Holy Books are never written for non-believers. It is presumed that, upon reading that god made the heavens and earth in six days, that the reader brings his or her faith to the text. The text does not carry power and influence on its own - it is our own thoughts that make the words sacred.
That is why, try as we might, we most often fail when we attempt to write things that others will embrace. We are so rarely enlightened. We do not seek enlightenment and so it does not occur. We may understand what the writer has written, we may even understand the writer's motives ... but how often do we allow ourselves to be swayed by the writer's passion?
I have been thinking upon Christmas, most expecially upon how the Christian view of the holiday retains its grip upon me, in spite of my non-belief these past twenty years. It feels, even now, that the holiday should be about so much more, though I know it is not. I am fixed by the passion I once had for the church, because once I did believe ... and that belief has somehow sustained itself for decades without being fed in the slightest way. Christmas, I guiltily accept, was always about the birth of Christ. And though I wish deeply that it was really the holiday Saturnalia, so that my mind might be free, I am plagued by this other, dead belief. When I do not hold the belief, I do not have Christmas in the sense that I once had it, in my youth, when it did seem to mean something.
It is not that I wish to reclaim my piety. It is only that I realize that Christmas is as dead for me as the religion itself - and that I am bitter that there is nothing at this season with which to replace it.
Each year, just the same, I try to establish new traditions, secular traditions, that will hold up year after year and make the season what it ought to be, again - a period of happiness, giving, celebration and playfulness. Each Christmas the task eludes me and each Christmas I ponder how it is that I cannot hit the mark.
This year I am thinking on the principle that Holy Books are written for believers. I am thinking that Christmas fails for me because I am the only one who sees Christmas as I do - that even my Mistress sees it differently, having her own past to bring to it. And I am realizing that what made Christmas special for me all those years ago was that everyone believed the same thing. Hundreds of people standing in the same church, with the same candles, singing the same hymns, holding the same surety that Christ was born to save themselves, and their friends, and me too ... and that I felt as they did. The mark of the holiday I do not hit is that so very little is shared.
And so what I mean about Holy Books is that they are meant to be shared experiences - read aloud, the words passed between believers, accepted jointly as truth and thus viewed with benign acceptance. I don't view books in that way. I am a hopeless old cynic and I rarely find anything in common with my fellow man - Holy Books and holidays, whomever they might be written for or made for, no longer seem to include me. I have long lived in exile.
What happens, then, when I try to write a Holy Book, something others might share or believe in? Why failure, absolutely. What else could it be? Why should any words of mind hold any person's faith that all the books that have been written that did not hold mine? Yet I cling to the impossible belief that they might, just as I cling to Christmas, the shadow of the truth that is nevertheless a comforting shadow.
I tell myself that there are books that right now DO hold my faith. That have taught me and led me in my thinking to the place I am - books that are sacred in my opinion. But all about me I watch these books dragged through the mud and the mire by others who don't seem to understand them, who miss the point, who fail to grasp their import or their influence - and I am forced to acknowledge that such books were never written for non-believers.
I sit down now, to write, trying to remember it. That if I should write anything that truly has meaning, it too will be dragged in its own pool of muck, whatever the quality. However good a writer I am, however improved I make myself, however hard I work to hammer out the rough edges of my work and make it accessible and understandable to the reader, it makes little difference. For it is less in my power to produce work of value than there is power in the reader to dismiss it out of hand, unread or miscomprehended. I never know which it is - did I fail as a writer, or has the reader failed as a reader? The responsibility rests with me - I have chosen to write. I have committed the sin first. But in writing I quest for a reader who can comprehend, to commiserate with, not upon the writing or its quality, but upon what I have written about. What is this truth I have hit upon and tried to describe? What does it mean to others?
I shall go on trying to write holy books. I shall hope that someday, many might embrace them, and come together on those ideas and hold them together ... and that being in a group like that I will feel a bit of the Christmasses I have missed these many years. It is a dream I have.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
The Epiphany
It surprises me that after so many years, and after so much thinking on the subject, I can still have a breakthrough. I can still discover something about myself, and about my motivations as a submissive, that has never occurred to me before. I did two weeks ago. I did in the middle of a session, as I laid on my chest, bound, in the middle of being whipped. Mentally, my mind opened wide. I am still reeling from it.
Half of me is at a loss at how to explain.
It's not an unusual thing to say that most men who participate as submissives, or who want to participate as submissives, don't understand why. It is a frustrating aspect of the lifestyle, since subjecting oneself to abuse is such an absurd thing, it almost certainly begs the question. Most neophytes or non-practicing persons will ask, given half the chance. And since I am the kind of person who will say it directly, given reason to believe it will be taken well, I've been asked the question a lot.
