Got through the madness of final finals day.  One hour of sleep between Friday/Saturday and a Shakespeare paper complete (TANGIBLE SHADOWS:  “Shadow” and “Nothing” as Tangible Entities in Shakespeare…want your paper to sound important…give it an important sounding title I always say…).

Delerious, I packed my things went to Eureka…then to Bloomington and played LARP for six hours and then back to Eureka and then to Morton and then to Wil’s party.  Fun, fun, fun.  Torrie and I kicked som ass at Trivial Pursuit (with some help from Christopher Walken).  Fell asleep on the couch.  Then I woke up just as a nasty leg cramp (ever notice how you wake up the second before it hits and, even half asleep, you know its coming).  I was about to leap off the couch and walk it off (timing is critical for a calve cramp).  That’s when I heard Fender making out with Bonny in the next couch over.  So now…in the split second before searing pain, I found myself asking the question, What is the ettiquitte in this situation?  Do I tough it out silently or do I jump up and pace around the room before two people in various states of undress?

I chose the former.  My calve muscles turned to into a dense mass of pain…and a few minutes later, relaxed.  This morning I found out that you walk that shit off, not only to avoid the immediate pain…but because that hurts the muscles (I’m still limping around!!!).

Oh well.

Now I’m back at Eureka, in Nick’s room.  I’ll be here untill he finishes up sometime Monday night or so.  Oh…and Lenore is with me, so any one on campus brave enough to meet her has the chance while I’m here (just go to Nick’s room).

In the quaking quagmire,
the strenuous stew of end of year,
of final exams,
of “show your knowledge – pee in this cup”
of not knowing what to do
of not knowing who
you
are
of hells composed of hungry pens and itching fingers
staring at blank pages and screens bleeding plasma
one might consign oneself to despair.

I say SMILE.
Winter break is here.

Tired and tired. But here’s some free writing. The teacher showed us a picture of three children (old picture) and told us to write something with it…

“Pick out the serial killer,” said the FBI Profiling Professor, “which of these things doesn’t belong here?” Eager students examined the old photograph with the pensive, intense looks they thought suitable for a master investigator. Three children from years ago: a boy, a girl, an infant.

Boy.

Girl.

Infant.

They examined the toys, the expressions, the close, looking for the shadow threads that connected the puzzle in grotesque lines and clinical symmetry.

“Which one of these children grew up to be a killer?”

Boy.

Girl.

Infant.

“I can’t tell,” stammered the struggling student voice, breaking under the teacher’s weighty gaze.

“That’s right, you can’t tell.”

Another time…the teacher passed out a pine cone to us students. We handed it back and forth. When all of the sudden, bugs (dormant from the winter) exploded out. After that excitement, we wrote…

Her grandmother always told her of the “pine-cone” people, born from pine cones that gestated in the earth’s womb for too long, but Shelley never believed in the tales her gnarled elder would spin. Still, she never did figure out where the giggling came from when she walked the groves of trees at dusk, as the sun winked goodnight.

And yet, another time, the teacher passed around pieces of coal…

An inquisitive child, Vern came to the conclusion that geniuses were suppressed early in his life.

His mother yelled at him when she found Vern cooking rocks in her favorite pan – never mind that he was testing the scientific theory a fourth grader promised was true – that cooking sparkling rocks produced coconuts.

His punishment was over sever when his parents found his name carved into the bathroom mirror – he only wanted to see if the geode stone he got at school was actually a diamond, and, if it was well that would buy a lot of mirrors.

But Vern was past that childish stuff. Now he had learned a truly useful fact – that enough pressure could turn a piece of coal into a diamond. Vern’s older neighbor Tim could hold a basketball, upside-down, by squeezing it in one hand. Vern figured that was enough pressure.

