Reflections.....

When I was in college I lived in a house off campus. The house was attached to another house. Our house was filled with vegan lefty "anarchists" with awful politics (one of whom was me). Next door were more regular college ilk. There was a girl who lived next door, I can't remember her name, maybe it was Sarah, I'll call her Sarah. Sarah's room was on the second floor. When you exited the front door and turned left you could see her bedroom window. If she was up at night you could see the light coming out of her room. I saw her on campus one day and asked if I could throw rocks at her window one night and read her crappy love poetry. I did in fact do such a thing. The angle of her bedroom to the ground was perfect. I remember her opening up her window and leaning out of it a little to hear me. The setting demanded I read her crappy poetry late at night.

A week or two ago I was outside of my friend's house. I looked up at her window and that memory came to me again. Coinciding with that memory was thinking about John Cusack in "Say Anything," which is arguably one of the most romantic movies ever, ever! That was the major inspiration to the last two pieces "If you sing to me in French..." and "What are we doing here..." They are also the same "story" told from two different viewpoints. I was hoping to practice trying to develop different character views.

"Writer's block" came up after I tried to write a blog about some punk kids. The short piece is on the blog. My computer froze up and I figured I'd write something about getting writer's block. My output hasn't been that much lately because I haven't been prioritizing writing and instead been prioritizing feeling sorry for myself. Its more than when I was dating though. Another argument about how girls will make you fat and lazy! I like the line about the computer having AIDS.

"Much Luck" is an almost exact replica of a conversation I was having with one of my friends who works in the service industry. Its a pretty typical conversation to have with another waiter or waitress. I've been using more "real" dialogue that I've had in my stories, or at least these last few.

Most of my writing isn't far off from my everyday life. The characters, the events, the settings, are all reflections in a murky mirror. Let's hope that I don't upset anyone with my characters (as in lets hope the real kids can't tell who they are) but than again I'm under read as it is. They'll be happy when I've achieved posthumous fame. "Hey I was in a story by Matt Lucas," will be on everybody's lips.

Thoughts on "Lightbulb"

Today I changed the lightbulbs in my kitchen. The other day I was saying how the kitchen was pretty dark. Anne, my roommate, noted that the lights were blown. I put changing the bulbs on my short to do list. Around the corner from my house is a small bodega. Its run by some middle eastern guys. I bought the light bulbs from there.

I wanted to write a short story and thought that a story about changing a light bulb would be fun. I don't read many stories about ordinary every day things.

Along with wanting the story to be about changing the light bulb I decided to have a female protagonist. She's not a very developed character and if I substituted all the shes, and hers, for he, and his I doubt there would be any difference in the story. Lip service is a small step towards writing depthful female characters though right?

The other thing I did was to denote time passing. Halfway through the story I decided the whole events would take about 50 minutes. I counted each action in terms of minutes. I don't know why I did this but it seemed like a neat literary device.

While I was riding my bike I thought of the writer, Piers Anthony. I read a couple of his "Immortal" series before I left for Thailand. In the forward Anthony talks about his writing process. Not only does he have a separate work area but he also finds he rarely has writer's block. He feels he doesn't suffer from writer's block as he writes about the mundane things that happen in his life. It was bizarre to hear him say this as he writes outlandish fantasy tales.

Also that picture of the lightbulb is fucking stupid. My friend Eric commented a while back that I should have more pictures in my writings. Caving into peer pressure has my writing look stupid. Next thing you know I'll end up a hack like El Chavo. Eee Gads!

Thoughts on "You're going to Get Hit"

Unlike some of my other stories I rewrote each entry rather than create a separate part for each one. So instead of having Billy's letter part 1, 2, and 3, I just kept Billy's letter and amended it as I went along.

A week or so ago I was sitting in the tub. Its not often that I bathe, take in a full bath full of hot water and let my skin soak. Recently having been bitten by a spider a tub full of boiling liquid seemed to be in order. As my body sat steaming I looked at my wound. It slowly leaked out blood. The seeping red liquid reminded me of those who choose to commit suicide in bath tubs. Certainly they should be applauded for their consideration of the aftermath mess.

