Empty Day

Today has been bare, and by that I mean barren of meaning or utility.

The only thing I did of any note today was read some. I kind of worked on writing, but I didn't actually write any, didn't put anything on paper (virtually), or produce anything that I could use as proof of productivity. I could blame life, and will shortly, but ultimately the blame lies with me.

However - God help me, sometimes I despise this society! It is really shocking how alienated we are from one another, how separate and distinct we are, how alone. Most people only have a few friends now that they rely on on a day to day basis. I don't think that we are designed such for that to be sufficient. Today I saw my girlfriend. That's it. I talked to maybe a few other people - wait, no, I didn't. That was yesterday. I saw and talked to no one. All of my interaction was with computers, books, or media (I watched some tv shows via my computer and the internet). It isn't surprising that all meaning dies from such repeated activity. Games, books, shows, all seem trivial (which is reality), while doing something productive (such as writing) seems a waste of time, because it isn't my paid profession (I'd have to be published) and as always, writing is only me versus the world, creation as filling the void of nothingness. I'm also in a trouble spot with my main story (Johnny Attero) and with my other two stories (SciFi and Fantasy). I can't justify putting that much effort into it because I won't see any real result other than my own words on a page, a few "Good job, I'm glad you wrote today"'s, and because I'm just plain weak at times.

Sara long ago said that I wasn't made to operate without a large social network - she was (as usual) and is right. Maybe I've moved around too often. Maybe I've been too long without working somewhere where I could meet people. Maybe I lived to long in isolation in Mount Airy, or maybe I haven't made an effort into branching out and making friends, relying on the few I have. Maybe it really is our society, which encourages constant judging, competition, social awkwardness and social fragmentation. Maybe I should be going to Church.

I did meditate today. Zazen. That was good.

Enough. Bedtime, then work at 7am. All those wines - they're my new friends.


Goodnight.



J

Writing with the Eyes

Sometimes, you're watching something, and it seems like writing.

Its confusing, because you're aware that you didn't actually create what you're seeing; it is someone else's effort and creativity that made this visual and auditory event happen. But, just like most things involving writing, it doesn't matter if it makes sense. It's like you wrote it. Its you.

I couldn't possibly begin to explain to people what it is like to be a writer. I don't understand the world - let me at first say that. The living, breathing world that everyone seems to think is perfectly normal and, in fact, preferable is to me as alien as a fantasy novel, as strange and complicated as a legal document. The rules that we follow, the what-we-have-to-do's and the who-we-have-to-be's seem impossibly odd to me, like asking me to walk through life on my hands instead of my feet. The jobs we work at, the problems we have, the conventions of our social lives (clapping!, for one, what the hell is clapping for applause all about?), they all strike me as some made-up nonsense that people are more than dangerously attached to: they are obsessed with it. I can create; I can wave my hands and new worlds appear before me like mist from a waterfall. I can think; the thoughts that come to my mind continuously that perplex and annoy my friends are not far-away-dreams and attempts to get out of "responsibility" or wastes of time, but are to me like stars in the sky, everywhere, bright and burning and all you have to do is look up and there they are and WHY CAN'T EVERYONE ELSE SEE THEM?

I was born with another language. I can't teach it and I can't unlearn it. I still struggle with our languages that I've picked up in order to communicate with everyone else, but in my heart I still speak Attero.

Ciao. I start work tomorrow.

Wine. Maybe now I'll write...



J

Today

I just wrote this to someone.


"Wishing I was moving to London or Northern Italy or Paris or somewhere amazing and brilliant where I could write all day and sip espresso and then drink wine at night while throwing line after line describing sunlight slanting across a girl's perfect thigh... or something like that."

Boy does that sound familiar!

Its the old me, Johnny Attero, trying to come out from this person who worries about bank accounts and jobs with better incomes and moving for practical reasons and thinking more about english football than plot lines and never, ever cheats. I'm more practical and... oh, I don't feel like whining about myself. I am who I am, I was who I was, and I'm still edgy and angry and creative as a hurricane and there is nothing wrong with that. I can want what I want and that is okay. I want Europe, of course, and I want to write, of course, and I have about three years of backdated writing compressing against my heart. I may disappear and be found a year later in a small, gritty apartment in Rome dying of malnutrition and surrounded by manuscripts.

Ah, romantic and foolish. Why do those always go hand in hand?

I would also like to create music and write songs, to drink gin and ping notes on a keyboard while melodies spill out around them. All this creative liquid stored in me for the last twenty odd months is begging to spill out - but it also drives me a bit mad. Makes bad decisions, this liquid, sloshes me about and threatens to fill up my head with visions and dreams where plans and purpose were.

Stay focused. Write out the dreams.

I'm typing this from a steam room.

It isn't your standard steam room, but rather an improvised one. The air conditioning here at the office is on strike, and as such everyone here is enjoying a deep pore cleansing. And I thought I'd left the 80 degree indoor weather in Hawaii! Ha! Just a taste of the old South, as Hawaii has never been this humid. Long live the Confederacy of Water Vapor.