Getting coal…

That informative fourth grader, mentioned previously, who will remain nameless for the sake of ethics, informed Vern that Mr. Butts, the scary old man, a requisite in all proper neighborhoods, owned a coal bin. What’s more, Vern learned that a dead body lay within the coal, through whispered murmurs under a slumber party blanket.

Vern creeps towards the bin now.

Things would go smoothly if Vern had learned only about the coal bin and the fact about diamonds. Even the tidbit about the body would have only excited his curiosity. But Vern had learned one more, chilling piece of coal lore, one he took with deadly seriousness – coal turns bodies into zombies…

That last one is faintly autobiographical. To be fair, I didn’t actually try the “sparkly rock to coconut” trick…but I did test a piece of sharp crystal on my parent’s mirror…

Happy days come in 20 gigabyte bites. Fore nearly a year I’ve gone without music or tunes of any kind in my car. That’s four hour trips home and back to school (and various treks to the Eureka college call) with no sounds other than the voices in one’s head. Just me and the dead corpse of a radio…and a perfectly healthy CD changer…that requires the radio. The shit that comes out of my mouth, alone in my car, by hour 3.75692 might have some running for an exorcist.

But that’s all done. Got my trusty MP3 player this week. I’ve filled it with music…I have gobs and gobs (those are English system gobs) of memory left having only used a smidge (that’s a metric smidge…I should really make my measurement systems congenial to one another…).

So far that’s 900+ songs and a smattering (metric smattering) of short stories. And it can go with me anywhere (even have an in-car cradle and radio receptor when and if I ever get that radio fixed) whether its in my car, in someone else’s car, at my desk, out and about. If I want to put together a soundtrack play-list for shopping at Super-Walmart at 4 in the morning and listen to it while I do it…I can. If I want to listen Iggy Pop read “The Tell-Heart” while I’m at the gym…I can. If I want to do the “Thriller” dance at Lincoln’s tomb while listening to said track (I don’t think there is a particular rule against this…but I’ll have to test it out to be sure)…I CAN!!!

Thus my various trips to Eureka have been and will be more pleasant. Yesturday I got to see some Acting III monologues. GOOD JOB GUYS! It’s interesting to see what the actors will do with pieces they picked out for themselves. I also got to help Nick in a small way for one of his pieces…not having worked together on anything entertainment related in a while.

And now it’s the NyQuill induced coma to force me to sleep ‘cause work needs me during the morning hours.

If, in life, you find yourself in a situation that causes you to say, “God, I wish I had a kazoo on me right now,” two or more times – get a @#!*&!%$!# kazoo.

For a good deal of my childhood, I had a hand-me-down waterbed, under which, no monsters could dwell. So I had to put them in many other varied places…

…my writing professor thinks this lack of claws and scales and glowing eyes under-bed is the reason I pursue them so eagerly now.

So today marks the sudden shift, the chasm-deep drop off between the time I worked on my epic “here and there” to really WORKING on it full time.

In that regard, this post is in answer to a comment Rich made a few posts back – about updating on the progress (or even with pieces of) my work. I think that’s a good plan. Anything to help keep me centered and focused and excited is good. If nothing else, at least there will be a recorded and public document of my thoughts should I go completely insane from the pressures of writing a thesis, suffer a complete psychotic break, a cabin fever resulting from being closed inside my own head – tear off my earthly garb, and lope off into the forests between my family’s house and the Fox River, howling and flinging small woodland creatures at trees and children – never to be found again, existing only as a suburban legend and a strange noise boaters might hear on the river, between the hours of dusk and dawn…at least there would be such a document so people would know.

But…a writer who always talks about what he’s going to write, is usually the writer who does not write (in which case he’s not really a writer, right?). So you probably won’t find whole chapters or an entire synopsis – but little bits of thoughts and lightening bolts from my synapses.

