of crime and sin,
A pitiful wreck of what might have been,
Hated and shunned, and without a home,
Was the child that had played in the streets of Rome.

We also found a sighting of the tale (minus claims of the painting being da Vinci’s “Last Supper”) in a 1979 collection of tidbits and tales meant to be used in sermons:

A painter once wanted a picture of innocence. He found and painted a little child kneeling beside his mother at prayer. The palms of his hands were reverently folded, mild blue eyes upturned with an expression of devotion and peace. The painter prized this portrait of young Rupert above all else and hung it prominently in his study, calling it “Innocence.”

Years later when the artist was old, the portrait was still there. He had often thought of painting a counterpart — the picture of guilt. One day he purposely visited a neighboring prison. On the damp floor of the cell lay a wretched man, named Rupert, heavily ironed. His body was horribly wasted, his eyes hollow, vice sprouted all over his face. The old painter succeeded admirably, and the portraits hung side by side — “Innocence” and “Guilt.”

Last updated:   13 January 2008

Wordless Wednesday: Only Mum Can Judge Me

The King's Standard

At eleven in the evening, the King of the world decided to call a meeting. Everyone was ordered to come to the castle and wait on his majesty's pleasure. The governments of the world each sent a delegation of representatives including their top executives. Whether these happened to be prime ministers, presidents, dukes, or dictators did not matter, all were subservient to his majesty, naturally.

"I have an announcement," said the King of the World. His councillors and advisors had not been warned of this developement and were quietly discussing options with the Generals.
"I banish all months, fish and people with an S in their names from the country for ever."

The room might have erupted in roars of opposition but the King's own name began with the letter S and had several more sprinkled throughout like so many caraway seeds on a moist steamed bun.

"You bore me, you see," said the King with a tone of finality when everyone had been bracing themselves for another of his long winded speeches.

Then he could have leapt from the throne on which he had sat for so long and for which, in return, such little gratitude had been given and he could have run screaming or maniacally laughing from the throne room. Or, he could have produced a sword seemingly out of nowhere which he had cunningly concealed in his robes and slashed a chandelier rope and risen up out of the throne room to a waiting window like some swashbuckling hero of the silver screen's golden age.

"Just kidding," he said, "I've decided to declare War against our enemies neighbouring our southern border.

Everyone expelled a sigh of relief. The Generals put down their phones, the advisors sheathed their pens, the councillors returned emergency briefs to emergency briefcases.

Contentment reigned.

49 The Murder Book

Homicide Detective Ellison had been assigned to the cold cases as a sop. Close to retirement and having clocked 40 odd years in the force, it was just what he was looking for, the cases that wouldn't go away. The bad guys left in the cold.

Some were cases he himself had worked on 20 years ago. But eventally he came to the one that would prove his last.

"I'd leave that one alone, it's bad mojo," said his new-old partner, Detective Jacek (Jack) Tedesky, from a blue family of Polish extraction, his father and grandfather had been officers. He was retiring in a week, against his will but the government policy did not make exceptions. 67 and they forced you out. A shame really.

"What's up Tedesky? Never knew you to shy from a murder book," He was referring to the volumes of evidence and documentation that Homicide detectives used for keeping everything to do with each case organized.

"I never spent enough time with my kids, you know? Now they don't want to talk to me."
"Yeah, I get it, pass me that book will you?"
"I wish I had though, you know? I wanted to, but the cases kept coming and we needed the cash for Marjorie's treatments."
"Those damned co-pays."
"Those damned co-pays, exactly, you'd think serving and protecting putting your life on the line every day and night would net us some better dental coverage."
"We should go have a word with the roommate, she says in the statement here that she was visiting her parents but I got a receipt from a gas station in town with her name on it."
"Let's check out her story, I tell you, why did I do all those things I did, for my kids, if now they don't wanna talk to me?"
"Kids are funny Jack, You do your best or you don't, they forgive you or they don't."
"What's that supposed to mean, you saying I didn't do my best?"
"You think my kids talk to me?"
"You were on the phone with them this afternoon."
"Yeah but they only talk about the good stuff, come on Jack, we were old to this game when it was new, there ain't no human life that's all ups with no downs, I mean what kind of a ride is that? Sure ain't no rollercoaster I'll get on."
"Alright Frank," Jack said, he seemed to shrink in his chair, suddenly old, he'd be retired in a week, what was he going to do? All he knew about living was what he did and when he couldn't do that, what?"
"Still," said Frank.
"Yeah?"
"Let's do this book and then, let's get a fishing boat, or open a cafe or something, or maybe we do nothing but try and repair the damage to our relationships Jack, it's never too late until you're late and great."
"Thanks Frank, let's go check out her story, maybe swing past the gas station first, I'd like to ask them a few questions."
Frank locked up the murder book in his desk drawer.
"I want a burger first, you want a burger?"
"Do I want one or can I have one?"
"Man..."

