September 17, 2014 · 6:36 am

No Place To Go

**click title for image

There is no place to go, nothing to do, participate in, or witness, that will achieve the elusive state that exists in Bryan “Weed” Tecco’s head. Not that he doesn’t imagine: its glory and the path backwards through memory to the thing he really wants, the euphoric recall. But it’s in the subtext now, this longing. Even at the premature age of twenty seven he’s been coasting along, living with subdued disappointment and thwarted experience; a specimen of ennui and muted self-loathing. In the post-script of this missive, I’ll give him a break and call him by his real name.

Bryan’s day job is that of a game-tester for a telecommunications giant called Sahi communications. Ten years ago the average reader of a book like The Situation might have asked if being a tester of video games was a real job, but these days, with e-sports an actuality, role-play video games more popular than film or music, the job in question might now be the ultimate career choice for the average teenage or tweenie male. Girls wouldn’t want this gift, except maybe those desperate to squeeze into the male world; one-time little sisters playing out the drama of not being left out. However, Bryan works his day job by taking it for granted, paying it little heed while using the languidly passing hours as a springboard for the evening’s moonlighting, his wax dealing side-gig. Though seemingly bright, creative, and possibly ingenious, he nurses an old wound that obstructs ambitions, his prospectively society-contributing lifestyle. In his world, whether that is Richmond, California, or the affluent, hippy back roads of West Marin, Bryan is a misfit: born without guidance or guidelines, though he is subject to hasty yet capable nurturing later on. He is destined to plunder his own path, revisit his original script of rejection more effortlessly than Chris “Crystal” Leavitt ever will. He will keep others at arm’s length, generating intrigue in some, contempt in most, but still assessing his limitations all along.

As a serendipitous adventurer, Bryan fits the bill for me, but not for Sahi, a corporate beast that doesn’t notice the special talents of its worker bees. A wildcard in their system, Bryan recognizes special elements in a game he’s been given to test; elements uncannily similar to the hallucinogenic visions (called ‘Shadows’) that he shares with his also wayward friend, Chris. Galvanized by an impulse not fully expressed to the reader, Bryan steals the files for the game, called ‘The Situation’, half-believing that he’s found a cause that will stoke a dormant heroism. In the novel’s predecessor, Crystal From The Hills, the notion of a situation is given some comic mileage as an inside joke between friends: a situation is a personified event with an attitude, and given a cosmic edge. A situation, as introduced in the first novel, is an umbrella term for an event with some manner of sentience at its core. A situation: it has opinions and feelings; it wants things, and like God, will fuck with people if it has to. It’s a signal that all things, happenings and beings that wander aimlessly, congeal in order to find meaning, reflecting the existence of an overseeing power.

The presumptions of a psychotherapist, which are perhaps similar to those of a dramatist, are that people care: they care about themselves, about their friends, their parents or siblings, their lovers. They care about their communities even, and given half the chance, lifelong frustrations or limitations notwithstanding, they’d seize the opportunity to make a difference, disrupt the presumed versus natural order of things and bring forth something like goodness. Bryan’s adversaries generally see him as an opportunist and a sociopath, and so they miss him. His doppelganger, Eric “fierce” Pierce, chases Weed across the landscape of California, pursuing him with all the righteous fervor of Javert, but also the collapsing delusion of a failing system. Pierce haplessly represents his employer, which thinks it can easily squash the individual, the fly in the ointment, “between the pincers of a superior being”, I write. But of course it isn’t superior, this corporate behemoth that is Sahi Telecommunications. It’s made up of individuals, after all: all lost in the mix. Like Bryan, it only acts as if it knows what it’s doing. Underneath the pretense, my protagonist acts as if he doesn’t stand a chance. That’s why he separates, as in separates from everything and everyone as often as he can. The backstory? Sorry (or not), this story’s not like CFTH; it’s locked into the present and future, not the past. It’s in the subtext also, Bryan’s quiet lack of self-worth.

Who he is lies somewhere in between the texts of the two novels, or else before either, out of sight of his author even, and hiding defiantly. It’s late now, a good several months since I finished The Situation, plus a year or two since I birthed Bryan “Weed” Tecco. I know he’s better than he thinks he is. I knew from the start that he’d be much more than the cardboard nasty I expose in CFTH. I thought he might be a good anti-hero, a curmudgeon with a tender heart, a bit like the John Milner character from American Graffiti: greased, beefy and sour, yet sweet enough to give a kid a break; kissing the thirteen year old girl on the cheek at the end of the night. If you read the dense yet worthwhile gem that is CFTH then you might have thought you’d seen the last of Weed, and thought good riddance (to Weed, and maybe the book, I guess). You didn’t know I had plans, ideas that were only half-thought through as I got started. I was playing it by ear, looking for redemption in a sequel, hope in ordinary guys—not even men—and believing in few things less than I do heroism, which is a problem for me, I admit. Really: the way heroism is sold in this life is a deadly lie. I prefer redemption as a concept. There’s more personal history, less of a script for others to steal, transform into something banal, there just for common consumption, or exploitation. Instead, there’s something musical, un-captured and pure. There’s even more syncopation in the sound of the word.

For e-book link for The Situation, click on the following:

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September 10, 2014 · 8:09 am

The Bed

Barbara stares down at her wrists. The cuts are not deep, just beyond scratches, and the blood coagulates, hardening into a flaky streak within minutes.

“Damn,” she whispers, and bites her tongue. The sting is tolerable but the speckled dirt–millimeters from the cut–needs to be washed away or else she risks infection. She heads inside, breaking the momentum of her chore with the flower bed. She’d cut the dying heads off some roses, trimmed messy brush away from the orange tree. With a couple of hours left of daylight, there is much to be done, but it’s within reach. And not. Time enough to highlight those stems that were thriving, still at their peak of aliveness, not yet sliding down into drooping retirement, as Barbara once precipitately did. It’s an arduous task, staying on top of this acre-sized garden, but at least she’s not alone. Thank God she’s not alone, she muses as she runs her hands under cold water. Across the grass, Jim, her husband of forty eight years, bends over upturned soil, holding his spade like a cane. As he pauses he grimaces, revealing his fatigue, but masking the satisfaction borne of this back-damaging work. The moist soil is deep black and chunky. Inconvenienced worms slither unseen upon the surface, destined to be sliced by Jim’s next plunging dig.