For years, the answer I've given hasn't been entirely satisfactory. It has, nevertheless, been the answer that I believed ... I've even written about it in this blog. That answer, to save both me and the gentle reader having to find the old post, is a pervasive feeling of guilt that I have had about being the person that I am. I'm uncompromising, arrogant, blunt, inconsiderate and at times frankly abusive ... behaviors which I demonstrate less and less as I get older, but which I possess within my own head when I am speaking to ordinary people. I am thinking, what a stupid thing to say; or, no wonder they don't get it. When I was young, I would say these things out loud, and would give reasons for them ... along with an argument to demonstrate exactly why I was right and exactly why they were wrong. This was bad enough when I was unable to convince the individual of my position - it was worse when I was able to accomplish my purpose.
I felt a reasonable guilt about this behavior. I did not feel that I was wrong; I did my best to have the answers I had from books that I'd read, experience that I'd had, evidence that I'd piled up over the years and so on. I may close my mouth now, and nod politely and say nothing, but the experience and the knowledge hasn't gone away. I still believe the things I believe - I just don't beat other people over the head with them. Well, not unless I feel the other person can take it.
When I would feel guilt, I would also feel a desire to compensate for this guilt ... and I believed that being a submissive was a sort of compensation. Knowing that I was making many people unhappy, and knowing that I was unrepentent about it, there was a certain release that came from being tied down and abused. I could reason with myself that it was compensation. Something in me, I thought, drove me to seek this compensation, which drove me to being a submissive.
I knew all along that there was a mild disconnect along the way. For example, I couldn't actually remember ever having felt 'guilty' just prior to sex. Except for a few, rare occasions, I never had the thought in my mind, "Wow, I was a real tit to that person ... I ought to go home, cower before my Mistress and get beaten for it." And really, for those few exceptions - I wanted abuse to be a compensation, but in fact, it wasn't.
When I was young, however, it seemed that my arrogance and my sexual appetite would go hand in hand. I was either highly desiring of both, or neither. Those were the days when I suspected myself of being manic-depressive. Now I think that any relationship between arrogance and sexual appetite were coincidental ... associated with my manic periods, such as they were. I don't think that periods of depression had anything to do with my sexual drive at all - but I did then. I used to think, I don't feel powerful, therefore I don't feel guilty, therefore I have no sex drive. It seemed to make sense to me. It doesn't seem to make sense to me now.
That is because these days I find that my feelings of depression or confidence have no influence on my sex drive, either way. Adding to that, since I've not struck out at anyone emotionally in many months, even given the opportunity, I have nothing in particular to feel guilty for. I don't tell people what to think ... except here online, where no one needs listen to me anyway. Moreover, the more arrogant I am in blogs, the more interested people tend to be. Where's the guilt in that?
These last months, I have had virtually nothing to do with anyone ... as I'm not working, and I'm not partying, and I'm not going out (no money), I am cut off from everyone except my Mistress. And I don't give her reason to be unhappy. So, no guilt. But plenty of sex drive. It has been an interesting six months.
For five years, I have puzzled over this. My actual potential for power and for threatening other people has been undermined by my largely solitary career, my age and my lack of association with stupid people (I had a great deal more opportunities in school and when I participated in the Arts). I once thought that, if given any real power, I'd abuse it. Good reason to be a submissive, to have a Mistress keep me down, to limit my opportunities.
But I'm an old, toothless bugger now. I don't need to be kept down.
Why am I still submissive?
The discord had occurred to me from time to time, but with no better answer than the one I've always given, I could offer no suggestion.
I can now. The scales have fallen from my eyes.
There is another emotional response to being an abusive sort of person, the kind of person I have been for years, that has nothing to do with guilt. From an outside perspective, however, it could seem like guilt. A professional Dominatrix, watching powerful, capable men crawl on the floor to her time and again, might come to the same conclusion that I did all these years, a conclusion suggested by a psychology text I read thirty years ago. A judge makes decisions about life and death, and feels guilty. A doctor finds the pressure of saving and not saving lives grows disinterested in people's lives, and feels guilty. Any pro-Domme can list off dozens of people like this, even hundreds, if she has had long experience in the industry. I've had a number of conversations with pro-Dommes about just this point - those conversations served to prop up my long-held belief in the aforegoing explanation.
Whatever explanation I might offer now cannot discount the evidence. I may not feel guilty now, but I believed once that I was guilty ... and many others would associate their submissive emotional position with guilt. I don't think that is something that can be disbelieved, or discounted. I think, truly, they do feel guilty.
But it is NOT guilt about what they do, or what they have done ... or even what they might do. It is not even guilt about who they are.
I am struggling to pick my words very carefully here, because what I have to say could be very easily misunderstood. I ask the gentle reader to resist coming to a conclusion yet ... I'm still fleshing out the circumstances.
