“Why did you leave Italy?”

It was the middle of the night and Carter at him with wide, open
eyes. Eyes that were hazel in the florescents of the LaundroKing as
Carter leaned over the counter and looked up at Dean. He had perched
himself on top of the counter, long, lean legs drawn in. Jean tight
and taunt and his hooded sweater loose and falling over his wrists.
Dean looked down at him after a moment, dark hair neatly kept out of
his face, exposing his raised brow.

“Why did I leave Italy? Why would you ask something like that?”

“Because your accent is still sort of fresh, I was just wondering.”

Dean swallowed the saliva that collected in his mouth but he said
nothing. It was a delicate question. One he wasn’t often asked.
Everyone else he knew took for granted that he was foreign. They asked
him silly questions about Italy and Greece and food and customs and
good walls to paint on, but nothing else. Never any questions about
his family or his home. Nothing about the tiny apartment they all
shared overlooking the the city of Rome. Nothing.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Carter said,
shifting his hips and stretching his back out. He looked like some
sort of caramel colored lion cub.

“It’s just an interesting question, that’s all. Why did I leave?
Maybe I should have stayed?” Dean licked at his mouth. His lips looked
redder when slicked with spit.

“Not what I mean,” Carter groaned.

“I know, I know. My father died. So I left.” Dean shrugged. “It
seemed like the best idea and my mother had no problem with it either.
I was always getting into trouble anyway, better to be out of her hair
than her bailing me out of jail again.” He gave Carter a small grin,
sharp teeth peeking out and nibbling on the side of his lip.

“You’re a dangerous guy,” Carter mused.

Dean twisted himself, letting his legs drop off the laminate, back
facing the wall and the makeshift manager’s office that Carter was
always sitting in. He heard the squeak of the wheelie chair that
Carter was sitting in, but didn’t bother to look back. Instead, he
just lifted his arms above his head and stretched, snapping his back
in a few places.

“Nah. Just paint sticky.”

A few weeks back someone asked me Oh, so you write? When I nodded, this someone nodded in return and said That explains your clothes. My hair was a rat’s nest and I had on my long multifabriced tier skirt and a tank top. Arms full of bracelets and probably boots on underneath. It’s cool when someone gets it, even if they don’t really get it. I try to dress like I am living out of my head. Places and times that don’t exist and all that.

I’m strange here, but really, it’s okay.

My fashion sense goes through these huge upheavals from time to time, usually depending on what I want to manifest in my life or what sort of story I am working on. I have a pair of goggles I wear often, no matter what they match or not, because they were made to my specifications and I love the more than any accessory in the world.

I wear them for my characters in Cartography, though I don’t know why for. Shielding their eyes from the dust and particles and making traveling between the desolate cities of the post-apoc world a little easier, I suppose. Same with the long skirts and the boots and tank tops. The jewelry is both wood and metal. Finding a happy medium between them. It has been alright for the past year, really. I’ve gotten the layers down. They all fit together so well.

But lately, I’ve been just a twinge unhappy. A twinge elsewhere. Like my heart that is out of the dull city scapes and constant black-on-black, I’ve found myself leaning more towards the neutrals. Tan tank tops, brown boots. Dark mahogany purses. Bleached out bark colored medical bags. Black and white is wonderful. I love it. I love grey.

But, sometimes I hide in my bedroom and stalk Mori Girl and obsess over things like this:

Now really, maybe not too straying too far from the bits of clothing I’ve been putting together lately, but a far cry from the black on black on grey on white on black outfits I’m used to wearing.

It echos sand and dust and when done up nicely, some part of me knows it’ll fit my aesthetic just right. Patched up clothing made at home, willowy skirts, sheer layers. Dirt it up here and there, put goggles on, a backpack and the end-of-the-world is right in your backyard.

Tell me, can’t you just see it? Take from here and take from there and that’s how you get personal style, isn’t it? A dazzling mix of what’s inside poured right out. Night sky black and pure foam white here and there, grey for rainy days in between. But, I’m feeling it’s time for a change. Maybe some way to embrace it all?

Maybe I’ve got a 80′s cyberpunk kid’s heart, but a datagypsy’s post-apoc soul?

Well, we’ll see how it goes.

One is Never Enough

I did it again.

Over the past week I have been using the Stereoport/Eastern Undercurrent sketchbooks with a lot of success. My mind is flittering with ideas and getting them down is simple and beautiful. I am thinking visually again, in snippets of atmospheric pressure and shots of color. I can carry it around with me, and I do. People stop me everywhere I am to peek through it. It’s interesting – I don’t mind. I thrive on collective interest and instant reaction. I had someone who had never seen my work read through the entire week’s worth of work and nod her head at me, telling me it was interesting.

I liked that.

