A True Nomad

Achieving control from inside.

   It has become apparent to me that these distractions from the ability to concentrate brought about my the electronic age were in my way. They provide such ability to move fast from one mental space onto another mental space, like slipping between the cracks, a wonder to be sure, but ultimately the wrong medicine for needing to be rooted to the spot. Rooted within one, and satisfied and grateful for the very fact of existence. I am always seeking to better myself with learning, the allure of the knowledge inside of a book, inside of the wealth of information available with a few touches of my finger tips, a few clicks off a couple of links. What wonders will I find? Yet that is not the right attitude to writing, to wanting to remain, focused here upon a singular task, a singular character, a singular plot. With the quantity of information of varying quality available, one tends to diminish the need for quality within oneself. Quality within oneself requires massive investment of time, for only this mind, this one singular consciousness with all its limitations need to move beyond it, to cut at the roots of whatever is holding one back.

   I recognize a flaw in my character. Before I left the isolation of my provincial college, I had done research into the practices of Shamanism. Apart from an ongoing intellectual interest in the altered state, and the dimensions of consciousness, I had been seeking a pragmatic use of the techniques of Ecstasy to achieve a solidifying unity within the vacuum created by my inability to worship or rely upon a deity for the meaning of life, of existence. I had thought that by becoming filled with this element, as I see it now, which I felt from inside an intellectual quest, I could somehow achieving a purpose without Reason: a believe only in the journey itself, to no destination. For a while, in the rewiring of my Being, my purpose to achieve this aim I found a spirit to which I could turn, eschewing the usual drugs of drink, cigarettes, the munia of distractions to which a restless idle mind turns to escape the gnawing sense of lack, the Absurdity of a rationaless universe against my need for Reason. Now over a year in pursuit of the journey itself, I have fallen again into idle distraction. A journey without destination grows wearisome, as the sights, though of no repeat, begs of the question of the journey itself. Why not linger here or there? Why move again? For what purpose? The questions return, with a renewed sense of hopeless to ever escape the need to answer them. Wandering around, feeding wayward curiosity has left me feeling superficial. I feel further away from my aim then before. And I become more vulnerable to distraction than ever, as idleness slowly crept in.

    Only in a complete disengagement from my life did I start to retrace these steps I stumbled through, holding the Ideal (again) of the journey aloft as my only compass.

   A true nomad is not a wandering man without a home: He has settled himself as his home. The journey without and within reflect the change of the world. One does not make a home on the road, but becomes at home on the road. Thus, wherever the journey, it is as a center moving towards the periphery, not as a moving away from center towards the edges of the Mandala.

   I have been idealizing the malcontent, the shifting restlessness of youth for so long. Now I hope to make peace with this life. For I see now the reflection; why certain moments in traveling, or driving long into the a lonely night on my moped towards a distant destination feels so right—I have become one with moving, with movement. I have settled into the moment, into myself in the moment of flight. This illusive feeling of belonging to a place while in transit, has been the unity of a return into the self-flow of This (I can find no other word to express it).

To grandpa

And finally I have the time to write again... it's been a hellish couple of months, but that's not what's on my mind right now. Looking forwards, and what in 2 days I'll be 24. 3 years after expectations. 3 years after the initial scheme. I've been foolish to think that others could replace it, that things could just become as what I've heard told or retold, not what I'd lated down for myself all those years ago.

The writing is coming, but I've been afraid again, keeping it all in for the right words to flow out. The right voice, the right sound, the right words. And it is coming, like drops out of a faucet, a drip and a drip at a time. But do I have all that to wait, for the little pool to become something on its own. A little collection of words so right for what I need?

Sometimes, when I'm dead drunk or just feel like starting up at something (you can't see the stars in a city like Bangkok) I lie on the tile floor of my bathroom along the gecko and rat shit and stare up at the cracking ceiling, looking for random patterns that might assemble themselves into something, listening to the rats. I like living in this house, my grandpa's house. I've got to admit that condos are more convenient, I'll give it that, but I can't help but think of grandpa in almost everything I see here. He's cobbled most of it together from bits and pieces, like he does with everything. Plastic pipe canes, industrial sinks for basins, cement ponds to block out the water, lamps that never match, sockets that don't work, and a thousand tools mounted on rotting wood and empty cans with the nails still sticking out. He cobbled together something for his children too, while not having an real significant degrees himself my uncles are all lawyers or doctors, and none are or had to be that damn poor to own pieces of plywood tools, or build their own fans, lamps and tables. And all of a sudden I'm back to being 7 years old, building tables with him in the backyard. The tables we still have at our house. With the pieces of scrap wood left I built myself a box car. I remember hammering tails in the side, and sticking in cans in the bottom. I remember getting into it for the first time and seeing all the jagged nails sticking out which I didn't bother to hammer down cause I was so excited to just be in it, even when at that age I knew it would never move. I'd made something, and I didn't really care that it was just a weird box. Grandpa could've probably made me a box chariot, but he just let me keep it that way working on it until I cut myself with the saw, and perhaps that was all for the best.