Fictional world idea: Reality is a leaderboard

You are judged on a daily basis. Each night that you sleep you move up or down, you always wake up in a new world. very similar but the difference depends on your actions on that day and each and every day.

There is no judge. There is only judgement. This is a stochastic process like evolution. Time is an illusion. There is duration without progression. The illusion of progression is due to the judgement moving you up or down on the leaderboards of reality.

Every day is another chance to get it right.

Wronging: How to write copious odious quantities of words

Don't research. Don't have a plan, just pound those keys hard and fast and make a mess. Ramble, digress, avoid: index cards; any attempt at logical structure; leading topic sentences; authoritative sources; and great books by great writers.

Leave work undone. Start new work often. Keep no records, refuse to track your progress. Establish no milestones and be fixated monomaniacaly on goals. Pay no attention to process and clench your mind mightily. Wish for outcomes and do not do anything concrete to make them a reality. Use words of negation like punctuation. Make eloquent excuses, put the blame on everybody from your parents to your best friend's best friend. Tolerate no compromises, be unforgiving and angry and frustrated.

Hang on in unquiet desperation sitting in quiet cafes in the hours of the early afternoon once the office lunch crowd has gone back to work.

Make housecalls where you berate Prince[ess] Charming for not plucking you from this nightmare of your own creation.

"Why, then, 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison. Well, then it isn't one to you, since nothing is really good or bad in itself—it's all what a person thinks about it. And to me, Denmark is a prison."
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.

What Shakespeare is explaining so beautifully is that our thinking is the root cause of our problems. Bad things happen to us sometimes, there is no changing that, what makes these bad things into a problem is when we decide we don't want to take responsibility for our lives anymore and want someone to comfort us and tell us it is going to be okay if we can just get back on our feet and make another attempt which would be well and fine if we then proceeded with the part where we get up and get on with it. Wanting comfort is human, wanting comfort to the exclusion of all else smacks of addiction.

In the context of writing or wronging, sometimes trying to imagine the worst way to write helps us to find the insight that lets us find the gaps in our process and tilt the balance of our write-ness and wrongness towards righteousness.

Hopefully.

Simple is not easy: two questions and two attitudes for writing anything

The two questions we need to ask ourselves when writing are simple enough. If you can answer them to your satisfaction you may have also done the same for your audience. No opinion exists in a vacuum.

The two attitudes we need to demonstrate in ourselves when writing are also simple enough however simple does not mean easy.

So what?
Who cares?

Vulnerability.
Receptivity.

Brake for Stan

Written October 28, 2002, four years before this blog began about avant garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage.

In the poem I try to convey an image from a documentary about the filmmaker that stuck with me. A clip of sunlight piercing the trees at sunset seen through the open rear window of a speeding car. Meanwhile, a friend of the filmmaker relates in voice over how Stan enjoyed 'mickey-mousing' in time, which in the context of the documentary had something to do with images that could jump from the future to the past and back again. From men in space to dinosaurs on earth.

According to sources, Mickey mousing has to do with the total synchronization of image and sound first highlighted in the animated short Steamboat Willie (1928). What Stan's friend meant exactly by his comment is tantalizingly just beyond my present comprehension.

In interviews, Brakhage often returns to the question of how the untrained eye must see the world in terms of unknown, hence uncategorized, experiences, how a simple lawn must radiate with colours before the eye learns to interpret all the variations as green. From other sources, once there is a schema, the eye often never sees the object again, which accounts for the inability of most people to identify defining details of their own national currencies. From Dan Norman, author of the Design of Everyday Things, we have the example of the american penny. Is Lincoln facing left or right? Where is the year of minting? Most are unsure when presented with a set of 16 alternatives and of those who are sure, not all get it right more than chance would predict.

I felt sad for Stan Brakhage, I can't articulate why.  I never watched the documentary again and my memories are corrupted reconstructions. But the poem exists.

That's enough backstory.

BRAKE FOR STAN.

Mickey Mousing in time;

to the future and

the primeval forests;

sunlight strobing

past us through

the curtain of trees;

masking gracefully

the veils, the holes,

the whole veil unto

which these souls

of mass and quantity

have willed themselves

projected.

