1. An enchanted rabbit farm in Utah.
2. The wilderness men of the Rockies who gave me the muzzle-loading rifle I now keep on display.
3. Or the time my sister, cousin, and I followed a sand partch through two miles of Florida jungle to the ocean. We were given strict orders not to go in, but we did. We couldn’t help ourselves. We played in 40 degree water for as long as little children could stand and then tried to walk the two miles back at late dusk. It’d been my first taste of death.

I can’t help but give in to work, writing stories. It’s a compulsion. Somewhere between temporal-lobe epilepsy and hypergraphia. And I figure since I was raised in a city of women the language center of my brain just throbs all day and I’ve adapted. Call it Addison’s diease. Which is a way of saying Adam’s disease. Wich is a way of saying cursed. Mortally cursed to wander and report, unable to find peace until I learn to organize my life and work and spin this pile of straw into gold. Mixing metaphorically.

Flipping through the pages and looking at how the each month is arranged–based on the internationally accepted civil calendar, the Gregorian calendar–I wondered how we settled on the design and arrangement of this tool we all take for granted and which plays such a significant role it plays in our life, our cultural perceptions, and how it dictates the way we interact with one another.

(Watch this)

One of our most significant advances as a species (as significant as discovering fire) was the moment we became aware of time, and more specifically the passage of time. That’s when our collective memory began. A flash and insight. In that moment we became aware of our mortality, an event in itself gave rise to art and civilization. We measured time in the cosmos. And everything about our existence then was reflected in the heavens. This gave rise to myth, religion, science, which in turn required language founded on symbol, utility, and complex forms of socialization. And all it took was a little advance planning.

So, there’s this rectangular sheet of paper hanging on my wall–a meditative Japenese Garden on a rainy day in one hemisphere and a 7×5 matrix in the other. The design is basic, strictly functional. Since the 24th of February 1582, we’ve used the same calendar, which is now accepted as standard throughout the world. Overcoming language, religious, philosophical, and political boundaries. But I’d never given it that much thought and have always just accepted the fact that we knew what we were doing with this thing. Obviously it’s not hanging there for decoration.

Then I’d remembered reading somewhere that Wittgenstein had arranged his Tractatus from a 7×7 matrix (with forty-nine main propositions). And even if we’re not consciously aware of how Wittgenstein has redefined the Western cultural perception, his ideas (as a whole) have influenced how we understand language, psychology, and social interaction. Or so I’ve been told. As with Eistein’s theories of relativity, only about 50 people in the world really understand it. And I think the same may hold true for Wittgenstein…though the number is probably less than 50.

How much of our cultural depends on these utilities, these easily transmitted precepts of memetic information? And that’s when I had the idea: a plot matrix.

Don’t worry, though–it’s not all good news. The American Empire is in its final death throes after the worst economic depression since the ‘29 crash. The apocalypse came when we weren’t looking and we missed the rapture. I’m more content to stay at home with a good book–Bolano’s ‘By Night in Chile’ maybe, or Nabokov’s premier. Or, there’s always sexting. Skyping, or whateverthefuck.

We’re all fucked up in our own, special way(s). So don’t blame me if I smell like weed and cheap cologne and dress like an anoxeric teenage girl who just climbed out of a hobo shanty–I haven nothing but love for you. All of you. Even if you are all a bunch of twittering Yahoos. Go out, get your freak on. Just don’t cut off my balls.

 And so it goes…

Frankl would say suffering ceases to be suffering once we define it. Kubrick would say we must come to terms with nature’s indifference. Schopenhauer might say that it doesn’t really matter either way, because the world will carry on with or without you. House would say living sucks only marginally less than dying.

But, I remain the eternal optimist. This is the best of all possible worlds. Truth is beauty; life is suffering. Let’s go eat some worms.

Spent morning updating, checking e-mail, sketching and writing. Over the past couple of days I’ve realized how important setting priorities might be if I hope to get through the mass of work I’ve created for myself. First off, and what I worked on for part one was the massive revision of TVT, which is now called Queenstown and designed around a central plot structure–however loose the structure–and am editing the stories to fit. TVT is too scattered, too much of a collage. My goal is to repackage it, resell it for reprint as a new title. I don’t know.