Barbara gazes out towards him and maneuvers her lips into a thin smile. Affection. Gratitude. But above all–relief. It’s a good job she got out of bed today; a good thing the lethargy she’d felt for days, and the hollow sensation in her stomach, had finally subsided. There’s a point in these cycles that stirs horror in her: a protracted moment in which she thinks there’s no turning back. Her body, which has hardly let her down once in sixty eight years, seems poised to rebel in protest, claim time off for good behavior and call it a day. Jim says it’s all in her head, these neuroses, which doesn’t help matters. The insight, logically unassailable, doesn’t alter the feeling, the unprovable reality. Time is running out. Luck is running out. Life, stretching ahead for a couple of decades, if the luck of previous generations is anything to go by, offers years of pleasantly relaxing pastimes, opportunities for leisure and travel, twice per year visits with doting grandchildren; weekend conversations with successful, happy, if bewildered adult offspring.

Enough with the benzodiazepines, gripes an impatient son, Barbara’s eldest. Go for walks with your neighbor, says his younger sister, somewhat more cheerfully. Don’t worry about Dad, she offers in sorrowful contrast, hoping to soothe her mother. Stick to the garden, Barbara thinks, referring to the hobby that’s ahead of her and not the botany career that passed her by, the reasons long–well, not forgotten–just not talked about. Not anymore. There’s no point, others imply, changing the subject whenever she reminisces. Barbara knows it’s the manic bitterness that turns people off: the way the subject of teaching gets hijacked by a decades-old conflict with a head of department, the one that compelled her early resignation, her unwitting retirement. It would be too difficult fighting her way back, she routinely argues whenever the subject of a career revival arises. Time passed quickly, gathering speed as bodies, if not minds slowed down.

Jim steps back from the dirt patch upon which he’s been risking his lower back for the last hour. He sees Barbara at the window smiling at him and returns a tired, forced laugh. It’s no good, he’s saying with his slumping, seventy one year old body. He can’t last the day either. He passes over their refinished wooden deck, crosses over the threshold to their sunlit kitchen, and closes with some effort the double-glazed sliding door.

“Finished,” says Jim in an exhausted voice. Barbara, half-listening, thinks it’s a question.

“I don’t know,” she replies, frowning to accentuate her uncertainty.

Jim chuckles, mildly frustrated. He looks across at his daydreaming wife, now staring out the kitchen window, her wounded hand hanging limply under running water. She avoids the hard look of her husband’s still handsome face.

“You alright?” Jim asks half-heartedly.

Barbara dithers, her mouth downturned. “I don’t know,” she repeats, slightly turning, wanting to regard the immaculate home and garden that surrounds her. It’s not clean enough, she decides–not good enough. “Think I need to lie down.”

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September 8, 2014 · 8:08 am

Letter to a good reader

 
 
 
   
   
   
 
 
Dear David, thanks so much for once again providing such thoughtful, intelligent feedback about my writing. You may be one of few to suggest preferring CFTH to The Situation, as others tend to think the earlier novel too long, slow, or weighed down by backstory. Regardless, while I glean that the subject matter (in particular of ‘Nightmare’) or style may not be to your taste, it’s clear that your objective, critical eye enables you to see qualities in the narrative.  
 
It’s interesting, your comment about the present tense. This is the first book I’ve written this way, on the suggestion of another writer whose prose I appreciate for its immediacy. As The Situation would rely far less on backstory or flashbacks, and much more upon present action, I thought the approach worthwhile. Sorry it didn’t take for you.  I agree with your observation about the movement of the plot, and will likely continue to experiment with tense, or point of view. Without the burden of explaining context (at least, not to the same degree), the writing moved quickly this time and I think that’s reflected in the flow of the story. However, my self-critique is that my overall story is a little too complicated for its own good. While some exposition was necessary in The Situation, it also rendered the plot cumbersome. In retrospect, I think the story as a whole may have benefitted from being simpler, and thus more accessible to the average reader.
 
You’ve offered a theory about the ending so let me explain my intentions there: on the one hand, the reference to Weed’s eye color seemed a catchy way to end a story that places eyes at the center of a theme about non verbal communication and empathy.  Less pointedly, I was vaguely aware of juxtaposing the ordinariness of his eye color (though not the ordinariness of Weed himself) with the extraordinary purpose his (and others) eyes may have in the future: windows to the soul, and all that.  Eyes feature prominently in both novels, with lines like “eyes have much to answer for” (from CFTH) signifying a devaluation of anatomy, but also hinting at unrealized meaning, something that breathes life into cliche. Until the climax of Situation, eyes are referenced mostly as a source of aesthetic appreciation–a decoy cliche–with only subtextual premonitions of the paradigm-shifting social function I introduce through the character of Jules Grotius. I accept that my ending may be anticlimactic for some, though I defy anyone to tell me it’s predictable. It occurs to me that ‘anti-climax’ may be an unwitting compliment: an admission from readers that I’d bucked expectations, delivered something original. Actually, my biggest concern is not so much the reader’s expectations, but rather his or her misunderstanding–perhaps the assignment of pretense to my lofty purpose. Only those who know me as a psychotherapist might have seen it coming, and only those primed for psychological fiction (really, I’ve consistently described it as such) might immediately recognize a theme that posits horror (or trauma) as that which ultimately informs social engagement rather than isolation. For this reason, I think my strange, dark and sometimes grisly novels carry positive messages that redeem flawed characters living in desensitized, less-than-conscious times.

