We Built a Bonfire (A Poem I Wrote)

We built a bonfire
From scrapbooks and old polaroids
From cassettes and video tapes
From Halloween costumes and Christmas trees
We built a bonfire
From summers full of cheap beers and wine coolers
Summers of sitting on the hoods of old Toyotas
Smoking weed
Not cool enough to know better
Not smart enough to care
Watching the sun set
Watching the sun rise, joggers passing the diners in the early morning
We built a bonfire
And the smoke curled up to a sky slit open by clouds
A sky that opened up its guts and poured
on soccer games and school plays
on a first kiss and a broken heart
on a first time, stifling noises, clumsy and afraid
we built a bonfire
and it roared and hissed and kissed at our hands and feet
and we flew kites, and warmed cold hands with our breath,
and coughed from the smoke that filled our lungs
we built a bonfire
watched it burn
until it was gone
and the embers swirled through the evening air to land on the earth
and were extinguished

So I'm back.

Kind of. I guess the fact that nobody reads this is both a blessing and something else that is less of a blessing. Things have changed since I last posted. Quit Boss, started a new job selling gym memberships, started working out again, finished Champions, and wrote a first draft of a query letter. I want to finish the letter this week and get it sent out. You know, get me an agent.

In other news, I'm just so sad. I can't put my finger on why. It just really feels like something is busted down deep in my guts, and what works in most people just shuts down in me. I've got this weight on my shoulders, and it's pushing me down a little bit further every day.

Like I told my mama: I'm feelin blue. I don't know why I'm feelin blue, but I am.

Little Children was pretty great.

Read it at Borders, waiting for KC. Added some new stuff to the novel. Ready to be done with it. Going through the whole thing tomorrow with one goal: make every character 3-dimensional and likeable.

My masculinity has deserted me

in the blur of swiftly folded shirts and condescending customers. I've fooled myself into thinking this was good enough for a while now, and just recently broke out of the spell with the aid of beer and cigarettes. Tomorrow, I ready myself for change. Tomorrow, I break free and explode into a future of uncertainty and promise.

Or I get drunk and write some. Either way.

Loving Daisy. Came around on it. Sick of Boss sucking the testosterone from my nutsack, but I'll get used to that too. Or not. Peace bitches.

Daisy

Wow, this album is heavy. Not exactly what I expected, but I'll give it a few more listens before deciding anything.

Those guys need to cheer up.

If Dan finishes up in the next couple days

or even if he doesn't, I'm starting in on the final draft. I'm still not sure if the whole thing works as a dramatic whole, rather than a collection of affecting short stories, but I'm at the point where I'm ready to be done with it, regardless. It's been tough, at times, to see the forest for the trees, but I'm not ashamed of the (almost) finished product.

So I'm not winning a Pulitzer or getting on Oprah. I very well might get published, and then what? I've got a second book planned, either way. It's going to touch on many of Champions' themes, but I'd like to empty out all the cynicism and negativity and just write something really honest, beautiful, and sad.

Swinging for the fences, as always. Either hit a home run or strike out.

Champions

Waiting on final input, then finishing up. Attempting to contact agents starting tonight. Looking into independent publishers.

It will happen for me. It has to, right?


(probably not)

Stuck.

No escape in sight. KC's despondent in California and I'm completely stuck in the frozen north. Tired and sad. Everything from the Bills to this job to KC's situation is weighing heavily on my shoulders. Just want to publish the book, find a job I like, and get free.

Good luck.

Really sick of

secret shoppers and UPTs and DPTs and sucking up to morons, trying to sell shit I couldn't care less about. Ready for a real life, if one is out there waiting.

Also, tired of this self-destructing body and my self-destructive habits.

Gosh am I happy

to watch some football, even if the Steelers did win. Can't say I'm holding out much hope for the Bills, but the Packers might be fun enough this season. Dom and I split a 12 pack variety mix of Long Trail and watched the Thursday night game, switching every commercial break to catch pieces of "Animal Armageddon." Dear Animal Planet, are you proud of yourself now?

