a storyteller's journey

Dear Future, from Your Past

2011-11-06T11:22:00.000-08:00

Hello. I am a pioneer.
Please don’t judge me for what I don’t know. You see, we knew so little then, but we did the best we could with the little we did. Just starting out onto this new frontier of the mind and all, the way we were.
It may seem silly to you, but my grandparents looked on their grandchildren in wonderment at the idea that they, these two year olds, seemed to know, innately, the mechanisms of a rotary phone.
The same it was for my parents’ bafflement at grandchildren with their IPhones, IPads, IPods, though no one was using those much, as a single unit anyway, by the time my children were born.
Yes, it may seem silly to you that I can only understand that a shift is coming - indeed, is already here - and that it will entail a completely unfathomable as of now, and yet so logical in retrospect, quantum shift from perceiving time and space - same thing, Einstein says, I know that much - to being time and space, each creature together, yet onto himself.
I can only grasp in the dark at such notions, but I know you, dweller in the thousand years of peace, as my distant relative and yet unrecognizable humanoid, have been blessed with the spiraling surplus of knowledge in such a way that my own humble graspings are as fundamental and retrospectively apparent as Galileo’s realizations.
But there is something we have in common, you and I, besides a mutual knowledge that the only things America was / will be remembered for are the atom bomb and state park preservation: you and I, we are both, in the grand tradition of our ancestors, within whom the spiraling helixes still turn on the flat, micro plane of recycled time, we are all, in our own exponentially contributing rights, pioneers.
Hello, my future DNA. And again, sorry for how bonobo-at-a-water-pump-evolutionary I must appear. I am doing the best I can, with the collective knowledge I’ve been given, thusfar. The oak that created the small thrift store desk I’m writing to you from now, probably was grandfathered by a tree that grew in the Dark Ages. We are so young, hovering here in the Mayan end of days, so young and yet so bloated with the foolishness of ego.
Yes, probably approximately five lifetimes / five months for you in a virtual reality hub if that’s how you choose to spend your time - and who wouldn’t? From here, that’s as distant a time ago as the discovery that Mars does have pyramids, will probably take.
So here I am, projecting this sheepish, humble hello to you, in the attempt to explain our conduct and maybe, even maybe, to get a response back.
I’m dying to know what it’s like out there in the future, after all this shit goes down, down, down.
And hey, please bring me forward for a visit, if you guys have that time-space manipulation thing down by the time you get this.
And if you can project a covered wagon hologram while you’re at it, why not, let’s have some fun with this, bring some humor into it.
I mean, there’s definitely humor in the future, right?
It’s one of the funniest - yep - things about this whole creation mystery, I think: the realization that this contracting, expanding, beating heart of a universal hologram we’re all floating in, here, incorporated a sense of humor into the whole equation.
If the universe is a cheek, we’re the tongue sticking in it, that’s for sure.

koreatown

2011-09-21T14:58:00.001-07:00

The animal noises, and the restless heat and the sounds of distant fans reverberated through the sticky concrete streets like a symphony to struggle. She lay in her bed and tried to imagine a time when writers knew what to write, when the voices in their head were mightier than the societal tapeworm of reality TV and short-term attention spans, but such a time seemed almost mythical, like the Crusades or non-PC 70‘s shows, or Jesus.
She was living in a part of Los Angeles theoretically known as Koreatown, although the signs on Beverly and Temple read ‘Old Filipinotown.’ However, despite a lack of signage, most of her neighbors were El Salvadorian, even their dogs and children howling in what sounded like Hispanic accents. And yet, somehow, even in this mishmash of ethnicities, she’d managed to land in a ramshackle enclave where only white people lived. It was purely by accident, she liked to surmise, but her roommate, also white, said it was a subconscious decision, even without having seen the other white people. He said these decisions were based on things like smells.
Whatever the case, the private lives of everyone around, regardless of ethnicity, was up for neighborhood grabs. The big black guy on the other side of the fence had a bunch of mama hoodrats creepin through, a basketball hoop rendered useless by the car lean-to since built under its net, and an upstairs to his house that had been shut off by yellow police ‘caution’ tape since before she moved in. The ancient Filipino lady on the other side of the alley swept her barred driveway in the same flowered kimono everyday and had a son that kept his motorcycle there, covered by a pink blanket, also flowered. He also parked an insulting BMW there, behind the bars, between the potted cactuses, alongside a deaf outdoor cat that meowed pitilessly and without ceasing. The barely pubescent skater boys upstairs had pretty Malibu girlfriends, a penchant for all-nighters and didn’t mind blood, while the persnickety gay white guy in front sold weed and drove a rattly little Camry painted like a brown and gold Louis Vuitton bag from bumper to bumper.
She sat, with her ugly, clunky writer’s block, and listened to the sounds of all these people coming and going all day, and read and reread a quote by Albert Camus that gave her a queer - meant in the sense before it was co-opted to mean a subculture - but reassuring sense of purposefulness: ‘the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.’
And it was in this proactively detached headspace that she and Armando’s similar lifestyles first became apparent. Armando may or may not have been mentally retarded. This was never established for certain, and even if he could or would have answered such a question his English wasn’t much better than her Spanish. Their acquaintance stayed at ‘hello,’ ‘hi’,’ and ‘hola.’ Eventually he upped the conversation to include ‘good morning,’ and then, later, her name. Most likely, he had a crush on her. There weren’t many other girls around to look at other than Hispanic mamas and those Malibu girls, who mostly stayed, shrieking and chain-smoking, behind drawn day blinds.
Armando threw up once a day, on the side of his house, in great, horrifying heaves. Afterwards, he’d wipe his eyes, shuffle off and turn the oldies back up on his porch partner’s - a cheerful-enough, lame old man prone to bouts of sudden sleep - handheld radio.
She didn’t realize until later that she, also, was throwing up everyday, because she was in denial about the fact that it wasn’t just because she had a sensitive stomach and that therefore, it wasn’t really happening since it would surely cease soon.

