Palahniuk and Powell’s

“Give me your hand.”  Fingers aflutter I complied reaching out to grasp Chuck Palahniuk’s hand as I perched on his knee, our other arms entwined around one another.  I forgot all about my camera in the capable hands of the awesome

couple behind me in line snapping pictures for me; I forgot I was at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon; I forgot every word of what I wanted to say in this momentous moment.  I blathered nonsense instead in sheer anxiety, what I do when I’m in any social situation, on full throttle here.  He was gracious, kindly ignoring my presentation, and talked with me anyway, taking his time signing two books with personal inscriptions. 

I only recently learned of the existence of heaven on earth, also known as Powell’s Books.  How had I never known

about this place?  It is the largest bookstore in the world, comprising a full city block, three-stories tall.  I toured it on-line, drooling, foaming at the mouth the whole time and immediately decided to take a road trip, a pilgrimage.  I then clicked on the “events” link and there it was – a book signing in two weeks by Chuck Palahniuk.  Clearly kismet.  I had just written about him here, just finished his most recent book, Beautiful You.  I opened the garage, got in my car and waited for two weeks to go by.

It was a 15-hour trip one way.  I broke it up into two days for travel each way and they were long two days.  But it was a gorgeous exciting drive.  The

journey on the way up filled with excitement, anticipation, hope.  On the way back, I was full, satiated in a way I haven’t been for some time.  My car was stuffed with books and my heart was equally full and happy and I’ve carried a glow around me since I’ve been back.

It’s such a risk, meeting your heroes.  Often they turn out to be either absolute assholes, or disappointing in myriad ways.  Not so Chuck Palahniuk.  Powell’s, which was

even more awesome than I had fantasized, had the event exceedingly well organized.  I was anxious about what to expect.  Did I need to camp out the night before?  Would I be waiting in line all day?  Whatever it was I was prepared to do.  I got there when the doors opened at 9:00 a.m. and was able to go right up to the counter and receive my “A” line ticket.  I would be in the first of four groups.  Easy and awesome.  They said he would sign two books.  I could take pictures of him, but he wouldn’t be posing for pictures.  The very first person in line he posed with.  He played with each person personally, lifting

one girl off her feet for a shot, honking one man’s breast for a candid, playing out the iconic Charlie’s Angels pose, snuggling up behind others for cozy shots, and for me – down on one knee with his arm around me, holding my hand, looking into my eyes as I swooned. 

It was the most fun I have had in a while.  I giggled and jumped up and down in line with the young man behind me, both of us giddy as we inched closer and closer.  He had tattoos on his arms of different scenes from Palahniuk books. 

He was lovely.  “You’re next, you’re up next!” he whispered in sudden quiet and awe.  And there I was, all cognitive capacity and articulation ability leeched out in a puddle back in line as I finally stood in front of him – Chuck Palahniuk.  The author of Fight Club.  So many works, so much – Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke, Lullaby, Fugitives and Refugees, Diary (I just finished this one and I think it may actually be my favorite.  I literally exclaimed aloud at the ending.  How often does that happen?!), Stranger Than Fiction, Haunted, Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, Damned, Doomed.  And his most recent, launching this book signing, Beautiful You. 

I chose Beautiful You and Damned to be inscribed.  I wish I had chosen Diary instead.  Next time?

I kept saying “thank you.”  He thought I meant for the signing, for the pictures.  But what I meant, what I wanted to say was so much more.  I wanted

to say thank you for the books.  Thank you for writing them, for having the amazing courage to release them out into the world.  Thank you for taking what’s deep and often dark and personal and pure, what’s hidden away and brutally true, and putting it on the page.  Thank you for the uncompromising work, the heart and soul and remarkable mind birthing it all.  For being in this world.  In my world, our world.  For how very much we need you in this world.

Just - thank you.
 

The Forty-Eight Year Journey

It’s funny how “change” occurs.  Oftentimes it seems like it happens very quickly.  All of a sudden, things just fall into our lap, we stumble through an innocuous step that changes the whole course of our life.  It just happened,

out of the blue.  But did it really?  What if we put a slow motion speed setting to that process and watched it on film?  Like those of a hummingbird frenetically zooming about the garden resembling a spaceship; one moment right in front of your face, in less than a blink of an eye it’s across the yard snorting up catnip flowers.  When that movement is slowed down and captured we can see those little wings beating so hard, the tiny straining muscles; we can imagine a tiny drop of sweat beading up on his miniscule forehead as he struggles to keep himself aloft. 