If you do these things you will pass

The following story was told to me by a friend of mine who heard it from someone else.

Apparently, somewhere in this great land of ours is a place of work with a very special set of rules. If the rules are followed for the most part, then employment continues. However if there is no deviation, if there is in fact a slavish devotion to minutiae or its opposite, a major deviation from norms, then employment is rescinded.

Strangely enough, this business operates in a lucrative sector but the engagement of the employees is at an all time low, despite this, their managers do almost their best (see above) to give them almost all the support they can and just about nearly as often as more-than-chance succeed if only partially.

Liminality all the way up down left right backwards forwards in-between beside and around.

This company does not break or kill its members. Life will do that. This company bends its members. Distorts them until they resemble each other like so many camels in a caravan.

2354145194125

Unformatted Sketch of a scene from a feature we'd like to see.

INT. OPULENT ROOM WITH TWO DOORS AND NO WINDOWS - DAY.

There is a UNWASHED HUMAN reclining in trash piled up against a richly decorated wall. The room is the child of the Paris Opera and the Palace of Versailles. There are two doors. One on either side of the room. Before long, one door opens and a COIFFED HUMAN enters slowly with downcast eyes as if ashamed to look.
UH: Come on then.
CH: Can we talk about this?
UH: You won't listen, what's to say?
The Unwashed Human arranges the trash piled around itself in a meticulous manner as if arranging flower petals into a mandala. The Coiffed Human is utterly ignored.
CH: See you.
The Unwashed Human has a cut lip and there are open sores on its bare feet.
UH: You won't. Can't leave the way you came in.
CH: I will.
UH: Someone will. Won't be you.
CH: I don't want to end up like you.
UH: You won't. I stayed. You're going.
CH: You know what I meant.
Coiffed Human moves quickly for the other door but makes an about turn when nearly there and almost runs back through the door they came in.

Four dimensions of people according to one researcher

Is there someone outside this framework? I don't know.

I was listening to the audiobook version of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and he mentions there are only two races: those who are sadists and those who are not (my wording).

Immediately I thought of this chart by Professor Carlo Cipolla.

If there is someone outside this framework, it's not me.

Take a photo, curate a photo.

Take photos. But pick a handful, any number, to represent your day. Those receipts? You don't need them anymore. Went to the park and took dozens? Pick five. If a life is made up of days, and you leave the editing and curating for tomorrow, which never comes, why are you taking photos at all?

One friend of mine takes no photos. He wants memories and the act of taking photos in his mind is a distraction.

Another friend takes few photos. Most all of which are good. Myself? Too many and I procrastinate curating.

Let's all take fewer photos and curate the photos taken. Or we will end up yet again with too many photos to appreciate them.

Where I'm going to from (where I've been)

A friend from Toronto is in town and he reminded me that where we come from has a big impact on our perceptions. For some, coming to Europe is an advance towards their future, a victory. For others it is a retreat towards their past. In addition to an advance or a retreat, it can be a moving from a place or a moving towards a place.

Captain Obvious? It seems important to lay these presuppositions down.

The frames through which we perceive our reality are in some sense the only reality we know. Lost in a musum of painting we cannot really see but we imagine what must be there by the nature and texture of their frames.

Choices and consequences as a famous Canadian actor reminds us in his latest film.

Both are daily presences. Especially around now and especially around here.

Force overwhelmed by superior force: another boring plot

Here are a few claims to substantiate at leisure. Characters in conflict generate plots which are compelling. Whenever the plot relies on force overwhelmed by a superior force there is a failure of characterisation.

In marketing there is an alternative to force. It is not the strongest who wins but the first. The first to generate a new category in the mind of the audience is automatically at the top of a ladder with one rung.

I have intuitively connected these three claims: characters in conflict generate compelling plots, plots relying on force overwhelmed by superior force have an inherent flaw, to the first and not to the strongest go the spoils. The one in the middle is my claim, the other two come from authorities.

It remains to be seen if the evidence will support my reasons for connecting these claims.

It is far more satisfying when a plot can be looked at in retrospect as the inevitable outcome of a conflict between characters in whom we have vested our interest. Much like a convenience store sandwhich: modest expectations remorselessly fulfilled.

p.s. When you force things, you break things. Since you can only put things together or break them apart, take care to break apart only what you can survive not being able to put back together.

Medium is not the message, it is the challenge, says my Dad

Between 1967 and 1970 my father wrote articles for the local (at 17 years old) and national newspapers (at 18-20) as well as youth magazines. For example, he did the movie pages for HEY a youth magazine since defunct although the name remains popular.