Something that attends guilt in a person's mind is the firm, clear belief that they are a bad person. For someone like me, unrepentant, mentally abusive, that becomes a defining part of my character. I am not a good person.. I'm not quite as bad as a murderer, or a professional thief ... but I have committed theft when opportunities presented themselves and I haven't felt guilty. I'm really quite amazed, from time to time, about my lack of capacity for guilt. Or my lack of compacity for compassion. Oh, I don't wish for bad things to happen to people, but I'm often unaffected when they do. Much more unaffected than those around me. I won't go into that further than I have ... it's not important. Let's just take it as established that I have reason to believe that I am the bad guy.
This is something I live with. I keep it concealed, since I wish to retain the few friends that I have, and to retain a certain perception from the general community, but I don't lie to myself about it. When something bad happens to me, I'm not 'down on myself' like others - it isn't a confidence issue. There's a strong belief that I deserve what I get.
But a very strange transformation happens to me in a session, something I'd never identified before, but which is always there. It explains why BDSM has to be real for me. It explains why safe words and consensuality are things that I don't identify with the lifestyle. It explains why a Dominatrix has to make it hard, why it has to go for a long time, and why it can't be nurturing and compassionate. It explains why she herself has to be sadistic and cold ... the more ice cold and indifferent, the better.
You see, during a session with my Mistress, I am not the worst person in the room.
I'm not getting off because my decision-making capacity has been taken away from me, and I find bliss in not having to make decisions. It is because, during the abuse I experience, I get to be the victim. I get to be the innocent, blameless, unresponsible participant in the whole affair. This is a mental place which I cannot experience at any other time in my life. Whatever happens, it is somebody else's fault. They committed the crime, or the atrocity ... I am not guilty.
The prospect of not being guilty, without question not guilty, is so strong that it is enough to convince someone that what they felt before was guilt. Bondage sex is 'anti-guilt' ... everything else must be guilt. That is the framework in which I've operated for so long, but which has been blown apart.
I haven't felt guilty ... but I have longed, dearly, for guiltlessness.
How often has anyone felt truly blameless - for themselves, for what they've done, for what might be perceived - how often? Having given it much thought lately, I think a quest for the lack of guilt drives many of the emotional needs our society experiences. Going back to childhood, there is a certain emotional high that comes from knowing that someone else committed the crime, someone else is going to get blamed. I believe this need to identify someone else as the guilty party (thus making ourselves seem more innocent) is what drives the yellow media and the church, and even to some extent the complicated drug industry. "I'm not to blame, it's the pushers ..." or the bartender, or my boss, or my parents, or what have you.
I know who to blame in the middle of a session, as I'm lying on my belly, in pain, twisted and contorted with harnesses and straps, beaten, raped ... it's HER. It's that magnificent creature who has decided to be guilty in this substrata of human existence. The nastier she is, the more she laughs, the more she vindictively pursues her fascination with my misery, the more completely innocent I become.
What a place to be. No wonder many Dommes can't give it up, insisting that they are switches. I myself understand at last why I don't want a session to end. I don't care how much it hurts. I don't care how debased I am. I'm a victim. Don't we, in this culture, sanctify victims? I want to be sanctified. I want my Mistress to baptise me again and again.
And it makes me wonder; could that be why so many Dommes, who can't embrace the pleasure of criminality, feel perpetually that they must soften their power and make it about nurturing the submissive? I think it must be so. It is worth a blog post in itself, but I don't know if I'm in a position to say anything about it.
Half of me is at a loss at how to explain.
It's not an unusual thing to say that most men who participate as submissives, or who want to participate as submissives, don't understand why. It is a frustrating aspect of the lifestyle, since subjecting oneself to abuse is such an absurd thing, it almost certainly begs the question. Most neophytes or non-practicing persons will ask, given half the chance. And since I am the kind of person who will say it directly, given reason to believe it will be taken well, I've been asked the question a lot.
For years, the answer I've given hasn't been entirely satisfactory. It has, nevertheless, been the answer that I believed ... I've even written about it in this blog. That answer, to save both me and the gentle reader having to find the old post, is a pervasive feeling of guilt that I have had about being the person that I am. I'm uncompromising, arrogant, blunt, inconsiderate and at times frankly abusive ... behaviors which I demonstrate less and less as I get older, but which I possess within my own head when I am speaking to ordinary people. I am thinking, what a stupid thing to say; or, no wonder they don't get it. When I was young, I would say these things out loud, and would give reasons for them ... along with an argument to demonstrate exactly why I was right and exactly why they were wrong. This was bad enough when I was unable to convince the individual of my position - it was worse when I was able to accomplish my purpose.
I felt a reasonable guilt about this behavior. I did not feel that I was wrong; I did my best to have the answers I had from books that I'd read, experience that I'd had, evidence that I'd piled up over the years and so on. I may close my mouth now, and nod politely and say nothing, but the experience and the knowledge hasn't gone away. I still believe the things I believe - I just don't beat other people over the head with them. Well, not unless I feel the other person can take it.
