Tag Archives: addiction

June 30, 2014 · 6:54 am

Crystal Surreal

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As my next novel, The Situation, becomes available today, I step back two years to reflect upon its predecessor, my much maligned Crystal From The Hills. You don’t have to read CFTH to get The Situation. It’s easy enough to follow the action, infer the major events of the previous novel, if not its subtext, and get involved in its story. What you might miss is the contrast between friends pictured above–the paths defined by different needs for both characters and readers: for mere consciousness on the one hand, for heroism on the other–for empathy above all. Who are you? Where are you in your life, and what do you want from drama? Here’s a few thoughts from November 12′:

I’m not sure what an example of surreal fiction is. When I think of surrealism, I think of painters like Salvador Dali, or filmmakers like Jean Cocteau, or Luis Bunuel. I’m told Jacques Lacan is the man for those following the unconscious. Not sure that’s true. The author Polizzoti writes that Freud and the surrealists were nonplussed by one another, especially Andre Breton, who reportedly met the Viennese physician and was underwhelmed. These writers were poets, stylists of the 20s and 30s, contemporaries of the absurdist Dada movement, and men who reported interest in the unconscious, and went about the task of creating images that simulated dreams. For what it’s worth, I’ve tried a modest and similar tact with Crystal From The Hills, having read some of Lacan and Breton, and then staring at that remarkable painting by Magritte: the one that frame a woman’s naked body within the contours of a feminine hairline. ‘Le Viol’ it’s called: the rape. Simplicity and genius. And horror.

Mine is a story that begins dreamily on the streets of Oakland, with an ambiguously aged man holding a sign that reads, “Hungry White Trash” as he panhandles by the side of a freeway. You might get the idea that it’s a joke, but not entirely. In fact, there’s a history to the joke, and horror: a serious underpinning. Chris Leavitt has suffered an accident. That’s the pitch, the beginning of the story and the forerunner to a back-story. There will be a few accidents depicted if you read on, as well as deliberate action, malevolent and kind. There is no hero per se (heroism comes later), just a hapless everyman riding a string of bad luck, making several wrong decisions, struggling to act like an adult. He’s playing with life. He has a girlfriend, sort of. It’s Jill Evans, ten years before her stints playing support character in Living Without Blood, and almost twelve years before she takes the lead in The Big No, my second novel. Jill gets around, and here she goes back in time, getting younger, lucky girl. I have a villain of sorts, a guy who’s not around, but who gets talked about a lot. He’s Weed, a drug dealer, video game star, con artist—a bad, absent, abandoning guy. His influence is balanced by Sweet, Chris’ other friend, who is even more childlike than Chris, yet affable and easy to have around. He sticks around. There’s an aged yet autocratic aunt—Chris’ only surviving relative, an endearingly caustic woman. Others in the story are lawyers, doctors, police, employers, street thugs, ghostly figures (dubbed “Shadows”) that hang around with hallucinatory menace: not all bad people; just people with seeming power and a willingness to use it.

            CFTH is a story that concerns itself with many ideas. It relies on continuity and the experience of ideas, fragments that have been indicated previously in the text. If you read a few pages then put it down for three weeks, then I’m sorry if I bored you. If that’s not the case and you’re just dilatory in your reading habits, then I’m afraid you may miss out. A good read is like good therapy. You don’t go once a month, like it’s a check up. You’re supposed to remember bits and pieces, like it’s embedded in your experience, and just know where you left off—no bookmarks are necessary if it works. There are associations to be made along the way. Don’t look for patterns, just experience the sense of revisiting as you note terms, phrases that appear to get repeated in the novel; themes that seem to link to one another. This is a story about accidents; personal, physical, even sexual, and habitual. It’s a story about rejection: also personal, and also institutional. There is trauma involved, and the problems related to poor memory and dissociation. You might feel what my characters don’t: that’s the point. Chris doesn’t remember much in the beginning, but builds his story along the way, and tells others, and you, what’s happening in his own time, on his own terms. His friend Sweet has an even worse memory than he does, but low and behold, it is he that becomes the chronicler of events in the end; the witness. Trauma victims need witnesses. That’s written somewhere. Above all there is a problem with reality, regressions in time, age. Characters aren’t sure what’s happening. They lack real perspectives, real goals. They don’t even use their real names. Despite all this, CFTH is actually not a confusing novel, in my opinion—not if you’re present, that is. It’s not all in Chris’ mind: things actually happen.

            Bad things happen. Evil lurks, as in any good action movie or pulp mystery novel. Darth Vader types hover, and towering infernos exist. Read the novel some of these cheeky references will make sense. Meanwhile, like the “Shadows” of Chris’ imagination or psychosis, the author and reader are witnesses to all that goes down. CFTH is a novel that may move you, or it may leave you cold, or I suppose—just to cover all bases—it may leave you feeling something (?) in between.

