I’m taking my second crack at going offline.

That song was stuck in my head while in Joshua Tree over the weekend.  For no particular reason, I don’t think.  It’s not apropos.  I’ve had Cash on my mind a lot lately.

I went to Joshua Tree with a group of poets from the university, camped for a couple nights.  Did a lot of hiking, a little wood-chopping.  Also chopped my foot, which I did, thankfully, while everyone was away.  And yet I confess it to you–something to think about.  I still have all my toes.  I rolled and took two hits from a cigarette rolled in a leaf, just something I felt I ought to do, since it was on hand.  What happened was, during my hiking, I found tobacco dropped by one of the poets who’d already left.  And I had some dry leaf around for tinder.  So, kinda had to.  Only two hits, though, as it was horrendous.

I love being out there.  I love being outside.  Coming back home and tying myself to the computer for work was a shock, and not one I like on any level.  Being out there with folks who didn’t know me…it’s always interesting, because I have a very obvious personality that I’ve cultivated–the hat, the garb–and none of it is false, but it’s not something I think about often, though it’s there ostensibly by choice, and this is quite the run-on, and the new folks are always the vocal ones about how I act, thus revealing me to myself.  If I wasn’t already the person I portray myself as, I am becoming him.  He’s quiet, and for a reason.  I forget that on the internet.  You have to talk to say something, if that makes any sense.  And I guess I rarely have that much to say, though I talk often enough.  So I’m signing off again.  No Twitter, no Facebook.  I’ve shut off comments on most of my posts, though that’s because of the infuriating amount of spam I get in a day.

On the cusp of my twenty-fifth year.  Maybe by the end of it I’ll be more comfortable thinking of myself as a man, an adult.  I’m already comfortable being a writer and being myself, but those are both internal efforts, and I want to do more for the world at large.  Around the campfire I told a few stories of myself, and one of the poets asked about my parents, what they do.  Father a firefighter and mother virtually in charge of a sheriff’s department.  Uncle war veteran, grandmother bastion of strength reaching back to the Great Depression.  She told me I didn’t have much of a choice, then, but to try to become some sort of mythic hero, in this case a cowboy.  Whether I believe that or not, I don’t know.  But it sure plucked some strings.

Doesn’t that kick ass?

I know I’ve been gone a while, and I won’t be coming back soon.  I waver between shunning the internet completely (nearly) again and accepting it.  Mostly I’m able to resist the urge to click things, sometimes.  I’d get more done if I went into exile again, I know.

I’ve been waiting to post until I have news, but news is a long time coming.  So in the meantime I thought I’d just bring you all up to speed as to what I’m doing.

• Writing a novella.  As I Lay Dying meets Antigone meets me.
• Editing the third book.
• Working on semi-experimental poetry. For me, that is.  Which is still pretty stiff.
• Realizing how damned insular and irrelevant an English class can be.  Interesting topic, boring friggin’ students.  First day of class not a word was spoken that would matter to the outside world.  Everything they put forth will only go so far as another university.  That drives me up a wall.

I rode a horse a few Sundays back, had a good time with that.  Went to Joshua Tree with a friend of mine from Ohio, Coffee, for you old-time blog readers.  Had some baked beans over a campfire and ate them with my bowie knife, since I forgot spoons (among other things).  A great experience, though, eating beans at a campfire.  I’m going back in a week or so, as part of a group of poets.  We’re gonna be writing about the desert, presenting it at an opening art center in Riverside.  Read a bunch of books over Spring Break.  Gonna try to write a review of one, get it up on The Rumpus.  So, see, I’m a busy guy.

Should have that novel excerpt out for you to read soon.  I’ve got some short stories floating in the ether right now, hopefully they’ll get published soon.

Anyway.  I’m alive.  Will continue to be for the foreseeable future.  Hope you’ll be, too.

Things that are making me happy.  Cheers:

1. Justified.  A really kickass show starring  Timothy Olyphant.  He plays a US Marshal named Raylan Givens who gets reassigned to his homestate of Kentucky after shooting a gunrunner in Florida “justified”, he says, because the man drew first.  Givens is an old style lawman, throwing down what the Chauffeur and I call Prairie Justice.

