The Real New Year

Knowing myself, I've only got a short while, so lets be quick here.  Lets make a promise, you and I, that this week will not be last week.  Look, the sun is shining!  The world is bright!  And we are alive!  While we're on top of the world, lets put some real work into staying on top, eh?  C'mon, waddayasay?  And for starters, lets do what everyone has been telling us to do.  No, I don't mean getting pushed around at work, I mean the hippy 'see it, feel it, do it, achieve it!' bullshit they've all been forcing down our throats.  For once, lets not give in to cynicism.  Lets actually act like we believe that shit!  You are an artist!  You are a creative being!  Lets be that first, and a technical button masher second.  You've got stories to finish and collections of poems to complete!  Lets make some progress!  Ooh!  Even better, lets make some submissions!  Nothing like the approval of others coupled with wider exposure!  Yeah, we'll be on top for a loooong while this time!

That's my pep talk to myself.  From myself.  You, dear reader, should try having one too.  I promised you more Eulogy and I swear its on its way.  A couple other projects I wanna try and do too.  Other than that, just saying hi.  I'm still out here.  Still pluggin' away.

What's happening with Polymath

 I've been thinking a lot about stories lately.  And just to clarify, I'm not talking about fairy tales or love stories.  I'm talking about the things that happen, that go unshared, but ought not to be.  This, right here?  This thing you're reading?  This is a story.  And yes, it may not sell books or make millions of dollars in movie sales, but like all stories it deserves to be shared.  It deserves an audience.  And I REALLY want to give it that.  This story, and stories like it.  And many other stories out there.

There's a combination of things that's been inspiring this, I think.  A big part of it is the things that I've been feeding my brain with lately.  Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale is a book about books.  About stories and writing, and only partly about the people that write them.  I've been delving into the blogs and available writing of Caribbean writers.  People with stories and cultures so rich that it makes me jealous.  And I've been been listening to a lot of Selected Shorts, The New Yorker, The Moth, and This American Life on my iPod.   All the while I think 'Why don't we have this?  Why aren't we telling our stories?  When I downloaded an old podcast from Caribbean Free Radio and heard the contributors sitting around a table with a bottle of gin and simply...talking; simply telling the story of that year's Calabash Festival, I was sure that we needed something like that. 

On top of that, I still (STILL!) get asked about Poetry Night.  About Polymath and about the plans and intentions that we had.  And as much as it was stressful and difficult it was always so immeasurably rewarding.  Even the disappointments, to me, were great things.  And recently we've been having whispers and plotting sessions.  Measuring the best places for an antenna.  Judging costs of converting a certain upstairs.  The phrases 'Radio Station' and 'Our Own' have been meeting in dangerous proximity.  We even talk about it as if it already exists, and only half in joke.  "That's a good idea." We say.  "We'll put that on the programming schedule for Pirate Radio."  Pirate Radio.  A play on Belize's buccaneering days.  That's what I'd call it, at least.  I don't think Manza's quite sold on it.  Furthermore, I don't think he really knows how excited I am about the prospect.  Because i haven't rushed out to buy an antenna or arranged to procure recording equipment, he probably thinks I've brushed it under the rug or that I wasn't really taking him seriously in the first place.  That's not the case. 

I am taking him seriously.  I do listen when he starts talking about these wild ideas.  I believe in the brother, ever since he made the first one happen.  But after the first one, I stopped worrying about the physical aspect.  I stopped worrying about how we're gonna make a stage appear out of thin air.  How we're gonna get wiring and speakers.  How we're gonna get house lights and get a bunch of people crammed into a room to listen to one tiny, shy voice at a time.  Now when he says 'we're going to put on a show.' I believe him.  When he says 'Its gonna be outside' I say 'There's gonna be lights in the trees and paper lanterns and people sipping wine on ' and I don't feel stupid for thinking so big.  Likewise, when he asked that first time 'You think we can find poets?  You think people will be into it?' and I told him 'People will be into it.  They'll fucking weep!', he believed me.  And it all happened.

Its just that right now, I'm more concerned with content.  I don't want to tackle this tiger head on.  I'd rather sneak up on it.  Death from above.  By the time Brah Tiga know's what's happening, I want to already have my teeth in him.  So, with that in mind, my after-work project for the next couple days is to take one of the Hard Drives I have at home and converting my home PC into a part time recording and editing PC.  I don't have the best mic, but I have a mic.  I don't have a studio but I have a room that's quiet if I let it be.  I don't have the top of the line software, but I've got Ubuntu, and open source resources.  I don't have the stories.  Not yet.  But I've got the drive.  And I've got the imagination.

This is gonna happen.  Just watch.

There's more to this, but I'm not ready to talk about it yet.