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Nightmare

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** There’s a nightmare in The Situation. Happens about a third of the way through, so you don’t have to worry, you light sleepers, you precious happy-ending seekers. It’ll be over soon. But try telling Bryan “Weed” Tecco that. Try telling Chris Leavitt that his troubles are past him, or that life after childhood is a good idea. Try telling the traumatized that it’ll be over soon. So what can you do? Well, not that he’d planned it this way, but Weed is poised for a lesson in humility, which I haughtily imply is not a bad thing. But I proceed gently, even tenderly in this matter, placing him an infant’s clothing–a diaper–which, among other things, recalls for him the dead-in-the-water invention idea of Chris’ from CFTH. If only Weed’s dilettante friend could see him now, trapped on a gurney, kidnapped by a lunatic intent upon sexual intrusion. He might be horrified to know that a diaper, his one fruitful symbol of regression, the one idea in his head that wasn’t linked to dark secrets from the past, could be used for a sinister purpose, as the idea he’d dreamt of was all about salutary anticipation: detecting what is there when the senses–sight and smell–are not available

**Sample:

Bryan “Weed” Tecco thinks he’s going crazy. For the last several hours, or thereabouts, he’s been tied up on a bed in a basement of…somewhere. There’s been no sign of Dan Pritchard since he passed out in the car. Weed is almost naked but for a heavy pair of underwear. Despite this, his body is just about covered: over his chest, across his ankles, over his head and hands is a network of straps fixed to plastic rods, pinned to what might be a bed—possibly a gurney. It’s an elaborate system that allows some flexibility, and just about keeps him warm. Weed can move. Meaning, he can wriggle and shake. He can’t speak due to what feels like a boxer’s mouth guard that is fixed into place by another strap, but he can utter muffled noises. He can thrash about and give the elastic restraints, and himself, a good workout. When he gets exhausted he can fall asleep and pass the time, because the bed is actually quite comfortable, except he’s cold. When he awakens, he can start again, hoping that sooner or later his efforts will pay off, and that the restraints will break. When they don’t seem to—when the sheepskin-like straps remain untroubled by his thrashing about—he can slump back and rest again for a spell. He can cry.

            Weed hasn’t cried in years: not since he was preteen. Back then he cried a lot; got it out of his system, he later joked. Now they’re back, the tears. They’re streaming down his face, running over his lips and into his mouth, which now hangs open in a suspended, distraught howl. Weed can move but he can’t get out. He is trapped, yet teased with the ability to stretch. If he could free his hands from a pair of taped-on gloves, he might rip at the material that’s holding him down. If he could somehow bump the guard away from his mouth, or move his head such that he could look up and down his own body, he might assess the problem and find a way out. He’d bite, claw, and tear at these straps until his fingernails tore away; until his teeth broke. He reminds himself of the lagoon, of the pain of nearly drowning. In some ways this is worse, he thinks, and there is no special breed of seaweed around for him to reach out to.

            He doesn’t know what time it is, but knows it’s daytime from a shard of light that beams down through a window in the opposite top corner of the room. That is Dan’s only act of kindness, or mistake: the likely decision to not cover up the gap. By the level of brightness, Weed guesses that it’s morning. The sunlight has a vaguely fresh feeling. Also, Weed feels the way he often does on a weekend morning: it’s a pleasant fatigue enabling a lazy sleep-in followed by a dawdling saunter through the day. He feels like a blind man trying to navigate his way through the world from memory and random impressions. The room seems tidy enough: there are no cobwebs that he can see; not a lot of dust. It seems like he’s underground, but thankfully, there are no scratchy sounds of rats or any other kind of rodent. There are no creepy inanimate sounds to speak of, and no flies buzzing about his face, tormenting him. Fleetingly, he thinks he could really get into an investigatory mood if this were an exercise. It could be like some kind of deprivation game reminiscent of the kind of things talked about in military boot camps, or by martial arts fanatics. Through the clues around him he could construct meanings and strategize: what time of what day is it? What kind of place is he in? What’s the likelihood of being rescued?    

            He figures one thing out through a force of nature. The need to urinate comes on quickly, which in turn alerts his brain to re-evaluate what he’s wearing. As his sensation builds he goes through a body check: he fidgets to see what kind of resistance there is in the underwear. He shakes himself to see what degree of give there is in the crotch. His dick feels strangely comfortable; held, even. He can feel it but can’t move it, because it’s cushioned within some kind of cotton bedding. It’s unsettling no matter how good it feels. Meanwhile, the stream is imminent, yet there’s no way he can get free. A panic rises. He doesn’t remember this feeling; his body and brain aren’t on the same page. How can they be? They don’t know what to do, and he can’t fathom how any living being can get relief without…

            “Jesuf…” he manages through the guard. A diaper. I’m sitting in a fucking diaper, he realizes—then he lets go.

            This is not an exercise, Weed thinks as his body relaxes. It may be an experiment, but not one of his choosing. Is it a game? He wonders. Dan Pritchard seemed interested in games, in the games Weed plays, and expertly tests. Dan had tried to engage Weed in a talk about games, but Weed wasn’t interested. Weed blew him off. Maybe something happened to Dan in those moments; something the older man kept to himself but then acted upon. Then again, he’d likely planned this all along, as soon as he’d seen Weed by the side of road, plodding along; a weary, vulnerable transient. As Weed tilts his head slightly to his right, he can just about make out a staircase leading upwards. Its top three or four steps are obscured by a cylindrical tank that looks like the property’s heating system. It seems small—only a few feet wide and tall—suggesting a home, not a commercial piece of real estate. These clues tell a story about what kind of place this is. The meaning is simple and obvious, yet under the circumstances, primitively moving for Weed: this isn’t an abandoned room. People either live or work here. They take those stairs, frequent this fairly clean-looking environment. Maybe they hang out down here and play sometimes. Somebody looks after this space. Somebody cares, and that means Weed won’t be alone forever.

