08 Wednesday Nov 2006
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Insomnia strikes again…
Last night I was falling asleep at my chair, at the computer…but as soon as I lay down…my brain won’t shut off.
And I have a very long day of driving and class.
I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE this!!!
01 Wednesday Nov 2006
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To start, several authors and celebs have put up stories in six words HERE.
Here’s my attempt at a story in six words:
Dante,
You left your wallet.
-Luci
And now, on to the featured presentation . . .
First off, I just got a call from UIS about my epic poem thesis (which you might remember was picked to represent the English department for consideration as Outstanding Graduate Thesis of the Year). And . . .
. . . it won out against all the other departments. I’ll have to check, but that might be the first bit of fiction to do that at this school (as I’ve heard, fiction doesn’t usually even make the cut in the English program).
And now . . . we do the dance of joy!
The awards ceremony will be either January 22nd or 29th (I’ll hear soon, either way) and I think I have to make a big speech about my epic poem/novel, Souls Unsure.
And . . . what went on during my Halloween?
Well, last week, the lovely Torrie made the arduous journey from Springfield, just to celebrate the Halloween season with me (she’s nifty-cool like that). To start, we shared some spooky coffee.
We listened to an audio tale of Neil Gaiman’s short story, “October in the Chair.”
Then she, Nick, and I went into Chicago to brave the reputedly only “adult” HAUNTED HOUSE in the city. It was adult, and very gory (including a leather faced guy in high heels getting a hummer from a corpse)…but not the best I’ve seen. Still, all in all, it was fun and it had a bar inside.
Then the three of us went to THE RED LION PUB for some drinks. We looked at a picture of a ghost that haunts the bar, drank copiously, and discussed the practice of autographs, and a vow of a certain tattoo to be placed on a certain ass, later.
Flash to Friday . . .
Nick and I again reprised our rolls as Jay and Silent Bob. Last time we did this, we won several hundred bucks at a costume contest at Excalibur. So we thought maybe we could repeat this year (especially with their new movie being out). So we hit a club and met up with a few friends.
Justin was looking especially evil that night . . .
Everyone loved us. We stayed in character the whole time. Several groups of people stopped to chat, or get their pictures taken with us, or otherwise bullshit with Jay and Silent Bob. The problem…the place we were at had no contest. Bummer. So we left for greener fair. Nadda. Every other place we visited either had no contest, or it was already over. So we marched back towards the car, still in character, ready to drive and find a place that still had a contest. People on the streets got a kick out of us. And then things got even more surreal . . .
We pass an alley, between two bars and two cops are arresting two perps. They have them against the wall and are slapping on the cuffs when one of the perps looks over, and (even though he’s being arrested) gets the biggest grin on his face and yells, “Hey, look, it’s Jay and Silent Bob!”
Now all the perps and cops are looking in our direction. We maintain character. Nick, in his Jay voice, yells out, “Snoochy Boochies!” They yell something back and Nick replies, “Keep it alive, brothers!” At this point, the cops cannot keep a straight face and they’re smiling and laughing and the perps are laughing and it seemed everyone was having a good time and I think, had this been a musical, we would, the six of us, started dancing.
Instead we moved on a little further into surreality and met up with the cats from Sesame Street. There were several of them. In big, professional looking costumes. I’m not sure if they were doing it for fun or for some promotion, but it’s a strange sight to see the characters you grew up with turn to you and go, “Hey, it’s Jay and Silent Bob!” and then follow us around wanting to party. I imagine it was a stranger sight for the people seeing the whole group of us marching down the street.
“Yeah, punk, we’ve been selling blunts on Sesame Street for years.”
But happy stories go bad sometimes.
We get back to the car and it’s been broken into and my MP3 player and transmitter have been stolen. That was an important gadget to me, the ability to take my music with when I go to write 😦
On top of that, the savages took my poor little brother’s jar of homemade jam he had gotten from a friend. Nick was quite angered by all of this.
Saturday . . . found us in Bloomington, LARPing at Jeramie and Amy’s place. Sunday, we lazed around their house for a bit, and I got to hang out with my goddaughter and she has definitely learned how to smile and she’s not afraid to show off that talent, and it’s cute as can be. Before heading home we hit the CREATURES CRYPT, one of the better haunted houses in Illinois.
Monday . . . I headed to THE RED LION PUB for another addition of TWILIGHT TALES. It was an open mic night, with the featured theme of “Monsters.” I read my short story, “The Halloween Tree,” and it went off well. So well, that the organizer came up and told me he wanted me to come in, in December, to read as a featured reader with some published authors. I’ll be reading for 30 to 40 minutes on those nights. I should have some dates soon to give everyone.
