Our Illusory Pasts

I have always felt the yawning gap of history behind me, and it has always seemed unnatural, like an artificial empty space in my memory. Places that I visit seem to be familiar upon my first visit, whether due to my overactive imagination, my love of the old and the beautiful, or to some spiritual connection, I don't know (perhaps all three?). Two of the strongest areas are one place that I have visited, France, and one place I have not, Hungary.

It seems odd to me that I should feel affinity to seemingly random places, and some times these irrational connections do fade after exposure or a change of heart or just simply time. I loved Italy in a boyish fashion until I traveled there; not to say I disliked it, because Italy is wonderful. The people, the landscape, the history, all of Italy was truly gorgeous and spectacular, and yet I did not feel the deep, unexplainable connection with Italy that I thought I would. Instead, France stepped out like a second sister that I had always heard so much about and didn't want to love but, like so many others, couldn't help myself.
I fell passionately in love with Japan for a while, moved to Hawaii to study it more, to learn the language and study its history, but found myself instead warming to the history of my own blood, to Europe, reconciling myself with what I slowly recognized as Western guilt. I had been seeking out all things anti-Western because I blamed the state of the modern world (which has always, and continues to, feel wrong and twisted) on the past evils of "The West," whatever that is. I looked to "foreign" religions and peoples for answers, and found many, some of them truly beautiful. But in Hawaii, while studying Zen Buddhism and learning how to make tea the ceremonial Japanese way in an authentic Japanese tea house, I suddenly came to terms with the West, with Christianity, and with my own self (to an extent). Perhaps my experiences in France were a part of that, a planting of a seed, if you will.

I love France, love it down to my bones, feel the warmth of the French sun and the gripping touch of French soil, and it really doesn't make sense. I am not French; some of my ancestors may be of Norman decent and moved to England after the Conquest of 1066, but I am fairly sure that six hundred years in England makes one English. My other ancestors seem to come from Scotland and Ireland, with intermingling between the two thanks to the policies of the English throne. So why France, why this irresistible connection with a country I have no obvious link to? There is no easy answer, no reasoned line of thought. The cynics among my friends (and there are many) surely think that it is my love of beauty and another of my flights of fancy, a silly and juvenile infatuation, like my conversion to Catholicism. Others think it is a past life, that I have lived in France before and am remembering it in some spiritual way. In some of my musings I wonder if it is the influence of the saints, if the work and prayers of St. Joan of Arc, who was so instrumental in my conversion, have endeared me forever to her homeland. There probably will be no easy answer in this lifetime, and I accept that.

Lately Hungary has been pushing its way into my mind. It is still warming, waxing and waning like a moon around the Earth that is my France, but it is there, an ancient land of proud and beautiful people that have no direct connection to me. I will write more on this later, but suffice to say it is my sudden pang for Hungary that made me write today, and if nothing else, I thank if for that, for anything that can rouse this dragon of words out of my dormant cave.

For now, that is all. Adieu.

Lent

For any of you non-Catholics out there, we are currently in the Lenten season, the time when we reflect on our past transgressions with Our Lord and Master and voluntarily give up something important to us as a sign of sacrifice as he sacrificed. I have given up computer games. I am only allowed to play with Abby, so my free time has skyrocketed. I did this partly to please the Lord, and partly to sever my ties with my most troubling addiction.

And it worked. I am a writer again.

I wrote several pages yesterday, wrote a poem today and and developing my stories at a much more rapid pace. I have met a few new people who are involved in interesting projects, such as a food-blogger (much cooler than I would have thought, food blogging). I ran out of English tea and am drinking Irish tea, which reminds me, HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY!

Now, off to work. I must continue to write, but I've been saying this for ten years now. Wow. Did I mention I just turned thirty?

Adieu.