So, with the spare cash I had this week I picked up a slightly larger, more brown sketchbook for Cartography, which has gotten no love lately and needs to be chipped at. It’s the third and final piece of my current Works In Progress. The one with the actual first draft and the whole history hashed out. The one that isn’t quite there, but almost.

The one I know a lot about.

So, I thought a another visual escape for it would be a good idea. Something to get me thinking about it in a different way. Yes, this one is my baby. This one is my story gem and I hope that I’ll do it justice one day. Thankfully, I’ve already tried it once and failed spectacularly, which I am proud of. In fact, there is nothing I am proud of more in my writing career than the marvelous disaster that is the first Cartography draft.

I love this sketchbook already. Old maps, brown tones. Places I’ve never been.
Yet another fake history to immerse myself in.

I don’t read books for favourite quotes. I feel bad holding a pen and scratching it against the pages of a book. I feel bad even if it is a pencil. I don’t highlight, I don’t write in the margins. I may break spines and water damage things here and there, but, I don’t leave things behind in books. I’m usually never floored by exact statements.

(poetry is different. this isn’t poetry. poetry and music. song lyrics are everywhere. poetry snippets are scattered. i believe these forms were just made for quoting…)

The thing of it is though, when asked for my favourite quote, I always pick this one. I haven’t read the book since the first time I picked it up (And that had to be just a little after it was released in 1999) and I can’t tell you anything else about the book, really (other than at the time, I did love it. It was smart and heartbreaking, all at once). In fact, I should probably read it over again one day, but, that quote. Oh, that quote.

I’ve always felt it defined my entire life.

How do you pick a favourite quote? It mostly seems impossible. I love the opening lines of Neuromancer (“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel”), they feel like home to me and Nicole Blackman’s You are Never Ready is like, a mantra and something I try to live by, but a quote? Something you love each time you read it, something that defines you in some way. Something that fills up the space on your Facebook profile and leaves people understanding you ever so slightly? Is that what a favourite quote is? Right there amongst favourite bands and favourite movies? Do you want to get emotional? In depth? How much is too much to say? Who and what do you really want to be?

I have chosen the same quote for that question for over ten years now. I don’t have a good answer as to why it is my favourite quote. It just is. It made me stop in my tracks and copy it down somewhere when I was just a teenage girl. It made sense at the time and it still does. I’ve never picked out another quote from a book and I doubt I ever will.

Really, I think this says it all.

What about you? Do you have a favourite book quote? Are you a habitual sentence highlighter? Can you recite your favourite books word for word for word?

I admit, more often than not, I am a literary snob.

Maybe it is the hours and hours I put in to get my English BA. Maybe the other hours I spent in lectures, readings and critique groups. Could be my collection of over 400 books. Could be my obsessive interest in Junot Diaz alongside my upmost respect for William Gibson. Could be the fact that reading Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicles taught me to understand writing fiction or that Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street opened my eyes on how to do do it.

I’m unsure, it could be a lot of things. Sometimes I feel bad about it. Most times, I don’t.

The only thing it really leaves me with is a sense of duty to my words. A motivation to layer it on and create a puzzle that needs to be made sense of. I am not happy when my writing is straight forward. I am not happy when my writing goes from point a to point b and there’s barely a hint of atmosphere or thematic storytelling in between. I don’t mind it in other people’s tales, but I can’t manage it in my own. I get down easily when I’m unable to make cross-character connections and dual moving plots that are really about the same thing but different.

My literary snobbery left me with a palpable desire to just want to make something that someone else will dissect. I love books sometimes just because of what they’ve tried to achieve. Even if the characters were a bit drab and the storytelling was convoluted. Just trying something new with literary form, with getting people paying attention, with testing the boundaries and deepening fiction kind of sets my heart off.

And when things connect, the layers form a latticework of understanding, I can do nothing but smile. I’m thrilled. There’s a theme, there’s an undercurrent, there is something aside the action and the thrills.

And that’s all I want to be able to do. Really. When I complain, it is all I am trying to do.

If that’s being a snob, well, you know, I’m okay with that.

The intrinsic need for something tactile

If I were middle aged and married with children, maybe I’d take up scrapbooking. Full on. With scrapping parties and a Circut machine and pages upon pages of my children’s soccer games. That’s not to say I can’t take up scrapbooking now, but it would be all photographs of me in different outfits and skylines and piles and piles of books. That’s what this space of for. I don’t have to print much out. I’m saving that hobby for another time. Another life, really. Maybe I’ll get there one day. We’ll see about that.

I do though, get this itchy bug in my hand to have something I can leaf through. Something with pictures and tiny notes. I never was an visual artist, but I have always been pretty good with a pair of scissors and a pile of magazines. I’m great with a stamp pad. I collect paper like it is currency. I have too much of everything.

I take it back, in a way, I am a visual artist.

I have to see things to understand them. Even for my writing. I create books for things. To hold things. Pictures from magazines and maps I’ve drawn on the backs of napkins. Sometimes I sew the book up myself, and it is perfect for what I am trying to do. Sometimes, I pick one up with a craft store coupon and start gluing things to the cover.