And Halloween…
Nick and I took on the guise of Jay and Bob again and hit another club. This one had a costume contest. We worked the crowd before then, shaking lots of hands and getting in lots of pictures (I’m sure we’re haunting dozens of blogs that we’ll never see). Even the DJ saw us and mentioned us over the mic. However, come contest time, they had everyone pack onto the dance floor and some judges would pick out twenty people. They never spotted us. Even when the winners of round one wee being marched up on stage, a judge noticed us and told us what awesome costumes we had. Nick, as Jay, asked why we didn’t get a ticket for the next round and she said that she didn’t see us.
Sigh.
I’m sure we would have won, from pure love from the crowd, had we gotten past the initial round. There was a cool costume that definitely deserved to be up there though, a guy dressed up as bender – he even had light up eyes – and I wish I had a picture of that.
Finally, Neil Gaiman wrote a cool and chilling article on Halloween for the New York Times and you can read it HERE.
And that concludes this overly long Halloween post.
Pleasant dreams.
25 Wednesday Oct 2006
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 |
You scored as XIII: Death. Death is probably the most well known Tarot card – and also the most misunderstood. Most Tarot novices would consider Death to be a bad card, especially given its connection with the number thirteen. In fact this card rarely indicates literal death.Without “death” there can be no change, only eventual stagnation. The “death” of the child allows for the “birth” of the adult. This change is not always easy. The appearance of Death in a Tarot reading can indicate pain and short term loss, however it also represents hope for a new future.
Which Major Arcana Tarot Card Are You? |
21 Saturday Oct 2006
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Tags
Adrienne, coffee, coffee mug, coffee shop of horrors, Dave, Jack Skelington, Nithmare Before Christmas, weddings
Alright, I can’t sleep. This is happening too much lately. I think I need to start running regularly again. Something. Some form of . . .er, um, exertion. My brain just isn’t shutting off and the extra time awake never turns out very productive. So I might as well update…
And so it’s October and my inner landscape is aligning with the outerscape. It’s that time of the year when everywhere begins to look more like my room…
Last weekend I was a reverend and I married a couple. Strange. Surreal. I’m touched that Dave and Adrienne asked me to do this. I could tell that some of the family/friends, at the wedding rehearsal were thinking, “OK…what is this guy doing here?” But both D. and A. said they heard nothing but good comments after the actual ceremony. So…I think I done did OK. CONGRATS, you two!
I now have my coffee machine set up in my room, saving trips to the kitchen when I’m working. I keep my coffee in a jar I picked up in Disney. It says “Deadly Nightshade” and resembles the urn Sally used in Nightmare Before Christmas. I also got a nifty mug…
And speaking of that…
With several other folks, I went, Thursday night to the midnight showing of The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D. Awesome. I brought along a flask of rum to mix with my cherry coke and it was a lot of extra dimensional October dreaming goodness. I was especially excited because I never saw Nightmare in the theater, the first time around.
Wednesday night I took my laptop out on the deck and set up a fire in the new iron pit and played spooky music on the outside speakers and wrote out there for most of the night. Splendid autumn fun. Our yard runs into forests and lately, the deer have been coming out in droves and walking around in the neighborhood. I’d wonder why, but, staying outside, late at night, I can hear the coyotes, many of them, howling and yipping in the woods. Over the last several years, their numbers have been increasing and now, instead of scattered single hunters, I think they are starting to hunt in groups. I imagine it’s because, surviving in a suburban environment, their food sources are not optimal . . . but there are plenty of deer and deer go along way and hunting something that big . . . it’s safer to hunt in a group.
Some folk are frightful about the multiplying coyotes and their increasing boldness (more than a few pets have ended up on the dinner plate in my area). I say cool. Not that those pets go eaten but that he have a large predator surviving and thriving in this place, in a suburban place (granted, we have a lot of scattered forests)…a lot of places can’t say that, certainly fewer and fewer as time goes on. The cats in my neighborhood have pretty much killed everything that used to live at the edge of the forests where the neighborhood runs into it (we used to have all sorts of things scurrying around back there). If the forest comes out, howling at night, and takes a few of them…well…it’s not entirely unfair.
(Special Note: I like cats. I don’t hate cats. I likely don’t wish anything nasty to befall YOUR cat.)
The howl if a single coyote sounds kind of lonely, and not particularly scary (nothing like a wolf). But, a group of coyotes sounds roughly like insanity and I heard them while I wrote outside. So…while the experience of writing by firelight was fun, the writing itself was frustrating. I could not get that story to work (and I’ve attempted it in the past). It’s called “Eye, Heart, You” and it retells three Poe stories and connects them and gives a new twist. I’ll get it to work someday.