Work still sucks, and in REALLY fun news, someone (no names, of course) forgot to pay our gas bill, so I'm sponge bathing myself with microwaved water like the world's fattest boy.

Either way, this is dangerously close to rock-bottom. It could only be worse if I were an 840 lb teenager or a prehistoric animal during armageddon. I think I might read some Stephen King novels, since I'm a moron and like books about monsters.

Death Poem

General Samurai Akashi Gidayu prepares to commit seppuku. His death poem is displayed before him and in the upper right corner.

KC left for LA today.

So the apartment suddenly feels much larger and emptier than it ever has. Dropped her off at the airport at 4:30 AM and got home in time to not sleep at all (around 5:30.)

The all-encompassing ennui continues. Starting writing a second story or novel or novella or whatever. Done with cynicism. Still waiting on Daniel to provide some input on Champions.

Realize this might be kind of hard to read. Sorry.

Sending the draft

over to Dan, hoping for the best, obviously. Got two suits, and they look just dandy. Read a couple stories from How We are Hungry during lunch break and enjoyed them.

These are the days of our lives. And, no sir, there's nothing wrong with the shirt. The problem is with you and the fact that you've managed to reach obesity at the age of 23. No, we don't have it in an XXXL. I think maybe we should just let this one go.

Remember

being 16, going to concerts, the excitement of drinking beers by bonfires and chasing girls and smoking weed while sitting on the hoods of cars at four in the morning. Remember beaches and the hot sun and the slowly passing trails of clouds cutting light wounds in blue skies. Remember snowboarding and running and feeling every victory and failure with red-hot clarity. Remember the subtle buzz and burn of youth and how far away it seems even here, halfway through twenty six.

Wake up from dreams of childhood with tears in my eyes. Shower. Go to work.

Repeat.

Tired of phone calls

from jobs I hate. Tired of high expectations for low pay and no fulfillment. Tired of the mall, and the suburbs, and the sunny days spent locked away behind walls of concrete and metal. Tired of waking up ready to go to sleep every single day. Tired of running in circles.

The novel is just under 51,000 words now. KC read it and offered very useful criticism. I am working on a query letter, and will begin to shop it in October.

Stage 1: Sell it.

Stage 2: Get the hell out of dodge.

But where will you go? Wherever.

Hardbodies

The object of Dom's frenzied obsession finally arrived, via Netflix delivery, and was everything he'd claimed it would be and more. Recently watched The Bikini Shop on one of our 730 Showtime channels and was unimpressed, and while Hardbodies repeats the same basic formula as that long-forgotten classic, it has way more boobs and at least one more retired Jewish NFL quarterback. Casual Reagan-Era misogyny and questionable plotting collide head-on with tits, tits, and more tits in this care-free and sexy adventure. An awful, awful movie that I recommend renting, at the very least for the coming attractions.

Work and writing

Book is nearly finished: now sitting at around 48k words. My goal is 55-60k trimmed down to somewhere just over 50k. Once KC's read it and given me some notes, I'm going to dive in a complete revise it before putting together a query letter and sending it out. Very exciting.

In Boss land, business is incredibly slow, and working in the mall is the worst, but it's paying ok and I'm getting nice clothes. I'll keep repeating that mantra - nice clothes.

Martin Streek is dead

He was really just a voice I heard every other Saturday night, but now he's gone and killed himself and I feel a deep sense of regret. Why? Maybe because I automatically assume that suicide indicates hidden depths. Fuck the happy people with their big houses and good jobs. Give me the depressed, the heartsick, the melancholy. Maybe I identify with the losers of this big shitty game, or maybe I just respect someone with the balls to check out before his designated time. Either way, I'm drunk, and he killed himself. Maybe that isn't sad? Nah, it probably is.