Now if I could learn to write like that again, like I built the boxcar, like grandpa does with building whatever he had at hand. Despite the mismatch, or maybe because of the mismatch, I can learn to love the wrong words for everything. Like PVC pipe hand canes, plastic bottle lap shades, and aluminium plate clocks.

Speed Writing

I just suddenly realized that the greatest problems came from going too slow. I've set out to write three novels this year, when I should have aimed higher. I just aimed too low, with the speed that I can do. I am going too slow, and that's why I'm bored.

I went outside tonight to the street-lamp lit space underneath the bridge. The place they moved the sorry excuse for a park that they leveled for a show space across the street. Now it double as basketball court, tra-kaw court, a place to dump gym equipment, and do some aerobics sometimes, but they moved that behind my house with the children playground. The orange blow of street light, and me alone in the darkness with a box-cutter. I just watch the cars go by, and then wait for myself to catch up in this place where its quiet.

It's then that I notice that I'm going at a certain speed. A speed that's not quite right for how fast I need to go. Writing is like that sometimes. I've been surprised how much more writing I'm doing now that I have a faster keyboard. On the slower keyboard, writing was a pain unless I'm doing the kind of writing that requires slow thinking. I can still change and hook that thing up if I need to, coffee stains and all, but I prefer this.

I prefer having something that might just be fast enough to catch my thoughts as I abuse it all over.

So now what am I shooting for? Of my high speed education, I'm achieving the workout schedule. No problem, and I'm about a month or two away to lifting my own body weight. Reading books I'm averaging about 3-5 books a week, and I'm blaming that on the World Cup, but I also know can be faster. On the writing well, it's only been when inspiration strikes that I can write with any sort of enthusiasm. Now it's gotten to me; I don't really need that right now to write all the same. I need speed, and not that much precision. I need to keep clubbing the damn muse until it's all soft and I can apply it evenly on the canvas. I just gotta keep writing at a certain speed because my mind just works that way. In editing comes what people call a genius, and I'm no good at that. I'm just the curious guy trying to understand how this all works. So I'm going to speed write a couple of things this week, and now I'm going to aim say, for a novella in 2 weeks, and perhaps a novel a month.

Ambitious, yes? It's only the fear holding you back.

Something for those who know: Sometimes you sleep just because you're afraid of staying awake...

May 20-21

The first part is not spell-checked. It was simply written on the spur before passing out. Somehow I like it that way better. The second part is only moments ago. I'm either going to pass out again, or get back into veiling my ideas in their letter body bags.

--

Rage is boiling inside of me at what had happpened yesterday. I'm at a point right now where everything is coming together. I understand now that I'm gong to have to type with my eyes closed to get the world out. I see the visons of this inner world where the stories ring true, but I can't neglect to keep my eye out for this one. This one world this one where the moment can pass ou by just liethat. There's no inifinite time on a plane to be wsting waway getting drunk and hihgh and unreactive. There's been too long that I've just said to myself that I'll take antoehr drink then I'll do it, but then I don't I justkeep watching the next damn thing on TV trying to hide from what I have to do , but no more even if the desire for alcohol take me I'm giong to keep on writing, I'mg going to write no matter what the keep the images moving inside of thi callibir head of mine. I'm going to keep the whole lot from falling with my mind. I'm going to use this vison that I see the vison in the dream.s that come to be from night on to the next to keep guiding me towards the next revolution in rightiong. If I it isn't a revolutonfo or them it is a revolution for me, because I can feel what everyone shall being feeling that alineted from this sense of reality proud nad ostaligic, the mood and lthe listening, it's in the music in is in the underground... am I making the right choices, but I'm only the writing the novel that I can write right now in this moment . I'm only going to use what I know right now tot keep myelf going. I'm going to high speed the hell out of wriitng meocride crap, and keep heading toward the benveable goals. I know what I'm gong to hve to learn to type faster to keep with the flow of my thoughts into language. This lagnuage which spikes and thrills. I 'm wiriting electicity off from my head into my fingers.