2.  The end of Winter Quarter.

3.  #sexbyauthor.  A fun, rude thing to think up.

4.  A glass of Coke with ice.  I don’t drink pop very often, but I did today, and it was marvelous.  Quit some luxuries for a while, you’ll come to appreciate them more when you take them up again.

5.  My novel excerpt in Verdad Magazine/blurting out something of a short story in one evening.

6.  My assumptions about the world being proven true again.

7. Poets & Beer Night.

8.  Robert Johnson (and the blues as a whole. But mostly Robert Johnson).

Like Saint John of Patmos.  Except I have fewer many-headed and horned beasts in my writing.  I say fewer.

My exile has done me a lot of good.  And a lot has happened.  Chief among these things is that I just finished my third book.  It came in at 102,128 words.  Shorter than I anticipated, but I expect a little expansion in revision.  That’s 102k in 7 months.  The quickest I’ve ever finished a book, and it rivals my first in size (pre-cuts).  This past Monday I wrote over 4,500 words in a night.  That’s some kind of record, I think.  For those not word-savvy, that’s about twenty pages.  My pace increased quite a lot once I put myself off the internet, and I don’t think I’d be as far as I am if I hadn’t.

But wait, there’s more good news.  The third book–have I mentioned? it’s called Above All Men– is going to be excerpted in Verdad Magazine.  On top of that, myself and Clowncar are in the next round in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award Contest.  On top of that, I’ve got a poetry gig coming up that’s gonna pay out a little bit, and let me write about Joshua Tree.  On top of that, I’m going to be Editor-in-chief of CRATE Literary Magazine next year.  On top of that, I’ve been hanging out with a few poets, one of which is, I shit you not, going to be the next Lorca or Neruda or pick-your-favored-poet-that-changed-what-being-a-poet-means, hopefully minus untimely death; and the other is a Tom Waits and No Country for Old Men-loving punk rocker who enjoys her (my) whiskey and is currently reading my copy of All the Pretty Horses.  Her favorite Tom Waits album is Real Gone.  You can’t get more legitimate than that.  And both of these two are much, much better poets than I am.  Not that that’s particularly high praise.

So, life has been pretty good since I left you.  There’s a lot of work to do down the pike, and I won’t really be back until after that, if then.  But I’m thinking of you, and I hope you’re well.  I haven’t gotten any letters from you.  Don’t think I haven’t noticed.

I’m considering abandoning most of the networking sites I frequent.  This will stay up because it’s my author website, but other than that, no more tweets, no more facebooking.  Probably limit the blogs I read to the literary ones.  It’s not you, it’s me.  Well, it’s you a little.  I’m putting myself through hell by being up on every little thing and seeing your lives and hers and being out here doing very, very little that nourishes me.  I am phenomenally affected by what I see these days and I don’t like giving myself the opportunity to drop those little pains into the well that is the internet.  I don’t like my instinct being to run to you to say how I feel.  You’re a crutch, and not one I need–rather one that’s letting me atrophy.  Whatever metaphorical legs I have, they’re getting weaker.

It’s a long road to the summer.  It’s a long way back to Ohio and what joys I might find there.  The writing is easier than ever but I’m afraid I don’t have enough words to fill the distance.  I don’t, in fact.  This book will be done in a few months–two is the projection– and then editing, and it will all be faster than anything I’ve done before, and better, but it’s the Word of God alone and I need the bread, too.

This is all rather melodramatic, and I’ll be back inevitably, if I do leave.  But I am bothered by these things, and not just emotionally, but by what they mean, what they’re doing to me and taking away from me as a writer.  I’d miss the updates about Iran and Morocco more than anything.  The rest is just egotism.  So I’m going to try this, for a while.  Be an internet ascetic.  I’ll have email, of course, and I still love you all and want to know how you are.  So if you don’t have my email, drop me a line here and I’ll get to you.  You know what would be even better?  Real mail.  Let’s do that.

Janet Fitch was on campus yesterday as the keynote speaker for Writers Week.  I’m not big on her writing, but from what she said I know she’s got it  together and I have a lot of respect for her.  She said she doesn’t know how she feels about something until she writes about it.  And I figure that’s true for me, too.  My books thus far are mostly a 800+ page wrestle with what it means to be a moral being in an immoral world.  We’ll see what comes out of me next.  Probably more of the same.  I haven’t found an answer, yet.