Suicide is an inevitability. For many people its a way out, a form of escape. There is absolutely nothing wrong with suicide. It is a way to walk off the field of a rigged game. I hope that one day I will be able to commit suicide, when I so desire.

All these morbid thoughts of suicide and death reminded me of when I was younger. Burdened with mindless labor on a farm I would often think of what my funeral would be like. I suppose reading Tom Sawyer had gotten my mind going. As I grew older I would think of committing suicide as a way of punishing the people who would survive me. My death would be their guilt. Countless hours would be spent picturing the weeping, the crying, the sobbing, and the sadness of having never said "I love you Matt," enough or with adequate earnest.

I don't think about such things as much anymore. Yet as the water in the tub cooled I thought about my own death. Who would preside over it? Would I be cremated? Why would I die? What would people say?

This story is a reaction to those questions. I don't think that it is fully representative of what people would say or do after my death. I'm somewhat satisfied with it. I feel like the last piece is a little rushed and the romantic reasons for the death of Marc are a bit hockey. Silly, juvenile, but far more realistic than Marc finding out he has cancer and going out to gun down cops. Who does that? A young person is more likely to throw themselves before a train than go out with a bang.

The suicidal urge seems to be dying out though. People don't have the same amount of passion as they did. Passion has been replaced by obsession, or worse detachment. An eventual compromise is made with everyday life and the mill stone continues to grind on.

If I can wait my whole life I can wait two months

So the meathook series is done, and rather anti climatic. A rather simple story of a young man attending class and breaking up with his sort of girlfriend. I didn't have a set plan for the story and ended it when I felt like it rather than going to a certain narrative point. I wanted to establish a ambigious tension between the narrator and Chelsea which I felt was successful. Part of my desirre to create an confusion between the two characters was to mirror my own feelings about how relationships, especially romantic relationships don't make much sense to me. Some people are rather successful with their love lives, while others who are more interesting, dynamic, or just better people are complete losers. I imagine dating to be more like the drifting and crashing of iceburgs than anything else.
One of the points of doing the series was to be regularly writing, even if only just a page or so. My ability to write non-fiction is limited, or perhaps my ability to speak using a fictional medium is greater.
The point of each installment was usually less about the story than about a particular image. For example my fascination for the gloved picture in Andre Breton's Nadja. Well its hard to describe it as a fascination, that seems like it involves some extended period. No its more of a process of becoming lost in an item, or an action that has no real value to oneself. The gloves mean nothing to me, the picture means little, but something is catching about it for a little while.
This thought was a little more established in my mind as when I was at work a week or two ago. When of the food runners, a rather lazy worker, was drinking from a glass of water. As the water moved into her mouth I was drawn by the act, the transferrence of the water from cup to mouth. Something indescribable about this ordinary act caught me, drew me in. Its not the act itself, there is still nothing special about the food runner drinking water, but there was something in that moment that made things surreal.
In one of the first posts I talked about the narrator drawing porn comics next to marxist quotes. I added that part as it was both funny and as a way of showing that the narrator engaged in "juvenile" male behaviour. Those pictures are great though.
My main problem with the writing by the way is that I'm pretty sure I fucked up the present and past tense a bunch, mixing the two. Some proofreading would probably take care of that.
At some point soon, within the week I'll start a new series. It seems like a good set up.

On a completely other note I fought my third smoker on saturday in san francisco. It was a crushing defeat for my opponent as I seem to have found my style of fighting. It mainly involves kicking until I'm in range to knee, then I clinch up and knee the shit out of the opponent until they are done. My opponent felt like a rag doll on me towards the end of the second round. I will be fighting again on march 3rd. \

The Ram Muay or Wai Khru



One of my problems right now is dealing with the issue of wether or not to do the ram muay. The ram muay is a ceremonial dance that is done by the fighters before the beginning fo the fight to pay respects to their teachers. Part of me wants to do it, part of me worries that I'm just some white kid appropriating thai culture. The real question is how much of a muay thai fighter am I? What does that mean to me? How do others view a foreigner thai fighter? Maybe I'll be the next Raymond Dekker, probably not....