2:23: AM Can't sleep. The rats are always knawing at the roof at 3 in the morning and it's too damn hot even with two fans on me. Since I can't sleep I decided to read some of Henry Miller's letters. Now here is a man who knew about making art by writing. Unfortunately I'm almost at the end of the book when I discovered where the injuries foretold in an earlier blue ink warned. The bastard had cut out and stolen most of the last chapters! He's so damn indecent as well to steal the pages after the letters have begun! I'm left hanging... and cursing the bastard who had the gall to call me motherfucker in his note! Whoever you are, I have to say I had been amused reading your note but I want those damn pages back and damn your scrap book or whatever you chicken shit! I can barely read your handwriting, and the sentiment was fine, until you had to insult me, carr.
Well on the bright side it got me back in the new office chair to write. Meditations upon the visions in the back of my eyelids. What is writing? The question simply popped into my mind as I finally got up to drink some water. What is writing? I could ask: What is art? But: What is writing? Is writing some sort of special medium, where working with the very basic tools of language we are sending straight bolts of telepathy hurling into the minds of others? And what constitutes good writing? I know commercial success appears to be what everyone around me is striving for. I'm wondering if we're simply a verbal puppeteer, dragging characters out of the closet to enact our private pains for another audience. What people want to read about are other people, doing human things. That is the sphere of fiction. We have the scientific language which leaves one bored to sleep, maintaining that detached 'objective' perspective. Yet what is 'good writing'? I'm clearly unresolved on the issue.
I dream of a style being variations on a theme. There is the main concept, and then the small parts. Yet to create something totally new, something original, I see that one has to work with the basic colors, the nuts and bolts of the craft. And yes, despite everything being so uncertain there is certainly a craft to doing this.

The Human Condition

I just had a good long sleep using delta brainwave technology. After a good evening at my friend's house where I had FOOD. For those who don't know me in real life, I'm quite a thin person though I eat A LOT. My unusual thinness is thus generally attributed to: a) a fast metabolism; b) not eating properly. I like having a), but b) is somewhat deceptive, at least to me. As a semi-workaholic [I spend my free time, reading for my work, taking legal stimulants to keep on working, and in lots of exercise] food is simply something I don't think of on a regular basis. Since I mainly cook at home, this can become a big problem. By the time I'm conscious of that my body needs nutrition (when you're used to staying up for days on nothing but coffee, cigarettes, alcohol and willpower this can come pretty late) I barely have enough energy to make myself a cup of instant noodles, which as soon as I consume realize how empty my stomach is.

In this regard my bad mental habits don't help.

"Just a couple more sentences."

"Another chapter."

"Oh but you're doing so well right now, if you stop it might not come out good tomorrow."

Amongst other things I keep unconsciously saying to myself. Next thing I know it I wake up on the keyboard, and the writing is a disorganized mess. Good ideas; just don't know what order they go into. To illustrate the point, I have on my desk the remain of a pack of anti-acids that I've been chewing on (in semi-spearmint flavor!) to keep the stomach at bay.

Either I'm dedicated, or crazy.

Dread, unlimited.

Remember that loading screen in Baldur's Gate II: "Your characters don't need to eat. You Do! We don't want to lose any dedicated gamers."

I need a sign like that, for writers.

Wonder Boys by Micheal Chabon

Tried to watch the movie for Wonder Boys (based on the book by Micheal Chabon). There's just so much alternating of the original story I can take when it comes to adapting a book into film, and after the part Trip calls Walter at 8 am to tell him that he's in love with his wife I had it. I switched it off, feeling so glad that I read the book.

I wonder how many books turn into bad movies. What a shame that is. Wonder Boys might be a passable movie, but if anyone got turned off by it and didn't bother with the book that would be a damn shame. Then again, you can't translate a book with such a cleverness with language, references, turns of phrases, description and wit onto a screen.

I must say though that on the whole the novel had more good points than bad. It's a novel that's good, pushing great, but didn't quite get there. That is the best kind of novel for the learning writer to learn from, in my opinion. I learned a lot from this book.

It's good writing, good craft. There's so many nuggets of gold in there for an aspiring writing, and I have a feeling that this being the difficult novel, and the novel before the The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay (Pulitzer) it taught him somethings. As one in our trio reading group aptly said, "The writing is like Hollywood special effects. You're like 'wow, wow, wow' and then it's over, and you're thinking 'that's it? what about the story?" The dazzle of his prose got in the way of the execution of the story and character. You've got to 'kill your darlings' and here his cleverness with words were his.

I love first person narratives, and this one managed to stay in the same POV the entire novel. However, the writing bordered on the style of the the third person too much (the 'special effects'). While clever, the fact of it being 'too clever' at inappropriate places distracted from the situation of the story. I realized what the first person narrative needed most of all: a strong voice. That's essentially what I liked about all the books I read that's written in the first person (for an interesting experience try reading Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City written in second person) from Catcher in the Rye to Henry Miller's Tropics.