In other news, got me a new job. A fancy one at that. Sellin' me some expensive suits and t-shirts. It's retail, so it reinforces my general awfulness as a human being, but it seems like it will pay ok, and I get to pick up some sick duds along the way.

I got inspired (by way of drink) last night and hammered out 700 words of pretty-decentness. Nothing earth-shattering yet, but I know where I want to go with the motherfucker. Should have the whole shebang done by next month. Here's hoping.

In honor of Martin, I suppose - some Lorca:

Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream.
This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.
Bodies decompose beneath the city clocks,
war passes by in tears, followed by a million gray rats,
the rich give their mistresses
small illuminated dying things,
and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.

A Brief Review of Lunar Park

It's almost impossible to talk about the new Bret Easton Ellis novel Lunar Park without discussing the life, impact, and reputation of Ellis himself. That said, I'll try, but with a disclaimer: Some knowledge of Ellis and his works (specifically American Psycho and Less Than Zero) is probably necessary to enjoy this book fully.

With that out of the way, what exactly is Lunar Park? That's a tough question, for a number of reasons. Is it a Celebrity Memoir? A satire of upper class suburbia? A Stephen King-inspired horror novel? Well, yes... on all counts. The book, which stars a fictional version of Ellis himself, details the author's struggles with his new found suburban family life, specifically his difficulty interacting with his young son Robby and his celebrity wife Jayne. As Ellis fights to leave his drug-addled and drunken past behind, he finds himself haunted by the ghost of his late father, and the creations of his earlier novels. In the meantime, local boys are disappearing at an alarming rate, a monstrous toy bird named Terby is peeling paint from the house's walls, and a cream-colored Mercedes which may or may not have belonged to Ellis' father methodically stalks the his family.

If that seems like a lot to take in - well, that's the not the half of it. While the book shifts tones frequently enough to leave the reader dizzy, it never truly loses focus. Lunar Park is a very funny book, and the stabs at suburban life, particularly the treatment of children in modern culture, are spot on. And when the scary stuff kicks in (about halfway through) it's very scary indeed. The more squeamish among us can take heart in the fact that this is certainly the least graphic (in terms of sex OR violence) book Ellis has ever written.

At its heart, this is a story about fathers and sons and, after all the blow-torch murders and fur-and-teeth monsters have come and gone, Ellis demonstrates a newly-discovered flair for the emotional in the closing pages: an achingly beautiful and deeply bittersweet ode to fatherhood - exactly the sort of thing I knew he could never write. In Lunar Park, Ellis has created something completely different from his normal fair, something exciting and alive. Out of the limelight and facing irrelevance, the former bad boy of American literature has done something truly remarkable. He's grown up.

A Girl at Work Got Fired

and on the way home, I drove behind a car with a "Proud Parent of a DARE Graduate" plate frame. I took DARE when I was 11, drew penises and joints on every character in the book, and skipped the final test. Still, I was successful enough to graduate from the program. I wonder if my parents know. There might be a plate frame with their name on it.

Young in body. Old and shitty in spirit.

After work today, whistling down the 33 propelled by cheap coffee and Woodhands, my hands stumbled across a disturbing realization. Brushing my fingers against the side of my head, I found a group of 4 or 5 thin, spindly hairs erupting from my right ear. Surely, I thought, these must be from my sideburns, but no - further inspection confirmed my greatest fear. So with great sadness and resignation, I mourn the continued passing of my youth, from smooth adolescence to the hairy, crooked form of a man, complete with all the bodily eccentricities that entails.

Just one more step in my ever-present march toward mortality. 26 years old, one foot in the grave.

I only know one speed to run.

Let's get this motherfucker rolling.

Like the Phoenix

My blogging ways rise from the ashes of indifference. You might be thinking "This is all very exciting, Erik, but what prompted this return to self-indulgent glory?" Well, this here blog should allow me to network with the Buffalo writing community and track my progress with work.

I feel obligated to sign off with a promise of better things to come, but nobody is reading this yet, and I don't want to sign any checks I can't cash. Ta ta.