J

Sooner Sunsets

I don't like the world becoming dark so early - only in northern latitudes does it feel natural for night to come at four pm. It does not depress me, no, the emotion is rather one of unbalance or annoyance, like it being warm in December (another recent occurrence) or snowy in May. I know that this is actually normal, unlike the last two nature extremes, but for some reason it rubs my sensibilities the wrong way, like people riding horses bareback. Put a damn saddle on and into some riding pants, dammit!

Ha. Like I've ever been on a horse in my life!

My writing is rusty - I mean R U S T Y. I keep trying to work on my new book and find myself wearing out after a paragraph or so. I can make excuses like Steven King can make shit novels, but after a while they add up to a crap collection of useless material and wasted time - like a Steven King library. Gosh, I'm rather snarky tonight, aren't I? Maybe I'm just jealous that he rages out words in floods while while I drip drip slowly. Quality versus quantity: why not both?

Anyway. Almost over being sick. Will try and update more - I'm past the point of promising. Ciao.

Virtual Reality

I am making myself write today, because my habits have become quite counterproductive. My game playing, reading, and drinking have pushed into the space where the creation of elaborate strings of words used to reside, and have thus inhibited my ability to be myself. Of course, I enjoy all of those things, and writing, whatever you might think, is dreadfully demanding and difficult, so it takes quite a big push for me to break the pattern and be myself again.

I have been working a lot, and will continue to do so throughout the holiday season. My distractions are like islands scattered about on the sea of my weekly existence - reading about the Reformation on Amanda's deep scarlet love seat (no metaphors, no metaphors - sometimes a couch is just a couch!), sanity-saving chats with a certain nerdy dancing barista (though she doesn't dance while she makes me coffee, which is unfortunate), weaving a story of Burgundy through the ages on my computer (games, not writing, again unfortunately), drinking wine and smoking cigars while Ed teaches me poker (no metaphors, no metaphors!), and movie viewing and nice dinners with my Significant, Miss Abigail de l'ange. I am about to go watch Eli Stone, another one of my favorite preoccupations.

So when do I write, you might ask?
Well, not often. I'm trying to blog more, which you are currently witnessing. I have so many ideas that I can barely keep them straight. I am always working in my head, sorting through the new and the old and revising and editing and throwing some away and making some new. Just yesterday I had a new idea that will be a pleasure to work on (of course, in the future, after lots of research). Maybe the new apartment will help me - setting seems to have a huge influence on how productive I am, and on how often and what I write.

Oh, and I should get published. Any thoughts?

Enough, enough. Eli beckons, and I am his willing mistress.

Um, just ignore that last bit.



J

The Whole Wide World

I am going to extricate myself from this room and go procure food with my Significant. I then will try and write a little before I dress and go to work, slinging cases of wine with the greatest of ease and only a little annoyance. Tonight, maybe drinks and poker? Who knows - I have been shocked into awareness again by brilliance from the Left Shore *deep head nod to my guiding Star*

Adieu.

Some Old Writings

I found these while looking through my writing folders. I am now less panicked, though whether that is a blessing or a curse I am not sure.

Old 1:

I don’t write anymore. Where once there was thunder now is only cobwebs and dust. What happened? I used to live with passion and anger and fire, and now I’m ice and caution, watch your step-step up again around and I used to breathe-breathe and now I hold it.

Where do you lay down the lines to redraw a life?

Is this how artists die? Do they jump in water and sink to the bottom, drowning to find ancient cities and gold and myrrh? Or do they go out upon the cliff and look down and realize that they brought no rope, and go back for it and have to work and pay for the rope and then they get some and think its not enough so they work some more and save and bye more rope and weeks and months go bye and they wonder what they needed the rope for.

I only wrote this because of Toph. I heard the echo of a light in his voice and it called me back to remember what I was. Where am I? I have fallen off into something and I am safe now and safety is terrifying. Where is the threat of death and loneliness? Where is time that enemy and that comforting torturer? I have God now where I had nothing – I grew up with that reassuring darkness all around me, how can I deal with His ever-present light? And don’t I have to pay for it?