            And, of course, he has a song stuck in his head. It’s not a song he likes. Songs that get “stuck” never seem to be ones that people actually like. If that were the case then for Weed it would be something by Led Zeppelin, Metallica, or Korn—something that would keep him fired up, and more. Modern Wagnerian sounds: they sanctify the lives of the wretched, stirring Weed’s soul. He’d settle for less. Even a little house music wouldn’t be amiss. But no, it’s nothing like that. Instead, the song is a childish ditty, practically a nursery rhyme. It’s something that Weed sort of remembers his Dad singing with one of his friends at a New Year’s party when he was a kid. The worst part is that Weed isn’t even getting the words right, which nags at his perfectionism. The first part, the most famous bit, is correct—Roll out the barrel—but the second bit—Roll out the barrel of fun—doesn’t sound right. And it’s on a loop. Eventually, the song turns to something else, but even though Weed loves Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, “I’m Waiting For The Man” isn’t making him feel any better.

            At the same time, Weed is trying to will Dan Pritchard into an appearance. If he concentrates hard enough, long enough, he can also wear down the resistance of that resilient sheepskin material, and eventually make the straps loosen just enough so that he might free himself. They feel childlike, these regressions and wishes. That’s okay, Weed figures. Meaning, it makes sense. It’s human. Fantasies are what he has for the moment, and who knows how long this moment will last? So, for as long as this takes, for as long as he is helpless, he’ll let himself feel like a child, and act like a child until someone lets him be an adult again. It shouldn’t be that hard, being a child. After all, though he doesn’t remember it, Bryan “Weed” Tecco was once a helpless child.

 ** photo by Helnwein

 

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September 1, 2014 · 6:35 am
August 26, 2014 · 4:09 pm

Excerpt With A Flaw

 

   ** So, the question is, why do characters do the things they do? What do their “flaws” mean? Here’s an example of an excerpt that might stir the question: Bryan “Weed” Tecco and his partner, Jill Evans (Chris Leavitt’s former girlfriend) are doing the road thing. Fraught with sexual tension, they’re driving down to LA, chasing an unknowing Chris Leavitt to retrieve files of a special video game called ‘The Situation’. Unbeknownst to them, they are also being followed by a Sahi security team led by Eric “fierce” Pierce, likewise determined to retrieve the files of the subversive game. Weed is giving the concerned but pitiless Jill some background, about himself as a keen observer of the video game industry, and more anomalously, about his and Chris’ shared preoccupation with visions they dub “Shadows”, and most shockingly, the way in which they have touched her life. Should he really be telling her this stuff? Having previously kept this secret from her–having decided overall upon a life of strict reticence–why would he be so open now? What strange decisions people make as they negotiate the distance between self and other.**   

 

Weed looks over at the gas gauge, sees that the indicator is hovering below the quarter tank mark. Up ahead are signs directing traffic east towards Bakersfield and the five freeway, which is a straighter run at this point so they agree that taking the turn is best. Weed figures they are an hour or so still to the base of the LA mountains, the so-called grapevine. He looks at the clock: just past four, it reads. He yawns. Still mid-afternoon: this has been a long ass day, he thinks.

            “We should stop soon,” he says. “Get gas, take a bathroom break.”

            “Sure,” Jill replies, accepting the end of conversation. For another quarter hour there is silence as they both gaze up ahead or sideways, looking at misty, distant mountain ranges, stretches of telephone towers, flatlands, farms, and stolid, uninspired cows. Weed dwells on his secrets, feels an odd, dull weight at the base of his stomach, like something’s pushing out.

            “A lot of people say that to me,” he suddenly remarks, presumably in reference to Jill’s last comment. “That’s partly why I wrote a book,” he adds.

            “Yeah?” says Jill in a bored voice. She bites. “What was the book about?”

            “It was about gaming. I thought Chris told you about it.”

            “He did but he didn’t describe it much.”

            Weed issues a barely discernible grunt. Disappointment. “Well, in case you’re interested it’s relevant to what we’re doing here. A few years ago I started blogging about games that were available on the market. I made You-Tube videos of myself playing games like Call Of Duty, commenting as I played. I got plenty of hits, then subscribers. Soon You-Tube wanted to partner with me, advertise on my site. Then with the blog, people started saying I should write a book or something, and I actually got a publisher a short while later.”

            Weed pauses as if looking for reinforcement.

            “Uh-huh,” Jill utters.

            “People seemed to like what I was saying, which was a full-on review of all kinds of games, but also a general complaint about a games market that lacked imagination. I mean, I was good at COD, and Battlefield whatever version, but these games are mostly about wandering around with a camera on your head, being alert for resources and enemies, and then figuring out ways to kill ‘em. I preferred Battlefield to COD, wrote about how lone ranger games weren’t as good as those which fostered teamwork. At the same time, I thought more games should be like Soulcraft, which is based on Minecraft—games which find different kinds of goals for players; more creative or complex goals. When I was writing the book, which took about six months—it wasn’t long, only a hundred pages—I thought that’s what people wanted to hear, deep down anyway. When I presented the book, called Play Gone Wrong, the publisher balked, said they wanted something more positive and less mysterious in the title, though they supported the content.” Weed stops again, shaking his head.

            “So what happened? What was the title?”

            “A bullshit title, Today’s Top Games. It sold about a hundred and fifty copies.”

            “That’s stupid,” Jill remarks awkwardly. “The title change, not the fact that it sold only a hundred and fifty copies.

            “Yeah.” Now Weed sounds bored. He goes quiet again, and it seems to Jill that talking to this guy, getting stuff out of him is hard work; just as hard as prying stuff from Chris, actually. Several times she thinks to ask another question, kick the pebble that is this exchange just a little ways further. She stops herself, reasoning that at some point Weed will simply resume talking, picking up from where he left off, the context obvious from his point of view. Weed’s mind is actually elsewhere, recalling that about a quarter of the books he sold were bought by his dad, and few others by book club friends of his mom who would otherwise read anything: cookbooks, travelogues, quaint stories about pets named Marvin. When that reverie stops, his thoughts turn back to the secrets he’s keeping; specifically, the stuff he now feels pressure to share with Jill. “I got something else to tell you,” he says.