So, thought I’d end with a few videos to start off The Day, part two:

 Still haven’t heard this album in its entirity…but the video is hardcore.

And how do you feel about this Levis Jeans commercial?

The lit scene in Austin is progressing slowly thanks to the dilligence of a few flame barers. Between the Ransom Center archives and BookPeople and TSU’s library archives, I’ve seen in person writers like Denis Johnson, Jonathan Lethem, William T. Vollmann, Sarah Vowel, etc. etc. and have seen up close original material from Baudelaire to Stoppard, Beckett to Mailer, DeLillo, McCarthy, Faulkner, the Kerouac Scroll–all that good stuff we writers sluff off like dead skin cells. It’s been a better education than I could have ever wanted, but doesn’t much help feed the moths in bank account.

Thought you might like that.

Recently we informed you that we were raising our Overdraft Fee and Return Fee to $39. After careful consideration of the many factors “currently impacting” the economy, our business and our customers, we have decided to leave our Overdraft and Return fee at $38.73 per item.

_______

Because We Care!

It occurred to me yesterday that the difference between a career and a job is a cash register. If you handle money, you have a job; if you manage accounts, you have a career. I…have a job, and not a good one. I’ve been perfectly content these past six months working in a stock room, breaking down pallets. I don’t need to count and handle money to be happy. Ya know. But sometimes life isn’t fair. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. All that I ask is when they crucify me for fucking up that you speak well of me at my graveside.

“Take a ride through.”

“Ride through. On what?”

“East. Elmshire. Provost. Take your pick.”

“There is no East side.”

“Fucking dead ends. Nothing on this guy. Address undetermined. No numbers, I.D. Nothing. Who the fuck is this kid? Shows up in a tank, after a fire? One of two survivors, and he’s a nobody. Doesn’t exist. Or, at least he did until he walked out the goddamn front door. He’s a sketchy frame from a ten year old camera pointed in the wrong direction.”

“Man, that was eight years ago. I went through those files…and believe me there was a shit ton of paperwork—I went through the bulk of those files and still don’t remember everything. I’m not going to remember everything.”

“About your old crew.”

“What about them?”

“It never comes up?”

“Never comes up.”

“You don’t think about the case?”

“Not one day. Not until this prick started setting fires. I mean…. ”

“What about the guys, though? Anyone you think might’ve botched the evidence?”

“The hell you talking about?”

“Who ran the detail?”

“Mercer. Chang. If anyone could botch even a pot of coffee it was that douche bag. But we didn’t let him anywhere near the evidence. Chang was just a punter, some asshole to push papers. Gra—”

“Jim Grady.”

“…Grady was a real cop. Bled blue. Blakley ran—he was the patron saint of good detective work—ran the case like you’ve never seen. Sully. Ronald “Butternuts” was a slop. Guy drank more than I did there close to the end. Fucking screwed his wife and kids with his pension, getting axed like that.”

“I heard about that. Two, three years ago.”

“We ran that detail hard, like pros. And Blakley shut it down, man. I tell you what, I couldn’t’ve held it together the way the he did. Reid’s good and all, but his prick doesn’t measure to Blakley’s. They were all good cops.”

“And you got the guy?”

“You think we didn’t? … You think we didn’t. That we just posted some fuck on a life sentence. Think where your loyalties are before you start throwing shit.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not questioning loyalties. I’m saying…”

“That what? The guy was known. We made him. Caught the motherfucker in the red, doused in gasoline. Was going to set himself on fire. He got what he deserved burning those kids. You saw the pictures?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Then you know what this shit is about. If that shit doesn’t get you, nothing will. You find a guy like that and you put him down, either on the spot or you send him out on life. You don’t take a chance on a guy like that walking away after ten years, twenty years. I don’t give a shit. We buried that cocksucker so deep he was going to die in a cage, or, God willing, with a needle in his arm. So no, I haven’t thought about him a day since.”

Captain: “Durham, Neilson: I want you to cross-reference area communications in the past twenty-four hours. Go back ten years against our records. Red flag anything close. Any hits, you let me know. Listen to me, I’ll get the authorization on a tag if and when it comes up. The rules are flexible, so we’ll deal with the proper channels when we get there. Until then, everything goes through me. Got it?”

“Got it, Cap.”

“Let’s get in there.”