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stories are the bones of everything

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The shakeup

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One dark night the Hindu gods conspired with the Celtic ones and threw the reigning aristocracy out of Heaven. A few hours later Santa Claus woke up without his skin. An animated bag of bones with a ridiculous white beard attached to a skull face. His hunger had him looking for cookies and milk immediately but he’d been trapped in a maze that contained only cheese. The new kings and queens of the universe laughed merrily.

Kurma the tortoise banded together with Abandinus and created a funhouse atmosphere that would change everything. Jesus appeared with a chainsaw and a mask. He ran around madly revving it loudly, unable to control himself. The Easter Bunny showed up with hand grenades painted in bright colors and covered with various types of glitter. Satan was made to follow behind on a leash carrying resupplies for the large rabbit. The grenades exploded in great bursts of smoke that turned into scriptural passages from the holy books of the conquered and then blew away in the wind.

Borrum blew his mighty breath out and sprinkled broken evergreens and firs across all the world’s deserts. Matsya got up to mischief when he saw what was happening and moved all the world’s fresh water around to new places. Thing that had been wet were dry and the dry places drowned. Chaos grew roots and sprouted everywhere.

It was a real party when the golems showed up with bag of presents for everyone. The big black rock in Mecca turned into an inflatable funhouse when the conspiracy really got rolling. The wall that wails started laughing in an eerie timbre and didn’t stop. The Temple Mount suddenly sported a large amusement park run by the former angels, demons, djinns and saints of the overthrown big three.

Things became a horrific carnival when The Morrígan showed up and set up a series of elimination matches for the heroes of the vanquished mythologies. Iblis and Skeleton Claus were matched against Abraham and several lesser Bene Elohim and the sands of the recently rebuilt Colosseum in Rome flowed with blood.

That Halloween shook everything up. It would have meant certain destruction for all humanity if Danu and Durga hadn’t stopped the farce. In their mothering ways, they finally convinced the rest of the long oppressed and alienated victors of Heaven to settle down and let the people worship as they pleased. As a conciliatory gesture it was decided that Santa Claus would remain a skeleton ever after to remind the people not to throw out their old gods so easily when shiny new ones came along.

All the holidays and holy sites were moved around so that people would be forced to take a fresh look at their beliefs. It was less than a month before a whole new pantheon of gods appeared out of nowhere and started fomenting trouble. As they approached Heaven to argue for equal rights for all gods, Skeleton Santa watched and sighed. He wouldn’t be getting his milk and cookies anytime soon.

Isolation and the craft

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[su_pullquote]“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.” ― Charles Bukowski, Factotum[/su_pullquote]

There is no doubt in my mind that a writer can achieve some measure of success writing for others. You can write in order to please an audience. Or you can write in order to please a publisher. You can write to please your significant other or your imaginary friend. Your best writing though, will not emerge until you write to please your demon. The spirit that lives inside you. The one that will help you channel everything you are into only one thing: compelling storytelling.

Whatever your story happens to be. You might not even consciously remember writing it. But it will be fucking amazing. The writers that are true to their demons are the writers who can make a career out of it. A career that plays out on the writer’s terms and on the relationship between her demon and the words. You’ve got to be a little possessed to write powerfully. To do it in a way that will make your audience gasp and keep coming back for more.

Do you want to know the secret to becoming a storytelling legend? It’s amazingly simple. Become a story. Live a few dozen adventures. Have some close calls. Take some ill advised risks. Get high. Break a few laws. Hang out with people you would never have considered hanging out with before you decided to be a storyteller. Talk to your demon in the middle of the night or just before the sun rises or just after it sets. Touch, taste, feel, smell, see. A little bit of crazy for each of your senses. That’s the recipe that’s needed.

Then, after, isolate yourself. Like the madman in Stephen King’s The Shining. Get away to a place where all you can hear is the voice of your storytelling demon. Let that creature fill you up and take over your being. That’s when the story will be born. When it’s just you and the demon alone in a cabin. When all you care about is pouring out the thing that needs to be born. When your fucking cell phone is shut off and you forget to eat. You might piss your pants before the flow stops flowing. It won’t matter. The story comes first. The fingers don’t stop dancing with the keyboard until the story gets told. You don’t leave the cabin until the characters have come to life and been killed off. You go from one end of the arc to the other in a frenzy and you don’t let anything or anyone get in the way.

