Tomorrow's newsletter is in the send queue and I've spent the remaining time sitting in Orangina The Chair, staring at Fictions02 and 03, and wondering why I don't sit in Orangina The Chair and stare into space during my non-working hours too. Something else I need to work on.
something new
Been a long time coming, but today feels as good a day as any to commit it here (so I can possibly undo it by Sunday's newsletter, but I doubt I will, not this time): I'm stopping work on MainFictionThing and moving on to something new.
I love the characters and the story, but I can't crack it, and, more importantly, I feel no connection to it, no spark, none of the important, unwritten things to make it at least semi-compelling to a reader. It feels like a relic of a former me, a time – among other things – when the most important person in my life for the entirety of it was still alive.
As I'm moving on with other aspects of my life, it's time to move on with this one too, into something new. The something new is percolating, and I need more time to process it, but I think it'll work; all I know is that I've little interest at present in long-term, long-form projects, fiction or non–: the weekly SHORTBOX MEMORY REVUE pod is part of it, but not the whole of it.
Aiming to have a better picture of it by Sunday's MacroParentheticals. In the meantime, the only way to get that clearer picture is to play with sketches and fingerpaints and see what comes.
Big thank you to Macro subscribers for your outpouring of support following yesterday's early release / TFD-venting session. While it’ll take a spell for me to return to full operating capacity, your kind words (and a fun night out – though the food was a major disappointment does no one use salt anymore jesusfuckingchrist) certainly helped. Will resume regular weekly dispatchery a week from Sunday. ❤️
Eyelash-freezer of a run this morning (morning run for the weekends: makes things a little easier married-schedule-wise (and gives my upper half a couple of days off; might do the same mid-week, will see) but makes things a little harder "oh shit it's cold"-wise) in untrammeled cemetery snow powder: pleasant to look at and conceptually pleasant, but reality is, as ever, possessed of other ideas. Four miles.
Similarly struggling with even the newsletter this morning: words aren't coming and I'm beginning to think that my attempts at a third workblock have, no matter how much I've enjoyed adding it in the afternoon – and being able to add it in the afternoon – left me with only fumes to work with the next day. Won't deny that the breakthrough the other afternoon was nice – haven't felt it, the creative equivalent of an orgasm, in longer than I care to admit – but it's useless unless I'm able to think clearly enough to expand and build on it the next day. Better, I think, to find something else to fill those postprandial/post-run hours and let the pieces and fragments stew in the afternoon miasma of IDK.
Also struggling with newsletter formatting and rendering: seriously, WTF Buttondown? Something's amiss…
tiny projects
This interregnum between the penultimate drafting of the main thing and final typesetting and design might be granting me a peek into where I'll be heading, creatively, once it's done: a full embrace of Rubin's experiment train of stake-lowering thought, a practice of tinier, smaller projects, each project existing solely to explore and finish and move on. Partway there with the weekly Shards, but I'm aiming to expand aspects of its intent (namely, that they're nothing but experiments) across the totality of my creative practice; now that the ambition to have anything resembling a creative career is dead and buried, I’m having fun simply tinkering or, as my late grandfather would say, “potting around.”
SitRep/20231023
Sent a quick (ok, not so quick as my editing skills are nonexistent at present) follow-up newsletter to subscribers with an update (and thank you) on the current situation. Recording a bit of it here, for my own reference (and remembrance).
“As for my grandfather, he's still kicking - in spite of having a second massive heart attack which should have killed him on Saturday evening – and I'm working with an amazing hospice team to make his final days as comfortable and pain-free as possible. This was my first time working with them: I had set it up for my mother, but we determined it was too risky to move her – fortunately, one of the hospital nurses had worked as a hospice nurse and knew how to handle it. Their work is truly amazing: two hours after I signed the papers, his room at assisted living was converted to a full suite with hospital bed and everything and we had him back there from the hospital. He was pleased to get back – and with the throngs of visitors who came to see him.
Today, I'll make the calls to cancel all future follow-ups and dialysis appointments. Once those treatments stop, he'll have anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, visiting friends, loved ones, and able to simply drift away, painlessly; he's earned his rest after 96 great years and one hellish month of 97 and, at this point, it's the best gift I can give him. Profound relief on all fronts.
As for me, the combo of no sleep and T1D wave-riding has kicked my ass. Hopeful that I can start to build myself back up in the coming days. But it has given me deeper empathy for his mindset and situation: if the last four days did this to me, I can only imagine what it did to his system – and he's got 55 years, borked kidneys, heart, bladder, and three tubes (one of which got torn out on Thursday evening, which overwhelmed his system and led to this endgame) on me….”
principle09 :: this is it / this is me
Updated Principles page with 09 :: this is it / this is me:
MacroParentheticals0138 – featuring the return of the audio "I am the voice in your head" editions(!) – is out and on its way to subscribers' inboxes, 0139 and Shard003 blank pages templated and set for composition and headscratching. Returning, finally, to MainFictionThing with an understanding that part of its challenge is maintaining my interest in and keeping a sense of surprise – both for me as the writer and for the eventual reader – while working with a pre-defined (or as close as I allow it to be) form and genre. The day’s run, leaves, and visits lie ahead until they lie behind.
happy / done?
Two notions duking it out across brainmatter battlefield:
One, that I'm happy writing what I'm writing and publishing it the way I do. No interest in aspiring to go beyond short things and experiments published to newsletters and zines. Aspiration pointed only towards increasing the quality of the work.
And yet:
Two, the emptiness I've felt around most aspects of my life and self at one point or another has, as of this pondering, consumed nearly all aspects and, for the first time since I left music school 20 years ago, seeped into the one area I didn't think it could: Am I writing now only because I haven't a clue what else to do with myself? Or because the alternative, not writing, is too scary to fathom? Is there something else I should be doing and if so, is the only way to find it to stop writing?
Synthesis(?): while I'm about 98% certain that writing will remain part of whatever the new normal shapes up to be (and that notion one will win out), that two percent is – or, rather, I'm in a state of mind where that two percent is – compelling, perhaps dangerously so. Likely cause: utter exhaustion.
Duly recorded here solely as a reflection of the current status of my process of processing.
sitrep/20230930
Tomorrow's newsletter's written, the first Shard (weekly 100-word microfictions exclusive to subscribers) done. Next: deciding whether or not to continue the "I am the voice in your head" editions of the NL: while it's not a ton of effort, it does impact how long I can work on the writing, so I'm still weighing that one. A lot depends on how my voice is doing in the morning.
MainFictionThing remains at a standstill but I'm chipping away at the brick wall in front of it, a little light peeking through. I think I see what I'm trying to see which is maybe what it wants me to see?
Grandfather on road to recovery, out of hospital and in his (rather swanky) resort/transitional care. Fridge stocked with Ginger Ale, football on the TV. He's set.
The hanger is real: multi-grain cheerios and a shot of bourbon do not an excellent dinner make.
Compiling a list of times I haven't felt a pervasive emptiness in the last 14 years and it's rather paltry and I don't know what to do with that other than state it for the public to myself record.