When I would feel guilt, I would also feel a desire to compensate for this guilt ... and I believed that being a submissive was a sort of compensation. Knowing that I was making many people unhappy, and knowing that I was unrepentent about it, there was a certain release that came from being tied down and abused. I could reason with myself that it was compensation. Something in me, I thought, drove me to seek this compensation, which drove me to being a submissive.
I knew all along that there was a mild disconnect along the way. For example, I couldn't actually remember ever having felt 'guilty' just prior to sex. Except for a few, rare occasions, I never had the thought in my mind, "Wow, I was a real tit to that person ... I ought to go home, cower before my Mistress and get beaten for it." And really, for those few exceptions - I wanted abuse to be a compensation, but in fact, it wasn't.
When I was young, however, it seemed that my arrogance and my sexual appetite would go hand in hand. I was either highly desiring of both, or neither. Those were the days when I suspected myself of being manic-depressive. Now I think that any relationship between arrogance and sexual appetite were coincidental ... associated with my manic periods, such as they were. I don't think that periods of depression had anything to do with my sexual drive at all - but I did then. I used to think, I don't feel powerful, therefore I don't feel guilty, therefore I have no sex drive. It seemed to make sense to me. It doesn't seem to make sense to me now.
That is because these days I find that my feelings of depression or confidence have no influence on my sex drive, either way. Adding to that, since I've not struck out at anyone emotionally in many months, even given the opportunity, I have nothing in particular to feel guilty for. I don't tell people what to think ... except here online, where no one needs listen to me anyway. Moreover, the more arrogant I am in blogs, the more interested people tend to be. Where's the guilt in that?
These last months, I have had virtually nothing to do with anyone ... as I'm not working, and I'm not partying, and I'm not going out (no money), I am cut off from everyone except my Mistress. And I don't give her reason to be unhappy. So, no guilt. But plenty of sex drive. It has been an interesting six months.
For five years, I have puzzled over this. My actual potential for power and for threatening other people has been undermined by my largely solitary career, my age and my lack of association with stupid people (I had a great deal more opportunities in school and when I participated in the Arts). I once thought that, if given any real power, I'd abuse it. Good reason to be a submissive, to have a Mistress keep me down, to limit my opportunities.
But I'm an old, toothless bugger now. I don't need to be kept down.
Why am I still submissive?
The discord had occurred to me from time to time, but with no better answer than the one I've always given, I could offer no suggestion.
I can now. The scales have fallen from my eyes.
There is another emotional response to being an abusive sort of person, the kind of person I have been for years, that has nothing to do with guilt. From an outside perspective, however, it could seem like guilt. A professional Dominatrix, watching powerful, capable men crawl on the floor to her time and again, might come to the same conclusion that I did all these years, a conclusion suggested by a psychology text I read thirty years ago. A judge makes decisions about life and death, and feels guilty. A doctor finds the pressure of saving and not saving lives grows disinterested in people's lives, and feels guilty. Any pro-Domme can list off dozens of people like this, even hundreds, if she has had long experience in the industry. I've had a number of conversations with pro-Dommes about just this point - those conversations served to prop up my long-held belief in the aforegoing explanation.
Whatever explanation I might offer now cannot discount the evidence. I may not feel guilty now, but I believed once that I was guilty ... and many others would associate their submissive emotional position with guilt. I don't think that is something that can be disbelieved, or discounted. I think, truly, they do feel guilty.
But it is NOT guilt about what they do, or what they have done ... or even what they might do. It is not even guilt about who they are.
I am struggling to pick my words very carefully here, because what I have to say could be very easily misunderstood. I ask the gentle reader to resist coming to a conclusion yet ... I'm still fleshing out the circumstances.
Something that attends guilt in a person's mind is the firm, clear belief that they are a bad person. For someone like me, unrepentant, mentally abusive, that becomes a defining part of my character. I am not a good person.. I'm not quite as bad as a murderer, or a professional thief ... but I have committed theft when opportunities presented themselves and I haven't felt guilty. I'm really quite amazed, from time to time, about my lack of capacity for guilt. Or my lack of compacity for compassion. Oh, I don't wish for bad things to happen to people, but I'm often unaffected when they do. Much more unaffected than those around me. I won't go into that further than I have ... it's not important. Let's just take it as established that I have reason to believe that I am the bad guy.
This is something I live with. I keep it concealed, since I wish to retain the few friends that I have, and to retain a certain perception from the general community, but I don't lie to myself about it. When something bad happens to me, I'm not 'down on myself' like others - it isn't a confidence issue. There's a strong belief that I deserve what I get.
But a very strange transformation happens to me in a session, something I'd never identified before, but which is always there. It explains why BDSM has to be real for me. It explains why safe words and consensuality are things that I don't identify with the lifestyle. It explains why a Dominatrix has to make it hard, why it has to go for a long time, and why it can't be nurturing and compassionate. It explains why she herself has to be sadistic and cold ... the more ice cold and indifferent, the better.