To be who I was I have to die. To be who I could be I have to die. To be who I am is a kind of death, a slow down of heart beats and a slip-slip into the easy arms of repetition, so like a pulse but more like the drip of some narcotic sleep-sleep. Here, open your arms, this is what you should be, like everyone else, here John, take this pill, you will play golf on Saturday’s and have a three bedroom house and two children and they will play football and soccer and grow tall and strong and you will go to church and you will end your life without Him or her and no one will know where you went John you have to reconsider but you can’t leave them all behind.

3.24.07

Old 2:
I had to choose a path and the choices around me were wide and far. I could run in one direction and it could take me so far that I would soon lose sight of the other directions and then I would be self-inflictedly lost and would lose my ability to back track and in a way it is okay because I have already back tracked enough. I have to become an American which means working at jobs we don't like and paying debts we shouldn't owe and wanting picket fences always the picket fences. I am not an American I am a citizen of the Invisible Continent, the Continent that rolls on waves like lost boys in crowds, the Continent that rolls on waves like she rolls on my body, the Continent that rolls on waves like I roll on God, the Continent that is so far away you can never see it unless of course you are standing on it and I am.

You are only beginning to see.

My friends are scattered like the Diaspora like the grapes after picking and the basket is spilled we were never made into the wine that would make the world drunk and giddy some are in the Old World and some are in the Triangle and some are in the Island City of Finance Cutthroats and some are in the forests and some are in the mountains and those are in the valley where I stopped being a madman visionary to Dionysius and became a visionary for Earth and then I moved to the Island of Waves and Invaders and became a visionary for the Buddha and then he gave me to the Word and I became a visionary for the Christ and I fought it and I fought it and I hated it because everything that is in dark hates the light because in the light all is in the open and ashamed and so the dark hates the light and the light is truth and He is the light and now I am done fighting it and I am a Visionary for Him and I will be mocked for it and I don't care but when have I ever.



J

All the World's a Page

How many odes have been written to the Blank Page?

A pox upon them all. Someone call down the Writing.

The Flaw

I was built with a flaw in me. It was an artificial construct, inorganic, a hostile implant.

It was an idea of love.

It is a weakness like a structural anomaly, a purposefully insufficient base platform upon with the edifice of my life was stacked and created, girder by girder. It shines through me in an inappropriately revealing way, making me lean with the lack of balance, the synergy and design of me tilted like an athlete with a limp. I can at all times feel it, alternating between despising it and reveling in it, celebrating the deep tissue scar to make it art.

And yet the questioning of it makes me a monster, an alien, rejecting the "gift" that those buildings around me trumpet as their greatest feat of sociological engineering. Our gigantic web design of culture rejects as a whole the concept of biological genetic engineering, and yet they stumble through the sociological genetic engineering that is half-accident, half-viral weapon by a toxic and violent overly rewarded hierarchy. I have in me this twisted fucking beam, and I remember a time before my foundation when we were made without it.

How many of us see our own blueprints? How many study ourselves with any degree of regularity, or compare the blue on blue lines with those of others, or with those ancient models that were our predecessors? Is my skyscraper related to a Roman villa, or a Greek theatre, or a Sumerian ziggarat, or an Egyptian pyramid? Am I a recreation, or are just parts of me borrowed from posterity, useful designs copied like archetypes of weight-bearing arches?

Those who have questioned have been labeled safely insane by the cultural superstructure, beings or buildings like Nietzsche or Jesus. One said love no one, one said love everyone. Our most common denominator says love select ones, those of biological relatedness and one "special" construct who is designed to fit with your model perfectly. We spend out time looking for the connecting pieces, or connecting with everyone again and again and again until we bash holes in our walls and fracture our supports, vainly struggling to fit with this concept despite obvious problems.

But there it is, this idea, solidly woven into me like a spiral staircase or a subframe, a great column deep in my foundation that is purposefully too weak to support in case of an earthquake.

We have made ourselves crippled giants. This one wants to lie down and sleep.

Because I was built with a flaw in me, and I cannot repair it.

