12 Years Old

Me: Jackson, you've totally got this.
Jackson: I don't know, I can't. It's too deep.
Me: Look, I'll do it with you. *rips off shorts and stands at the edge of the dock*
Jackson: I've done this before three times! Why can't I do it now? You go first.
Me: *jumps in, treads water* Ok, your turn.
Jackson: Nnn...
Me: You've been in the water before, you know you can do this.
Jackson: I know.
Me: Ok, on the count of three, you're gonna scream "This is Sparta" and then jump in and swim the test with me, ok?
Jackson: Ok.
Me: One, two, three!
Jackson: THIS... IS... SPARTAAAAAAA! *runs and jumps*

The Beauty of the Ghost in her Machine

Someone who knew what they were talking about when they said it once told me this: "Life is too unique to be communicated." I have come to know what this means and only wish I could share these feelings and quirks of thought freely as all information should be free. Struggling with inadequate words is as close as I can come right now. I'm hoping in the future to be able to add music to this, very much so in fact, and delight in every second I get to press the small pads of my fingertips into the strings of my violin.

"May those who accept their fate be granted happiness. May those who defy their fate be granted glory."

These words are beautiful to me: my happiness is separate from my glory, and I am most definitely in the latter part of this segregation. I'm not quite sure glory is the proper term; it's that feeling of knowing you've begun to succeed and are continuing to accomplish what you've set out to do, that sense of knowing you're doing well and bringing your true A-game to the table. I don't think happiness as it's generally defined by society has anything to do with that feeling of mine, that glory or pride or whatever you want to call it. I have associated conventional happiness with a blithe, flippant way of living that I have come to understand intimately and have rejected for myself. I have no problem with other people living their lives this way, but it is most certainly not the way I'll be living mine.

For me, true happiness is that pure feeling of being filled up and whole from accomplishing what everyone thought might not be possible, and the conventions of plebian happiness has nothing to do with it. When I first heard that quote, it summarized in so few words how I see the forks in the path at every moment, in every day, and what each gives to those who follow. The path of the "good enough" way of living is the first part; it's everything I don't want this life to be. To accept where I am, say that this is good enough, fine with me, don't know don't care... It's disgusting. I really can't stand to be around people who have that settling feeling about them, the ones who don't want more than they can easily reach from where they're already standing. There are plenty of people like that here at camp, but at least they're not entirely complacent; a lot of them came here looking for something they're not going to find.

The path of the struggle, the fight, the hunt, that's what I want. Every second of every day that I get to fight against all odds, against fate itself to push harder, get stronger, faster, smarter, this is MY happiness. This is my glory, defying my fate. I take so much joy from having to put every fraction of energy and skill left in me to get toward what I want that I cannot be happy with that pedestrian happiness. It's not enough for me to be happy like that because it is not my passion. My passion is fighting circumstance and restriction. To push outside of every known limit is what I want more than anything. (On that note, I can't wait for the Olympics to start. :x)

Setting attainable, concrete goals for my large pursuits are useless to me and I have reiterated this time and again during training here at camp; having goals in that fashion would mean I'd have an end point I actually intended on reaching. It's better to shoot for the far reaches of the universe into the unknown. I fight for stars so far away that I don't readily know I can accomplish the Herculean task I've set in front of me, but living that way provides me with so much motivation and energy I don't know how to possibly use it all up each day. It's that fire inside that kept me going through grade school and it is that very same fire that has comforted me and supported me through everything. I hold my own hand, I pull myself up.

After thinking about it for some time, I am not here to be around these people, I am here to be in this place. I am not under the delusion that there are the same type of people at camp as I am. Everyone I've talked to so far has shown an admiration for my fury, but no understanding of it. (I can't count how many times I've been asked where I get my motivation from. What kind of question is that? It's self-evident.) Camp is full of fucked up challenges, irrationality, mind-numbingly irritating personalities, closed-minded management and one-trick ponies. If I can blaze a path through it all using everything I've got, I will come out on the other end having won my battles and able to declare victory over anything that tries to stand in my way from here on out. I am again learning how to fine-tune a masterful balancing act, but this time it's not vindictive and it's not mean-spirited; it is the simple, infinitely complex art of maneuvering (not unlike Go). Nothing is going to stop me, no one is going to keep me.

I feel like I've suddenly become able to see different colors again, the ones that had been there the whole time, but ones that normal people can't see. The world is vivid and bright to me, rich seams of hues seen by a select few. I take delight in being able to experience it, and pause to take it all in from time to time as a reminder.

Flames

If I were to point at a universality among all human beings, something that is consistent between them all without exception, it is knowing the truth. Were one to dig at another human, it reveals itself clear as a full moon in the bare night sky. This is one topic I have always struggled to find words to describe; when I say truth, I mean to say that within each person is the knowledge of how things really are. Not admitting to these truths is both commonplace and completely ridiculous. I find it utterly wasteful to hold any reservations when discussing something, considering a mode of action, trying to think of a solution, or any similar type of situation. Enough with it; everyone needs to be honest with themselves before they can be honest with other people. What you hold back is what's holding you back.