Last night (Friday Night) I wrote a story called “The Cure,” for a contest.
Speaking of contests, the WHITE WOLF NOVEL CONTEST is still undecided, for those wondering. But I did hear a rumor that they will announce the winner during a convention in Milwaukee that takes place on the 27th through 29th of this month. Keep your extremities crossed.
And finally, it’s that time of year to get some spooky coffee. I just ordered some from THE COFFEE SHOP OF HORRORS.
I got a bag of Graveyard Shift (a dark roast).
And a bag of Sundown Blend (a medium roast).
And, if you’ve ever seen the movie Dead Alive (I’m thinking of you, Alex), you might get a kick out of what’s written on the bottom of this bag of Skull Island (a dark roast).
19 Thursday Oct 2006
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Morpheus
Take this quiz!
12 Thursday Oct 2006
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On Oct. 20th, Disney is re-releasing The Nightmare Before Christmas as a 3D movie, in select theatres.
Me and mine will seeing the showing on Thursday the 19th at midnight (ok…technically it’s the 20th…but we’re cheating by a minute) at The AMC Lowes near Woodfield Mall. Anyone who wants to come along, let me know, we’ll likely go goblin hunting afterwords. Just reserve your tickets for the midnight show, before hand.
Stay tuned for more haunting, October activities to be scheduled . . .
11 Wednesday Oct 2006
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09 Monday Oct 2006
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My grandmother has apparently found my MySpace page and now thinks I’m possessed or evil. I’m pretty sure I’m the same old me (whatever that is). Sigh.
My cell phone has been stolen and the perpetrator(s) have been using it to send text messages. The state of the criminal underworld is pretty sorry when the big score is text messages.
This weekend we all got together for Dave’s bachelor party, which included not only Chucky Cheeses, but hours and hours of poker and a very bad movie about lesbian vampires. I came out of it $100 dollars ahead. Much fun was had.
Do yourself a favor and watch THE INDIAN VERSION OF “THRILLER”.
06 Friday Oct 2006
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Steve and I will be getting together come Sunday to get my website put together. Steve is talented in the realms of flash animation and web affects, so I’m excited at what we’ll end up with. The basic concept is a sort of spectral tree full of ravens and each raven is a different story or different link to another part of the website. Below are some concept notes I jotted down very quickly…
THE RAVEN TREE
-There is a tree at the edge of dreams and every branch has a raven and every raven tells a tale.
-A tree grows at the edge of dreams and it bares a thousand and one branches and in every branch roosts a raven and every raven tells a tale.
-There grows a spectral tree at the edge of dreams. It lost all its leaves in the long ago – its branches now leaved with ravens.
-The ravens feast on the dead feed on meat and memories in the enterprise of plundering corpses and now ghosts swim in their feathers and in every feather there is a story for anyone with the courage to pluck the quill.
-There grows a black tree on the edge of dreams and all its leaves fell in the ever-Fall – it’s branches all bare, but it will not die.
-There grows a black tree on the edge of dreams. It’s branches blow bare on oneiromantic winds, but it will not die – its black roots feed on those below.
-There grows a black tree on the edge of dreams, its leaves all ash, its branches all bare, but it will not die – it grows in the grave soil past Ever-After, black-fang roots feeding on the heroes buried below, toiling in a congress of bones, feeding meals of marrow up and up – and black bark encapsulates all the rhymes and prose trapped in the memory of a millennia of rings, and the black spiral swirls up and up – and stretches into a thousand-and-one black branches that hiss a cacophony-chorus of forgotten mythos in oneiromantic winds – and every black branch bares a raven – and every roosting raven tells a tale.
And lastly, here’s a poem I wrote the other day:
AMERICAN IDOL
The faithful cried because the evil prophecy had come to pass
and the sound of their generation was a self-indulgent keen,
the bellowing of bad karaoke singers who became demigods
in the flickering, pixilated eye of the babbling Cyclops.
And the faithful cried at the sound
of the demidgods’ voice-box-masturbation.
And the faithful prayed for the return of soul
and the second coming of Buddy Holly.
And the faithful prayed to all the saints.
To Saint Hendrix.
To Saint Morrison.
To Saint Lennon.
To the Holy Order of Zeppelin.
To the Knights of the Stones.
To the monks of the Brothers Blue.
To all of the angels
who now stood on the stairway,
holding their hands to their ears,
leaving their harp strings
unplugged
and
unplayed.
04 Wednesday Oct 2006
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Good extended weekend.
Why good?
For starters, October is happening around me and I can feel it in the space between my molecules. It tickles. Also, I’ve gotten to be a kick-ass, award-winnning epic poet/swordfighter/reverend.