Life has slowed a bit recently. The days creep by like pages in Les Miserables, slowly and sweetly, hours like lines of patience and character. I read Mr. Hugo, Entrepreneur Magazine, British football websites, analyzes of Napoleonic strategy, even some Zen Buddhist explanations of life. I find myself praying more, trying to take in my natural surroundings, pondering life and existence in a much more positive way than my usual social criticisms. Of course, that is there too, my harsh eye never veering far from the jumbled and overly bright neon display that is our culture, flashing wildly like an advertisement in a strip club, T-O-P-L-E-S-S.

I find myself in a position of forced balance, my life wavering on a strange fulcrum. Certain old ideas that were supposedly central to who I am are being cast away, while other, even older ideas that had been discarded are being recalled into action. I'm looking at nature again for the first time in over ten years. I'm re-exploring the calm mind of Buddha and trying to fit it with a passionately Catholic Jesus. I'm going to church more regularly than I have since I was ten years old. I'm dating a kind, loving girl. Talk about something I haven't done in a while!

I am tearing away the past and reinventing it. I am ripping the curtain of the future from the skies and looking past it into the newness that we all will be a part of, trying to find the best route to infinity. I am, as my main character in my novel, shoving forward and standing still at the same time. I am undergoing the constant process of character revolution.

Let's continue the story, shall we?

J

He is Risen (The Ressurection of my Blog)

I thought I had given up blogging, but it turns out that the daily exercise of writing combined with the benefit of having a readership outweighs the obstacles that kept me from blogging (namely boredom and laziness). So here I am, plunging myself yet again into the realm of people who find themselves so engrossing they believe others will jump to find out who they are and what makes them tick. Of course, many people blog without vanity as their main motivation.

Try telling my friends that. I'm a blogging bullseye.

Anyone know knows me will be cognizant of the fact that Johnny Attero isn't my name (and yes I just wanted to use the word "cognizant"). JA is the name of the main character from my first novel, and we have enough similarities that I have always found using him as a pseudonym to be appropriate. Feel free to call me Johnny, or John, or JA, or Jerk, or any other name that rolls sweetly off the tongue and into the floor in front of me. As the old saying goes, call me anything, just call me.

There. Enough intro. Time to get back to work and leave you waiting for updates.

Tick tock.


J

Iterations of Pleasure

I don't deserve all the blessings being heaped upon my life.

I'm halfway dressed, getting read to go to catechism and then Mass. I'm eating Irish oatmeal and toasted granola with soymilk and sweet Medjool dates. Coffee is nearly brewed in the other room. On the other side of the continent, a beautiful girl is sleeping and dreaming of me. I read Nietzsche and Napoleon and the Bible and, right now, Marion Zimmer Bradley. I'm listening to Anberlin and Jimmy Eat World and Guns N Roses and Fall Out Boy and a lot more. I sweeten everything with honey, I can drink coffee again, and I'm in the best shape I've been in since I was a 19 year old college cheerleader.

*pauses for laughter*

Okay, all that being said, life is good and I'm happy.

And my manuscript is on its way to a publisher for the first time in my life.

Pray, everybody.


John

The Virgin Entry

I'm a Xanga reposter, so here is my first repost:

I’ve got that energy again, that feeling that builds in my hands and courses through my forearms and coats my elbows in solid gold. Times like these I feel half-invincible. I look down at my wrists and they seem so strong, see the veins under the skin and the color, the tightly knitted muscles and the tendons standing up like soldiers at attention. I can feel something hitchhiking on my blood cells, this glowing white light that sings and screams down my arms and comes out through my fingers. This light can create masterpieces and make women moan, can scald the walls I touch and break glass and hearts. When this light is in me, I can do anything.

I am alone in this room. I feel like a knight in his cell, surrounded by the tools of my trade, with smirks for armor and books for a broadsword. I feel like wrapping myself in furs and venturing out into a snowbound landscape to find my Lady Fair, to cut down those who prevent me from touching her hair as it blows like sunset-light slanting over frozen peaks on Nordic breezes. I want to set sail from Galway with thousands behind me and conquer the river Nile. I want to make love in a palace.

My life is a training. I work to gain patience and sustenance and to connect myself with the intellectual diaspora, with the lost tribe of Reason. I exercise my body to become stronger and more appealing to gain greater advantage of this culture obsessed with image and illusion. I study the works of Napoleon, books of chivalry, Christian texts and Gnostic history. I pray more and focus on the present. I fall in love every day.

I am being pulled forward into the future by a harsh and demanding force. I am being joined with people by an almost mystical attraction, fitting into them as if by some prescient design. I can feel myself being assembled. The pieces inside of me that are broken are being mended. Something is finishing my creation. I am exhausted. I am exhilarated. I am alive.

Good night all. To that dark world of dreams, to Heaven, to her arms, to night.