I also appreciated the novel not having a standard plot. The characters essentially don't change throughout the entire book. Grady does towards the end, which could qualify it as a maturation plot for both Grady and James Leer, but it's just the barest of changes. This is not bad. Yet a novel without a standard plot is a difficult feat to pull off, and I admire the writer for managing it, especially in a first novel. From what I understood, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh had been Chabon's master's thesis.

We disused universality in our group. One in our group got all the Jewish references, which myself and the other had no clue about. Another referent would be the pot-smoking aspects. If you've never spoked weed, hung around weed-smokers for a long time, had good friends (or spouses) who smoked reefer, then certain parts of the book would definitely get to you. As Grady compounded the problems in his life (and his denial) by smoking and avoiding conflict, each 'shove it under the carpet' scene set up the next. The way these series of effects were connected were masterfully done, but they felt like connecting the dots instead of a resonance. The essence of standard plot are stories which resonate with the unconscious (either that, or we've just been listening to them over and over again from childhood) of a majority of people, and this one perhaps a more niche group.

There are a few other points, but I gleaned one valuable lesson here. The book appeared very autobiographical. All books are, but I got the sense that this book had excellent technical execution also as if it had been a creative writing project that an A+ student wanted to write. 'Write what you know' and all other maxims met. Yet the voice didn't seem to fit or didn't come in at the right time. I saw a writer beginning to understand his craft and style. Perhaps every beginning writer must do this: write an intensely autobiographical novel, just to understand both his voice, his passion, his honesty, and the distinction of that and the story-teller's craft. Every if he/she doesn't show it to anybody, it needs to be written.

So I go to write mine... keeping in mind to kill my darlings.

Another shitty day in paradise

First day where I begin to sober up again. Yesterday was all recovery. After a week of continuous drinking, I had sat having a glass of red wine (donated by my friend Robin) when it hit. The dizziness and wrenching body spasms of sickness when your body starts to reject the alcohol. There I am again leaning over the porcelain goddess again... wow it seems like ages ago old friend. And... nothing. I tried again... nothing. Wait a minute, when was the last time I ate? A day ago, a day and a half? I sunk down and laid on the bathroom floor staring at the crumbling sealing listening to the rats crawling between the floors. And the drainage pipes below. Smelling like piss and booze. You feel like ooze, wanting to flow down there just about now. Not again, forgetting to eat. Forgetting to sleep. Why is it that I feel the most human here, when my mucus covered fingers have nothing better to do than force myself to regurgitate.


Somehow, it felt like writing essays in college. So I laid their scribbling on the ceiling. You never know what you can get from a good dry hangover.

0 - Oblivion

Oblivion...

I’m standing here almost at the beginning. One more assignment to go and I’ll be the proud owner of that sheepskin. The one your parents are always egging you on to achieve. Yes it’s limbo all over again as you’re asking the question: So… what now? Motivation Zero. Was it suppose to be some kind of success or was I again mislead. I am standing here trying to confront what I am disgusted at (our happy capital city of Bangkok), sky high bar looking down at pollution crowds and the cloud buildings, feeling much the same really; scammed. Really now, was it worth it? You read the front pages of the smiling faces and happy testimonials, and you make a fantasy of yourself walking around enjoying the sunshine, lying in the yard talking to friends, meeting strange wonderful people, and getting a through academic education at the same time. To give the dream credit, I didn’t go to a good school. Still I can just shut my stream of mental rotations for a second and listen to the conversation going on next to me, some two blond chicks from somewhere or there, or the old man sitting around sipping liquor, or the group of wealthy something something networking young professionals all getting drunk (like me) to realize we’re all missing something.

Don’t remember who said it (maybe it was Stephan King) when we’re puking in the gutter the color’s the same. Well from personal experience I’ll say there’s not much difference in the price of liquor, but there is a discernable difference in pigmentation if you’re looking for it. Or if you’re trying to feed fish.

Maybe I just have a problem with society. I've been told I have an attitude problem; an authority problem; (Had) a drug problem; (resuming) an alcohol problem; (had) a smoking problem; some sexual dysfunctional fixation problem; etc. ad neasuem. 

You know. Maybe I just have a smiling problem. Or even worse; a writing problem.

And I’m tired of trying to fix it. I'm looking back for that time. It seemed so long ago when everything was perfect; seemed perfect. Naw, I just didn't care. Floating there in chemical oblivion, master of my own universe... and perhaps that was really the answer after all.

... at least to the writing problem. 

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Copyright 2010, Saranit Vongkiatkajorn