Please explain Josh?
Well, this weekend, I got to see a large quantity of the people whom I have very acutely missed lately (in fact, I’ve had the opportunity in the last few weekends counting trips to Springfield and seeing Torrie, Wil, my writing class fellows, and others).
Friday, I got to see Dave and Adrienne and drink with them and start discussion on how they want their impending marriage ceremony to go. That’s right. It’s Rev. Joshua…at least for legal purposes, and I’m going to marry a couple in a few weeks. Things get strange in October. It’s my favorite month.
Saturday I got to see Val’s husband’s band play…and I got to see some of my favorite mammals from Eureka (I love you guys). I thought they did an excellent rendition of “Ballroom Blitz.”
Sunday saw me with Jeramie, Amy, and adorable-goddaughter-Reese, for a brief visit. Then on to Genenda’s place in Southern Illinois. The purpose? She’s directing a high school play involving pirates and I promised her I’d help teach her students how to drink rum……just kidding – teach them some basic stage combat. Come Monday, it went well, considering I just had a few hours with them, and I’m a bit rusty. Though I think I did alright, I’m sure I’d be much better at teaching the kids how to drink rum.
Come Tuesday and a long train ride and I’m back. But that ain’t it. I received an email from my teacher/advisor/mentor, Nancy Perkins. She had nominated my thesis/novel for Outstanding Thesis of the year (first in the English department…and then the school, should it advance). She said not to be too, too disappointed if nothing further came of it as fiction is often overlooked, even in the English program, let alone the rest of the school, but that she thought mine had merit.
Well, today I got this email…
Hi Josh,
Happy day! I found out on Sat that your thesis did win the vote in the English Program to represent the English Program in the competition for UIS Outstanding Thesis for last year. I wrote my/the Program’s nomination on Sun. and Faxed it in yesterday.
I’ve attached it for your files–it is your first “review”!
Because I believe in your novel’s merit, I was honored to write the nomination.
Always my best wishes,
nancy
And here is the official nomination, my first review. It’s the stuff blushes are made of.
Memorandum
To: Provost Harry Berman and Members of the University of Illinois at Springfield’s Outstanding Thesis Selection Committee
From: Nancy Genevieve Perkins, Associate Professor of English, Representing the English Program
Date: 1 October 2006
Re: English Program Nominates Joshua Alan Doetsch’s Master’s Creative Writing Closure Project Souls Unsure: A Dark Epic in Prose and Poetry for UIS’ Outstanding Thesis
Joshua Alan Doetsch’s Creative Writing Closure Project combines epic poetry with brief interludes of stand-alone fiction. The poetry intertwines classical literary allusions with Native American, Caribbean, Latin American, African, and Creole-American literatures as well as contemporary street slang, music, movies, and other pop culture. The plot traces the universal theme of good verses evil through the sinewy streets of New Orleans to the shadowy regions of Sheol, and the temporal setting pre-dates time itself interwoven with the moment of now.
The epic poem began in Dr. Marcellus Leonard’s Long Poem course with a twenty-page tale spun from the wondering conscience of what happened back then: back in the dawn of time in the Judeo–Christian history of the War in Heaven, which resulted in good and evil, good angels and bad angels. Were all angels such? Or did some get caught between such warring forces, and if so, what happened to them? Where are they now? Dante wrote in The Inferno, III 30-37, “This is the sorrowful state of souls unsure./ Whose lives earned neither honor nor bad fame” (Book II, Coda 91).
One of the three primary characters/voices of this epic tale, which is written in the form of a drama script, is one of these not fallen, not soaring, angels. Josh named him Syth. Syth is allusional, of course, to Seth, the third child of Adam, of Eve, of promise, of curse. The Biblical Seth neither soared nor plummeted; he was neither the Promise of Abel nor the Curse of Cain; he simply was, and is, the between of all that is and of all that could be. He is the best and worst of the modern Everyone. Josh’s Syth is true to the prototype of Seth; he is neither good nor evil; neither black nor white but ashen and usually seen in shadow forms; he has a broken crystal voice which he uses only in whispers and sparingly because his voice reminds him of the best of what could have been, a voice in The Celestial Choir; he has broken wings, which allow him to move from world to world but without grace. And Josh gives him a broken spirit—bound to his broken body with barbed wire, it longs to rest, to be quiet, to join the unfeeling of uninvolvement. The opening Interlude, however, tells of the screams of a pure child, and those screams transverse this modern world to the nether world, beyond knowledge of time and space, and touch this broken spirit, and Syth intervenes in her misery, stopping the unnatural predatoring by her own father. This action, this pure action, evokes the tortured souls in the nether regions of nightmares and Danté’s Hell to blister the readers’ minds and to taunt these minds with memory’s silent screams, and punish Syth for daring to feel.