It is critical to slow down our own process as well, see it for what it is and most importantly, what we really did that resulted in that “sudden” change.  Nothing just happens.  It’s a bucket.  Every day you go by it on your way to your real

day to day life of work and kids and family and errands and bills and drama and busywork.  But you may be able to add a drop to the bucket on your way out; maybe two at the end of the day, or middle of the night.  Maybe there’s a day when a whole cup flows into it.  Usually it’s not in the forefront, this little reservoir you’re almost unconsciously filling.  But then one day – one fateful day – you put in a little drop and the whole bucket spills over.  It reached its tipping point.  And now it’s spilled over and you’re walking in it knee deep, it’s everywhere.  It has to be

dealt with.  It can’t be ignored any more.  Now there is more over “here” than the “there” of your familiar day to day life.  “Someday” is here.  It just got moved up to the forefront and it just got real.

How did that happen?  All of a sudden the stars seemed to align and things just happened; the scales tipped over and you’re on the other side.  But it didn’t just happen out of the blue.  You built that.  Drop by drop, each drop as essential as the one before, the one to come.  They add up.  They join together to build a river that will sweep you away.
 
And now here you are.  Giddy, amazed, still scared to let go of that rock that

tethers you to the shore, but knowing you are going to.  It’s like being in line for that terrifying crazy roller coaster ride at the fair with your friends.  You’re all laughing too loud at stupid things.  Flexing bravado at fear.  You know it’s inevitable, you’re going to end up with your butt in that front seat; there is no turning back.  You’re scared, but you know you chose this; you paid for your ticket, got in line.  You created this fear and you’re going to engage it.  It will be fun you tell yourself. 

And it is.  You survive and you and your friends crow to one another.  Look what we have done.

There is a random flier in your mailbox at work, a commercial on late-night television, and you follow it and your life changes forever.  You have kids.  They leave, they come back.  You divorce.  Your husband dies.  You’re alone.  You come together again.  You struggle for money, for survival.  You do what you need to do.  You do survive.  Your survival means your entrapment.  You finally see the trap, too late.  You’re ensnared.  But something deep inside, something not

allowed into consciousness yet – it’s not safe there – quietly begins to collect those drops of water.  Those non-threatening drops that don’t mean anything by themselves.  Not really.  You surreptitiously add them one by one to that bucket by the front door. 

And now it’s overflowed.  You’re in it.  You did that.  There is no going back.  They can’t be put back in that bucket again.  It’s too late.  So you find meaning.  This must mean I’m now ready.  This must mean I finally have the fortitude, the resources I need to embark.  That’s ok.  Fine.  Whatever you need to tell yourself, whatever works.  But move baby. 

 
You need to ride that roller coaster to wherever it goes.  You bought your ticket, paid the price, waited your turn.  Step up, step in and thrill to the ride.  Get ready to scream in terror and delight.  Look at that first plunge up ahead already that will turn you on your head.  You have a moment of wanting to get off, to escape, maybe many moments; you know you’re going to be sick.  But it’s too late.  You’re here now, strapped in.  You set yourself up.  There are others around you, shouting at the fear, bring it on, some are cowering in their seats with their eyes closed.  But they’re all doing it.  They’re all on this ride with you.  You are a part of your own creation.  You may not be in charge now of the Frankenstein monster you’ve created and incubated all these long years.  So be it.
Enjoy the ride baby.  Enjoy the ride.

To my dearest friend Violet.  I believe in you.

Escaping the Song of the Siren

I was hit this week full force between my eyes by the stark contrast of the

choices in my life.  Taken down to the mat and pummeled by both of them.  Wonderful multiple opportunities synchronously occurred opening up paths, inviting me in, shoving me firmly forward.  The very same day, the day job’s status quo – if not incremental progress, “success” if you will, that I thought I had achieved – was stripped away in several painful harsh acts of sabotage and reality.