            Jill raises her eyebrows. “Okay,” she answers warily.

            “What you were talking about earlier, about Chris: I kinda knew about that.”

            “Really? I’m listening.” Jill doesn’t sound shocked.

            “I don’t mean that Chris told me what you just said. Believe me, if he had then I’d have called him out.” Weed and Jill’s eyes meet. “Well, maybe you won’t believe me. Whatever, but that’s what I’m saying, anyway. But the thing is this: when I first met you—that night of the accident—I recognized you. I’d seen you before. You know what I’m saying?” He gives her a patient, studious look, the type a teacher gives when hoping a student will get a lesson that’s been suggestively imparted. Jill looks at Weed, confused.

            “No, I don’t,” she replies impatiently, “why don’t you enlighten me.”

            “You were a Shadow the first time I saw you—what I call a Breather-Shadow, something that I think…well, I saw you as a vision standing next to Chris, saying something to him. That meant, as far as I was concerned, that something had happened between the two of you, or was going to happen.”

            Jill’s patience, if not something else, breaks. It breaks almost to the point wherein it transfers to her feet, halting the car in the middle of the highway, which is especially dangerous given that traffic is thickening as the afternoon wears on.

            “Wait. What do you mean by ‘something had happened’?”

            “I mean…ya know,” he says, because he didn’t know.

            “Didn’t you say that Shadow sightings or whatever alerted you to crimes, future or past?”

            “Yeah.” Weed’s agreement is tenuous and foreboding. By the fierce look in her eyes and the jutting of her jaw, he gleans that Jill is about to hit Krav Maga mode with her tongue.

            “So if you thought Chris had committed or was going to commit some kind of crime with respect to me, why wouldn’t you ‘call him out’, as you put it?”

            Weed looks dumbstruck, caught without a good answer for the skilled inquisitor. That’ll teach him not to reveal his secrets. Should’ve stayed on Monads—should’ve have seen this coming. Not that he doesn’t have anything to say. He has an explanation for her; not a bad one, even, at least from one point of view. But it sounds feeble to him when he thinks about it—it’s too personal.

            It’s different. I know you now. I…

            “I don’t know. You’re right. It’s messed up that I didn’t even ask him about it.”

            “Just as I figured,” says Jill, disgustedly turning her attentions back to the road. “This Shadow business is just a load of bullshit wasting everybody’s time.”

            For the first time since he’s met Jill, Weed sits shamefacedly, his shoulders slumped; his jaw slackened, shorn of the steely mastication that Jill, unbeknownst to him, found quite sexy not that long ago. Meanwhile, Jill sits in her driver’s seat, fuming. The task of keeping her hands on the wheel is all that keeps her from lashing out and flailing her arms at the hapless passenger. Not for the first time with a guy roughly her age, she feels like a big sister driving a delinquent brother home after a disgraced appearance with a school principal. But it’s too late to turn back now. She’s in this thing, committed. Up ahead, appearing like an oasis in a desert, the outline of the grapevine, with the five freeway snaking its way into the hills, looms fantastically like the land of Oz. A sign by the side of the road indicates that a last chance of gas and food for many miles is coming up. Weed feels like a ten year old boy about to annoy an impatient parent with biological needs that ought to have been dealt with beforehand.

            “I really need that bathroom,” he says in a pitiful voice.

 

 

 

 

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August 25, 2014 · 6:22 am

The Importance Of Being Flawed

It was during a discussion about our top ten favorite musical performers—a merry debate Jay and I had wormed our way through numerous times—that I outlined my criteria for great art and great heroes: they must be flawed, I declared. I trod carefully, seeing the mischievous glint in my friend’s eye and knowing him as one who once delighted in finding flaws—flaws in my reasoning, that is; my faulty logic. Time has softened his position. Now aesthetics share space with his offbeat moral codes, Jay’s demand that people have courage, be self-sacrificing, even if otherwise behaving sinisterly.

As a result, Jay had issues with Chris Leavitt, my distracted protagonist of Crystal From The Hills, and redemptive support-player in its follow-up, The Situation. Jay was gingerly in his criticism: caretaking, self-deprecating (“…maybe it’s me”), yet quietly scathing. Among other things, Chris acts in ways that would not endear him to many readers. He behaves fecklessly, avoiding problems, especially this strange accident with a truck, his friend Bryan “Weed” Tecco, a lagoon in West Marin County, and some malevolent followers, possibly real, likely not, who are dubbed “Shadows” by the psychosis-sharing axis that is Chris and Weed. Over the following week, Chris retreats into the gritty streets of Oakland—a privileged, ill-fitting white male losing himself—rather than following a responsible, much less logical path. Over the course of CFTH, the reader is called to dally alongside Chris, enduring anomalous altercations with other lost, disturbed figures; surviving a more purposeful assault from local gangstas seeking Chris’ absent friend and their rival. Chris unknowingly emulates Weed, seeking to disappear, meanwhile hoping to grow down and not up; to lie about his age, not be responsible—to not be a hero, or even an adult.

Unacceptable. This is my guy, my hero, but more importantly, the carrier of secrets, pain, as well as the corruption of hierarchical systems, including families. What a burden. In order to understand, if not like him, the reader gets Chris’ back-story: the explanation as to why he is the way he is. Good enough? His near-salvation is his adjustment to reality, which happens slowly, serendipitously, and usually in spite of others’ strenuous efforts to help. There: a therapist’s idea of a happy ending. The efforts of Chris’ women seem particularly off the mark. His girlfriend, Jill, rather like his bossy Aunt Jenny, think haranguing Chris will lead to change. It doesn’t. Like many who are depressed, or addicted, or delusional, or all three, Chris avoids the messengers of prosaic yet worthwhile truths, instead preferring fantasies, the habit of meandering in between models of authority and mirrors of failure. In his mind, Chris half-listens to voices of reason, the present-day life-like figures, while ever keeping private counsel with the absent or illusory: his friend Weed, his hapless, deceased father; an elusive, affection-withholding mother; his “Shadows”. If characters like Jill, Weed, or the affable Sweet are in any way stand-ins for the departed or the ephemeral, it’s not clear. But it’s not implausible.