If the police come to get you before the demon is done you’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the place you are hiding. You’ll find a napkin and something sharp and you’ll keep telling the story with your own blood as the ink if that is what becomes necessary to get it into the world. If you’re going to try, as Bukowski recommended, go all the way. Nothing is more important than this. You were born for this. You’re lucky enough to be possessed by the need, the fire, the compulsion to bring something from nothing and pour it out into one of the most important things human beings possess: stories.

You can’t half-ass this thing. Punch your distractions in the face. Isolate yourself. Go crazy and write the story. For yourself. For your demon. Don’t try. Don’t do it for anyone else. If you are doing this for any reason but to quiet your writing demon why are you even bothering? You aren’t really alive. Go do something else. Go get fat and comfortable saying and being all the things somebody else thinks you should say and be. We don’t want you around. My writing demon and I have things to do and you aren’t welcome.

Throw me into the sun

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I have walked inside the mind of a killer. Known him intimately. I have tasted the marrow of his bones. I am the one who knows himself. The strength of my hands, the cords of my arms, the unsubtlety of my guarded eyes. I have wrapped my hands around the necks of the willing to sate the hunger and the fear. As the killer I understand each heartbeat’s value. That every moment is more precious than the last. I am touching the air with my lips. The air is touching your body with its invisible hands. My mind prowls restlessly looking for you. To hunt is to exist.

There is a cold, starry night. We are in a field, my ancestors and I. Looking up and outwards at the stars. Wondering. Always wondering. What secrets do they hold? I have walked inside the mind of an explorer. What is down there? What is over there? What is beyond the places I can see? I can feel the road calling to me. Always. Begging for new traveling companions. Treasuring old ones. Needing the gnawing knowing to expand. My ancestors gave me the gift of cold, starry nights. We share them evermore. Their bones under me compel an outward spiral’s birth. I must lift the veil and go into the darkness afraid and resolute. To explore is to exist.

They censure and censor. The heretic I have been and will always be. The audacity of refusing to bow to kings and priests is in my DNA. A gift from the universe made by gods who do not speak only to the powerful. My gods speak through the starving man, the desperate mother and her sickly child, the peaceful warrior who only wields the blade reluctantly. I have shared many a meal with the downtrodden, the unwelcome, the pariahs and the mad ones. They are mine and I am theirs. Come, let us build a home together and plot against the kings and priests. For they are fat and comfortable as we will never be. I have been the penniless hungry heretic with worn out shoes.

I have known the builders. Something occurred to me once as I watched them building a structure that leapt towards the sky defiantly. About borders and boundaries and invisible lines we draw around ourselves. I want to shatter all of it. I am implacable. Lay down your unnecessary friction and I will bring the grease pot. Draw the static lines to cage me and I will plot an escape. To build is to take a dream and give it life. Your rules are for you. They are not mine. My hammer’s drumbeat rhythm is not one to follow that of the taskmaster’s whip. Allegiance to nations is a sin. I swear my fealty to ideals, not men and their flags. For those are fickle and ever changing. I know how to build and I know how to destroy. I know how to reach for the sky. When they tell me where my feet cannot go I do not listen. When they tell me where my hands cannot reach I spit at them and reach anyway.

I will taste your ideas. Each in turn. I will know you. In the deepest places where you do not know yourself. And when I am ready, when there is nothing left to taste, to explore, to learn, I will ask you to throw me into the sun. I know that it is my destiny to burn. I do not know which sun will take me in when that time finally comes.

To flow freely

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There are a million things you can be. Will be. You will not be told this secret by most you meet. For they are afraid. They live in a world that is finite without the understanding that all things begin and end over and over. Finite fits inside infinite. We are again and again. We are eternal. Not in the small way that some storybooks tell us.

The inevitability is that your atoms will, at some point you do not fully control, be scattered and rearranged. You are composed now. Your story has a start and a finish. There are only so many chapters. What most people fail to see clearly is that the story of you and the story of me are part of a bigger story. The story of us. All of us. We all swim together in an ocean of time. At different moments we might tread in its gentle flow and float together for a while. I know that the moments when I can swim with you might be fleeting.