You see, during a session with my Mistress, I am not the worst person in the room.
I'm not getting off because my decision-making capacity has been taken away from me, and I find bliss in not having to make decisions. It is because, during the abuse I experience, I get to be the victim. I get to be the innocent, blameless, unresponsible participant in the whole affair. This is a mental place which I cannot experience at any other time in my life. Whatever happens, it is somebody else's fault. They committed the crime, or the atrocity ... I am not guilty.
The prospect of not being guilty, without question not guilty, is so strong that it is enough to convince someone that what they felt before was guilt. Bondage sex is 'anti-guilt' ... everything else must be guilt. That is the framework in which I've operated for so long, but which has been blown apart.
I haven't felt guilty ... but I have longed, dearly, for guiltlessness.
How often has anyone felt truly blameless - for themselves, for what they've done, for what might be perceived - how often? Having given it much thought lately, I think a quest for the lack of guilt drives many of the emotional needs our society experiences. Going back to childhood, there is a certain emotional high that comes from knowing that someone else committed the crime, someone else is going to get blamed. I believe this need to identify someone else as the guilty party (thus making ourselves seem more innocent) is what drives the yellow media and the church, and even to some extent the complicated drug industry. "I'm not to blame, it's the pushers ..." or the bartender, or my boss, or my parents, or what have you.
I know who to blame in the middle of a session, as I'm lying on my belly, in pain, twisted and contorted with harnesses and straps, beaten, raped ... it's HER. It's that magnificent creature who has decided to be guilty in this substrata of human existence. The nastier she is, the more she laughs, the more she vindictively pursues her fascination with my misery, the more completely innocent I become.
What a place to be. No wonder many Dommes can't give it up, insisting that they are switches. I myself understand at last why I don't want a session to end. I don't care how much it hurts. I don't care how debased I am. I'm a victim. Don't we, in this culture, sanctify victims? I want to be sanctified. I want my Mistress to baptise me again and again.
And it makes me wonder; could that be why so many Dommes, who can't embrace the pleasure of criminality, feel perpetually that they must soften their power and make it about nurturing the submissive? I think it must be so. It is worth a blog post in itself, but I don't know if I'm in a position to say anything about it.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Perspective Suspect
I may have a job. There are some hoops to jump through first, and I'm not counting my chickens. In light of this, however, it seems providential to talk about things other than myself.
I have watched a steady stream of nonsense go by the board this fall, and I don't know what to make of it ... only that more than any other time in my life, the world seems less competant than ever to manage the tiniest detail.
More troops in Afghanistan? Clearly, not to accomplish any purpose except to expend ammunition and wreck military equipment. People cry everytime someone gets killed there. If it were a war - an actual war - there would be battles of some kind, in which hundreds, even thousands of soldiers would be killed in a day or two. And people would want it to be over. Instead, technology has created a sort of weird attrition where humans die in comparatively small numbers (one every few days), while equipment is massacred.
H1N1. The swine flu. After months and months of terrifying news stories, I'm finally acquainted with a victim. I met El only a few times. He was 36 years old and overweight. When he contracted the flu, I am told it was nothing special. That he told a friend he planned to take some NyQuil, get some sleep, and feel ready to start work the next day.
Two days later, his friends broke into his apartment and found El's body. They called the authorities, who saw to it than an autopsy was performed on the body to see if foul play was involved - which it wasn't. As it happens, a side-effect of NyQuil is that, while it does render the user unconscious, it also speeds up the heart. El's weight, along with the virus, couldn't take it. The medical examiner reckoned that the heart attack El had did not wake him up.
I've never heard a news story linking cough medications to dangerous results - I have heard a lot of stories, here in Canada, about incomprehensibly incompetent government agencies set up to distribute shots to the public. We're past most of that now. The government got its act together. But it was a real shit show there for awhile.
I'm not afraid I'm going to catch the bug; I do wonder whose making decisions about how the information gets to the public. I wonder if anyone is.
It just seems, lately, that stupidity is ruling the day. And that no matter how many times the government gets caught with its pants down, it keeps going forward with Afghanistan, with health care legislation that's expensive and not expected to work, with climate change conferences that aren't expected to change anything, and so on and so forth ... just a big circus with clowns. I've been trying to remember the last time there was any effective legislation passed by my government. Or the last time an emergency was managed. Or the last time a definite decision was made on foreign policy that wasn't put off three years, and didn't begin with loading soldiers onto planes.
Feels like its been a long time. I wonder if it's just ... nostalgia. I wonder if it hasn't been this way all along, and I'm just noticing now. Maybe I haven't been paying attention. Maybe now that I am, it only seems a moronic dumbshow. Maybe this is normal, and I've never really known what normal was before.