Transition is in the air - or is that fall?

Seriously - the briskness, the step of something that make the air move, the liquid quality of the night, things are moving forward, the great wheel is turning and for the moment I don't feel ground beneath it, but ride high upon it, life the great Ferris Wheel spinning me and giving me an amazing view.

The past few weeks have been up and down, with too much honesty and not enough alcohol (wait, strike that, reverse it), but they haven't been bad weeks either. I'm still not writing enough, though I get some work done when I get to a coffee shop and away from my vacuous pit of a room (okay, okay, so I'm writing there now. Sue me. I need to clean it, too. You gonna give me a hard time about that?) Remind me not to make such liberal use of parentheses.

Regardless, things are better now than the weeks previous. Maybe its the change in weather, maybe its that I've landed on some workable equilibrium with my girlfriend, maybe its that I figured out the plot twist in my novel and how it will end (YES!), or maybe its that I've accepted that change is here, a Something is about to happen, and I am ready and accepting of it. Wait, am I writing about accepting change? I sound like a conservative finally deciding to vote for Obama.

Ah! Politics invaded my blog!

(I nearly got away from self-obsessed whining!) (Okay, enough with the parentheses already!)

I'm exhausted from work, and I can't even believe I wrote tonight. I'm off to drink tea or water or something besides wine, because I rise at 6:30am to spend another long, long day hauling cases of beautiful wine that I can't afford.


J

The Lamentation of the Crossroad

I'm at a crossroads.

Things will change because the path veers into the distant twin horizons, one left and one right. Buddhists would say they are the same path, and only my desires twisting reality into illusion would make them appear distinct, but this interpretation would not change my current situation. Let me be clear: in some way I am tearing in two. I do not want to choose to go down either path - one is the path of commitment and one is the path of loneliness. I have lived a very carefree life, floating about on winds as my desires dictated, getting caught in others along the way only to drift free and soar again. Has this lifestyle made me happy? Certainly not - I look now at my life and see how hollow and transient it is, with nothing save one unpublished work and the tears of my loved ones to follow me into the grave. Yes, I have found work that is interesting in a field I can be passionate about, but anyone who knows me knows that work, that profanity, will never make me happy.

Have I messed all this up, or am I attempting to solve an unsolvable puzzle? Are the two paths one, or am I trying to force them to be? I love someone, and that is one of the only pure feelings in all this, in this sudden storm of uncertainty, depression, doubt and boredom. Does that become a beacon, a light to walk towards? Or is it something I am pulling down, my greedy hands clutching it like a thief clutches a gem, something stolen that belongs to someone else. Who is remaking who, when none of us can ever change another?

Ah, alas and ah, the tragedy of good intentions.

To be honest I don't even know how I got here. A few weeks ago I saw one path, stretching before me. Sure, it wasn't perfect, it wasn't a roller coaster or an adventure, but it was a good path, a bright one. And now, in such a short time, the fork in the road. When did this happen? Lamentation, though one of the oldest art forms, have never been of much practical value. Woah is me in that.

I despise all of this, really. This is a problem of THIS world, the world I loath. Only here could love be twisted in such a way, could clean and clear desires make others hurt and lead to broken bonds between two people. We both love each other and yet it somehow does not make it easier - make what easier? What is there to make, what is the it? I can't see the currents in these black waters, can't see the wind that whips up these tempests. I still don't understand this world - just yesterday I walked through the store and saw the world as a canvas, or a tapestry, feeling as if I could reach out and touch the fabric and laugh, wondering how no one else realized how fake it all was.

Lamentation - wailing for wailing's sake. Oh, life is so hard!
Pish.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to any readers that may have mistakenly stumbled on to this site. This is a good example of why blogging can be dangerous - it seems to give us license to whine.

The situation is how it is. I shall try to resolve it with love and tenderness, and if it cannot be resolved, if I have somehow caused irreparable damage, then I shall to the West, and retire to the City of the Bay.

May angels guide my tongue, Hallelujah.

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.