That is why, when I am bobbing along in the timestream and you happen to be caught in the same current I am, that is important. You might be my companion for a moment or a lifetime. I don’t know. To flow freely is my destiny. I have spent too much time and energy trying to do something that no one swimming in an ocean of time should try to do. Staying in one place should not be the goal.

I will flow freely. To wherever it is that I end. To begin again in a new incarnation that is not going to be what I expect. As I wait for the gloriousness of not knowing to arrive and wash me away it occurs to me that I would like to touch you. I’ll try to remember your eyes. Their color. I’ll try to remember if you laughed and what it sounded like. I will write down the one thing you said to me in that moment that was worth remembering and learning from. Even if it is only for a moment. You were trying to teach me something in the moment that we floated together. I’ll ponder and remember and try to know what it was.

What if that moment turns into a lifetime? It could you know. The ripples and echos and eddies of us seem like beautiful untapped potential. At the beginning of this story I did not understand that I will pass a million faces floating in the sea of time with me and perhaps only see them once. That all of those faces contain something I should try to know.

It’s why now, if you see me float by, and are paying attention you will notice that I am staring. I want to know because I do not. Know how much time is left before my story ends. Or your story ends. And where the ocean will receive this thing I call me into itself. So I look deep into your eyes as you pass by. To see if you will give me something worth chewing on, worth writing about, worth a dance or a song or a painting.

And when the next me comes along without remembering the last me I hope that something I knew in the part of the ocean where I met you helps the you and I who come next know something new. We are all meant to flow freely, to swim until we are tired, and then to sink down into dreams and be remade.

There are a million things you can be. Will be. Which one would you like to know about before this story ends? Let’s take a moment together and float in the question.

Forgotten

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I was in the library browsing. I go there when I’m lost. To find myself in the pages. Among the stacks. The smell of books is the smell of home.

I noticed an old volume with a tattered, worn red binder. Not in its right place. As I stooped to look I wondered why it would be on the floor under the lowest of the shelves. Almost out of sight. The title read Mysteries Past, Present and Future. When I picked it up the book it shivered. Which made me drop it. Books should not shiver.

So I looked at it a while. A thing that should not do what it had done. The pages had opened when it fell. I made the mistake of looking too long. That’s when I fell into the book. The wood shelves and the smell of home disappeared as  gravity pulled me in. My dress fluttered in the wind made by my fall and I screamed a little but forgot to make a sound. The scream echoed around in my head. My landing was gentle and unexpected.

I am standing on the greenest grass I have ever felt wondering why my shoes are not on my feet and pondering where they have gone. The beautiful man is looking at me. His eyes are fire. His hair is long and fine. He is carved or chiseled. I cannot decide which. I want to touch him but I am afraid because I know he is not real.

“I am a poem,” he says. I say nothing. What would a girl say to a poem anyhow. We are silent for a while.

I see the grass blow gently in the wind. I look down at my feet and wiggle my toes. The sun warms me. He looks at me and I do not know anything except that I want to know everything.

“I used to be war,” he says. “But I was tired so I became a poem. I had died one too many times and the bleeding was making me weak. I was eternally hungry and I needed to be something else. Would you like to know me?”

I only nodded. Unable to speak.

The sun turned black. I disappeared and we were stars with the eyes of eagles. He twinkled at me from inside impossibility and then all the stars around us twinkled. “Those are ghosts,” he said. They are all already dead. This light we are is always moving, always changing, always being reborn in other universes. I am a poem.” He twinkled again.

I felt the baby inside me. And it was him. He spoke to me. “Life is the greatest gift. The understanding of love washes all sins away in tsunamis that cannot be denied. When I was hungry on the floor of the library you loved me without knowing what it was you were about to love. I thank you.” He was born then, in an instant.

I screamed in pain and thankfulness as he stepped into the world from between my legs. He looked at me in a way no one ever has or ever will again. The oldest newborn. Helpless, silent, all knowing. Needing me. Needing love. Needing to exist.

“I am a poem,” he cried. I understood everything and I held him in my arms. We didn’t speak for a while. He warmed me. I warmed him. Then he suckled and the understanding grew. Something shifted again.

I am standing in front of a mirror looking at myself. And he is standing behind me. In a warmly lit boudoir that is tastefully decorated. We are both naked and wrinkled. He is covered in a story that is tattooed on his skin. The words flow downward from his neck. They are coiling around his form. Alive and ever changing. The color of his eyes is changing too. He wraps his arms around me and whispers in my ear.