Will it get worse, or is it my age? Funny thing, age. I think I age faster than the world does, and I think it makes my perspective suspect. Would I sweat if I were twenty? Or would I think, as I did when I was twenty, that it could all be solved.
There's no way to know.
I have watched a steady stream of nonsense go by the board this fall, and I don't know what to make of it ... only that more than any other time in my life, the world seems less competant than ever to manage the tiniest detail.
More troops in Afghanistan? Clearly, not to accomplish any purpose except to expend ammunition and wreck military equipment. People cry everytime someone gets killed there. If it were a war - an actual war - there would be battles of some kind, in which hundreds, even thousands of soldiers would be killed in a day or two. And people would want it to be over. Instead, technology has created a sort of weird attrition where humans die in comparatively small numbers (one every few days), while equipment is massacred.
H1N1. The swine flu. After months and months of terrifying news stories, I'm finally acquainted with a victim. I met El only a few times. He was 36 years old and overweight. When he contracted the flu, I am told it was nothing special. That he told a friend he planned to take some NyQuil, get some sleep, and feel ready to start work the next day.
Two days later, his friends broke into his apartment and found El's body. They called the authorities, who saw to it than an autopsy was performed on the body to see if foul play was involved - which it wasn't. As it happens, a side-effect of NyQuil is that, while it does render the user unconscious, it also speeds up the heart. El's weight, along with the virus, couldn't take it. The medical examiner reckoned that the heart attack El had did not wake him up.
I've never heard a news story linking cough medications to dangerous results - I have heard a lot of stories, here in Canada, about incomprehensibly incompetent government agencies set up to distribute shots to the public. We're past most of that now. The government got its act together. But it was a real shit show there for awhile.
I'm not afraid I'm going to catch the bug; I do wonder whose making decisions about how the information gets to the public. I wonder if anyone is.
It just seems, lately, that stupidity is ruling the day. And that no matter how many times the government gets caught with its pants down, it keeps going forward with Afghanistan, with health care legislation that's expensive and not expected to work, with climate change conferences that aren't expected to change anything, and so on and so forth ... just a big circus with clowns. I've been trying to remember the last time there was any effective legislation passed by my government. Or the last time an emergency was managed. Or the last time a definite decision was made on foreign policy that wasn't put off three years, and didn't begin with loading soldiers onto planes.
Feels like its been a long time. I wonder if it's just ... nostalgia. I wonder if it hasn't been this way all along, and I'm just noticing now. Maybe I haven't been paying attention. Maybe now that I am, it only seems a moronic dumbshow. Maybe this is normal, and I've never really known what normal was before.
Will it get worse, or is it my age? Funny thing, age. I think I age faster than the world does, and I think it makes my perspective suspect. Would I sweat if I were twenty? Or would I think, as I did when I was twenty, that it could all be solved.
There's no way to know.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Doldrums
Those who know me, who have chosen to search for me these past two months, are well aware that I have not disappeared. I have worked and written excessively on other blogs, linked obliquely to this one, specifically those related to the playing of Dungeons and Dragons. On those blogs I receive quite a lot of feedback, and recognition enough to make my head swell ... while on this blog, writing the things I have written in this blog, I have churned away in something like obscurity. For what I have written here, I have gained one good friend, and nothing in the way of notariety. My head, admittedly, has been turned. I enjoy comments, both good and bad, and when I write of D&D they arrive by the sackful.
Still, this lonely little blog is more of me than anything I might write about a game. And though I have written nothing here in a long time, this is less reflective of my interest in those things contained previously in the blog that it is my interest in myself. I have not held great interest in myself of late. I have written a good book, which may or may not get any institutional attention. I have been out of work, out of luck, low on funds and lower still on the bread of life - there have been only crusts these past six months. In this I vary little from my fellows, if the news is believed ... but where my friends six months ago were in my boat, their lives seem to have adjusted themselves and I now sail alone. I alone do not work, cannot find work, cannot lift myself from this doldrum and find a breeze to move me anywhere. I am frustrated and angry and despondent, and this makes poor progress on a blog describing, well, anything.
I am an arrogant bastard, and I write arrogantly. It seems the height of foolishness to do so now, where work of every kind, that once came from many directions, has flown off and left me like an Ancient Mariner upon the swell. My fingers, not my tongue, have swollen; they have not felt duty bound to write. Until this weight drops off, I do not know when they will again.
I am the same person, and I have not been heaved up by a petard of my own making. My co-workers have the same respect for me, as it was not any of us that destroyed the magazine that sustained us, but rather all of us in choosing this profession. Those co-workers of mine who are working have gotten out of it. Those who remain in it are not working. They are in their own solitary boats, scattered about the latitudes. I can call them for solace but I cannot call them for work.
So I live each day. I write, I create, I search. I wait for the winds to pick up. I worry that the stores will not hold up, that the stale air will not loose it grip upon my vessel before the last keg is broken into and the last crate pulled apart.