nothing and everything but a sparkling snowflake

2011-09-01T10:27:00.001-07:00

You know how when you drive past the dog park and you notice a curly-haired guy with a daschund getting out of his car and then two hours later he walks into the coffeeshop where you’re working and you wonder if you’re the only person who notices these things? Or like when a guy comes out his house gate pushing a bike as you walk by and then bikes by your friend’s house five miles away later that afternoon? Do you notice these things too?
These kinds of things kind of torture me, because I don’t know what to do with them. They feel so meaningful in a meaningless way. Like, not meaningless because they have no meaning but so because we don’t yet have the mental or psychological or whatever capacity to grasp what it all means.
Some quantum physicists say the universe is a giant hologram, everything repeating and imitating itself onto infinity. That’s why nature metaphors work so well to describe our lives. Because basically we’re living inside a giant snowflake. And no two snowflakes are alike.
The entire universe, onto expanding infinity, is one giant snowstorm.
When you look at it like that, seeing the same curly-haired guy at the dog park and the coffeeshop feels even more meaningless than before. And yet, and yet, and yet … it’s like that’s all there is. Criss-crossing wavelengths, streaming the eternal question, does it matter? What does it all mean? And leaving a trail of sparkle that reminds us, at least we can look good doing this.
Whatever this is.

The Unhappy Hopi

2011-08-14T13:44:00.000-07:00

He was searching for a very specific rock marking the trail, somewhere on the right side along the tall banks, right after a small poplar and a rotting fencepost. She would be waiting in the woods there, still waiting, even though the sun now said high noon had come and gone and come and gone again. His stomach growled and he muffled another rumble with the heel of his hand against his sternum, inhaling sharply as if oxygen were flavor to the concept of a meal.
He was wearing a full feather headress as absurd as such a thing was in such a moment, but he hadn’t worn it the whole journey, only taken it gently out of his pack and arranged it over his braids a short walk back. He’d come this far, and he wanted her to see him wearing it, for her.
He could barely make out what looked like the totem rock straight ahead, the way the sun was reflecting off shiny dark green leaves dangling hot white in his eyes, but yes, that was it, and it also gleamed in the sun, only blackly, in all its majestically muted obsidian promise.
Mating falcons drop-dived at speeds as high and fast as a waterfall, their feathers the same as his, directly over the trail ahead of him, and it was as clear a sign as any ever.
He turned at the marker and entered the cool, dark woods. Something smelled wrong in the air.

She was plain, but she wore it like a garland of poppies. There was a man in a bear fur and he came to her in the night while she waited and she did not ask why of the night sky but only knew that he was, the way the stars were. It was this lack of fear, the not-asking that made her father love her, but it was also why she was now here, in these woods, alone as a fawn whose antlers are still fuzzy with newness.
The bear fur man led her to a cabin that took a river’s crossing and a climb and she followed him because a lover who says he will come then and does not has either betrayed or is weak and it was the cutting of weakness that had brought her this far.
The man’s cabin had curtains made of colorful cloth pieces, stitched together beautifully and she knew he had not made them because his hands were calloused and these had been done with a touch that was not native to his soul but that craved the touch again. This much was clear and he fed her and took her to bed with him and she forgot the one she had waited for.

The man in the hopeful headress stood in the small clearing and knew that the strange smell was danger and not the hope he had hoped for, but it was too late and they were on him, from all sides, and he was dragged back to her village, still panting from thirst. When the gauntlet was done and he was lying, reeking with his lack of shame, in the house of the medicine man, he finally spoke.
‘I did it because it was ordained.’
And the medicine man asked again, why. Why did he betray his own tribe, and come for the daughter of his father’s sworn enemy?
And he could only say, ‘She was worth it.’
And where was she now? He could not say, because he did not know any better than them.
It was only later that he admitted to himself that the falcons had actually swerved away from one another at the last moment. Such is the way that signs are interpreted.

here's what i'm working on lately

2011-08-01T16:10:00.000-07:00

rewrite of my script. so much work (and fun!) I finished the first draft and we made a 10 minute short out of it, so that's cool. progress, progress.

keep in mind this was shot in a day with no budget and scenes were added / edited that I didn't write, so I'm not taking responsibility for the cheesy stuff, haha.

Hipster: A Short Film from CynPosner on Vimeo.

2011-04-15T01:34:00.000-07:00

As They Blow By

2011-04-03T03:09:00.000-07:00

Crayons and neon indians,
Ooh la laaing down a corridor of bliss
Full-body colored tattoos and alex grey artwork,
All reduced to something trite.
And then there’s that.
There’s still that.
That lanky cabin in the pines with the totem pole out front,
Snow wisping off it in the spurts of chill
As they blow by.

thank god ...

2011-03-08T20:32:00.000-08:00

... for gin and Bob Marley or this depressing-ass dystopian romantic comedy bullshit wouldn't ever get written.

spinning...

2011-03-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

... i just finally watched the banksy documentary (even though i was hyping about it 6 months before it came out) and i feel like i'm going to explode. if banksy orchestrated that whole thing as an elaborate commentary on brainwashing then he beat me to it, because that's what my whole hipster novel is supposed to be about; a dystopian story within a marketed story within a regurgitated story - which is a cult.
i feel like i'm going to explode because he and all these other doggone geniuses actually get shit DONE.
let the driving guilt to produce something meaningful accelerate to the next level.
anyway, it was a good film ;)

my producer asked me for a poetic script synopsis ...

2011-03-03T20:34:00.000-08:00

... and to get in the mood this sentence came out and is now staring me, cursor blinking in the face, providing no further inspiration besides the craving to add sugar to my pinot noir.

"Gravity’s rainbow fucking you in the ass while gravel skittles grind against your teeth, motherfucker."

Synopsis pending.

the best day i've had in i don't know how long...