So today…we’ll start with quotes. I like quotes. There is an alchemy of potential ideas in words removed of context. There is a necromancy in saying aloud the words of those who have passed on – strange things a person can resurrect and conjure on paper or plasma screen or brick walls. I have a very HUGE file of collected quotes that contribute to or inspire my major work. Some are there to give me some ideas for verse structure and imagery. Others are there to be put at the heads of chapters (I’m a SUCKER for chapters that begin with quotes – if a girl walked in with a tank top that had a good quote on it…I’d probably be smitten for life).

So, instead of giving a synopsis and describing the plot to you all – I’m going to give a taste of the quotes. The idea appeals to me. It would be like someone asking you where you were last night and you replied with a series of scents – like telling a story with a series of moods rather than narrative. So here ya go…the list will probably be long, a long post…but feel free to come back and sneak a peak. If you have quotes you think would fit in…I’m all ears (please reply).

The story is calls SOULS UNSURE. It’s about a voodoo priestess, the dark and mischievous muse she summons (Crow), and a sort of fallen angel who really, really doesn’t want to play hero (Syth) – does not want to go back to a forgotten Limbo (Sheol).

“This is the sorrowful state of souls unsure.
Whose lives earned neither honor nor bad fame.
And they are mingled with angels of that base sort
Who neither rebellious to God nor faithful to Him,
Chose neither side, but kept themselves apart-
Now Heaven expels them, not to mar its splendor,
And Hell rejects them lest the wicked of heart
Take glory over them.”
-Dante, The Inferno

“And then I: ‘Master,
What agony is it that makes them keen their grief
With so much force?’ He: ‘I will make brief answer:
They have no hope of death, but blind life
So abject, they envy any other fate.
To all memory of them, the world is deaf.
Mercy and justice disdain them.”
-Dante, The Inferno

“Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel
Is just a freight train coming your way”
-Metallica, “No Leaf Cover”

“Down in a hole and I don’t know if I can be saved
See my heart I decorate it like a grave”
-Alice in Chains, “Down in a Hole”

“For the Emperor who governs from on high
Wills I not enter His city,”
-Dante, The Inferno, Canto I, Lines 99-100

“Speak to me with the answers I crave
About these souls and the sepulchers they fill:”
-Dante, The Inferno, Canto IX, Lines 5-6

“The Crow is an ethical finality. He is the dream-carrier of holy retribution. He knows every devil was born in heaven.”
-A. A. Attanasio, intro to The Crow: Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams

“Oh, I been flying…mama, there ain’t no denyin’
I’ve been flying, ain’t no denyin’, no denyin’
All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find where I’ve been.”
-Led Zeppelin, “Kashmir”

“Alone it falls to me to be his guide
Through the dark valley. It is necessity,
And not his pleasure, that puts him on this road.”
-Dante, The Inferno, Canto IX

“So, the crow spirals down through a collapsed dream and the only sound he makes is…like a concave scream.”
-James O’Barr, The Crow

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.”
-Eccles. 9:10

“And now I can hear the notes of agony
In sad crescendo beginning to reach my ear;
Now I am where the noise of lamentation
Comes at me in blasts of sorrow. I am where
All light is mute,”
-Dante, The Inferno, Canto V, Lines 24-28

“Never did I wanna be here again
And I don’t remember why I came”
-Godsmack, “Voodoo”

“Hell is more bearable than nothingness.”
-P.J. Bailey

“In the city, where angels fear to hover and devils come to croon, the sex of the night lets down her black narcotic hair under a yellow opium moon.”
-James O’Barr, The Crow

“My fears come alive
In this place where I once died
Demons dreaming
Knowing I…I just needed to realign”
-Godsmack, “Re-Align”

“No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv’d only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades…”
-Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, Lines 63-65

“Beyond all doubt that this was the dreary guild
Repellent both to God and His enemies –
Hapless ones never alive, their bare skin galled
By wasps and flies, blood trickling down the face,
Mingling with tears for harvest underfoot
By writhing maggots.”
-Dante, The Inferno, Canto III, Lines 52-57