So, he had to get a typewriter because the papers would not accept hand written articles. Up until then he had used pencils and pens out of necessity but there were advantages. Writing his first drafts in pencil, he could make corrections fairly easily and then write a fair copy in pen. The process was laborious but forgiving. It took actual physical effort and mental concentration to write legibly and correctly but when mistakes happened or he changed his mind he could revise without much hassle.

But the typewriter changed all that. Because the papers would not take hand written articles, he purchased a Grey Astor typewriter from Austria. He still has it. It is a slender and comparatively lightweight portable typewriter very similar to an Olivetti Lettera 22. He got it on an eight month installment and started typing up articles immediately to help pay for it.

Between writing movie reviews and other pieces, he participated in student riots and made protest posters, For every article he used carbon copy sheets between his pages because he wanted a copy for himself.

Which is where he learned how unforgiving a typewriter can be. He soon discovered that he hated blemished copies and because he could not make changes the way he used to with pencil and pen he began to compose even more in his head. He simply didn't want to make (what he saw as) a mistake.

He switched to computers as soon as he could and at first he continued to compose in his head and not on the screen. But the computer was so generous with mistakes!

He recently told me that 'once you start writing on a computer, even if you try to continue to compose in your head you end up with verbal diarrhea.'

In other words, even if you try to maintain the discipline of mental composition on a computer, invariably you end up in a fluid environment of cuts and pastes. Far better then to start with pencil and pen or with a typewriter if you are brave enough. Because these tools still demand physical effort and mental concentration that a computer will never require.

I confess some of my recent text messages were dictated to my phone. Speech to text has come a long way. Soon (if not now) speech to text will be faster than a court reporters' shorthand.

To maintain the architectures of mind that are the mental analogues to the mechanical skills of writing and typing, I must continue to exercise certain behaviours. I must continue to draft with pencil, pen, & typewriter.

Cursive is no longer taught in some schools, with the loss of yet another mechanical skill, I fear a mental ability is also being lost and there is nothing on the horizon I see as an adequate replacement.

All of which is to say that my father's riff on Marshall McLuhan's favorite adage is an apt one: Every medium presents its own challenges and each of those challenges is an opportunity in disguise. There are rewards you have not yet tasted lying in wait for you at the end of the pen or around the next carriage return.

Go on. Find out. Turn off.

Rant 32: Tsundoku & Bibliomania

Do not worship dead objects. Buy books to read them not because they're available.

Bibliomania can ruin your life. Be sure to read every book you buy and if you don't read it then get rid of it.

You must beat your tsundoku or you will be eaten by it. Having an antilibrary does have it's warm reassurance and it is true that books do go out of print and become difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, this is an age of the pan-dimensional Amazon's Bay.

Most of your library can be reduced to a photo archive of the covers, as one friend does during his regular cullings. He is not a researcher however.

Peppa Pig defines a talent as something you're good at doing which you also like to do. But can a talent for research emerge without books to read and peruse and refer to?

Books are the tools of my trade. For me to have read every book in my library would be as bad as having read none of them. If I had the resources I would build a room of modest area but with 8 meter high walls. One wall would be a bookshelf (and a built-in ladder). The other three would be a blackboard, a whiteboard, and a blank white plaster wall. The door would be through the bookshelf. The ceiling would be lightly tinted glass.

But until that room, until that day. The books must be contained. Be discriminating.

Idea 99: 8th Coven, 2nd Broom, Company B

Every square unit of area we take from the enemy is hard fought and dearly paid for in life. We find ourselves in dire straits. We keep going. -- from the Journal of Pvt. Blair during the assault on Cyclopea Three during the Witch Wars of 3431.

"Get back up there!"
"You're not the boss of me!
"Oh yes I am,"
"Argh! Yes you are!"
"She's gonna want to see progress!"
The cackle of the witch sergeant was full throated and high pitched at the same time. It struck a nerve deep in the ancestral coccyx and made you twitch and spasm in fearful sparks of pain.

I have just spent five hours throwing away stuff

Time I could have spent improving my skills, reading a book, shopping for groceries was spent throwing out stuff I should have thrown out years ago. Like every schmo I know with stuff, I don't notice the years it takes to accumulate it but I do notice the hours it takes to dissipate it.

I heard a good story from a relative about their neighbour. This neighbour was a cool dude with style and taste. He would sit in the evenings on his porch and play rare jazz records. Friends would drop by to share a bite to eat or with something to drink. He was a cordial and warm host.

