DIARY
Certainly not the most sophisticated title ever, but I figure I still don’t get enough hits to be “credible,” so what the Hell.
Anyway, I know I haven’t posted much lately, or even kept up with friends’ blogs, and that’s alright. For the last two weeks I was working the job from hell, and now I’m wandering not “homeless” are rather sort of “prodopted” in the streets of Flint and don’t have convenient internet access. In short, July is my sabbatical. Okay?
Anyway, this month hasn’t been good nor bad, but just plain bizarre.
If you want to know about my Helljob, just read below. Earning-less-than-minimum-wage-due-to-executive-graft washing dishes all night weekends and ending up with stinky clothes as a result at Angelo’s compared favorably with this gig. Mainly because at Angelo’s I only had white trash screaming at me two or three times a night, and threat of physical injury is, frankly, much more appealing to me than the threat of a $10,000 fine.
Then, literally the day that party was over, we began the first Occlusion retreat. Hallie and Paul were unable to attend, and unfortunately, so was Sam due to car malfunction way up in Marquette (for those of you not in the know, he might as well have been on the moon). But Cody (my brother) was there, and Elisabeth came, and Jessica was present a lot of the time as well. Not bad for a first effort. I wonder if in days to come people will reflect on us as the friendship between Byron, Shelley, and Polidori, or better still, the Junimea society in Romania. Probably not, but it’s fun to fantasize.
The retreat was good. Unequivically good. And emotionally exhausting.
First is the fact that the project I was working on, Adrift on the Mainstream (link to right) is a novella about a serial killer written in the second person. It was consuming and exhausting to work on… equally depressing and exhilerating. The only characters who I feel are redeemed for certain in the end are real-life figures who were, historically, monsters.
So while I accomplished a lot, I also feel like that accomplishment came at a cost. Excavations and times spent in the mines tend to have that effect. You scrub your clothing afterwards by hand, but those grains are fixed on fast.
And that’s what the last several days have been like.
On Sunday evening, Cody and I left for Michigan.
I came back to Michigan to try to “save” Urbàntasm, which I’ve been working on for the last eight years (see the post below… something something Pt. II… wedged in between those Summersdawn posts). Some people have doubted if this trip has been prudent for me to make right now, and that doubt has made the trip even more angstified for me. Quite simply, I have no idea yet if this trip is worthwhile or a waste of my time yet. It’s a lot like being a Physics major. If I didn’t give it a shot, I’d never have know. And I need to know.
Still, what I do know is that the feeling I have right now is sort of a churning bittersweet weighing heavy on the “bitter” side. I’m sitting on the second floor of the Flint public library typing as fast as I can because I want to make it back out to Sam’s car (that his folks are letting me drive) before the heavens break. They will certainly break. They’re already an umbral gray and the radio says the next county over is being “dumped upon.”
I wish I could see a therapist, simply to hear someone else’s take on what makes me tick. It’s a selfish fascination that I think more of us have than are willing to admit.
For me, place, or locality has always been of overwhelming importance in the most literal sense. And most often, the only PLACE I feel relaxed and comfortable is Flint. I do not know why this is. I think it has always been this way. I feel more comfortable in the most unfamiliar parts of Flint than I do in the most familiar buildings of Hyde Park. I think I’ve always felt this way; I remember feeling it as a twelve year old when I was starting elementary school in the suburbs (I was home schooled before that).
And here I am, in Flint, without that feeling of cut-off I’ve tried to acclimate to for the last seven years.
Problem is, I’m also lonely. I feel lonely for my family… and for friends. Partly because I’m spending my time alone, writing in diners, writing in odd-spots, writing. Writing is a very isolating career. Even when you are with people, you have to be completely alone, I find, in order to write. I try to write at diners, at coney islands and coffee shops, because it hurts a little less that way, but still… alone.
More poignantly, though, I am lonely for Jessica. I have been with her for more than four years now. We have spent so much of that time together, and we have been through trials together. We are going to be married, and I have come to feel that Jessica too is a place in the same sense that Flint is a place. I can only feel comfort or joy or… any sort of relaxation… when I am with Jessica.
To not be near her hurts.
To not be near her is wrong, in the sense that I could use the very sensation to define the word wrong for myself.
It is the sensation you get when someone you care about breaks up with you, or when someone has moved away and you need them. Almost the feeling of having someone die. It is a physical sensation. It’s in your head (dizziness) and chest (acceleration), but more than anything it is in your stomach (twisting, or of objects falling into a pit). I don’t believe all that about love in the heart, or Platonic, cerebral, spiritual love in the brain. For me, love is in the stomach. My stomach will always sense the absence or presence of love before any other part of me.
Maybe acting on that, I’ve been having tons of good, Michigan food. Good Flint food. I spent four hours at Tom Z’s coney island yesterday, and three at the Atlas today, despite that asshole manager trying to make me leave. (I showed him!)
I think I have five minutes before the rain…
Or less…
Goodbye.
~ Connor