In short, I have nothing to say here. Domination and submission will go on, I think, without my contribution; the political climate of the country will devolve and degrade with my silence; stupidity will arise without notice here. Not as long as I continue in this mood, this unremitting anger that taints every conceived opinion that might possess me.
But this blog is not dead. And won't be, until I am.
Still, this lonely little blog is more of me than anything I might write about a game. And though I have written nothing here in a long time, this is less reflective of my interest in those things contained previously in the blog that it is my interest in myself. I have not held great interest in myself of late. I have written a good book, which may or may not get any institutional attention. I have been out of work, out of luck, low on funds and lower still on the bread of life - there have been only crusts these past six months. In this I vary little from my fellows, if the news is believed ... but where my friends six months ago were in my boat, their lives seem to have adjusted themselves and I now sail alone. I alone do not work, cannot find work, cannot lift myself from this doldrum and find a breeze to move me anywhere. I am frustrated and angry and despondent, and this makes poor progress on a blog describing, well, anything.
I am an arrogant bastard, and I write arrogantly. It seems the height of foolishness to do so now, where work of every kind, that once came from many directions, has flown off and left me like an Ancient Mariner upon the swell. My fingers, not my tongue, have swollen; they have not felt duty bound to write. Until this weight drops off, I do not know when they will again.
I am the same person, and I have not been heaved up by a petard of my own making. My co-workers have the same respect for me, as it was not any of us that destroyed the magazine that sustained us, but rather all of us in choosing this profession. Those co-workers of mine who are working have gotten out of it. Those who remain in it are not working. They are in their own solitary boats, scattered about the latitudes. I can call them for solace but I cannot call them for work.
So I live each day. I write, I create, I search. I wait for the winds to pick up. I worry that the stores will not hold up, that the stale air will not loose it grip upon my vessel before the last keg is broken into and the last crate pulled apart.
In short, I have nothing to say here. Domination and submission will go on, I think, without my contribution; the political climate of the country will devolve and degrade with my silence; stupidity will arise without notice here. Not as long as I continue in this mood, this unremitting anger that taints every conceived opinion that might possess me.
But this blog is not dead. And won't be, until I am.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Completely Finished
The final aspects of research and editing are done now, as of today, and I am now officially ‘abandoning’ the work. I tell you honestly that I could sit down and do another edit from beginning to end and the book would marginally change as I did. An occasional paragraph would be shortened, a bit of description added here or there, a change in the language ... I’m never entirely happy with my work and I could hack at it endlessly.
Repeated editing ends with the character’s voices getting changed, bit by bit, with ‘grammatical’ alterations – particularly the narrator’s, and I don’t want that. So I have to leave it be. No doubt there is the occasional spelling error, a word doubled somewhere in the text or such ... just the nature of the beast. Given that virtually every such example of this has been found and fixed, unless there’s a glaring error in the first page, I’m not overly worried about it.
Getting upset by that sort of thing can delay and delay the distribution of a book – so at this point, even if someone found a typo on page 3, I would ignore it. The work is abandoned. Time to move on.
I have received kind and useful advice from a variety of sources, and I am ready to move forward into the next stage. This will involve producing a number of full manuscripts which will be sent to bonded, reputable agents, all of which reside on the East Coast. This is a long shot – it is very difficult to get the interest of an agent in a new novel; I can only hope that my previous track record as a published author and the quality of the work will gain some interest. I don’t, however, have much hope.
Nevertheless – and this is an important point. An agent is the big time. Every other course, other than an agent, means effectively that the work will never make me the income which will enable me to work exclusively as a writer, full-time. Finding an agent gets me onto the list of significant publishers, those who will not accept work from unsolicited authors, and it is only those publishers who can produce the kind of stock enabling me to imaginatively get on a best seller’s list. Therefore, whatever the cost of three or four dozen manuscripts, it does not make sense to ignore this step only because it is unlikely. Whereas I know that many authors get trapped by false agents who fail to do anything, I do know how to avoid these pitfalls; there are in the world, writer’s unions. Reputable writer’s unions – those which have been around for five or ten decades – usually list agents which have long standing legal reputations. It is foolhardy to speak with any other kind of writer’s agent. Generally, one does not need to be part of a union to contact an agent. It is assumed that once contracted, you’ll be happy to join the union. And you know what? I will.
Moreover, if it does happen that I must then move from the agent to the publisher on my own, and the book gets some limited notice, it may happen that a previously contacted agent will put two-and-two together. This is also extremely unlikely. That doesn’t worry me much. I understand that people buy lottery tickets. My odds are considerably better than theirs.
So here I am. Book finished, agents about to be contacted.
I might actually get time to write about other things.
Repeated editing ends with the character’s voices getting changed, bit by bit, with ‘grammatical’ alterations – particularly the narrator’s, and I don’t want that. So I have to leave it be. No doubt there is the occasional spelling error, a word doubled somewhere in the text or such ... just the nature of the beast. Given that virtually every such example of this has been found and fixed, unless there’s a glaring error in the first page, I’m not overly worried about it.