 

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March 8, 2014 · 11:14 pm

The Careless Passage of Time

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In the next section of Candace Orcutt’s book, Trauma in Personality Disorder, we read of Mr. H. and Mrs. M. Mr. H., she describes, presents a case with “traumatic overtones”, though the trauma isn’t obvious at first. Is it the rejection from his wife? The business failure, coupled with the partner’s nefarious financial actions? The problems with his adult children? He is depressed, Narcissistic, manifestly so (exhibitionistic?), and according to Orcutt, needful of mirroring, and not always with an accompanying interpretation. The Narcissist has an antipathy towards interpretation, she writes (p. 100), but she points out that the Masterson model bypasses this antipathy by wrapping such interventions with empathy for the patient’s vulnerability. With that seeming understanding in mind, one wonders why her transcripts appear to wander so often from the technique: instances of reassurance (p. 97: “it will get better in the end”, p. 91: “you have your kids and your pride. You’re managing”); so-called reasoning (p. 88: “Wouldn’t it be easier to stop fighting and accept the offer?”); a warning (p. 86: “Maybe it’s important to remember that reaction plays into others’ hands”); a confrontation (p. 85: “are you really defending yourself by turning this into WWIII”). The mirroring aims at maintaining idealized unity with the therapist; the confrontation a containment of acting out; the reassurance perhaps girds Mr. H. for his subsequent disclosures about an incestuous relationship with his mother. He ends therapy having broken a secret, and seems happy enough, with a new woman in his life and a better relationship with his kids. 

Orcutt writes that mirroring alone may be necessary when the patient is feeling especially vulnerable. This feels very permitting somehow, as though the interpretive piece were an extra chore for both patient and therapist; both are spared the task of dealing with the question of criticism that ambiguously lies within mirroring interpretations. Mrs. M is stoical, likes to “fix” problems. She seeks to control feelings, often by dismissing them, and thinks that having feelings and acting upon them are conflated concepts. She also discovers a family secret, through the experience of an accident in which no was injured, though Mrs. M. begins to suffer symptoms of PTSD. She wants medication, and hypnosis; she doesn’t want to dwell. She resists the psychologizing of her reaction from doctors, but soon integrates the therapeutic suggestion that her symptoms derive from stress, and more importantly, she acknowledges helplessness with respect to her fears. This appears to open up memories, including an incident in her teens wherein she felt responsible for a friend’s accident. Symptoms persist, and the therapist gives homework for Mrs. M. to interview family members about recurrent dreams of a little girl being killed. The investigation unearths a horrific family secret: a tragic incident in which Mrs. M’s four year old twin sister is accidentally killed by her mother’s first husband. Mrs. M. had witnessed the scene, but was thereafter amnestic, and the mother resolved to not talk about it. This is a painful story, one that had me reflecting sympathetically upon the father of the deceased girl as much as the horror of Mrs. M. She is distraught by the discovery, and blames the therapist for not preparing her for the burdens of memory. The therapist reassures that life will be put back “into one piece”, and adds that perhaps time will bring a change. Cliches aside, attributing change to the passage of time seems incomplete, even careless.

 

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April 28, 2013 · 8:14 pm

Disconnect/Reject

My novel, Crytal From The Hills, is looking for a place to live. Give it a home, readers. Or give it an agent, or this blog a directory. Otherwise, it might become a rejected story of rejection, about a guy named Chris Leavitt who’s left home, looking for a place to stay in the aftermath of an accident, a disappearance, a trauma, and a mystery–the novel’s pitch. Irony? Actually no–it might be apt, this quiet response, this absence of yours. You see, this is a tale of disconnection/rejection; disconnects and rejects; relationships with the absent highlighted by absent relationships with the present. Longings: dream about longings, why don’t you. I thought about all this when I started this thing three years ago. That’s planning, I say. That’s contrivance, some might think. Anyway, I sought feedback. Really. I made calls, wrote e-mails, did what you’re supposed to do–I connected, and asked what others thought. But phone calls get dropped, and e-mails sometimes land in junk. Sorry, says the world: we didn’t get that.