With all my insight, all my work on acceptance of the situation I must endure, I was still not fully “getting it.”  I was still trying to fit in, trying to find acceptance, validation and meaning there.  I stoke those fires of engagement,

allow that I am after all asking myself to give up a “career” not just a job.  A career I fought very hard for and will die financially still in debt to.  A path I once very much believed in, one that held me, nurtured my growth and development, sparked my intellectual curiosity and went a long way to satisfy that incessant craving.  At what point this path led to a snake pit and left me there, I don’t really know.  How it became “normal” to live in that snake pit I don’t understand.  But one

day I finally awoke and saw where I was; being taken further and further down every day.  I struggled to the ledges I thought could hold me, that led to a better way, but they soon crumbled beneath my weary feet and I fell, attacked and poisoned by a thousand snake bites every time.  And still I fought to find yet another ledge, a home.

That land has been ravaged and there is no place for me there.  There is nothing I can do to fix it.  The indigenous people have been murdered and the conquerors still fight over morsels of spoils.  To be there means to join them, to live in the revolting mire and call it Life.  If I don’t, I am a traitor.  A traitor who has seen too much, knows where the skeletons lay and who put them there.
 
The Muses tried to show me my path all laid out just for me, a road to follow to reclaim my heart and soul.  Maybe they had been too subtle they figured, so

here – here are back to back undeniable (even by you) incredible things just for you.  A synchronicity of remarkable events and invitations rolled out right in front of me.  And still I clung. 

So this week they have had enough of me, of my ambivalence and lack of full commitment, and screamed in my face.  “You will never belong there.  You will never be included, wanted.  And, you fucking idiot, YOU DON’T WANT TO BE THERE, REMEMBER?!”  Oh yeah. 

One path broke my heart.  The other can heal it.  I can’t keep it torn in two between them.

Along the broken path are Sirens.  There, a soul-sucking succubus lurks feeding on my spinning, ultimately wasted energy, ensuring there is nothing left for any other path, for what really matters.  The Sirens clung to my shoulders for years, singing promises of fulfillment, riches, respect and membership into the inner-sanctum, blinding me to the reality and cost of that path.  Through the cracks, the Muses fed me hope and glimpses of options of another way, the path to places where I belong.  This ceaseless whirling from one seduction to the other, trying to appease both sides, live in both worlds, has now finally come to a climax.

In their desperation to counter the truth illuminated by the Muses, the fangs of the Sirens have emerged; the songs have turned to a screeching of the million souls entrapped within.  The thick bile of their breath which had me

enshrouded, blinded, is dissipating, revealing the jagged rocks where demons await to finish me off.  I have blindly sailed into them and turn to find the wreckage has already crippled me.  In the rubble a final war is waged for my soul.  Snarling furious howls, snapping fangs glistening with the poison of lies, claws slashing at my heart; a Muse throws herself in the path before they can rip it out completely – her sacrifice for naught if I can’t correct my course immediately.

My vision clears.  I can now see and fully embrace my true course.  I have to abandon the ship of fools; I get to abandon it.  I may still have time left to serve, the unwilling price negotiated for my eventual freedom, but now my role there is clear.  No more lies.  I am now a part of the underground, those of us with secret lives.  I’ll learn from the others, I’ll follow their covert routes, speak in code, exchange knowing clandestine winks.  I have discovered where the light is hidden away and how to get there, how to access it every day, even in prison. 

And there you will find me happily living my real life while the insanity swirls

around me, while minions shriek and claw at one another, retreating bloodied and torn at the end of the day only to return and engage it all again the next.  For eternity this will continue, for this is hell.  The only way out is to realize where you are.  Do not forget.  Keep moving.  And never look back.

Connection and Creation

I recently found a copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s Stranger Than Fiction, a compilation of non-fiction articles and “true stories”.  He frightens me with his

stories; the stark, often disgusting reality of society, people’s lives and capacity for wretchedness depicted time and again.  But ultimately, his writing and perspective is singular and oddly, paradoxically, inspiring and I keep coming back for more.

One story in particular in this book has grabbed me around the throat and hasn’t let go.  You Are Here chronicles a writers’ conference.  It begins depressingly enough; very elderly

people with their life story, tales of trauma, clutched in “… both spotted hands” looking for an editor to validate their words, and in so doing, their life.  The stories, written and received, giving meaning to their suffering.  Then he begins

to spin an analogy of the process; lives being lived just to get the story, stories defining how to live that life – what “sells.”  The interwoven web impossible to tease apart, our life stories and their marketable potential becoming what living is.  “Then, sorry, your seven minutes is up.”  So far, pure Palahniuk.  Stripping convention, the meat from our bones, exposing us once again to the stark essence of our lives.