2011-02-27T00:33:00.001-08:00

...was auditioning for the lead actor in the movie i'm adapting from my novel 'Hipster.' There's a new name but I can't tell you yet because good ideas have a way of showing up on other peoples' slates before you can say 'that's so hollywood.'

ANYWAY.

the incredible beauty, passion, hotness, BRILLIANCE of the men who stood in front of my camera and delivered the lines i'd written was as close to REALLY high as I've come in a looooooong time.

This is the lead (he's accepted the offer) for my new film. Don't tell anyone. (Can you see why I'm excited and inspired?!)

And wait 'til you see the Jack Nicholson-reminiscent bad-boy 'real artist' who's going to dance with him onscreen (awaiting his acceptance to the offer that was sent off tonight ;)

good advice

2010-08-10T11:22:00.001-07:00

The best way to prepare for a Big Shift is to cultivate mental and emotional states that ripen us to be ready for anything:

* a commitment to not getting lost inside our own heads;

* a strategy to avoid being enthralled with the hypnotic lure of painful emotions, past events, and worries about the future;

* a trust in empirical evidence over our time-worn beliefs and old habits;

* a talent for turning up our curiosity full blast and tuning in to the raw truth of every moment with our beginner's mind fully engaged;

* and an eagerness to dwell gracefully in the midst of all the interesting questions that tease and teach us.

Everything I just described also happens to be an excellent way to prime yourself for a chronic, low-grade, always-on, simmering-at-low-heat brand of ecstasy -- a state of being more-or-less permanently in the Tao, in the groove, in the zone.

2010-08-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

So how does a writer develop voice? I don’t know exactly, but I think it has something to do with being as genuine as you can be in a given moment. It’s like having a conversation with your truest self. And you’re really listening. And you write it down.
from http://bit.ly/caS2oS

this is my life these days

2010-07-31T16:23:00.000-07:00

good food. good writing. occasionally combining the two.

creepy new excerpt from my novel

2010-07-08T00:51:00.000-07:00

I have brought it to this point. This love point, where she is experiencing that thing that the commoners think they’ve achieved, like a pinnacle, the place where now they begin to contemplate the possibility of ever-higher peaks, partnership for all of eternity. Good for them.
For me, this is the beginning of the end. What I must do now is prepare everything for the break-up, so as to ensure a more beautiful, a more meaningful, a more complete work of art.
But meanwhile, I am not so unlike a man – if anything I am so much more so than most – that I cannot enjoy the spoils of this surrender. There is a cooing fruitbasket of earthly delights lying across my lap holding a basin of spirits to my lips, fanning me with humid, airey affection.
Yes, please. And I feel the fire in my belly and this time, like an AA having a drink for New Years, like a vegetarian dutifully doing turkey on Thanksgiving, like smoking because some devastation justifies the peace of a poisoned inhalation, I do not push it away.
“Look, I’ll do it for you,” I say, putting my hand around the thick, grooved bottleneck and she reaches upwards and over, running her own along my cheek like butter melding into bristle.
Yes, please. This is fun. Really. Even those gnawed little fingertips look like a bowlful of cherries tonight. Just for tonight.
“I’ve been waiting for tonight,” I allow myself to tell her.
“Really?” she coos. “I thought you were hinting at wanting this.” She looks so pleased with herself, the flushed security in the temporary surety that her charms have gotten her what she wanted. “I feel like we’re a J.Lo song right now,” she giggles, trilling Waiting for tonight, oh, oh, oh, oh in a little falsetto.
It’s ok to add a smear of cheesy hot pink to the canvas, just now. Black slashes will layer and obscure it soon enough.
It’s a process.
And there’s nothing more fulfilling in intelligent conversation than a double-meaning that your victim can recall later, in stupefied wonder and reluctant admiration at your own structured, sculpting genius.
Women don’t want to admit it but they want a half-devil. Oh Jolene, you’re welcome, Jolene. You will remember this forever, your own drama, your own romantic epic fall from grace that most can only watch or imagine, sitting snug and monotonous in a broken-springs couch behind a screen of cowardly voyeurism.
You deserve so much more, so much more my adventurous, dumpster-flipping, nail-biting sweet Joleen, so much more and that is why I’m taking the time to give this to you.
Do you know how fucking cool you’re gonna be after this?

i have so much to do.

2010-06-16T10:52:00.001-07:00

which is why i'm taking the time to read up on 'how to create the perfect messy side bun' right now.

but when i'm done procrastinating, of note for novel:

-i need a street, gypsy character; hooded harlequin: idealist but desperate, flimsily brilliant.

-i need a charming user villain: so full of entertaining creativity he gets away with being a narcissist sociopath.

- i need jolene character's background to be sufficiently planned prior, to accomplish an organic depiction of transition from creepy controlled certainty to wide-eyed, desperate uncertainty. EVERYTHING taken away. Make the reader feel it, make the reader care.

ok things iz hectic

2010-06-15T13:03:00.000-07:00

so i'm gonna just start posting things here to remember to write about as soon as my job ends and i begin to write fulltime.

- the hare krishna egg-throwing, cross-dressing venice beach day.
- the tranny-living-at-my-house saga

it's happening.

2010-05-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

also ... this is a pretty good pic of janis joplin, huh?

poem

2010-04-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

oh sethy-poo, how i miss you
in your cigarette-skinny slacks
and moroseness masking something else.

your dark shock of hair, that pale, pensive mouth
like a neil gaiman sketch-of-a-joke
on the robots thronging rodeo drive

your blood-red heart dripping water
within a charcoal ribcage
i hope you wring it out to dry on your drums.

2010-04-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

these lyrics pretty much sum up the entire drive behind 'hipster / diary of a seducer' the novel i'm currently completing:

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
Love is touching souls
Surely you touched mine
Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed

Oh but you are in my blood you're my holy wine
You're so bitter, bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet
-joni mitchell 'case of you'

once again, all together now ...

2010-04-06T16:07:00.000-07:00

"the man who knows something knows that he knows nothing at all."