From the Land of the Lotus Eaters, take care.  I’ll be emblazoning the Crane on my eyelids, and thinking of you.

About my writing:

“I see myself staunching wounds. All the pages of all my books going into a great hole in people and slowing the loss of blood.”

Talking with an old friend about art.  Her philosophy came up, and mine, and my place in the world through art.  That’s what I came up with.  I don’t really think about myself in that capacity, because I’m not important in that way.  My words are.

Class has been tough this quarter.  Life has been tough.  The writing, as always, has been good.  I’m coming up on the end of this book and whenever I do that, in my experience, I get a little nervous.  No reason in particular, really.  It’s the same with starting a book.  Anyway.  I’m about 30,ooo words away from the end, maybe a little more.  It’s a treat to hold cards to your chest and finally get to lay them down.  The writing comes fast and somewhat easy, lately.  I should be finished in a few months.

Was laid out for the last week or so, sick.  Had a good and ridiculous time bar-hopping the weekend before that.  The places life takes me, sometimes.  The Antagonist came for a visit, on her way to Australia.  She cooked for me, we drank, we watched movies, we wrote.  She changed the alarm on her phone to a recording of me singing the beginning of Tom Waits’ “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”. Went to LAX for the 8th(?) time.  I’m now going steady with the 105.  Bought her a promise ring and everything.

May have some good news for you next time.  Meanwhile, I enjoyed the vlog thing, so, requests?

Bit of poetry.  Excuse the out-of-syncness.

Gray skies again in Riverside.  We’ve had a lot of rain, enough to make your cowboy hat-wearing protagonist get comically splashed by passing cars, and enough to make him thankful he brought his leather hat. (I’m like those old Batman action figures.  I come in Original, Rainproof, Snowproof, and “Jesus fuck, it’s 106 degrees and he’s still wearing jeans”.)

Helluva night last Friday, but that’s not what I’m here for.  I wanted to make you aware that I am now part of the editorial staff for CRATE Magazine, and we’ve got a call for submissions:

You wonder if you have something good to say, something better than usual because you’ve been quiet.  Time passes and the burden grows.  After a while it becomes hard to say anything at all.  Partly I’m silent because I think it’s the better course of action.  I don’t know if what I want to say would be said if things were different.  I want to share parts of my life with you because I know and adore most of you.  But whether or not it is applicable here–and you’ve convinced me, it is– will it cause harm?  I don’t know.  And so I take pause.

It’s been warm here, as always, and stepping off the plane weeks ago was almost laughable, it was so hot.  Noel drove me out of LA and I don’t know if I can convey the dread and resignation I felt at the sight of the yellowy sky and the dirty street signs.  We passed two signs for a tattoo expo and the ad pictured a busty woman with no tattoos and I laughed at that, at how false it was.  I’m no longer surprised that I don’t mind cities like I used to, living in this one and being in LA and in Portland.  Columbus was beautiful, snow-covered and deadly cold.  The people were wild and a kid tried to fight me and I stood right in front of him staring and telling him to remember who I was.  Minutes later he threw a chunk of pavement through the window of the house and I got cut a little on the glass and Christ, how alive that night was.  Ushering people out and hiding the contraband and the moment when she was caught up in the rush to leave and there was such a pull in her eyes and it may have been too perfect to happen but our hands met as she backed away.  Days later I found her on the street in the cold and she took me to a bar and we talked for hours.  And just a handful of hours before I had to leave she called and said she was coming, and she found me, and we sat before the fireplace and eventually we moved to the couch and laid down and for an hour I wanted to kiss her and could only brush our cheeks together.  We fell asleep and woke each other up a few times and finally I kissed her, and eventually we slept again.  I regret that I didn’t tell her to warm her car up before going.  I regret not having those few minutes and what they might have held.

And then here, in the dark, with storms approaching and lined up for the week.  Gray skies look so much worse out here.    New laptop because the old broke, money I don’t have spent on something I have to have.  I wrote a prose poem that went away from where I wanted but I think is good.  Too close to really write about it, now.  Though I want to, and I think she deserves it.  65k into the third novel.  40k or so to go. 2,213 miles from where I want to be.  Less if she drives out to meet me, again.  A little gesture, a little kindness.  I haven’t been exposed to something like that in a long time.