But wait, what’s this?  Positive possibilities emerge.  He postulates that maybe we’ll lead better lives, become the leading man and woman we aspire to in real

life.  Maybe we’ll begin to pay more attention to the details of living, of life; take better notes.  And maybe, by so doing, we create a fuller, richer existence.

Maybe with a little more effort and reflection, you can live the kind of life story a literary agent would want to read.
Yeah.  Chuck Palahniuk said that. 

He goes further.  Perhaps there is the capacity to rewrite the future.  Enact only what “sells”.  Maybe there are simply too many stories of atrocities and war and

these lose their audience and therefore cease to exist.  And then, then, what if a brand new story emerges?  One that depicts a never before considered way of living?  Here lies hope, possibility, the image and role of a writer as never more important or essential.  Evolution driven by the written word.

This from a writer who has touched the depths of hell in humanity, not

permitting us to look away from that which we are forced to acknowledge resides within us.  But here, he sees the extreme continuum of capacity that exists in each of us.  The potential for utter destruction exists along the same continuum with the absolute capacity to change ourselves, the world – to evolve.

This is what writing is.  Possible futures, salvation, potential destruction; man’s dance along that line.  There is resonance, a connective magic.  That connection, that somebody somewhere gets it, thinks like I do, wakes up dormant parts of our minds.  This person understands, speaks the truth for me that I can’t or that I hadn’t realized, and bravely puts it

to the page for just me to see, for the world to see.  The words shine a light illuminating a secret pathway hidden in plain view.  Options.  Hope.  A way to live, to think, to consider.  A life “other than” this one that can be lived.  Possibility never considered, but now that it has been written and read, can be, must be.

It worms its way in, tunneling through atrophied pathways, pathways not yet opened.  It seeps in, flowing through you, taking hold, taking root.  It becomes yours, fitting in with what’s in there already, germinating

those things, building upon them until brand new creations spark, come to life.  Possibility.  A new entity created, born from those words, on that page.  You’re never the same again, your synaptic pathways forever altered, new pathways forged and tunneled. 

This is physically experienced; a gasp, eyes widening, a quiver of wonderment, anticipation, thrills throughout the body, head to toe.  You want to squirrel it all away privately, you need a moment; you want to shout your discovery from a soapbox in Times Square.  Alone, together again. 

Maybe it all gets stopped up again.  Maybe we’ll be punished for our rouge epiphanies.  They don’t fit in with the well worn accepted pathways and routes

of thinking.  They lead to dangerous lands that others don’t want to visit.  But the words don’t force themselves, they just exist, from one beautiful mind to be picked up or not.  It doesn’t matter to the source.  They were written because the writer had to write them.  They are not meant for you.  But they are available to you.  This is magic – the very definition.

I discover this is what compels me, why I connect with each writer I revere.

This weaving of magic is what Tom Robbins excels at, what Chuck Palahniuk did

with this piece; showing the infinite possibility.
David Mitchell and Frank Herbert riding that magic through the whorls of time, through millennia.
Albert Camus and Hermann Hesse probing the magic of what exists within humanity.
Edgar Allen Poe, Franz Kafka and again Chuck Palahniuk showing what happens when those hidden away dark places are dragged into the light.
Haruki Murakami floating on the precipice between.
Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates writing the magic and tragedy of our

everyday lives, where we can prevail or not. 
Ray Bradbury dropping hundreds of mines into the meadow of our life, each an explosion of wonder.
Gerald Durrell (yes, Gerald) making us weep in laughter and recognition of the sheer absurdity and delight of the magic of everyday life, and how very full it is.
The sheer fun of Christopher Moore.  Douglas Adams turning the very concept of reality upside down, just daring us to join the fun.
Bill Bryson showing the magic and fullness, the endless variety of the everyday, painted in a

bursting palette of words.
Joan Didion painting the stark reality, the facts we so often don’t want to see, heartbreakingly rendered.
Diane Ackerman painting that reality in ethereal words.
Kurt Vonnegut turning the telling on its head.

We have all of these possibilities. Which leads to and aptly ends here in The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad:

“The mind of man is capable of anything-because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.”

If Loving You is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right

You finally get to the point in your life where you can seriously start chasing down that vision, the one that’s fueled your dreams, kept you going.  You turn

in triumph to embrace it, grab its shining golden ring – and it’s gone.  The dream hasn’t gone, the target has.  It simply doesn’t exist anymore.  What then?  What now?