2010-03-06T21:57:00.001-08:00

this is what it feels like in my brain right now. uncluttered texturized delicious quirk. to a soundtrack of Eric Satie. literally. pandora is playing his station while i'm at my office late on a saturday night, creating the next steps for my new tv pilot. i've been planning it for 3 months, and i'm getting ever-closer to the fun part. writing.
anyway, isn't this picture something? it froze me in my visual-aid-hunt tracks.
(thanks http://bit.ly/b59lDe)

I am Feeling Very Inspired Lately

2010-03-02T17:52:00.001-08:00

he told me it was written on inspiration of watching horses pulling a hearse in new orleans. this is a new remix.

and the latest videos for one of my favorite tracks of his:

Currently Reading ...

2009-10-19T18:25:00.000-07:00

Positively 4th Street, a book about Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez and Richard Farina. It's such a rare delight to find yourself in that place where you're aching to just get home and hear the whistle on the kettle that says it's done so you can get in bed with the book you're into. It hasn't happened to me enough lately, because i'm always 'working' in my head instead of relaxing.
And of course, even with this book, it's just research on the bohemian folk scene for my novels 'Hipster' and 'Gypsy.' Fortunately David Hajdu is an incredibly gifted researcher with a knack for verbosity that makes his detailed rendition of the emergence of the folk scene in Cambridge and Greenwich Village in the early sixties a visually evocative, psychologically profound reading experience.
Oh and the fact that the myers-brigg personality test I once took compared me most closely to Joan Baez makes it even more fun, especially since she was gorgeous, unique and iconically successful!

my horoscope this week

2009-10-14T15:54:00.000-07:00

To extract enough gold to make a wedding ring, a mining company must process a ton of ore. In a similar way, many writers generate a swamp of unusable sentences on their way to distilling the precise message they really want to deliver. Please keep these examples in mind as you evaluate your own recent progress, Virgo. It may seem like you're moving at a crawl and producing little of worth. But according to my analysis of the omens, you're on your way to producing the equivalent of a gold ring.

Wow, and right on the heels of ellen page selling a show to HBO just like Strays, followed by an assignment to condense everything i'm working on into a tidy little writer's pitch package.

thanks on-ever-insightful-one at freewillastrology.com!

Thoreau Gets It

2009-10-12T11:52:00.001-07:00

* I learned this, at least, by my experiment;
that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
from the "Conclusion" to Walden *

Just a lil' bit of a hoot 'n a holler of a hello...I've been missing in action on here lately. This is for more or less 2 reasons:
1. I've been doing 'The Artist's Way' a 12-week course of integrating 'morning pages', a freehand, free-form daily exercise in purging on the page, into my routine. This has taken most of my creative free time, but it has been highly worth it. I'm learning to be more disciplined and focused as well as more aware of my subconscious, which leads me to:
2. I'm learning that I need to complete what I start; even if the end result is crappy (the fear of which, I suppose, in addition to that of success, is what is holding me back), it will BE COMPLETED instead of remaining another secret arrow in the quiver I carry around like an invisible little secret. What I'm also realizing is that I've overestimated my ability to remember the specific details of a project and, upon return after alleged 'reflection,' the end result is not necessarily going to turn out any better for the wait.

So what I suppose I'm saying is that my artistic journey is intact, I have not abandoned ship, I have not succummbed to the quicksand, and I do see the clean, clear light of completion still sparkling, and ever-nearer.
Also, to hark back to an update on my New Year's reflections/resolutions on the power of Owl Medicine, I have seen, to date, three owls this year, and all in interesting and meaningful moments and ways.
This picture looks like the one (minus the snow) that flew past me in the dark a few months back.

2009-08-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

quote on friend's page that jumped out at me today: "...the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do….”

themes that keep coming up these days, in various ways and from all directions: gravity, vibrations, spirals

never was spoken a truer 'ism

2009-07-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

"A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price." The Angel's Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

a short 'story'