Syth’s odyssey to find the child follows “the trail of broken doll parts”; he is chasing “the silent scream,” seeking Hope, “a youngling shade” (186) who may have had her spirit crushed by a life where prayers were not answered and evil allowed to continue for too long. This hero/antihero gives all that he can, all that he has left, to save the spirit of the child whose body he saved.
Syth’s journeys, his quests, are chronicled by Crow, the winged Trickster, to the voodoo Street Priestess, Mama Nancy. Crow admits he is not to be trusted, and all readers of Native American literature know that his words can slide and twist the truth. The voodoo priestess cannot travel to the nether worlds; she is bound to time and place, but she can, and does, evoke the spirits of power in the other worlds, Papa Ghede, Saint Gerard, Saint Patrick, the Virgin Mother, among many others. But to know of Syth, to learn of his identity and of his journey, she must barter with Crow to be her eyes in places and in times she cannot go. The irony of her bartering is that all Crow will accept to do her bidding are her eyes; he responds to her question of “why would wily Crow want the eyes/ of this poor, poor woman?” (24) with “Isn’t it obvious/Miss Too-Clever-For-Her-Own-Good?/ I don’t know/ what it is to have life in my belly,/ to pay bills,/ to grow old,/ one day at a time./ And you are loved and you are feared,/ and I want to see from your side of the divide” (25).
This unlikely trilogy of darkness, what Josh calls “Three archetype tarot cards of the soul” (xvi) illuminates the modern world while diving into the realm of the unspeakable. These are like all of the dark corners that modern people avoid and constrain in the unspeakable; the tale’s words, images, and deeds focus the readers’ attentions, tap into emotions, and shine the light of language in the darkest of corners. The Interludes paint this modern world in vignettes, emotions carried by all lost souls, and in the daily lives of those no one brags about doing activities best left unspoken. Yet, the readers recognize shards of the self in these characters, and so laugh and so cry.
One of these Interludes, “Teddy Bear Rex” (332), tells of Oedipus, the Teddy-Bear most beloved of Hope’s childhood in her Kingdom of Dolls. All of the subjects had been turned to face the wall, so they could not see a “very bad thing” (333) when she was a very young child. Then, as a grown-up with knowledge, Hope “came upon Oedipus . . . eyes leaking poison” (333). “ ‘You shouldn’t have peeked,’ she sobbed, ‘Your eyes are too clever’. She took the king of dolls off his throne and ripped out those beautiful brass button eyes. . . . [he] was exiled . . . banished to the dark closet. Blackness and silence and memories of what was lost—they were so good, his button eyes. Perhaps it was all for the best. Blanketed in darkness, the king of dolls never saw what became of his kingdom, what befell his subjects. Without the evidence of sight, Oedipus went on dreaming he was real, in that grey place” (333). This tiny vignette speaks the truth so clearly, so painfully, that when Josh submitted it as a short story for publication, it was accepted, and it has already been nominated for an Il Council Award and for a Pushcart Award.
The blending of story with journey is a powerful conveyance to the readers’ collective understanding. Just as Josh’s blending of poetry, drama, and fiction scaffolds powerful truths, his epic tale for a modern audience paints the Paradise Lost by Milton in modern hues of Innocence Lost. So which force will win in the timeless chasm between good and evil, love and hate? Can both be understood? Is a victory for one force ever the final victory? Or is it, as the street priestess says that voodoo “is not about magic, but healing—healing through relationships.
. . Sometimes, we can raise ourselves up, to rescue another, when we don’t have the strength to save ourselves” (359-360).
Joshua Alan Doetsch’s Master’s Creative Writing Closure Project Souls Unsure is nominated by the English Program for this Award because Josh set out to write an epic for the modern world, using a cauldron of literary allusions to enlighten and to entertain, and he succeeded.
Reading this made me a happy panda. Reading it made me more excited than any potential award. If I grin any wider, I’ll become a very handsome PEZ dispenser.
And on a final note: I think the film The Long Kiss Goodnight is highly underrated. If you really want to see a woman be strong and overcome adversity and the odds, put down your masterbate-with-a-Halmark-card-LIFETIME-channel-bullshit and watch Geena Davis regain lost memories as a government trained hit-woman and slay several dozen assassins to save her daughter.
“Mommy, am I gonna die?”
“Oh, no, baby, no. You’re not going to die. They are.”
OK. That’s all.
Goodnight.
mwah
Joshua Alan Doetsch 