When he died, his relative with power of attorney put his house on the market. There was a one day open house garage sale. Everything in the place for a buck or a quarter. Like locusts, strangers picked over his rare and precious curiosities. lifetimes of wonder and mystery collected in each object.

What didn't sell that day was bagged up and put to the curb. There was too much bagged and curbed.

I don't want my stuff to meet that fate. I'd rather hand my treasures down to individuals I know well who can choose to enjoy them for some time or pass them on or sell them or let them go or whatever they deem fit.

But the chain of custody will not be broken.

My relative bought his rocking chair. She wanted one thing to remember him by.

First you get the stuff, then the stuff gets some stuff, then the stuff gets you.

First drafts with a fountain pen in a physical notebook vs Stephen King's pencil

An interviewer asked Stephen King what sort of pencil he uses, says Seth Godin in an interview by Tim Ferris. Godin goes on to say the type of pencil is irrelevant just like the process of any one individual is irrelevant. For what it is worth, Stephen King gets up in the morning and gets 6 clean pages written in a computer and then gets on with his day and his life. Seth Godin, by contrast, admits to no ritual or habit. He just posts once a day.

By contrast, Neil Gaiman says he writes his first drafts with a fountain pen in a good notebook (coincidentally also in an interview by Tim Ferris). Gaiman goes on to support his claim by saying he feels like he is losing something when he makes cuts to a digital first draft, but when he types up his first draft into the computer and decides to leave something out he feels like nothing is lost and what is more, he saves time.

So which process doesn't matter, what does matter is that you find a process that works for you.

Once, when I was a teenager, I saw a guy sitting and writing in a cafe on a legal pad with a disposable pen. He had a girl leaning up against him and I remember she was cute. He paid her no attention. At that age I thought it odd amusing. They seemed to have an arrangement. She never spoke. She just leaned on his left arm with her head sometimes resting on his shoulder while he wrote.

I interrupted him to ask why he did it that way, he replied he just had to. At that stage of my life I was already a touch typist with the familiar-to-young-writers fulminous outpouring of material.

I could not imagine taking such pains. There was too much to be done.

At this later stage of my life, I have another process: I use whatever I have, wherever I am.

But the best drafts still come from physical media. Pens and pencils. As an instructor of academic writing, I advise my students to do the same. Invariably, when they take my advice, they produce higher quality.

So the answer to the question implied in the title is yes, no, either, both.

Just write.

Detail from the Castle of Cagliostro (1979) Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

When does the audience matter?

“What is most important is from which state of mind you're doing what you're doing," Marina Abramovic, a performance artist, has been quoted as saying.

Doing the dishes can be work of art.

It's the brick laying versus the cathedral building once again.

Many great talents reported they did not enjoy the practice of their talent. English writer Roald Dahl for one.

But were they telling the truth or were they walking with a limp before losing their canes and doing back flips like Gene Wilder in the 1971 film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Writer-Director Ilir Pristine whose latest feature Florrie (2019) premiered this July had this to say about the audience. "What they had in common was a strong emotional response to Florrie, but their opinions were as unique as themselves."

I took this to mean the audience is important because without the audience there is no artist. But the audience does not matter because writing for so many would be writing for no one and would satisfy no one and evoke strong emotional responses in no one.

The audience does not matter.
The audience is important.

But the art is from a particular state of mind.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Get your day right

All those days that came and went, little did I know that they were life. -- Stig Johansson
Work at improving your day.
The secret to your success lies in what you do every day.
It doesn’t have to be a perfect anything. Keep going.

You might argue. you might say that you intend the opposite or an alternate. Whatever you choose or don't choose is what you live, exist or die with.

Nothing means anything so it is better to strive because the satisfactions that come to those who strive do more than make the time pass, they make the time pass significantly. All those eternities of scherzo between the tick and the tock can dance for you if you can be vital and fresh at least once per day.

Get your day right.

People will Believe what they believe and want what they want.

 This was the line that struck me as I was re-reading the 22 immutable laws of marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

It’s a very strong claim and the test of my experience runs against it. Or does it? I am prepared to treat it as a presupposition and see how much effort I can save to put to more worthwhile pursuits.

Game: What’s your blog about?

Listening to this: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?i=1000442141971

Chip Conley, entrepreneur and writer, Talks about a game called ‘what business are you in?’ The essential rule is simple: ask a player ‘what business are you in?’ They answer. Then you ask again. They answer again, but they can’t answer the same way. Conley asserts that after five answers the player will get to an answer very close to the essence of their business.

What if I changed the question?

What is your blog about?

Coverage will save you if you don't get any close ups or cutaways.