“Isn’t time beautiful? Can you see yet?” I realize that I can. And he starts to pleasure me from behind. We are old and this is the loveliest thing I’ve ever done. I close my eyes and let him fill me up. He moans and I moan and we become a song that rises and falls gently in waves.

We sing together for a while and enjoy our time as a harmony. We read for a while and we become stories. We dance for a while and we become an endless flow. Time stands still and time spreads out in every direction seeking life and understanding of life. I can see from the beginning to the end with my eyes closed.

When I open them I am in the library again. My home. Among the stacks. Waiting to be instructed. I have lived here forever. In infinite possibilities and endless gnawing wishes for understanding. In words that undulate and change depending on the vantage point from which they are read.

He is a poem and he is my master. I clutch his red, cracked spine to my breasts and hold him tight for a while. When I can bring myself to share him I will put him back where I found him under the shelves forgotten and eternally waiting for you.

There are only two kinds of people

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There are only two kinds of people. I have been both of them at different times. I suspect you have too if you’ve been around a little while.

In my 20’s I loved using the word fag. I threw it around in online gaming forums like free candy. Someone got the better of me and I got fragged. Then my mic went on. “You’re a fag.” Yep. That was my brain to mouth without filters in action. I don’t do that these days. Doing didn’t make me a better competitor. It just pissed off the person on the receiving end.

In my 20’s I loved to argue about everything and I would never back down an inch. I knew what freedom was. I knew all my rights. I knew how to fix every social ill that plagues our planet and our species. I knew that I had a high IQ and I thought that entitled me to being heard and respected.

I wanted other people to hear me. I thought I deserved it. The problem was that I didn’t want to hear them. I wanted other people to learn from me. I didn’t want to learn from them. I already knew everything. I couldn’t have been more wrong about that.

In my 20’s I was condescending. I was arrogant. I loved to argue. I’m in my 40’s now.

I’m still condescending and arrogant inside but the rough edges have been sandpapered. I’ve walked through some storms that I managed to survive somehow. Storms that I elected to walk into of my own free will. I still love to argue but I approach if from a completely different place. I might think you’re a whiny little bitch, or that there’s a double standard about the use of the word nigger depending on what color your skin, eyes and hair are. I might think a thousand different things are unfair, unjust or nonsensical. I might find you utterly boring. It won’t come out of my mouth anymore. Why? Because you don’t ever prove a point by crushing someone or turning up the volume to a point that no one hears any of the words anymore.

Annihilation tactics never turn an enemy into a friend. Escalation doesn’t solve problems unless you’re willing to bomb those arrayed against your point of view or stance into non-existence. That isn’t my go to place. I’m not a sociopath or a psychopath.

So somewhere between shouting out “fag” and creating a bunch of unneeded bad feelings arguing about everything under the sun I had an epiphany. Or a thousand. Here’s one of the most important ones.

I learned that enemies can become friends. To make that a possibility I needed to stop blurting things out and start paying attention to what the enemy was doing and saying. That guy who fragged me all the time knew something I didn’t. He had tactics I could have learned from. He wasn’t a fag. He was a better player than me. If I had been paying attention to what he knew back then instead of flailing around feeling angry about losing I might have combined what he knew with what I knew to improve my gaming experience. Which, at that time, was pretty much the world I lived in and cared about. Priorities change. What you care about changes. What you believe in changes. People usually don’t change. Until they start listening and stop talking.

That’s a lesson it took me nearly 20 years to absorb. You don’t become better at anything by pissing people off. Unless your ultimate goal is to be a world champion douche bag. If you want to be heard you have to shape the message in a way the doesn’t immediately incense your audience or potential audience. I eventually stopped using the word fag. I have used other expletives in the past in attempts to win arguments or save face. Now I just avoid the argument in the first place. I don’t care about saving face anymore because I’m focused on learning from failures as much as I learn from successes.

If you believe that Jesus Christ is the one true path to an eternal reward I’m not going to convince you otherwise until you are ready to consider other possibilities. If you think the CIA introduced crack into American ghettos to keep the black man down then one white guy isn’t going to change your mind no matter how eloquently he speaks. If you believe the moon landing was faked, 9/11 was an inside job or the Tea Party will save us from the downfall of America (whatever that is), I’m not going to change your mind before you decide that other possibilities should be weighed. You have to be ready to hear the message.