I have wanted to be published all my life.  Now it’s called “traditionally” published, a rapidly vanishing dinosaur with only a handful left hanging on, relics that are barely even conceivable to approach anymore, much less gain entry.  Everything I’m told of the writing industry is mortally depressing.

There’s now this shortcut, an instant gratification route called ePublishing,

“independent publishing.”  In my excursions into the writing world – conferences, organizations, groups, books and journals – it’s all that’s discussed.  They say this is the only way to go, the only viable way left to get a book published.  So the writer’s life must now be devoted to learning the machinations of the eUniverse. 

I wonder about what is lost, the implications.  I understand the pitfalls of big publishing industries, the worthy works that never got there, the politics.  But

what have we traded that for?  Have we settled for dull, trendy shades of grey vomitus and forgotten the vibrant spectrum of actual literature?  Will “Literature” become like Latin, Ancient Greek, to our future generations; something to be studied in school, a lost quaint art?  How will we ever know again what “good” writing is?  How to find that in the infinite whorls of a worldwide web?

Writing requires a life, a soul, commitment and sacrifice; a lifetime of learning, growing, improving, always reaching deeper and deeper, scouring the abyss of

the soul and mind, bringing those hard-won discoveries to the surface and light, to expose them on the page for all to see – our commonality that binds us, our differences that shape us, our struggles, our humanity.  Those that endure this journey cultivate our craft, live the writing for the writing’s sake.  The deserving, the lucky, got published.  And forever their words endure.  Official, through the gauntlet.  Ordained. 

But now, anybody can “publish,” can scribble something on an iphone, press a button and have a “book”.  There is no quality control.  Unedited, poorly edited,

poorly written, poorly formatted, raw pieces abound, alongside those that are truly good but never made it to, or approached the publishing process.

I may never get published, may never be enveloped in that dinosaur’s final warm dying breath.  I may never gain entry to a legendary Camelot, the very idea of which gave my life meaning.  But I find I don’t want to learn any more about ePublishing, about how to rise in the ranks and

ratings by machinations that have nothing to do with the quality or worthiness of the work; how to make deals – you “like” me and I’ll in turn “like” you and we’ll inflate each other – we’ll look good online.  Join my club and I’ll join yours and we’re in.  We’ll put together a platform that extols our own virtues, copying the review aspects of “traditional” publishing until nobody can discern the difference.  I can’t remember the last time I attended a workshop or conference or group that didn’t focus on the “e”.  Where are the talks of the Masters, of literature and quality and how to recognize it, strive for it, to improve and continue improving, on what authentic writing really is?

I understand the public relations / marketing necessity, I do.  And I’m not naive

enough to pretend this same necessity doesn’t exist in traditional publishing.  But it’s the exclusive focus on the technology, on joining the right platforms and clubs; all that energy devoted to boosting the numbers and ratings that make the hairs round my bruised and already battered right brain aquiver.

I’ve seen works go out with egregious errors, and the readers responding in reviews being the ones to catch them.  The general public now a de facto

editor.  That work then becomes labeled an “advanced reader copy.”  And it stays out there like that until it can, if ever, be properly edited.  A dead rat in the well.  And without any gate keepers the whole water supply gets diluted and polluted.  In the long run I fear this will hurt us all.

Or, we evolve past the expectation of exceptional quality, weaned out by sheer force of numbers.  It’s dangerous.  We’re breeding whole new generations of readers who have no other expectations.

So no, I have not joined this eRevolution.  … She says, as she hits “Publish” and these words join the “e” in the ether.  But I want to resist.  I hold on to, yearn for, a time and community in which I was never included and is now

fading away into another dying era’s sunset.

I just want to write.  I want to be able to touch that magic that touched me so many years ago.  I want to learn and continue learning the craft.  I am not

ready for this to die.  Too much will be lost.  We’re not burning our Great Library of Alexandria; we’re burying it like masses of cyber-ants, each with its own bits and byes to pile atop the edifice until it’s vanished, until it won’t even be remembered.

Maybe I’ll actually attain Nirvana someday.  Maybe I won’t.  Maybe I’ll convince myself ePublishing isn’t so bad or is the only option left to me.  Maybe it literally

will be all that’s left by the time I try to publish.  Mine may be the generation that has front row seats to the final demise.  But I am not going to waste these final moments.  I’ll grab my fiddle and write my heart out and then write some more, as if the golden ring is still there, a warm glow on my page.