Here’s another passage from CFTH:

“So, what are you gonna do after you check your phone.” Chris thought for a moment that she was mocking him, referring to his phone task like it was his major chore of the morning. Jill flung her purse on her bed—the only major piece of furniture in the unit—and stepped over to a desk to check messages on her land line. Almost simultaneously she pulled out her IPhone and began checking its messages; multitasking, like she was showing how it was done. To her left was a several square foot space she’d created against a wall. She gestured towards it, indicating several of Chris’ belongings. Chris had already moved in, it seemed like; he’d colonized her space with his motley collection of goods, things he’d once thought he couldn’t live without: a backpack made of hemp; a Nick Drake CD sticking out the top. Inside, there were several smaller items, such as another Ziploc bag, filled with Percocets. There was an IPhone that had been “blown up” several times, such that its memory was now full. Taking up the most space was an oft-malfunctioning laptop and a seeming trail of electronic dependency: wires, cords, stray flash drives. Somewhere in the backpack were a toothbrush, a bottle of arnica gel, and a thin squib of a soap-bar. His clothes, which included two shirts, a spare pair of jeans and one extra pair of socks, were strewn in a pile, looked aged and stiff. Chris appeared to be aiming for a staleness wherein some items would soon be able to stand by themselves, encrusted with dirt, dust, the curled up lint that hovers above tufts of carpet.
It all came back to him now, the minutes he and Weed had spent here the night of the accident. Chris and Jill had one argument that night amid the flurry of plans and excitement. To her he’d seemed manic—spun, in all likelihood, despite his subsequent denials. Weed stood in the background, grinning, watching them bicker, and staring at Jill especially. Greasy strands of hair stuck out from beneath his baseball cap. They actually looked like weeds, thought Jill, catching sight of him. Chris had a poster of James Dean which he’d plucked from a tube that he wanted to place next to the bed. Jill vetoed the plan, said it didn’t go with anything. Chris stared in protest at the sparsely decorated walls of her apartment, and appealed vainly for “logic” on the matter. Jill was having none of it, either the poster, or the premise. Logic? She’d swat that notion away easily enough. But the real issue, the underlying divide, was something else. She didn’t want him to feel at home.

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April 7, 2013 · 5:39 am

Killing Time

So here’s a little intellectual stuff: in his theoretical model, Dr. James Masterson alerted patients and colleagues to a three part cycle known as the self in disorder triad: attempts at self-activation, which include any and all attempts at real self expression, the pursuit of goals, lead to anxiety, an indicator of an underlying abandonment depression, which is in turn soothed by a defensive life strategy; a series of habitual behaviors, thinking patterns, which help avoid distress. Much of this is ego-syntonic–meaning, supported by the patient, who thinks of these behaviors as normal and natural, as well as the individual’s support network. This is especially true of trauma victims, whose self-defeating and sometimes self-destructive behaviors and thinking patterns are supported both internally and externally, leading to unhealthy collusions, stagnations that serve no one’s growth, but instead everyone’s survival. Time. Time stands still for the chronically traumatized. Past and present become conflated; the past is in the now. In Crystal From the Hills (purchase link), these alliances between selves and others have given space, but killed time. I wasted no time writing CFTH. I spent three years crafting its intricate mystery, its ambitiously deep subtext. There were good times along the way, room for a few laughs in between thought-provoking passages. The characters aren’t as quirky or funny as some–can’t rival HBO just yet for dark and hip inspiration. But hey, mine is a good book…really. Observe the following passage:

*These ruminations were killing time. Chris checked his enemy, the digital clock, registering the passing of four o’clock—his time, everyone’s time, he thought democratically—in his peripheral view. Soon Jill will be back and he’d feel a vague urge to justify himself, report upon the achievements of the day. They were few. There was something, actually; something he’d been talking about, albeit obscurely, for weeks: that revolution, as he’d cheekily put it earlier. Actually, he’d been thinking about it for years, but only recently had he admitted others to the conversation he’d been having with himself. He’d even said, “I’ve got business to do” to someone, perhaps Sweet. He’d told Jill about it, somewhat, though as he recalled, the conversation hardly generated edge of seat anticipation on her part. If it went further, she’d start interrogating as to whether this idea—which was really a joke that had grown into something else—had any legs. When she gets back she’ll ask what he’s been doing. She might seize upon the topic while she’s going through the room checks. He was procrastinating, now, thinking he had more time. In the morning, first thing, the day ahead seems long and promising; it stretches out with everlasting opportunity. Thing is time passes; opportunity passes, and procrastination kills time. It just plain kills it.