The flaws of my bi-novel narrative are surely plentiful, especially the flaws apparent through plain analysis of events: the point of view of reliable, rational human beings who behave logically, live consistently, and seem to know themselves. Damn you all. Regarding the accident that begins both novels, the even-tempered reader might wonder: is it realistic that Chris and Weed, separated due to the apparent sinking of a truck in shallow lagoon, would not find each other upon surviving and reaching the surface? Is the reader meant to believe that Weed’s fear of corporate followers, or Chris’ belief that a drowning Weed is beyond saving, would lead either of them to bypass the involvement of authorities? Would the reader further believe that such a traumatized figure as Chris would simply drift into homelessness, rather than return home, report the accident, the disappearance of Weed, and then resume work, relationships, and the general momentum of life?

Regarding the novels’ most prominent female character, would readers believe that the capable, head-strong, seemingly career-focused Jill would be in relationship with a character like Chris; would tolerate his immaturity, be anything beyond seduced by his dimpled face, lean body and puckish blue eyes; or that she’d be living in a derelict apartment in West Oakland, as opposed to one of its latter-day gentrified properties on Martin Luther King Street. As for Weed: having learned, albeit second-hand in CFTH, of his lechery, self-serving, and calculating nature, would the reader accept that he’d entrust the flash drives for an important and subversive video game (entitled ‘The Situation’) to Chris, who among other things, is known for losing belongings, especially electronic items like cell phones? And what of Weed’s penchant for procrastination: his three or four day break in Bolinas, wasting time with the elegiac Rosco, before resuming his cause? If he’d thought Chris alive and well, would he not concern himself with his stash, be chomping at the bit to get back and move on? What I’d hoped is that Weed’s latent heroism would vie with his dilatory, ambivalent nature, but ultimately yield a picaresque journey. That journey evolves like man: on foot, to car, ferry, and train. As a result, Weed belies his reputation as a mindless slob and criminal and gives meaning to that once inexplicable chase along a West Marin highway.

Love these flaws, hate them, or ignore them. Whatever you choose. Ignore CFTH. Ignore The Situation. Actually, I find it curious, this assignment of logic, or even consistency, to the constructs of character and drama. It’s as if readers think they know why people are the way they are. Jay does, and I know I do.

 

 

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August 18, 2014 · 7:40 am

Unseen Through The Window Of The Eyes

But seeing. In The Situation as well as its predecessor and best friend, Crystal From The Hills, much is made of characters’ eyes. Not the aesthetic qualities that art traditionally enjoys, but rather an expansion of a philosophical chestnut: that window to the soul thing. Or rather, it’s an attachment thing. Neurobiologists like Daniel Siegel and Allan Schore, and before them, John Bowlby, teach us that attachment is a biological imperative. Meaning, we will die without it, and therefore must attach at all costs. Those costs entail surrendering better parts of ourselves, those precious selves, borne of an archaic interaction, that carry the potential of growth.

Chris Leavitt learned early in life that secrets would keep him safe, if sick, and safe is better than sick…anyday. The truth is his parents should never have gotten together, so ill-fitting were they. Chris’ father, besotted by the elusive Nancy, pursued her obsessively, and she liked being pursued, but soon fell into a different role, one she didn’t understand but which carried her along. The momentum ebbed long enough for her notice other suitors, men who promised something better: maybe self-assurance, maybe reality. Young Chris started seeing visions of these men, and feeling their presence, but knew he should keep quiet. The truth: it hurts; has consequences. One of them was an altercation between Chris’ parents, a climactic frustration for his father–a likely rape of Nancy.

As a quasi-adult Chris he meets Jill, a would-be Nancy, a professional and habitual caretaker, and also a woman who falls into attachment for inexplicable reasons. Eyes. There was something in Chris’ blue eyes. They were sweet, beautiful, and seductive, but also dangerous, unreliable. Over a two day period, life collapses around a sequence of events: the disappearance of a friend, the exposure of his incompetence at work; an altercation with Jill that mirrors the violence between his parents. Accidents. Bewildered, Chris has the strange notion that all that has happened are just accidents he’s not supposed to talk about.

Speaking of accidents, Bryan “Weed” Tecco emerges from his, unseen. That fits his self image. So, too, does feeling unwanted, though the antecedent of that wound is ancient. He, too, has visions of important events that implicate the guilty, but until now, Weed has been content to live his own life, ignore secrets, and play out the role that appears to effect attachment in his life: villainy. And yet, it’s not good enough. These conditions of staying close–keeping secrets, caretaking, being bad–they just aren’t good enough. Something’s gotta give. Something’s gotta change. Weed’s day job is playing games, as a tester for a fictional telecommunications giant named Sahi, and he’s found a game that’s gone wrong, or will go wrong. It’s a special game called ‘The Situation’, which, on the one hand, seems like many others: it rewards quick thinking, fine motor skills, and ruthless decision-making…violence. But another level (literally) the game suggests ambiguous rewards for those who make different decisions; those who see into others’ souls, through the window of the eyes, and practice empathy. And this game, this new paradigm of play, is the creation of a Julian Assange-like figure ostensibly aiming to reach an apolitical, unattached constituency, by making it the unlikely recipient of whistleblower secrets.

The question is whether Chris, Weed, Jill, or countless others like them will hang in there as the adventure of their story unfolds. The question is whether they will settle for the way things are, versus staggering unconsciously along their respective trails, opening their eyes to what was previously unseen.