When I plot, I doodle. I make timelines that lined paper tend to ruin. I like charts and graphs and lists. I write in roman numerals and only use one half of the paper. There’s a madness to the personal organization of a story. And I am highly organized of my stories.

I have two very bare works in progress. Steroport and The Eastern Undercurrent. They are similar but nowhere near the same. Both are very visual. Start out real simple and get complex. Fast. Both need a spot to be drawn and collaged and doodled. I can’t justify two sketchbooks though. I carry too much with me as it is. I need to condense, condense, condense.

So I bought one and decided I would start either story on one side and they may meet up in the middle. It’s a race to see which will fill up their side first. Some days I feel like working in one and some days, I feel like working in the other. Now I can. A picture I cut out can go on either side and I can still have it with me at all times. Usually I cut up books and make markers and dividers, but this time, I will work it naturally.

You start at one side and keep going. You keep going and going and going. In the end, you see where it takes you. This is my new little visual book and when there’s more inside, I’ll take some photographs. It’s for my knowledge, my understanding, my vision.

It’s my new favourite thing around.

____
if i recall correctly, pictures are from juxtapose’s brazil issue.

On James Bond and why I can’t give a decent review of “Inception“

Inception: Joseph Gordon Levitt wears a bunch of amazing suits and looks absolutely stellar while a bunch of fantastic storycrafting is taking place around him, but when asked, all I can say is Did you see that shot of his suspenders at his lowerback? I am officially inspired for weeks. Don’t ask me to leave the house, I have writing to do. Stories to uncover. Entire novels to write about suspenders and lower backs.

And yes, we can also talk about Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy and Lukas Haas, if you so desire. I won’t stop you. Storytelling at a wonder-level, laced with good looks and good dressing. Really, we could talk about it all you want.

I just am quite sure I wouldn’t know what to say.

I’ve been thinking lately, on the usual things. What makes a story. What makes a story I love. Action, adventure and heartbreak – usually. Dead lovers, sharpened knives, guns with silencers on them. I am often told the things I love in life, in media, aren’t reflected at all in my stories.

This, I think, is true.

I have a folder full of quiet moments between people in bed, nestled together under the sheets. They have blankets up to their nose and scabs and scars that are hidden from plain view. I am not very good at putting together reasons behind these cuts and bruises, but they are there. The moment lacks it’s proper saccharin though. How can it be so sweet, so cloying when there was no burn beforehand. And what I want and need is burn after burn after burn. Motion, action, violence. I am learning plot slowly, through character motivation (as simple as they can be. Man wants to find his cat. Man wants to go home to his kids. Man wants to make it through the end of the day.) and simple cause and effect action. It is a hard learning process. Writing action is right up there with it. I don’t really read action books, but, I’ll watch an action film. I’ll watch them two or three times, watch them four or five times and never have a problem.

How does that find itself into a book?

Sure there are thrillers. Mysteries. I’m a half-breath from Miami and Miami is a wonderland for all that sort of stuff. Every new crime show, every new crime novel is here. But, no, I’ve decided to take it even further back. Back to the year my mother was born with From Russia with Love. With that gorgeous new cover they so deceptively placed in a stand near the comic table I was going to look through at the local bookshop. I love James Bond – how can you not? I’ve never read a James Bond book though.

So I am starting now.

I am going to learn to put things together perfect. With reason and motivation and proper gunshot sequences. There will be boys in suspenders and bloody kisses under sheets. There will be everything I love in it, really. And this is how I am starting out.

It’s an anxious thing, creating stories from nothing, making a fake life I am living in tandem with the one I am living in now. It holds my hand, it gives me love, it gives me a new home, it gives me a new place to imagine living in. It is my constant companion: assessing and reassessing everything. And once it has done that, it’ll assess it all over again. It’s complicated and it never ends.

I don’t run, but I want to. I walk. I nearly jog. But I don’t run. I’ve nearly gotten to that point but stalled out – stopped. Like a lot of things I’ve done, really. I don’t run, but I need to. So I go out everyday and play up the music and I try.

I try because running, walking, jogging is the only thing that really shuts my head down without me falling asleep. Meditation is good – but motion is better. It begins with the loud sounds of my conciousness. The doubts, the fears, the hopes, the dreams. Once those are thought over and over and over again it moves onto the fake lives, the stories, the characters and the plots and I don’t mind those either.

But if I keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going I hit a point of silence. Nothing but feet and pavement. The sound of breath moving in and out of my lungs. Nothing but feeling myself getting stronger and stronger.

And it’s like my brain is quiet. At least for a little while, my brain is quiet. It’s like I can finally get some peace. Sweat sticky in my clothes, but, peace. And for that kinda peace, I gotta remember, I will try.