Hello, I am alive

an imperfect missive on my absence and the delights of being alive

Greetings, turtle climbers!

A short poem to start the proceedings:

How Have Things In The World Been Since I Last Posted in Feburary 2023? 

Oh? 

Oh.

If any important or particular world-shaking news has happened in the last couple years, I’d appreciate if you honored my clown tradition and hold off telling me until I am mid-sip.

In the following life update, permit me this dalliance in sad boi writing about the literary genre of sad boi writing, with a promise of positive life updates to follow

I dropped off. The very last thing I remember writing was me claiming a deeper understanding of Hinduism. It is with heavy heart I report I did not run away to an ashram immediately after hitting publish. A far less interesting story unfolded.

When writing those past couple updates, I was sleeping on the couch of a good friend who, just so happened, was then my incredibly recent ex. I was struggling to find work (a recurring theme) and keep my demeanor “funny business as usual” (it was not) while feeling deep disempowerment. I would not recommend it. Would also not recommend watching Banshee’s of Inisherin in such mixed company, especially when said friend/recently-deescalated relationship partner’s only knowledge going in was “sweet, there’s banshees, must be whimsical.”

My writing, historically, has served as outlet for discovering depths of my authenticity and truth. In the circumstances of writing this newsletter, I did not want to write through stalled personal progress. With fear of expressing what was happening in my life, I refused expression. A draft of humor writing would pop-up here and there, and I would continue to write morning pages, but at that point, I didn’t want to “be seen.” Even when actively writing in 2022, I walked a tightrope between a desired image versus my lived-in experience colored in blues. And honestly? In the great dreaming of creating my own life experiences, I was settling. With a beautiful desert horizon in front of me, I chose to dig a hole and talk shit about mesas.

In the novel A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley recounts the quiet life of madness and disillusionment through what he called “fictional memior.” It’s a book detailing the unique sadness of watching other people live while realizing your own passive stasis. Dark humor delivered by the saddest of sacks. It came out in 1968, and developed a cult following over generations of disaffected sad boys.

Gotta share Vintage Contemporaries book art whenever I get the chance.

Part of my absence from this newsletter is an abject refusal to give into this genre of writing.

I was introduced to the genre through the book An Underacheiver’s Diary by Benjamin Anastas by providence of my university’s bookstore clearance bin. Pitch dark funny, it’s another fictional biography of a sad boy, except this one feels forever in the shadow of his twin brother. Naturally, I ate that shit up and followed the cover’s blurb comparing the work to A Fan’s Notes.

I loved those books in college. I was obligated to love it, as an English Major with a concentration in creative writing and a constant blood alcohol level of .2. Too aware to see Fight Club as a satire of masculinity, too oblivious to not attach my personality to the lonesome literary misanthrope, I brought that tortured lens to assigned reading The Stranger by Camus, and whew boy, sad pilled. Cue riding the CTA dual fisting Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and a PBR tall boy.

(In writing this, I have forgotten all about Albert Angelo by B.S. Johnson, which plays with form

I share these (de)formative texts now for background and a sense of victory for what I did not contribute to the world. my main goal for the last years were:

1.) Stay alive.

2.) Do not compromise what you know is true of yourself.

3.) Do not write sad boy/gender non-confirming/femmey fictional autobiography.

Post thie college era, this is one fiction author adjacent to this genre who I enjoy to bits. Thomas Bernard writes with wonderful form that tickles my depressed monkey brain. I crave form. but I couldn’t bring myself to bring myself to that style of woe crafting. Thematically, “The Sad Author” writing at its worst reminds me of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room — something attemping fictional biography that ends with the writer’s character being killed at the hand’s of their own wretched world.

I posit that all the above texts share what I called “martyr fan-fiction¹.” The writer’s Mary Sue character is always right despite the SoCiEty surrounding them, part learned lesson but the lion share is their own devising². Moments of escape are fleeting but escape isn’t impossible. Hope exists for these characters, but liberation comes in slivers, if at all.

Looking back, I have no idea how or when I was pulled out from that worldview. Mood meds helped. Falling into creative devising work with high school students work also helped. Sobriety didn’t hurt things. It was not an overnight change. As of this moment, three pivotal texts that inched me closer to optimism include:

• The School of Lies by David Ives, an adaptation of Mollier’s The Misanthrope, is written in writing couplets like the original. Our main character is disaffected and actively at odds with the aristocratic class surrounding him. Language flows beautifully and jokes drip with an effortless charm, the kind of ease that cultivated from the the hidden drafts beneath a perfect song. The play mockws the language of my ego at the time using beauty and beauty alone. Why can’t I touch this simple pure joy? What else am I if such a concisely structured text can defang me and drain me of venom? What is stopping me from creating something like this?