We made some great short films this summer at movie camp and because it is almost over I wanted to say something about how we teach shots. There are so many different types of shots that we can't name let alone practice in 10 days so I only teach 3 broad categories. Coverage, Close ups and Cutaways.

The campers don't always get their close ups and cutaways but because I ask them to shoot coverage first, we can always get the story told.

Also, with NLE video systems these days,, we can often cheat the close ups and cutaways with panning and cropping tools.

Leading the way through technology! These films are much better than my first efforts.

90 seconds to post as an experiment to see if people really don't have enough time to write every day.

This is not addressed to those who don't blog or write everyday. It is addressed to those who complain they don't have the time.

You have the time to do so much every day which doesn't help you move the dial.

Netflix, Television, Reddit, Instagram.

These things have their place. In moderation they are cheap entertainments offering infinite jest.

Before you do these things. If you say you want to write, write. If you don't want to, don't.

So, if I ever teach a blogging class, the objective will include a daily post that takes 3 minutes from logging in to posting. That should be generous.

First Thoughts about Blogging as a course of study

Seth Godin writes five blog posts and posts one. Daily.
The secret to success lies in your daily habits.
Life punishes vague dreams and rewards explicit tasks (Tim Ferris, lifestyle experimenter)
Perfect marketing makes advertising (in theory) superfluous.
Blogs which have a well defined scope are more attractive.
Blogs which have a well defined structure are more attractive.
If I attended a 30x45 minute course on blogging, what would I want to learn?
If I created such a course, what would I want to include?
Blogging for reminiscence and memory work
Blogging for marketing purposes
Blogging for self-expression
Blogging for self-promotion
Blogging for Journalism, micro-cultural news, themed news, local news and other news.
Non-text blogging. Photo blogging and video blogging, and platforms similar to blogging which are not blogging.
Advantages and disadvantages of different forms of mass communication media platforms in terms of happiness, vitality and health.
Keeping a journal while living in a self obsessed, permanently distracted, culture.
Efforts by individuals and communities to overcome this trend.
The difference between pleasure and satisfaction
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
You are a brand. What does that mean?
Blogs are platforms where there is no implicit trust so it must be earned over time. How long it takes depends on good luck, extent of planning, consistent execution and unknown unknowns.
Good luck includes timeliness.
Extent of planning includes research and meticulous attention to detail.
Consistent execution includes degree of effort; how much of that effort comes from willpower (exhaustible) and how much comes from well developed habits (easy to create, hard to create deliberately) will determine the probability of successful execution.
Unknown unknowns are all those factors which must exist but have not yet been considered.
Push downhill: Sell what folks want to buy (Seth Godin)
Remember Zig Ziglar

Links for further reading:
https://www.quicksprout.com/10-lessons-seth-godin-can-teach-you-about-blogging/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/writing-tips-seth-godin

Storytelling for people in a hurry.

The following is based on something I use to teach storytelling at my movie camps. More info about the summer movie camp program can be found here.

How I write stories for movie scripts. -a one sheet- The audience must care about your characters so get characters into trouble immediately. Getting to know them and making them hurt goes together. Focus on clearly drawing your characters, not on making the audience like them. If they are in pain (mental or physical); the camera spends time on them; and they are clearly drawn then you did well. Tell your story to one person in your mind. Real or imaginary people are both okay. Pick one person as your ideal audience if you can. Make the movie as if it is for them. Keep the plot as simple as possible and not simpler. The simplest plot is 2 people want something only one of them can have. Sometimes the goal is two sides of one coin. Luke wants to destroy the Death Star his father wants to build. Nemo's dad is trying to find him while nature (and a collector) are trying to stop him. The simplest act structure in movies is 3-part structure. Keep the beginning as short as possible (act one) then keep the complications fast (act two) then end it conclusively (act three) in a ratio of 1:3:1. keep the beginning as close to the end as you dare. Audiences come for human emotion so keep the action heavy, the dialogue moderate and the exposition/description as light as possible. Stories end with an option-lock or a time-lock or both. The arc looks like pity-struggle-catharsis(relief) The simplest shape of a story is called 'man in a hole* after Kurt Vonnegut formulated this grid approach with good fortune and bad fortune on the y-axis and beginning end end on the x-axis. Your scenario should be 250-350 words for any length of movie. Like any synopsis, if the major themes are not clear on a single page then you have gone overboard and it's time to stop and try again. Arbitrary? Yes. Effective? also yes. Ignore any of the rules above if you want. Just remember it is easier to break rules successfully if you know what they are. Good luck and happy story telling!