What’s the point of writing all this? It’s a message to all the really smart, high IQ, outside the box people who are struggling to be heard. You probably have important things to say. We all have a soapbox that we would like to have an audience for. If you want people to hear how great atheism is here’s a hint: don’t start off by telling them how stupid their current theology is. It doesn’t work. I know from personal experience.

Starting a conversation with “you’re wrong and here’s why” is like trying to pickup a woman in a bar by telling her that you are repulsed by her saggy breasts and the hairy mole on her face. Unless she’s an emotional masochist that approach isn’t going to work. You have a soapbox. You have an agenda. You have priorities. So does everyone else. Take the time to hear them and you might have a chance of convincing them to hear you. If they raise the volume try lowering yours. You’d be amazed how effective it can be to simply wait and listen without taking offense. I don’t take anything personally anymore until someone starts trying to punch me.

I never won arguments in my 20s. I spent too much time getting angry. I sometimes won video gaming contests but my blood pressure and my belly both increased when measured over a period of time. Shouting out “fag” or “nigger” or “I’ll kill you mother fucker” never helped me make a point about anything. It didn’t help me win. It did ensure a few people hated my guts in more than one online forum or gaming den. I’ve learned from those ineffectual years. I’m still learning. Here’s where I’m at in this moment.

Want to convince people of something? Try these tactics:

  • Endless patience. Be ready to wait a lifetime for them to be ready to hear you. Don’t get invested in changing their mind until they are invested in new possibilities. Which brings us to…
  • Understand why you believe what you do. If you don’t know why you hold a certain viewpoint no one else is going to be convinced either. It’s always been that way. The status quo doesn’t mean there isn’t a viable or superior set of choices. Fail. My parents told me so. No parent knows everything. No parent is infallible. Fail. It’s the law. Total fail. It used to be the law that you could own human slaves. The law is a dumb, blind animal enforced by mostly unimaginative people who carry guns to enforce rules passed by more mostly unimaginative people. Which brings us to…
  • Explain your belief/stance/solution/viewpoint from a humble place. Realize that you haven’t walked in the same shoes as your potential friend and convert. They have a different experience of the world and they look through different lenses. That’s OK as long as they are willing to listen to you and you’re willing to listen to them. Never ever start with “you’re wrong and here’s why.” For fuck’s sake you just used up some of that endless patience above waiting for an unlikely moment when they were contemplative enough to hear you. Which brings us to…
  • The point is not to win. The point is to plant seeds. They might grow into something later. They might not. But for most people epiphanies don’t happen in an instant. Most people have to connect a lot of dots before they see the big picture. You on your soapbox on any given day or in any given moment are only one of the dots in that person’s life. Finally we come to the most important part of being alive…
  • It isn’t about you. It’s about wisdom. Wisdom is bigger than any one person. Somehow, through a series of unfortunate mishaps and close calls, I came the conclusion that there are only two kinds of people. The ones I can learn from and the ones I can learn from. I learn things that I want to incorporate into my own life and journey from the first kind. I learn things that I don’t want to incorporate into my journey from the second kind. That means everyone has something to teach me. You cannot be a good teacher until you’re a good student. Spend a lot of time talking with the first kind of people you can learn from. Identify and observe the second kind of people you can learn from. Try to avoid close engagements as they are likely to result in hostility and bad feelings no matter how endlessly patient you think you are. By engaging the first and watching the second kind of people I have improved myself. I believe you can too.
    In my 20’s I was the kind of person who taught people how not to be and what not to emulate. In my 40’s I’m trying to be the kind of person who listens enough to be worth being heard. It’s not a science. It’s an art form. It’s not a static thing. It evolves. That is the nature of being human. You aren’t supposed to form a set of viewpoints and then spend your life telling other people how great they are.

There are only two kinds of people. The ones who are evolving and learning and the ones who have to be dragged along on the trip kicking and screaming. I’ve mostly stopped kicking and screaming at this point. I’ve started paying attention to my traveling companions. I’ve realized that some of them are magnificent, beautiful souls. I’m starting to understand just how amazing the journey is. I’m less scared of being alive than I have ever been. I see the stars and I want to go there with you.