2009-07-16T22:48:00.000-07:00

In the beginning there was a guy named Moses, and he was delicious. Everyone wanted a piece of him. At least all the people who were Somebody.
Moses had long hair and a beard, and was prone to wearing white, clingy robes, very similarly, in fact, to the Western depiction of the Biblical version of that prophet by the same name. The difference, of course, was that this hipster version of Moses did not have direct access to God, although some of the music and lyrics he and his expansive band came up with suggested so, and also, he was much more Conscious – dare we venture Deliberate? But that would defeat all his magnanimous efforts at Apathy, so let’s not do that to him until he Learns - of the image he was setting forth, or imitating, than that original purveyor of the same. The similarities were: both these Moseses had a lot of Followers.
But this is not a story about Moses comparisons. This is a story of a long, deep dive down truth lane, a story of searching, and perhaps, in the end, finding a Promised Land. Which is still so Moses from the Old Testament. But that isn’t the point as I just said, at least I don’t think it is. Perhaps we shall find that that is the whole point. But let’s tell the story, or what there is of a Story, first.
Moses lived a life of creative variations on the art of indolence and indifference. He was a perfecter, a purveyor, a propheteer if you will, of Nothing. He did Nothing so well, in fact, that he began to attract a Family of followers, curiouseers of his craft.
“Why does he look so good when he doesn’t try?” they whispered within their own minds, too afraid to share their observation with another who might tell them the answer, which would be exceedingly embarrassing never mind exposing to their efforts to replicate the same.
“Let’s do something with him,” they said to one another, and Moses agreed, yes, let’s do something, and so they did, in their robes and starched white shirts and angular black blazers and rusty ascots and ‘kerchiefs. They tossed their tangled dark locks ‘to and fro’ and warbled around the sound of their own beating drums, and people began to listen, and people began to flock, and they began to sing, ‘Let my people go,” and the people seemed to agree, because, they went.
They went to their shows, and they came to their book signings – broad, black-and-white volumes depicting the wanton winsomeness of their efforts, that publishers published because Moses was Moses and he had that IT factor, and Echo Park was only a few streets from Hollywood and so he had that kind of Pull.
All was good in the land of productive indolence, and music was made and poses were poased and lovers were loved for their lovability both by lovers and observers without lovers, who would have loved to have been loved themselves, but settled for observing, and then. One. Day.
She.
Dark. Thin. Frail even. And full of fire.
She alighted on the curtain of His desire like a spark, she walked through a golden field of wheat in His direction and from beneath her heels there flowed an ocean of milk and honey and his walls came tumbling down, walls he hadn’t known were separate from his city of Perfect Nothingness, and he found, within the inner sanctums of the city there was Something, and she was circling it, every shuddering footstep beneath her feather feet drawing cracks in the foundation, the milk-and-honey eating his Something alive like pirannas in quicksand, and he had to Think Fast, which did not go with the whole rest of his Thing.
Moses ran for the mountains and found himself in the desert. An alkaline desert of crags and crooks, borne on the wings of the shrieking hawk and the black branches of eternity, and he fell upon his back and reached upwards, upwards, upwards, and found in his hand a passion fruit and of course, he took a bite, because if he didn’t, we wouldn’t really have a story would we, because there is no story if He doesn’t take a bite and She doesn’t have something to do with it, is there?
Not really.
So of course, this is where our story really begins, because while He was sliding downwards, downwards, downwards, into the abyss of What Really Is, she was Taking Over, showing his Family that what was really In Order were the noise-makers, the percussion, the beads and bows of the Fathers, the African originators, whose zebra warpaint and leopard cloaks beat to the beat of an ever-beating beat, beat, beat.
And as the fools howled at the golden moon, and crowds gathered to watch, and asked no more what had become of Moses but instead watched Miriam, this dainty goddess of all that is Deliberately Unaware. And they cheered, and they danced, and they let sweat fall and limbs swings, and observers became lovers and lovers observers, and all was shaken, shaken, shaken.
And Moses knew not a whit.
The fruit was sweet and pungent, rancor and revival rousting in its seeds, and he thought of Miriam and wept and then forgot, and when he plunged down, down, down onto all fours the ground gave way beneath him and sank into an ocean of Regret, which was Curious, because Moses was the leader of Nothing, so what was there to think over here? Nothing, duh.
Nothing.
And yet, there was so much Something that he had no choice but to move his indolent, beautiful limbs, his tangled hair streaming behind him into clean, smooth lines, and he moved with the current, willingly, and up, up, upwards again, he burst forth, and all was as it had been before and yet So Very Different.
And then he went back to Echo Park, drying on the way there, and said hi to the Family, and they looked askance because he had muscles, new, from strokes and hair clean and straight, and he did not look like them, but She saw. She saw, and she knew, and Now was all that mattered for Them.
And Miriam took Moses and begat a new acceptance in the Family, and then they moved to Topanga Canyon and someone else came along and started a band and claimed to Bursting that they invented Popular Nothingnesss, and then they fell in love, and discovered Something, and someone else came along, and so on and so forth, and then Jesus came back, with long hair and another white robe, and there was a whole ‘nother round of bands, and everyone did coke and cried and laughed and quit, and made something artistic from the whole debangle.
They’re still doing it, by the way, right now, it doesn’t stop, that’s how it works.
Youth. Passion. Begets Passion, then Youth.
Throw some paint on that and a hair bow and sing about it.
The End.

on 2nd thought, no need to utterly nostalgize that innocence ...

2009-07-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

so i'm poring thru old files and i came across this list of 'contacts' i made, probably as a freshman in college. The parentheses notes are real. LOL!

CONTACTS:

-Ella (show scripts to the place she was interning for)
-Mike from class (screenwriting@gmail.com)
-story analyst guy whose info. career development center gave me
-maybe Cheri whatever, alum from Oxy? (wrote draft of toy story 3)
-Doug from myspace
-older guy from party that emails me (producer)
-Alan (sold me IPod on craigslist)
-writing group that dissed me

For Novel:
-Todd ? – Oxy alum who feeds me sushi

the fact I know so many amazing people doesn't help

2009-07-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

it really, really doesn't, when it comes to being original and self-confident. i often feel as if i am (subconsciously of course) co-opting the brazilliance of the ever-expanding network of true artists I am lucky enough to know.

i want to break free of this self-consciousness and regress to the raw truth of my early twenties, back when i ran away to mexico and found myself writing a gothic horror novel about rebirth. it's called 'the perfect love' and i'm revisiting it now, realizing that in many ways, my adult sophistication is merely a deceptive net of distraction, hard, festering shreds of my ego hanging from it like barnacles.

the fact that i can be too obvious with my symbology, too corny in my sensitivity, too wide-eyed for the lounging hipsters, is not something to keep hiding from.

the innocence of childhood is fraught with imagination for good reason, and toeing this line between creative originality and slick, baudy self-marketing is like cartwheeling on a cliff for a disinterested audience. maybe i will just cartwheel somewhere else for awhile and stop worrying about toeing that edge.

thanks ruth (friends since 11 years old now?!) for sending me the above picture

thoughts from diablo cody

2009-07-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

i noticed there's this horror film called 'jennifer's body' written by diablo cody coming out, and because she suddenly seems not only so prolific, what with juno and united states of tara and now this, but also along the lines of my unfinished stacks of creative variations, i looked up her old blog and found this awesomely encouraging and oh-so-'me too!' snippet from 2003:

The Book shall be conquered soon, this I swear to you.

I started writing The Book in 1999, when I was living in the Dodge Mahal, an ill-maintained college house so named because it was on Dodge Street in Iowa City. The Dodge Mahal was so squalidly kept that there was an overturned full-size Christmas tree in the living room. In May. I remember writing the first paragraph of The Book (which has now been so heavily edited that it bears little resemblance to those opening lines) and thinking "This could be something." Little did I know it would take me four years to write seventy pages. Seventy. 7-0. Stephen King probably writes seventy pages during his morning rehabilitative Pilates, and it takes me four fucking years.