Entertaining

Five varieties of heirloom zucchini were used in the preparation of what the chef refrained from referring to as a variant of peasant ratatouille. The guests were advised by courier that no one was permitted to speak during the meal and to arrive on time and leave as soon as they were finished eating. The journalist who had been invited to document the very rare appearance of the host in what might guardedly be called public society kept quiet only by keeping leafy greens in the mouth at all times. Every guest was seated by a personal waiter in an adjustable-height wing-backed armchair so that even the view of the other guests in the dimly lit dining hall was made difficult. This was a relief to the journalist who liked to eat with gusto even at the risk of offending the host with poor table manners. The journalist ate heartily and washed every mouthful down with wine from a glass that was perpetually replenished so unobtrusively by a personal waiter that after the fifth portion the journalist began to imagine the glass was in fact a cornucopia of wine and its operation was entirely the result of highly sophisticated magic.

Due to this indulgence and other factors, the host had already thanked all the other guests when the journalist staggered to a standing stop.

"That was delicious."
"Thank you. I used to have these dinner parties more often but talk was more interesting then."
"We weren't allowed to speak, how do you know we'd have been boring?"

The journalist could imbibe any quantity and still sound sober and yet, the question was entirely the product of drunk reasoning. There was no possible way any conversation tonight could have been interesting. The entire table had been made up of personages too august to ever let someone into their unguarded, hence interesting, thoughts. The journalist had been at dinner parties elsewhere with this entourage. All they had discussed were topical issues of the present state of the world, the lost biodiversity and the heated climate. Serious topics worthy of serious action, hence boring to the extreme. No, there would not have been better than that tonight. All those reputations who'd sat at this table had persona's to conjure and maintain in glamorous glittering brittle affected perfection. The journalist knew the truth of course, not that any editor would publish the truth. The truth was that none of the people who ate the ratatouille tonight were still living their lives. They had long ago surrendered to a public performance of living.

All except the host.

"I knew the talk would have been boring because I have been bored by talk for a long time. No one has said anything in my presence with any real effort behind the words. There is a word in french, do you know it? Gaspiller. It means to waste although it doesn't really capture the ache of the sentiment. I often find the word on my lips. Still, I wanted a dinner party, I wanted the world to remember me but at the same time I wanted the world to leave me alone."

"So you forbade talking."
"Only during the meal."
"We were told to leave as soon as we finished."
"You were."
"I didn't."
"I am never bored you see? Alone, I am never bored, I like the company of others but they make me tired and when I am tired I am irritable and when they talk they make me tired faster. I wish it were otherwise but I can't help myself."
"Why tell me? I was just leaving."
"I cannot burden my family with my troubles. You are a nobody."
"I'm a journalist."
"I deny everything. What I said was for your ears alone."
"Are you so weary of life?"
"Not in the least, I personally prepared your meal tonight."

The journalist's eyes widen reflexively.

"I don't believe you."
"Neither will anyone believe you."
"I am surely not the best person to unload your weariness on."
"Why did I take the trouble to arrange this dinner after so long out of the public eye?"
"Why take the trouble to cook the meal yourself?"
"I needed to care and I needed you to care."
"To be honest, I don't."
"I know."
"The meal was delicious and the wine and the service..." the journalist trailed off.
"superlative, yes. I did it all for myself. I am in the curious position of being the writer, producer, director, distributor and audience of my own micro-cultural content. Entertainment one-to-one."
"I think that's a sad way to go through life."
"My life is rich and full beyond words, I have everything."
"So why are you so unhappy?"
"Am I?"
"Happy people are banal, they don't do things like full-service silent dinner parties in purpose-built settings."
"The chairs? I wanted everyone to be exactly the same height."
"Yet in lighting so dim at a table so wide with wings on the chairs that we were literally isolated?"
"When you've tried everything within reason, the only options remaining are unreasonable."

The journalist turned without a further word and walked to the hall where a porter handed over a coat.
"A car is waiting to take you home," said a porter.

The journalist was too full, too drunk, too tired, to refuse the car. There was no backward glance. The host was clearly on a track too personal to make any sense of.

The night had certainly been entertaining.

Suspects

"Why are you here?"

"I had to come."

"After so long?"

"I didn't want to but since I'm here, I thought I'd look you up."