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August 10, 2014 · 6:47 am

Don’t Look At Me

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Recently, someone I know endured a traumatic episode—an assault—walking at night in the streets of Oakland, in the neighborhoods depicted in my two novels, Crystal From The Hills and The Situation. The victims were a middle-aged Caucasian pair on a night out, feeling a part of their community; empathetic, even celebrating of its diversity: of age, socioeconomics, gender orientation, race. On an unlit street a block or two away from a populated commercial districted, they approached a pair of youngish-looking black men, walking languidly in the opposite direction. The couple exchanged glances, but neither said a word. Through body language they consolidated a plan with a tacit underpinning: keep walking, don’t change direction; don’t convey to these young men a prejudice or fear based upon their age or race. Trust.
The plan backfired. Within ten yards of contact, the two men separated, moving to flanking positions on the sidewalk. The couple halted, realizing in an instant what was happening. One of the men pulled a firearm and calmly directed the couple to hand over their bag, while the other man stepped forward and reached into pockets, first those of the husband, then the pockets of his wife. The husband looked up, half-meeting the glance of the man groping around his body.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “What are you looking at?”
“Sorry,” muttered the husband, immediately complying and looking away.
The man with the gun stepped forward, reaching out to the woman instead. With his free hand he grabbed her wrist, looking to snatch her bag which contained her cell phone, her wallet, identifications, plus an address at which the coupled lived.
“Let go,” he directed calmly, intimately.
The wife didn’t look at him. She wanted to speak instead, ask some of the following questions: do you have a mother? How could you do this? What is this about for you? Is it poverty? Don’t you realize we’re on your side? Don’t you know, or care, what a set-back this is, for Oakland, for relations between white people and black? She didn’t say any of this, of course. She cooperated, relinquishing her grip on her bag. While fearful still for hers and hers husband’s safety, or that of their home in El Cerrito, she was equally distraught over the psychological fall-out: the changes she foresaw in the aftermath of this violation. A minute later, the incident was over, and the couple, physically un-harmed, was soon talking to police, sharing their details. Meanwhile, the wife continued to ruminate: where was the empathy in this world? The civility?
Privately, I’ve thought of incidents like this in the context of writing my two companion novels, both of which—though especially the first, CFTH—depict life on the gritty streets of Oakland, where danger is presumed. Two of my characters, Chris Leavitt and Jill Evans, endure street assaults that are peripheral to the story’s main drama, but nonetheless endemic to the social milieu in which they live. These episodes are included for a few reasons, one of which is a realistic depiction of Oakland, though this is of secondary importance. Firstly, my novels are not so much realistic as surrealistic; they rely on subtext, the expression of fears which are as much felt experiences over a lifetime rather than emotions triggered by specific, present-day circumstances. Still, the characters, going about their lives, for the most part unconsciously, make implicit appeals for more civility in the world; more empathy.
The second novel, The Situation, provides meat to this theme in the form of Bryan “Weed” Tecco’s story. An absent—as in disappeared—character from CFTH, Weed’s actions and enigmatic motivation are the pretext of events in the first novel, now resurrected, like Weed himself, for the plot’s unfolding. Prior to Chris Leavitt’s dalliance with homelessness, likely psychosis, his absconding from work and home, he’d accompanied his similarly psychotic drug dealer/video game tester friend, “Weed”, on an unexplained road trip to the secretive village of Bolinas in West Marin, ostensibly to aid a getaway, but also, more quietly, to take possession of some corporate contraband. That road trip culminates in an accident involving their truck and a West Marin lake, during which Weed disappears, later presumed drowned.
Well, he hasn’t drowned, according to the first line of The Situation (BTW: contradicting the first line of CFTH—hopefully, the reader notices). He’s back and ready to explain himself and the meaning of that contraband, for anyone who will listen and care. The contraband is a set of flash drives, the files for a game entitled “The Situation”, designed by a programmer/quasi journalist, a Julian Assange-like figure, who wants to exploit the phenomenon of gaming popularity, and publish a game with unprecedented social purpose: the game, played at its highest levels, will reveal the whistleblower secrets of the US government as well as bastions of corporate America. While this parallels the secret-laden lives of Chris, Jill, and Weed, they are unknowingly embroiled in a chase for the missing drives; driven to be a part of something they don’t quite understand, but know is important.
Along the path of this mission, from the ill-fated drive to Bolinas, and throughout the events that unfold over the two books, characters experience events that trigger their various traumas, ambiguously calling for civility, empathy, amid the surface pursuit of survival. They do a lot of looking at one another, and a little more talking as time moves on, as therapists like me instruct. Within the drama that is about survival, then a nightmare; then a comeback, and finally a game, a shadowy character, a talisman of sorts, teaches about empathy, tells them they must learn to take risks, look into the souls of others, through the traditional window of eyes.
This fanciful lesson will compete with reality, I think. It is a story, a fantasy, but also a kind of prescription competing with other warnings.
Look at me.