The shocker is that I work on it often. I'm just so obsessive that I'll routionely rewrite entire ten page blocks. I'm never satisfied. I still think it sucks.

I have no idea if my back-assward labors will ever pay off. Today, for fiction by a woman to be considered marketable, it has to be about a sassy Prada-clad nanny/editorial assistant trying to find love in Manhattan. I don't think a slim novel about a bulimic high school physics teacher who's obsessed with amusement parks qualifies as "hot fic" these days.

I'm gonna finish. I have about fifty pages to go, so we're looking at, oh, 2005?

update

2009-06-20T20:21:00.000-07:00

and so metaphorical for life; right when you think you have it defined it mixes it all up on you without actually going anywhere.

it's a mouse, not a lizard.

and it is still behind the dresser.

this just happened

2009-06-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

a lizard ran into my room from under a crack in my outdoors-door i've noticed before, but never realized the full implications of, and i discovered my immediate reaction to be, uttered in what i hoped were loud, commanding tones: 'WHAT THE FUCK, ANIMAL?'
and then he went and sat behind my pink dresser, and i just sat there too, only in my bed, and thought about how i should probably do something, but all i could think of, and eventually did do, was open my door to the less-inviting outdoors and then go bang the lid of a hard, vintage suitcase i keep some shoes in, against one side of the pink dresser.

unless he is supremely wily, which i don't really want to consider at great length, he is still under there, even as we speak. neither possibility is really what i'm looking for in life, right now, sorry lizard - yes, you, i realize you are a LIZARD, not an ANIMAL - but i'm glad we had this talk, i really am.

my agent dropped me, but it's not over yet.

2009-05-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

call it what you will - bipolarity indicative delusions of grandeur, fools gold, a fairy tale - but i have something primal, mystical, fundamental and sweet hammering on the eggshell of my delicate reality, with an insistent and insatiable clamor to get out.

i will keep writing. i know that much. it is so, so worth it.

12-Step program for procrastinators

2009-03-05T10:14:00.001-08:00

The Cult of Done Manifesto
There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
There is no editing stage.
Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
Once you’re done you can throw it away.
Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
Destruction is a variant of done.
If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
Done is the engine of more.

what will become of us?

2009-01-21T21:56:00.000-08:00

tonight i attended a short film series on the history of topanga canyon. the wistful pieces, mostly depicting brutally artistic souls in the throes of nostalgia, were a wire whisk in the stirrings of my soul.

a pied piper of a blonde ageless man, also present this night in the same pin-striped suit and feathered cap, spoke onscreen of time travel, his experiences with warhol, and true transcendence of the temporal. his pen and ink illustrated depictions of these esoteric concepts fluttered between frames of state-issued community bulldozing.

he struck me as a dying breed.

after, as i approached anastasia the filmmaker, full to bursting, as always, with another project i wanted to take on - the suggestion that we track down the neal young's, joni mitchell's, taj majal's and devendra's and garner the interest this project needs - the blonde man, similarly bursting, presented me with a list, hand-scrawled in red, of the musicians of that place, past and present.

He had the same idea. And it became despicably clear he was as overwhelmed by passion for the impossible as myself.
'I'm his squaw,' said a beautiful, pregnant woman, pushing me out of the room with her energy, and I felt ADD and silly and hate myself a little for having so much vision it veritably fetters me.

I ate a slice of apple and then I slipped away and drove up to Topanga and was happy to be home, even if that's what this rented hobbit-hole is for only a few more weeks.

2009-01-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

a very cool blog on the daily routines of creative people

Chris Ofili

"First, he tears a large sheet of paper, always the same size, into eight pieces, all about 6 by 9 inches. Then he loosens up with some pencil marks, “nothing statements, which have no function.”

James Thurber

"I never quite know when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, “Dammit, Thurber, stop writing.” She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, “Is he sick?” “No,” my wife says, “he’s writing something.”

Truman Capote

"I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.”

2009-01-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

I am here to rein in, harness and corral my thoughts into some potentially viable semblance of order. My New Year's Resolutions - essentially of working hard and being published and generally kicking ass, NOW - have already begun to gallop off without me. I feel like I'm bouncing along behind, one foot caught in the saddle, trying to protect myself from a buffeting of my own over-zealous creation.

I must remember that half the reason I've taken it so slow and easy the last few years was because I recognized my ability to get all nutso about goals at the expense of my peace of mind. Now is the time to find that productive middle-ground between self-indulgent laziness and fevered anxiety.

STRAYS: meeting with a William Morris agent this week, at my roommate's behest. I feel it's a little too early. I need to reapproach the whole concept before doing the rewrite. As of now, I am going to try to have that rewrite done in 3 weeks' time for my screenwriting class. I am reading 'flight of the conchords' episodes and the pilot for 'gossip girl' to get the creative juices flowing. I need to introduce 'more conflict' 'more reason to be invested in these characters' everyone advises. I want to be quirky and honest, yet mainstream and marketable. Possible? Unknown.

Meanwhile, will just meet this agent and have fun, with a goal of having an updated bible/treatment for him by end of week.

BRIDE OF CHRIST: literary agent is counting on something new from me by end of the month. This is going to have to wait until February. I am stewing with new ideas, though, and even looking online for fellowship/grant options, because if this thing is going to be any good, i need a lot of time and patience, still. And I think I need to write the whole damn thing, from my heart, rather than continue to try and write teaser-snippets to get that advance first. In my new voicing, i'm going for no passing of judgment and visual, tactile realness. Drop the sensationalism. Sorry, commercial world, and yes, I know, bad timing for artistic integrity in a dying industry. Oh well.

HIPSTER: what to do?! Maybe try to compile a pitch for it, and see if it sells with what i have. no time right now. would like to pull out some samples and send them around as short stories.

SHORT STORIES: wrote a good one over Xmas break. Am researching lit journals to submit it to, and have a feeling this one will be published within the next few months.

