Welcome to the Monkey House
A couple of year's ago, I made a decision
that I would travel someplace different every year. Not exactly different, more
like "out of the country" different. Currently I'm stuck in what could be
described as one of the most boring places in the US, the Mid-west. The land
here is flat, somewhat resembling the prevailing attitudes of many (not all) of
the people who live here.
So that year,
I went to Belize. Prior to that, I had been sent to Boston one year and the
previous year, I had (finally) gotten to New York City. I followed that up by
taking a trip to Belize. Last year, I went to Paris and got sent off to Seattle
as well. This year, I am off to Ireland this
year.
Perhaps I should have kept a
journal of my trips, but I never bothered, I was too busy experiencing things.
I'm sitting here at present, wanting to write, but really, not quite sure what
to write about. Characters from my novel keep bouncing around in my head, but
I'm not really sure if I want to talk with them. Part of me wants to write more
non-fiction, part of me wants to write stories. Perhaps there is something in
between the two that could keep me
occupied.
After talking with my
girlfriend about art and how we never manage to make time for these things, I
decided that I would intentionally take one night a week to go out to a coffee
shop around the corner to sit and write. Sipping tea, listening to my own music
in a sanitized cookie-cutter coffee shop. The decor is nice, I'm pretty
impressed by what they did with an old Burger King. Unfortunately, there is no
style amidst the overstuffed chairs, exposed wood rafters and wood panelling.
While the look has changed, its still very much a "fast-food" type place (with
coffee instead of burgers).
There are
just so many things to write about, I just can't seem to find a good starting
point, so I'm writing about
writing.
It's interesting to be "alone"
surrounded by other people. I'm not quite sure if this is the place for it, its
so sanitized, there's no real life as it is, so the experience is a bit dry. The
people are older and bourgeoise (then again, I probably am too) not like when I
last sat in a place like this and wrote surrounded by high school students in
their own intense conversations. There is a place like that, but it would
require driving downtown which I wouldn't necessarily mind, but when I get in a
mood like this, I'd almost rather not drive. I just want to walk and enjoy the
city. This place makes it hard to enjoy the city. It's so dead. I keep telling
people that it hasn't decided what it wants to be when it grows up. I guess the
cities I prefer are more mature: Boston, NYC, Chicago, Paris, Cleveland, San
Francisco, Seattle. It's not so much age (this town is probably as old as
Seattle but there is something in the air there that ages
it).
It's probably not fair to simply
sit and complain about where I happen to live. Sometimes you just have to make
the best of it. I try (though it's hard sometimes). The one good thing about
this place is that you can always leave. It is in some respects a good jumping
off point to go other places. A few years back, I took a road trip all the way
down I-35, as far as San Antonio. I stayed with some friends for a few days in
Austin. The whole rationale behind that particular trip was that it was some
place I could reasonably drive in the car and was sufficiently far enough away
from where I lived to make the endeavor worth
while.
God I really hate this place. I
mean I really loathe it with a passion. Its featureless landscape and its
soulless people. I suddenly feel a desire to listen to the Clash and perhaps a
bit of Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine, maybe a bit of the Sex
Pistols too. I need something loud, snotty and obnoxious. Alas, my MP3 player
got borked when I was trying to load music onto it earlier and I think I ended
up with only two or three tracks for some damn
reason.
My mind is a raging torrent of
energy but somehow I can't seem to focus it the way I want. While sitting here,
mindlessly typing, I decided that I would simply publish this garbage in a
"blog" (god I *really* hate that word, almost as much as a I hate the word
"podcast" but more on that some other time). So, I think it might be something
to go along with the podcast I'm doing. The podcast started out as a bit of an
homage to a friend of mine and is slowly evolving into something as I figure out
what it wants to be. I kind of tend to write the same way. I just start writing
and let things come out, I'm sort of the conduit for ideas either in fiction or
essays.
Looking back at this essay, its
all over the place, it could simply be a rough draft but there is a slight order
to it (at least in my own mind). Although if I were reading this as a professor,
I would probably give it a "C" grade (lacks coherence). Perhaps this whole thing
(whatever it is) can be my own little experiment in hyper-text. The web has so
much potential from an artistic perspective. It allows you to connect various
ideas that in and of themselves might be self-contained but in someone's mind,
there is a link between the two. Some sort of Joycean
stream-of-consciousness.
As I said
before, I'm not quite sure where this is going to go, perhaps I'll set it up so
that it's an online 'zine (how 90s is that?). Random essays and stories. Perhaps
I'll locate some like-minded individuals who would be willing to contribute.
Although this particular piece of software that I'm using (iBlog) isn't that
great. It does allow you to focus more on content than on appearance (I do tend
to have a particular look in mind and get quite irritated when it can't be done
my way). I think I might look around and play with some other software that
might be a bit better suited for the project that I have in
mind.
OK, I'm going to go publish this
and listen to some decent music.
Posted: Wed - April 26, 2006 at 06:40 PM