Horus is outside.  I call him Horus.  He's really just this crazy guy that walks around in an unbuttoned dress shirt with a bad head and bushy beard. But i call him Horus because he's got this perpetual sunburn And he talks to himself like a man who's been in the desert too long.  Or spends his days staring, naked-eyed, into the sun.

He's downstairs, squinting at my window (Dear god, can he see me?)  twirling his fingers around one another the way the universe circles the earth.  He's muttering his treatise.

This is why I need a camera.

A Sudden Spark

I do this thing online.  Its a game really, but its much more than just marbles or jacks.  It’s a world built loosely around a system of rules and structure.  I create realities, worlds, people and scenarios, and keep this imaginary, mostly fictional world spinning with nothing but the combined creativity and imagination of the players involved.  With that kind of strain; purposely exhibiting multiple personalities, emotions, even personal ideosyncrasies; its no wonder that we occasionally get burnt out.

Burnt out.  As in ’no fuel for the fire’.  That’s how I’ve felt lately.  Like I said, it’s pretty common when you Roleplay, and the solution is pretty much accepted and understood.  A player cries ’Burnout’ and everyone essentially says ’Go home.’  Go take a nap, or a week of naps.  Play with your dog, write a letter, go to the beach, watch TV, do something but get away from the computer and just recharge.  Simple as it was, it worked, at least for me.  You fell off the face of the internet and and came back a month or so later feeling good as new.  It works, every time.

But not this time.

I feel like its because my rest isn’t as restful as it used to be.  And no, I’m not talking about insomnia.  My sleep is so precious these days that I wouldn’t dare miss a moment if I didn’t have to, chemical imbalance or not.  No, I mean my downtime.  My time away from imagining.  It used to be filled with fun things, or at the very least, gentle, relaxing things.  I’d be too busy with work or pretending to be someoee else, so i’d write to remember who the real person was.  I’d absorb the good vibes my friends put out so I’d spend endless time with them doing nothing in particular.  And I’d read.  I’d read because i loved words, and loved the pictures they put in my head. I’d read the worlds these other writers had conjured up and i’d be struck with admiration.  I’d do these things until I fell asleep, and when I woke up I’d do them again.  And I’d feel whole after a while.

Now all I do feels like work.  If I write it’s because I haven’t written in a while, and I know i’ll be expected to say something at a show, so i’d sit and force something out of my head, squeezing and clenching my creative muscles.  If I go look for my friends its because I’ve been so busy doing other stuff that my relationships deteriorate into loose acquaintances.  I didn’t even know that my best friend had a near stroke until he was out of the hospital and chatting to me online.  I haven’t seen my friend’s or my cousin’s babies, and the latter is already four months old.  Organizing a dinner with friends is almost as difficult as organizing these Poetry Night shows, which is suffering as well.  And I only read because I’ve been reading the same book since the start of the year and I’m ashamed to admit it.  People say ’Are you alright?’ like I’m terminally ill or something.  The few close friends I have left come right out with it.  "You look like Shit."  Alexis said to me one night, which was disappointing because I was actually smiling that night.  I was happy.  Jubilant, even.  I haven’t been truly happy in so long.

My colors were faded.  I don’t know if everything went gray.  I was too busy to notice whether there were actually colors or not.

So I called Merri, in whom I confide all things (even the things I probably shouldn’t) and told her I was depressed.  I explained that it wasn’t a ’Toe in the shotgun trigger" depression, so much as it was a "What’s the fucking point" depression.  I told her I’d deal with it, and life went on.

and on...

and on...

and on...

At least that’s what it felt like.  At one point I’d confused motivation with worry, and realized that the headaches I had at the end of the day were from me furrowing all day.  Everything else was an obligation, and some obligations weren’t worth bothering with.  I did  I’ve been doing what I swore I wouldn’t do and, rather than bow out of certain responsibilities I simply left them hanging.  But I remain now, as I did then, numb.

There is hope though.  The other day I received a delivery for work.  Two servers that I submitted the specs for myself, and a 3000VA UPS and extended battery pack.  At first there was only the worry of how heavy all of it was, and how I’d find time to set them up.  Then, with the help of an unexpected friend I discovered that they fit almost perfectly into the Server Rack we already have.  As I stood there with this bahemoth of a machine in my hands and regarded all the potention 3 Terrabytes of disk space held, I felt a bit of a flutter.  It was a sudden and fleeting spark of happiness, and excitement, without any sign of anxiety.  It reminded me of when I first started working here, back when I still felt I could learn something, and when I reveled in the freedom being able to stay in the office as long as I wanted.  It was only a second, but it was so glorious.  I felt something for the first time in months, and it was unsullied by anything else.

So maybe there’s a light just up ahead.  Who knows.

---

Also, just a few hours ago there was another bout of pure emotion.  This time Heartache.  Not ideal, perhaps, but it too lasted just about a blink long.  And it too was atypical in its intensity.  Maybe I’m not so numb afterall.