ARTICLES: wrote a self-introspection travel piece from my Xmas break journeys. Will be sending it off to various magazines today and tomorrow. Already got turned down by LA Times - they're not even buying freelance anymore! OMG! - and Sierra Magazine, although the editor at Sierra suggested I send in some column-type pieces for a new section called Ponder. Have to work on that by end of week.

and, as if I need more ... want to compile and reexamine my 'Big Ideas' document so I can put my best foot forward to this William Morris agent this week. and need I mention I have what amounts to almost a full-time job in entertainment marketing already? No problem!

2009

2009-01-05T11:29:00.000-08:00

This picture is in tribute to the owl that lives in a tree off my new Topanga porch, to the childhood memory of a rare great snowy white owl I once saw flying over Wisconsin woods, and to all the ancient forms - Greek, Roman, Celtic, Hinduism and Native American traditions - that hold owls as representative of spirituality and insight. I will be wise and rise above and continue to soar.

the blood of a poet

2008-12-12T18:14:00.000-08:00

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

Art is science made clear.

Tact is knowing how far to go too far.

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death. --cocteau

topanga tales

2008-12-12T13:25:00.000-08:00

*** UPDATE: I GOT THE PLACE! moving in for a month or two. ***

ah, life. a series of panic-stricken bumbles staccattoed by deep
breathing and occasional crescendos of conviction. at least that's what it feels like as i rampage from one impressively orchestrated distraction to another, accented by supporting choir, all in an attempt to keep the symphony's volume at thought-drowning level.

this is a very fancy, alliteration-filled run-on sentence (my favorite bad habits in writing) way of saying i've been procrastinating and hearing the tsk-tsking buzz of silence beneath all the clamor anyway.

i need to run away. i'm waiting to hear from a magical doppleganger i stumbled upon in topanga, as to whether or not she will sublet her hobbit-hole on a hill to me for 2 months for dirt cheap. i'll know on sunday, and if it works out, i expect to finish hipster by the beginning of february; just in time for the scheduled call with my agent that i have put off until then.

this is the place. too good to be true. WISH ME LUCK!!!

from my book hipster

2008-11-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

*
There is a place where dry, golden wheat crackles under the afternoon sun, and the muted fragrance of death, natural and sweet, abounds. A place where autumn soil is dry and caked but when you dig into it, with fingertips stubby from use, you find moisture, still, beneath the surface. Dark, rich and full of life.
When Joleen sucks the air in through her nostrils, so deep that she finds the space beneath the smog, she can freeze-frame this place, and keep it as hers, in the depths of an inner garden, where no one, not even It, with Its fears and doubts and trepidation, can tread.
It is not made for man with his trodding desires, it is a place solely bred for life-giving oxygen, and that is what she finds, that is what sustains her next step forward, when she breathes deep, deep, deep, puncturing the seams of sodden grey and into clean, clear white.

2008-11-24T16:06:00.000-08:00

somehow, this whiny little gem had snuck around dark corners of the book shelf until last night, when i finished it for the first time.

if i could write one book like this one - a gritty, sympathetic, unashamed meander into a troubled mind - i could hang up my red hunting hat.

i had a previous, flippant impression that holden caulfield was merely an unjustified chip on an innocent world's shoulder; maybe that was before i'd begun to discover the cracks in my own once-shinier veneer.

good job, j.d.

getting it together

2008-11-24T11:15:00.000-08:00

it's time to start focusing again. i burned myself out writing the pilot for strays, and have been over-indulging in pseudo-unnecessary chilltime. also, trying to get in a creative mode usually takes me all weekend after working in a corporate atmosphere, and then right when i feel those stirrings again, i come in on monday morning and have to brainstorm on things like how to make convenience store ampm's brand image more 'fun and irreverent' which throws me off all over again. i'm starting to question if i have the discipline necessary. but since depression is a side effect of unproductivity in my chosen passion, i have no choice but to get it together. this weekend's trip to lake arrowhead is my planned catalyst.

spinning in all directions

2008-10-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

good news! big gap between posts means I've been busy on actual work instead of ruminating on it.

-agent is calling me back again and likes the new bofc chapters. he's submitting to new editors.

-worked like, 14 14 hr. days on strays and hit the deadline for class. almost done with the pilot; will email them the rest.

-hipster continues to run thru my veins like bad blood. must bleed it out. soon. agent likes but warns, no one buys novels.

-short stories popping out at random intervals. they're so dark and pathetic that the strength and honesty just may shine thru and i think that's the lightest way to be.

reality check

2008-09-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

of course, there's the other side to all this wishy-swishing around through the warm bath water of lavender-scented indecision and frothy ideas.

they come in the form of texts from my friend at william morris who just went thru a writer's bootcamp for agents thing today, and is taking it out on me:

dude, there are too many writers with motivation making money. grow up or stop claiming ur a writer.

ouch, and then...

too harsh for u. i mean i'm bored of postive reinforcement.

ok! followed by...

i mean seriously? ull be procrastinating till ur 40.

i hope they told her to do this to writers or something. and...

the strays idea. how many years u had that stashed?

ok, fine. back to work.

post-materialism, the aesthete and style

2008-09-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

my mind is stewing these days with angles, edges, concepts and philosophies all converging aromatically like a big goo-ball at a reggae festival. which austere bun-lady over there would definitely not approve of my sampling.

i'm not sure where it's all going to end up, but i'm treading off into some social commentary land in my new novel, hipster. it's fun, a little daunting, and ultimately, very entertaining to live with ideas jostling through your veins like childhood building blocks.

Helpful Research Tool

2008-09-15T17:38:00.000-07:00

This is a great website for television screenwriters.