Getting upset by that sort of thing can delay and delay the distribution of a book – so at this point, even if someone found a typo on page 3, I would ignore it. The work is abandoned. Time to move on.
I have received kind and useful advice from a variety of sources, and I am ready to move forward into the next stage. This will involve producing a number of full manuscripts which will be sent to bonded, reputable agents, all of which reside on the East Coast. This is a long shot – it is very difficult to get the interest of an agent in a new novel; I can only hope that my previous track record as a published author and the quality of the work will gain some interest. I don’t, however, have much hope.
Nevertheless – and this is an important point. An agent is the big time. Every other course, other than an agent, means effectively that the work will never make me the income which will enable me to work exclusively as a writer, full-time. Finding an agent gets me onto the list of significant publishers, those who will not accept work from unsolicited authors, and it is only those publishers who can produce the kind of stock enabling me to imaginatively get on a best seller’s list. Therefore, whatever the cost of three or four dozen manuscripts, it does not make sense to ignore this step only because it is unlikely. Whereas I know that many authors get trapped by false agents who fail to do anything, I do know how to avoid these pitfalls; there are in the world, writer’s unions. Reputable writer’s unions – those which have been around for five or ten decades – usually list agents which have long standing legal reputations. It is foolhardy to speak with any other kind of writer’s agent. Generally, one does not need to be part of a union to contact an agent. It is assumed that once contracted, you’ll be happy to join the union. And you know what? I will.
Moreover, if it does happen that I must then move from the agent to the publisher on my own, and the book gets some limited notice, it may happen that a previously contacted agent will put two-and-two together. This is also extremely unlikely. That doesn’t worry me much. I understand that people buy lottery tickets. My odds are considerably better than theirs.
So here I am. Book finished, agents about to be contacted.
I might actually get time to write about other things.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Through It
At last. Goddamn, I have made it through reading and editing the book, which was done twice from beginning to end. I find it interesting that the story is 3,500 words longer than when I started, but it is still tighter and flows very well now. I got to the end, the second time, just minutes before posting here, so I have a record of when.
I really doubted getting to this point.
I have still, regretfully, some technical issues that need researching, but that shouldn't take more than a day, perhaps two.
Best novel I've written. No doubt about that.
I really doubted getting to this point.
I have still, regretfully, some technical issues that need researching, but that shouldn't take more than a day, perhaps two.
Best novel I've written. No doubt about that.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
It Hurts
I know it has been more than a week, and that my last post was a bit down. This one isn't likely to be better. My head is rotting from within and the book is yet 89 pages from being finished.
It now runs about 70,000 words. It gets a little longer each week. The process demands that I work my way through each chapter twice, as the changes I make the first time through tend to demand further changes when I read it again, days later. That is one reason why this is taking so long. The other reason I covered in the last post.
Yesterday was my birthday, a very typical time for me to feel suddenly zestful about writing. Today I did apply myself. But the reality is that even when I am in the mood to work and work, three or four continuous hours to patiently work my way through only twenty pages tends to exhaust the hell out of me. My head gets foggy and I feel the need to abandon the work for something more straightforward and less reflective on my inner value as a person.
I have always said that writing is very much like beating one's head on a brick wall. The wall never falls down, you get bloody and it only feels good when you stop. Anyone who tells you they love to write has issues. They aren't tasking themselves, they're not ripping out their own guts and you can count on their material being quite bloodless.
Which describes, for me, most everything that has won a literary award in the past three decades.
But what the hell do I know? I haven't published a book yet.
Anyway, I'm safe and there's nothing to worry about. It's just the state of mind I'm in right now. I'll be better when it's done.
It now runs about 70,000 words. It gets a little longer each week. The process demands that I work my way through each chapter twice, as the changes I make the first time through tend to demand further changes when I read it again, days later. That is one reason why this is taking so long. The other reason I covered in the last post.
Yesterday was my birthday, a very typical time for me to feel suddenly zestful about writing. Today I did apply myself. But the reality is that even when I am in the mood to work and work, three or four continuous hours to patiently work my way through only twenty pages tends to exhaust the hell out of me. My head gets foggy and I feel the need to abandon the work for something more straightforward and less reflective on my inner value as a person.
I have always said that writing is very much like beating one's head on a brick wall. The wall never falls down, you get bloody and it only feels good when you stop. Anyone who tells you they love to write has issues. They aren't tasking themselves, they're not ripping out their own guts and you can count on their material being quite bloodless.
Which describes, for me, most everything that has won a literary award in the past three decades.
But what the hell do I know? I haven't published a book yet.
Anyway, I'm safe and there's nothing to worry about. It's just the state of mind I'm in right now. I'll be better when it's done.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