"I wish you didn't"

"You're right, I should go."
"Wait, since you've come we might try and have a talk."
"Thank you."
"So, how have you been?"
"Good, and you?"
"You don't know?"
"I wish we'd done this sooner."
"Maybe this was a mistake."
"No, please, let's just sit here across from each other for a while."
"Alright."
"I wanted to tell you I'm doing well and I wanted to be sure you are too."
"Still the same old same-old. What about what I wanted?"
"You wanted to be left alone."
"You're damn right."
"So we're strangers with familiar faces?"
"And?"
"I suspect that's all. What do you think?"
"I'm happy with how things are."
"I'm glad you say so. I don't think we'll admit anything else, you're right, we're too strange."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't, I guess it doesn't have to be said."
"Well, I've got to be running."
"For what it's worth coming from me, I'm proud of you and wish you every success."
"Thanks."
"I just wanted you to know that, I suppose."
"It's not true, what I said about being happy, but I am content, lots of satisfaction."
"You look happy."
"So do you."
"See you."
"Yes, sure."

THE END

Lying in and about hotel beds alone in the dark.

Welcome, out of the cold. Our only guest. That's right, step right this way. Follow me closely please, our lights are low. Our guests are photosensitive. This suite here, thank you but no, we cannot accept gratuities. Enjoy staying with us.

The door closes with a reassuring click. The air pressure changes as the seal of a well mitred door frame with insulation cuts off all outside sound. The room is carpeted in a heavy shag so clean it seems a shame to walk on it in shoes.

Lying on top of the sheets in outdoor clothes in the dark.

Dreams come. A previously owned car. An underground parking garage with exhorbitant towing fees. A late night meal in the only open business. Light spilling from windows onto pavement. Familiar places well worn with memory and living.

No point going there. Nothing remains. The old ugly makes way for the new ugly.

Breaking glass. A long fall. A dream but not for some.

Wanting nights to last forever in silence and darkness and peace and absolute quiet.

Peeling off outdoor clothes and folding them neatly. A Hollywood shower. Full pajamas, a sleeping cap, night mask and security with sheets tucked under the feet and no extremities dangling over the edge.

A hot cheese sandwich would go right but it is too late to eat without risking very intense and vivid dreams that involve some terrible loss that cannot be consoled by living longer. This loss just leaches all the vitality and energy and pleasure away leaving remains that walk and talk and pay for hotel rooms.

Lying in the dark under the sheets with all devices on mute and the phone unplugged is the pleasure of anhedonia: being unreachable.

Not even talking to people who are not there but just spending time with them in silence. Old people sitting on benches and watching pigeons doing their mating dances in spring. Old people watching the pigeons and imagining the pigeons are people. Not random people but familiar and younger people. Some dead and some living. Total raunch if people did what pigeons do. Old men, usually men, watching.

Reading in bed until the pigeons fly away and take the invisible people with them. Filling the day in units and increments because ever moment is tolerable if you isolate it. Segment the moments into eternities where whatever is done is all that has ever been done. Lying there in the same position all night, maximally relaxed muscles, forehead and shoulders dropped. Teeth brushed and flossed and minty.

Neither awake nor asleep. Night.

The moon rises. Venus rises. They can be seen from the window appearing to cross from one block of flats to the other. They could be lovers leaping from one balcony to another except Venus is very small. A lady starving herself guiltless. The moon is fat. Indolent with redolence in splendiferousness.

Talking never works. Listening doesn't work either. There is always the asynchronicity and asymmetry between the two participants. Talking from B to A is not heard but talking from A to B is listened to. Meanwhile A doesn't know B is listening and B knows A is not.

So much for modern talking.

Friends are disappointing. Except when they are really smart or funny or dead or all three.
Family cannot be disappointing even when disappointment is what is called for. There are reasons for this but lying on the bed is more interesting than exploring the reasons beyond the idea that friends are themselves while family is closer than that.

Anxiety is boring, frustration is boring, tiredness, fatigue and exhaustion are boring. Especially when that exhaustion is mental and it's all mental. Even the physical debilitations that flesh is heir to. Like neurasthenia in the legs and arthritis in the thumb and heartburn from having eaten too late after all.

Even Shakespeare ended sentences with prepositions at least once. Meanwhile the sheets remain cool and the silence remains deep and the moon continues to rise and the hotel and the planet it rests on spins with an ever-so-slowly decelarating motion. No point in trying to arrive anywhere, just pass the time.

As the absence of bordom is surprise and age brings fewer surprises because of the commensurate knowledge that each experience grants and among those true novelties that do come, increasingly they are unwelcome as most of the pleasant ones have already been invoked, then the point seems to be that rather than trying to finish anything, trying to find a way to spend time in a way that has any completeness to it is the point to lying in and about hotel beds alone in the dark.