RIP - the author of 'The Infinite Jest'

2008-09-14T17:54:00.001-07:00

never surprises me when writers do this.

here's something he wrote in college:

You are the sickness yourself.... You realize all this...when you look at the black hole and it's wearing your face. That's when the Bad Thing just absolutely eats you up, or rather when you just eat yourself up. When you kill yourself. All this business about people committing suicide when they're "severely depressed;" we say, "Holy cow, we must do something to stop them from killing themselves!" That's wrong. Because all these people have, you see, by this time already killed themselves, where it really counts.... When they "commit suicide," they're just being orderly.

one-month strategic plan

2008-08-29T14:07:00.000-07:00

focusing is SO DAMN HARD. i spend more time coming up with new ideas and researching old ones, than actually working.

i need to make a rock-solid plan and then stick to it. darn, does that mean i have to right now? ok, here goes.

to do:

-rewrite bride of christ opening chapter. i'm told it needs to be 'more visual, more shocking.' bleh. the hardest thing is, i'm still struggling with the voice. do i want to be objective and narrative, or can i employ my snarky, holden caulfield voice at times too? then they'll tell me, 'less abrasive. we want to like the character more.' double bleh.
-plot out a STRAYS season, then write the pilot. SO MUCH WORK!!

-brainstorm a plot idea, then write a sample 'mad men' episode. that's how to break in, i always hear. copy an existing show to show your skills before you try to sell a new idea as a no-namer. plus, i've watched 17 or so episodes in the last few weeks. now's the time.

-write some short stories from my vast reprotire of undone ideas. submit them.

so. it's friday, August 29. i have a 3 day weekend. plan out a mad men story by tuesday morning; review the episodes and take notes on names and specific dialogue. research some early '60's demos. ooh! i have an idea! research when the feminist movement started; maybe draker's stay at home wife could have a run-in with some outspoken women and start to think outside the box! i like this!

ok. so start writing the episode two hours every night; have it done by october 1st. meanwhile, get up at 8am every day, and submit 2 short stories for publication by october 1st. and work on bride of christ two hours every day, after work; send three great chapters to my agent by mid-september.

whew! i need a cigarette break and, oh i know, this calls for...a random old typwriter posting!!

hint, hint to the universe

2008-08-25T17:59:00.001-07:00

this is my book wishlist right now.
i just ordered
no one belongs here more than you by miranda july. she lives in LA and her best friend is in my writing class. i wish i could be miranda's friend, too. she's out of control awesome.

UPDATE: 10/16

I ended up thumbing thru Dear Diary at the American Apparel warehouse downtown (long story) and it's pretty much lame, so never mind.

Also, I have jealousy issues with the author, who is my age, and just happened to have held on to her teenage years diary. Damn my parents and their irresponsible foreclosure while I lived on the other side of the country and couldn't save all my childhood stuff from being tossed in a dumpster, thereby prohibiting me from seamlessly squeezing my lemons into profitable lemonade, dammit!

Starting to write Short Stories

2008-08-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

i never got that genre .... all i can think in terms of are grand, swooping ideas that will take years to do and, suicide and psychosis narrowly avoided, win me a pulitzer at 50.

since i'm sick of waiting around for all that fun, i've decided to take the million or so crazy, weird stories already floating around in my head and compile a short story collection.

for inspiration i just amazoned elizabeth gilbert's (eat, pray, love) first book, Pilgrims. google says: A superior collection of stories about women who are as tough as they look, though perhaps not quite as tough as they think they are.

exactly where i'm coming from, and since i've had a lot of people randomly tell me that eat, pray, love makes them think of my writing, seems like a great author to observe. so far, the stories kick ass, and i already have a list of about 10 stories i want to write.

i can't wait to assault my agent with more unsold, dubious ideas.

STRAYS

2008-08-25T13:14:00.000-07:00

spent the weekend revamping a tv show i started creating last fall. can't BELIEVE it's almost been a year since i went back to it.
really loving living each moment fully these days. time flies, cliche, cliche, cliche, bla, bla, but it's SO true.

so STRAYS is a tv show about 4 young artists and their struggle to make it in LA. they're girls - an actress, writer, musician and costume designer who are best friends, and you guessed it, they live in venice beach! in two adjoining beach bungalows.
think entourage (without the success) meets sex and the city (younger, hotter, literally hungrier) meets californication (but better writing i hope) meets friends and seinfeld (without the comedy focus) meets (and here's where the dreams get big) sopranos, six feet under, and mad men (writing quality ;)

i've learned so much about dialogue and character development in the last year, through trial and error and observation, and i think this could be good.

my roommate works at william morris and wants to pitch it around.

it's so fun working on this, because every single moment is pretty much inspiration.

intro to the memoir

2008-08-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Dearest Author of Certain Renown:Sorry I've taken so long in getting back to you. I've read it; it's good, very good. Right on the money. You've nailed the narrative style for this sort of writing.My delay is that I'm taking the liberty of editing it a bit. As an editor I'm slow, very slow.Back to you soon,Peter

my mom's boyfriend Peter, an unemployed architect and yale graduate with time on his hands and literature in his soul, has offered to look at my latest 2 sample chapters for BRIDE OF CHRIST.

it's so good to have some help. i really respect his opinion.

a little background: Bride of Christ is my memoir. Although I've completed the original manuscript, the sample chapters provided to editors thru my agent have gone thru 4 edits. This fourth, i feel, is the one. I think I'm finally getting what they want across without compromising my integrity or losing my voice.

enjoy the cheesy yet perceivedly desirable sensationalist cover i made once upon a time.

i'm here to write

2008-08-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

I may not be very good at it, the publishers might want endless variations on something i invariably and belatedly realize was hopelessly wanting, but it is a saving grace, this writing, my soul's silver tongue that seeks solid ground after so much tossing in this flawed vessel.

two pieces of good news, soul. there's dramamine and the writing can only get better with time.

in this rampant, loveless city of perpetually youthful angels, the latter's reality is a rarity.

i'm working on a novel, a memoir, a script, and want to write more short stories. i also intend to regularly procrastinate by posting pictures of writerly things like this old typewriter advertisement.

and so the journey from optimistic novice to whiskey-drinking pessimist continues. may as well try and get published on the way.