See…

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April 7, 2013 · 5:30 am

Towering Inferno Decisions

Beta elements. That’s a term coined (at least in the context of psychoanalysis) by Wilfred Bion, to indicate fragments of life–behaviors, thoughts, ephemera–that represent split-off, dissociated elements of reality. Unconsciousness. In Crystal From The Hills (purchase link), friends Chris Leavitt (Crystal) and his friend Sweet speak of “towering inferno decisions”, bantering in offhand ways to signify watershed and ironic trivial events. For me, Towering Infernos are an alpha element: a vivid memory of a mid-seventies glam-disaster movie that proved far more prescient than it ever intended. Chris and Sweet, on the other hand, are witnessing backwards with unwitting senses, not forward. Read:

Chris’ parents, not long before Eric’s death, actually had one more shot at reconciliation—a brief one in late 2001, under tragic, yet bizarre circumstances. Nancy’s then husband and former lover was a financier in Manhattan, and died, it was later presumed, in the 9/11 attacks. It took several days for this conclusion to hit home. Initially, Nancy held out hope like countless others, thinking or rather assuming at first, and then later praying, that her husband’s failure to respond to calls following the breaking news would be easily explained. The phone service told a cold, disinterested story: “That caller cannot be reached at this time.” It persisted with that message, like an aphorism of cosmic loneliness. Eventually, that message gave way to the more earnestly sepulchral, “That number is no longer in service.” She spoke to Chris on that terrible day, as well as many others. Their call was cut off—twice—as others, friends mostly, desperately tried to get through. Chris was understanding, but struggled nonetheless with the implication of relegated status. Frantically, Nancy would put him on hold, and promise a return call in minutes. An hour passed, followed by another interruption—this time his mother apologized, sensing for the first time that she was indulging herself at the expense of her son. Then two days passed without hearing anything new. Nancy had made arrangements with friends to take a pilgrimage to what was already being dubbed “ground zero”, to walk around with a photo in hand, and to pin copies along with flyers upon temporarily erected bulletin boards.

On the fourth day, Chris heard from his father, who’d been in regular contact with Nancy during this spell, reporting that “It didn’t look good.” Eric delivered the news like he was himself mired in the clean-up or rescue effort: there was a grim, terse summery, void of pain; focused on the task at hand. That task, Chris speculated, was a fresh opportunity. Over the next several weeks, Eric was Nancy’s confidante, a supplicating listener, resurrecting a role he’d once played in their early twenties. Chris had stayed over at his Dad’s place a couple of nights during this period. He observed the ambiguous hand-wringing, the sorry attempts at providing succor: “I know,” he’d say repeatedly to Nancy, punctuated with contrived apologies, in calculated increments so as not to overwhelm with reality. Chris eavesdropped on one call, held his breath as he listened closely for the words, the moment wherein his father might spring his trap. Why don’t you come home? He was waiting to hear that climactic entreaty.

Aunt Jenny, observing nearby, though not in person—unlike Chris—plainly disapproved. She condemned her brother for what she thought was his shameless exploitation of grief. “I’m trying to help,” Eric defended weakly. His shallowness gave him away, though he argued that his motives were redemptive in nature. Delusion. Explaining himself, Eric told Jenny that he’d foreseen the attack upon the Twin Towers, through visions that posited dark-skinned men next to billows of fire thrusting upwards. He’d not said anything, of course, because he knew he’d be dismissed as a crank, and a racist crank at that. But that didn’t help him feel any less guilty, especially as one of the visions had positioned Nancy’s lover and former husband next to one of the fires. Jenny was disbelieving, of course, which simply reinforced Eric’s persecutory beliefs. She thought that the best one could say of him during this episode was that he was patient and methodical. Chris’ own attempts to assuage his mother, she observed, though lacking the ulterior motives of his father, were equally awkward. A new plateau of listening is how he later described the exchanges to her: an acid test for the silent and helpless.

Nancy wasn’t one for anger. She had always been a smiling, positive person; sanguine, Jenny had once said disparagingly. She later regretted the slight, but it was too late. Chris agreed. However, while the nation was baying for blood, performing an unprecedented appraisal of its security measures, or denouncing liberal dissent, Nancy fell down, flattened by the strangers’ blow. She kept her positive outlook, but only thinly, and not with respect to humankind. The cruel attack of the apparently foreign enemy retained its strange anonymity over time. Despite the media overwhelm, the subsequent arrests, trials, and general politicization of 9/11’s fallout, Nancy stuck to her essentially apolitical roots. It wasn’t so much that issues of national defense, wars on terror, or civil disobedience didn’t matter; it was rather that they never did. Somehow, not being involved, or not being interested, was a defiant, albeit unwitting victory: you won’t change how I am, she seemed to exude. Externally, she appeared to deflate, with lines down the side of her face marking a steep decline. Fatigue emerged as a central condition, weighing her down, tying her to her bed for days at a time, forcing her beauty inside. Loving the imperfect had been a virtue, she’d once thought. Now the price seemed too much. On better days, she liked to step outside onto her New Jersey home, onto a balcony wherein she could bird-watch. Admiring that which could fly peacefully became a favorite pastime.

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