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July 29, 2014 · 7:08 pm

Dear Beverly

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Dear Beverly,

Please excuse the impersonal formality of typing, but I am used to writing ideas in this way. Tapping fingers facilitate my thoughts, while holding a pen slows me down. This is a shame perhaps. Anyway, thank you for the unexpectedly quick reading of my manuscript, <em>Crystal From The Hills, and for generously giving your time to this project. Again, I am truly grateful.
I thought I’d respond to one or two items in your notes, starting with an explanation of the Shadow concept, as that seemed to intrigue you in particular. As you know, or heard from Letha, providing psychotherapy is my day job. Actually, it’s more like an afternoon and evening job, and writing generally starts around eleven at night and lasts for a couple of hours. That’s my life currently. For many years, I have been influenced by psychoanalytically-derived models of psychotherapy, though not specifically Jungian models. In Carl Jung’s concept, the Shadow is roughly equivalent to the Freudian unconscious, with a negative inflection. The Shadow represents the undesirable or denied aspects of self, but also the source of creativity.
A Jungian might interpret Chris Leavitt’s drama as follows: his “Shadows” represent the denied aspects of his self, both from Chris’ point of view, and that of society (It thinks him crazy). I wouldn’t quibble with the Jungian interpretation, but I see Chris more as a victim of recent and chronic trauma. Secrecy, as a way of being in relationships and preserving homeostasis, is simply transported into his present drama. Modern psychoanalysts observe trauma more directly than their Freudian forebears. They assert that survivors need witnesses, external or internalized; therapists or others who will not only acknowledge reality, but in so doing show caring, and hold individuals accountable for responsible action.
Chris is torn between his loyalty to those who compel secrecy, both past and present, and his hidden need for reality. Meanwhile, he hungers for an original “me” that once lived happily without conflict. That aspect of himself is frozen in time, unavailable to his adult self, which is why he craves a return to childhood, and distorts matters of time and age as if they were toys to be played with. Chris is still being bullied by peers. He still has difficulty sharing and playing with others. Like all victims of trauma, he needs witnesses, and though he has some (Aunt Jenny, and more serendipitously, Sweet, or even Costman, Aunt Jenny’s gardner), he is or has been swayed by darker, more powerful models: his ever secretive parents, the innocence subverting, misanthropic Weed. The shadows are witnesses of his own unconscious invention: there to mediate in the space where real-life witnesses have let him down. But it’s not a simple task. Before he can make healthy use of the shadows, he must decide if they are real and beneficent, or imaginary, or malevolent. I think this is the drama of CFTH: a man with an underdeveloped conscience externalizes his conflict, and plays out a war with himself.
Ultimately, I think he is a resilient character. The story’s climax delivers him into reality, where he needn’t further rebel against adulthood with childish action. There seems to be hope for him in the end as he contemplates a re-commitment to his working life, the possibility of working with kids, accessing the child in himself in a more flexible, wholesome fashion. Perhaps he will even have kids one day.
You’ve made numerous comments in the margins of the manuscript, all of which I appreciate. My attention is drawn to the need for a good copyediting, but also a reconsideration of diction in several places, and of ideas, or narrative fragments that are unnecessarily repeated. You also make several important comments about words, actions, and descriptions that seem to not fit the situations indicated. Or the words don’t fit the characters sometimes, especially in the case of Aunt Jenny. My re-write will incorporate this feedback.
You’ve asked about the target audience for the book. This is an area where I am currently getting feedback, both from friends and other writers. This weekend I will be attending a workshop in San Francisco that will focus upon marketing of writing. For the time being, I’ve considered that my audience will be youngish, interested in either mystery or psychological fiction, or the travails of substance users or the mentally ill. At the same time, I hope to find a way to pitch the novel so that readers can identify with Chris Leavitt; not just think of him as disturbed, separate, and therefore different from others. Many will know what it is to be traumatized, alienated or lost in an unconsciously functioning, toxic system, be it a family, a workplace, or a community at large. I think the book will speak to these readers, if I can reach them.

Thanks again. Sincerely,

Graeme Daniels

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July 19, 2014 · 8:28 pm

Secrets

“A secret isn’t so much what is known or unknown. A secret is that which isn’t talked about.” I’m not sure what the reader will think of this quote. It’s not famous—not as far as I know. It is attributable to me—as far as I know—for I’ve never come across this idea being expressed in quite this way, by anyone else. I first wrote the line in 2006, for an article I wrote for a now defunct newsletter for my local chapter of EBCAMFT. At the time, I was applying a principle to the treatment of families enduring the psychological impacts of addiction; to the rules that govern communication within closed systems, resulting in alienation, broken attachments, and in therapy or drug treatment: aborted or stalemated progress in relationships.
Though not referenced explicitly in The Situation until the novel’s climax, the same principle pervades the emerging story, and even more so the backstory that’s contained in the novel’s predecessor, Crystal From The Hills. It starts with the backgrounds of individuals, within the psyches of shamefaced people that once raised my troubled protagonists, Chris “Crystal” Leavitt, and Bryan “Weed” Tecco. Chris, for example, was born to a couple who, like countless others, fell in and out of love before callow longings had even run their course. Love’s remainder, such as the birth and subsequent parenting of Chris, was a long, drawn out epilogue—the loss of narcissistic fusion was the quiet tragedy of both of their lives. Mother had a lover, Chris intuited, from a mysterious vase discovered in their home’s basement. His clue was the incipient appearance of a “Shadow”—a vision of a strange man in this case—positioned next to the vase, implicating an untold story with muted knowingness. Chris has been dogged by “Shadows”, at least intermittently, ever since, and like his future friend, Weed, has long since fashioned his own interpretations; extrapolated meanings he attaches to secrets and then applies to the workings of the world.
Secrets govern systems, I unoriginally explain in Working Through Rehab, my non-fiction about adolescents in drug treatment settings. Some systems, like gangs, or youth cliques, cannot be controlled, which is either a blessed phenomenon or a disturbing one, depending on your point of view. Kids, I discovered, quite ably police one another in the keeping of secrets. Snitches get stitches, they command, bullying without apology. Or else they threaten ostracism through ever increasing cyber-space sophistication. Few dare to break the no snitching rule, and few adults really know what to do about it, especially if they’ve lived by the same rule.
Ultimately, my fiction, like my therapeutic biases, extols the virtues of whistleblowers, led by a shadowy figure named Jules Grotius (the designer of the game “The Situation” and of course modeled after Julian Assange), and challenges those whose apparent solution to conflict is silence. The disclosure of secrets, and more importantly, my Grotius character’s pronouncement that the paradigm of public discourse must change for the social good, redeems the burdened history of those who have felt marginalized for seeing what they see, feeling what they feel within systems of all kinds: violent, non-violent; hierarchical; those pretending not to be hierarchical. In my life, I have craved belonging, or actually belonged, to various systems, units of society, all committed to one degree or another to unique, internal truths. These units have had different names: family, nation, school, team, club, clique, company, agency, men’s group, treatment team, couple; society. They’ve all had rules and self-proclaimed, distinctive virtues. They’ve all demanded conformity and punished separation. And they all have secrets.

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