“Her blue eyes are smokey like an opium den
First she giggles and blows you a kiss
Then she’ll whisper sweet nothings
like a serpent’s hiss”
-Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, “Shake Your Love Maker

“They open their throats wide as Sheol,
like Death they never have enough.”
-Hab. 2:5

“Did your God show you the door
Well, I’m here to eat your apple to the core”
-Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, “Here Comes the Snake”

“There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the Bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.”
-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death”

“The beautiful life is always damned
You gotta fall into the quicksand”
-Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, “Brown Derby Jump”

“You got to move fast to beat the devil
You arm is too short to box with God”
-Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, “Drunk Daddy”

“Dead I am the one, exterminating son
Slipping through the trees, strangling the breeze
Dead I am the sky, watching angels cry
As they slowly turn, conquering the worm”
-Rob Zombie, “Dragula”

“The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.”
-Martin Luther

Love and Sex With Your Friends by dannygrl0129
Username
Sex	MaleFemaleNot SureHELL, YEAH!
Favorite Color
Love of your life:	_contrived_
Best sex of your life:	weezie1581
Will make you come 1000 times:	sixinchmoth
Will break your heart:	lite_goddess
Best Kisser:	budhisattre
Best cuddler:	bassman_spiff
You secretly dream of:	farmkingdude85
But this person dreams of you:	wojak
Will handcuff you and screw you silly:	gambit82
Quiz created with MemeGen!

Your Erotic LJ dream by cozzette
username
you went to bed feeling
You began to dream about	kansas84
who was	Licking you
in	your car
with	leather on
which made you	twitch
but was interupted by	budhisattre
who began to	call in everyone else to watch
You awoke	horny
and you hope	that dreams do come true
chance of that happening:: 35%
Quiz created with MemeGen!

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm…….uh…….I guess that dream just hearkens back to that old, traditional saying, “Why dream about the girl if you can dream about the whole couple.” That’s an old saying right? Didn’t Ben Franklin say that?

Ah…silly me. I don’t have to work tonight after all. So, I’m once again headed up to Eureka. Last night I got my self analysis paper back (100%) – describing my writing process. In case I forget what that process is or that I even have one…I’ll post it up for easy reference:

This year I find myself more and more in the depths of a writing process I’ve called the Mad Scientist Theory. It is a rarer and rarer thing to find me typing out a story all in one go – to just sit down, start at the beginning and press on. Instead, I take a more stitch-by-numbers approach.

In the course of the day, I may (in my journal) record various, random thoughts, observations, interesting facts, bits of eavesdropping, or notes on some current story I’m working on. Every so often, I go on a little expedition I call grave digging. I dig through past journal entries and notes. I take anything useful and I move it to my computer (to my “Random Thoughts” file). I then dig in my Random Thoughts file and anything of a more particular use (or something that has had enough time to gestate) moves to a more specific file (such as a Character Quirks list or a Strange Facts File or whatever). From any of these files, notes might surface straight to files for stories in development.

Through levels of metaphorical, wormy earth, these strange things rise and wiggle. That’s a more general “grave digging.” I might take a more specific “grave digging” for a specific story. While I’m in the development stage of a story, I might look through my Random Thoughts folder or my Strange Facts folder or my Character Quirks folder and dig up anything there that might be useful in that story (maybe I wrote down that a character who tells lousy jokes about circus midgets…but hadn’t yet had a place for it).

Suffice it to say, by the time I sit down to seriously write something, there are already unconnected bits and pieces, in no particular order – limbs and heads and eyes and other gruesome treasures from my grave digging. I then fuse these things together, sometimes with messy, ugly stitches. And I throw the switch and there’s a spark and roars and screams of, “It’s alive!”

Often the freakish monster rampages and does things I don’t want it to do. I let it go, then recapture it later. I go over and clean up the stitches, make the seams less visible, and eventually transplant a more coherent brain with my monster.

But sometimes…I just let it rampage through the village…