Well, there you go, dammit.  I managed to shut up about myself for a couple posts, at least.

Edit:  Wasn’t quite clear enough re: kindness.  A great many people are good to me, and there are a few I probably don’t appreciate enough.  I meant a particular brand and a particular reception of kindness.

I’d been recommended John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing several months ago, and had heard rumblings of it before then.  The biggest selling point for me was that it had been described as an ancestor to McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.  I grabbed a copy at Powell’s while I was in Portland and it sat on my shelf until winter break.

Butcher’s Crossing is set in 1870, and centers on Will Andrews’ search for the ineffable and ultimately untameable wildness inherent in the American landscape and in, John Williams’ seems to posit, most Americans.  Andrews leaves Harvard to seek this spirit out, coming to Butcher’s Crossing, Kansas.  Having a decent amount of money, Andrews gets hooked up with a veteran buffalo hunter named Miller.  Miller had, years ago, found an undiscovered valley in Colorado that was almost completely inaccessible, and in which a veritable sea of buffalo live.  Now with the buffalo nearly extinct, Miller uses Andrews’ means to assemble a team and the two set out with a skinner and moderately insane ox-driver for the valley he found long ago.

Williams’ book has quite a lot in common with Melville’s Moby-Dick.  Andrews is an easy descendant of Ishmael, and Miller is quite clearly Ahab.  Miller’s dedication to the hunt, his arrogance and ignorance, ends up trapping the hunters in the valley for the winter.  Shy of 300 pages, Butcher’s Crossing is not a particularly big book.  Williams spends quite a lot of time with the set up and leaves himself about 200 pages for the execution.  The actual hunting and the whopping six months spent in the mountains take up a comparatively little space for being the point of the novel.  Where Andrews is supposed to develop, where we’re supposed to be in, dirt-level, with these men, Williams gives us an all too brief glimpse and moves us on.  This contrasts strongly against Melville, who, some would argue, throws the reader in too deep.

I argue that the greatest short work of fiction ever told will not match up to the greatest long work.  I’m not about to claim titles for those positions, but I’ll say that Butcher’s Crossing and Moby-Dick have similar premises, dissimilar lengths, and dissimilar places in the literary canon.  Williams has written a forgettable story because the reader is not submerged in it.  Butcher’s Crossing is easily a book of another hundred pages than what was written.  The author flies over six crucial months and skims the slaughter of thousands of buffalo.  It’s this sort of detail and depth, even repetition, to a degree, that imprint themselves upon a reader’s mind and make the story live on.  I had to look up Miller’s name, and I finished the book about two weeks ago.

To bring things full circle, Blood Meridian is not a very big book, but there isn’t a moment in it that’s really skimmed over unnecessarily.  McCarthy spends 4 pages introducing us to the Kid and his backstory, throwing us immediately into action and spending the rest of the book in dizzying detail until he again scoops us up through time in a few pages and sets us down at the end.  Williams manages the opposite.  By cutting through the middle, racing past the changes in these men (and letting Andrews state the changes rather than reveal them) Williams undercuts his ending, which I think would have been excellent had we spent proper time in the events before.  The disorientation and frustration the men experience on their return is on the brink of being powerful, but ultimately the reader has been distanced, and the ending falls short.

While Googling, I found out that Joe Penhall, screenwriter for The Road, is actually adapting Butcher’s Crossing into a screenplay. I happened to catch The Road a little over a week ago.  Pretty good.  I teared up a few times, which is strange for anyone who knows my reaction to the book.  Apparently I’ve grown enough to relate in the past few years.

In other news, I read Brian Hart’s debut novel, Then Came the Evening, a little while ago, and am currently powering through Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling, which I am enjoying immensely.  I think I’ll try for a true review of the former.  Will let you know if that comes out anywhere.  Chauffeur won the race by 3000 words, as I got a little too tied up with some craziness over break that I might let you in on sometime.  My novel currently stands at over 60k, and I just finished a rewrite of the beginning of the first novel.  Great to see how much my characters have matured over time.  I think that’s it.