  
  In a spiral notebook³ somewhere is a modern one-act play in rhyming couplets where a dandy attempts ingratiating themself at the local dive bar. This was fictional biography. Fictional, because the neighborhood bar was too modern to be considered a dive, though that did not stop the local biker club.

• Death and Other Interruptions by Jose Saramago and its dark whimsy reminded me of my favorite humor writing, then pivoted to soul-affirming love story. Chicken Soup for the Byronic Soul. Humor writing and magic realism doesn’t rely on a series of punclines. When they work together, the set-ups blossom into beauty under the author’s care.

  

  The whole vibe screams “a simple person of elevated tastes.”

• The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. It’s short, it’s light, and about delight. The book is entirely inner-monologue and the joyful opposite of all previously mentioned sad boi works. I adore this book. It popped up on my radar at Printer’s Row Lit Fest in 2011 when all writers on a humor writing panel raved about it (Shout out to David Ellis Dickerson!) I was still in my sad boi era at the time. Tried reading it then, but nah. Finally read it in full during my recovery period. It is a comedy built on gratitude and delight, where nothing happens except the beauties of the universe unfurling over the course of an escalator ride.

In continuing to write, I want my work to cheer up that sad boi. The one who spent a summer recovering from a health scare by reading and rereading Watchmen then painting their room grey with blackout windows. The one who, in fourth grade, wrote an incredibly bleak Oregon Trail journal for a class assignment in which no one survived unshaken. The one who could not permit themselves the risk of authentic emotional expression shall find home in this rearranged heart once again.

A promise for TATWU, to me and to you

For the time being, I will not write about writing future pieces. I will not overpromise. I will meet myself where I am each day. I will continue to write for myself regularly, with a continual focus on fostering authenticity in my daily actions. I acknowledge that writing has been core to my identity for my entire life. I acknowledge that, if writing reveals itself to be a maladaptive mechanism, I’ll then change tact with curiosity and the absence of preciousness. From this foundation, I shall show up, mote it be, it be mote, as below so above.

But above all, may any creativity rail against the seduction of perfectionism in all its tendrils.

What I’ve enjoyed instead of writing here (and fun activities I chose not to write about.

• I’ve started attending ADHD seminars online and holy shit, the shift has been huge! I don’t get ALL the things done, but I can get SOME of the things done! Previously, I was getting NONE of the things done. Hooray for the SOME.

• I revisited puzzle making, visual art, and game design. In a split universe, I went to college for game design and interactive narrative. It feels like making presents. Perfectionism be damned, I pushed through personal barriers and completed this puzzle. Hooray for the SOME.

  

  Can you solve the puzzle? Will you solve the puzzle? When will you begin solving the puzzle?

  
  

• I began work-study for spiritual training with Life Force Shamanic Arts and Healing in Chicago. I originally started back in 2021, dropped off, then this year had a realization: if I wanted to pursue my desires in circus, performance, and researching what makes the best parties, I must commit to healing my relationship with myself and performance. Through this work, I’ve pinpointed a moment eight years ago when a self-sacrificing devised theater experience sparked a shift away from complete authenticity on stage. (Post-publishing Morning After clarification because the world is small world: this was not at all The Grand Inciting Incident. I had a lot of interconnected issues before that particular leg of the journey, and I took a big jump up into a new situation while continuing to ignore my own needs. There have been other pinpoints, and there will surely be dozens more.) If anyone is interested, all their classwork and healing is available either in-person or online via Zoom. A++ would recommend if you’re looking for a different (ancient) way of approaching your art and life.

• For a nearly all of 2023, I co-ran an experimental liminal playspace called “Non-Working Hours.” For two hours phone-free hours, people were invited to play with toys and experiment with art-making objects with one gigantic caveat: nothing created in the space can leave the space. In fact, any tangible peice of work created within the space must be erased. Focusing on process over product, folks focused on the meditative and temporary aspects of play. Perhaps it will exist again, (again, no promises.)

There’s more. I might post about them. Or not. Either way, despite horrors, I trust I will be happy. Thanks for reading.

1. Martyrdom? More like martyr-sub amirite?

2. I say this, but I need to consider the reality that these authors would have benefited from modern therapies and support groups. We have less excuses to be misanthropic today. Still doesn’t *stop* people, but it feels important to say all the same. Also, gotta mention the social class that permits the luxury of this certain type of disaffected literary wallowing.

3. Every spiral notebook I wrote in that era should be referred to as a spiraling notebook tbh