There was a particular situation earlier where someone confided something in me without giving me the whole story and then asked me what I thought about it. I dug into them for that truth hiding inside them, and got it out of them after a few minutes, but this was in my mind a completely unnecessary waste. Why didn't she just tell me how things really were in the first place? There was a hesitation, a denial of self-exposure she did everything to avoid. it was only after she admitted to herself what the real issue was that she was able to tell it to me as I dug into her. I explained the benefits of honesty with self, and she came away from it with that seed planted in her head (I hope).

I am close to in my element right now. Tightropes and razor-fine wires make up my natural habitat, and I take great joy in every fine twitch of my muscles and every lighting spark of thought, balancing thousands of things all at once with precision and grace. I am a pillar of strength, able to carry ten times my weight or more and have already been called upon to do so numerous times, both professionally and personally. (In the back of my mind, someone is annoyed that so many people I associate with are so ineffective, but the others reason that the difficulty of finding other people as ablaze as I am is too much to ask; how often is it you see a supernova?)

I've spoken of crafting myself, but only in the last week have I seen the fruits of doing so. There is a beauty and a majesty in creating a delicately tuned balance and flexibility that fascinates me; my building of physical prowess has become so much a part of me I feel listless if I can't stretch my arms, fingers, legs and strain toward something. My fingers claw at everything, wanting to hold a bow. My feet fidget on the ground, wanting to run.

Influence

I peeled the wrapper off the back of the thin mint-colored disc and laid it adhesive-side down in the crook of my elbow. Immediately, the potent amphetamine derivatives began to work their magic. The tingles were just beginning to start in my arm when Benedict came in.

"Saw you'd logged off and thought I'd come by since you weren't answering your cell. What are you--... What flavor is that?"

"Wintergreen," I said, and the edges of my lips quirked upward briefly into something approaching a smile.

"For fuck's sake--"

"Shh. You'll ruin it."

He sighed, but waited patiently. I closed my eyes and let my head fall to one side as pinwheels of warmth spun me around, shimmering starbursts and crackling sensations along my spine making me vibrate. Crystals grew like fractals along an open plane of sharp angles and what little I'd been mentally holding onto slithered away from me. I let the breath out of my lungs in one long hiss.

"Ok. How many times did you try calling me?" I asked, but my hand had already picked up the cell from the floor next to me. "Eight missed calls," I read. I cleared the notification. Swirling globes of color-changing light danced around each other on the screen. A little white clock displayed 10:17 in one corner.

"How many of these have you had?"

"This is my first one." I glanced down at the slips of adhesive backing on the control panel and a mangled bright red disc stuck to one of the keys. Benedict didn't look convinced.

"Your ribs are showing."

"Uh, I'm wearing a shirt," I said, confused, and picked up the bits of paper, depositing them into an empty aluminum can.

"I know."

I still didn't get it. "Having some network trouble, should be back up in a few. Did you need something?"

"When was the last time you ate?" Benedict squinted at me; the only light in the room came from the halo of monitors around me, surrounded by rows and pyramids of cans.

I picked one up and shook it. "Liquid energy, my friend. Does everything I need it to." Emptying the last few sips, I cast it into the pile on my control panel with the rest of them.

"Get up."

"Huh?"

"Get up, we're getting something to eat."

"But the connection's gonna be up any--"

"And until then, we're gonna get some food. C'mon." I stared at him from across the room. Tendrils of undulating neon glow were wriggling toward the deep black hole of the rest of my apartment. "That wasn't a question." I sighed, stood up, caught myself with one hand before the vertigo could knock me back down.

"And grab a jacket. It's cold."

Bzzz

Speed of sound, speed of light, speed of thought...

As we approach Future Perfect, that abstraction of advancing technology I used to be so comfortably entrenched in, the neurostim drugs becoming available are threatening our beloved friend Caffeine from its exalted status as the Giver of Speed, Slayer of Exhaustion, and Muse of Invention. I welcome the transition, as usual — change consumes all — but some piece of me wonders if we’ll lose those charming side-effects in the process. You know the ones: teeth clenching, shivers, cold sensations, hypersensitivity.

For a time, it just won’t be the same, with no way of putting our finger on it. And then our new generation of neurostims will impart their unique gifts, maybe muscle tension or benign twitching, and then all will be forgotten.

As Acceleration Approaches Zero...

I went to a reading/Q&A/signing with William Gibson; he was very insightful about his writing process and the editing he goes through. It sounds a lot like my own: compulsively and constantly editing our writing as we go, shifting the entire structure even when it seems as if we’ve reached a stage of completion. They are never finished, of course, only “taken from me,” he says, but at that point there’s not much of a need to correct in the same fashion because we’ve given everything we could to reach a satisfactory point in time. Afterward, with some novels, he gives advanced reading copies and asks readers to spot factual errors; he mentioned gun nuts having a many-page debate thread over whether a specific type of rifle could in fact be the caliber Gibson had noted in his most recent book, Spook Country (which he rightly moved away from after no conclusion was readily agreed upon).

Someone else later asked him in more words how he comes up with these novels, specifically where he starts from at the very beginning. What he said was eerily similar to what happens to me: it begins with an atmosphere, an environment with a certain feel to it; in Spook Country’s case, it was a black and white location of a few blocks of the city it takes place in. Only then do characters begin to come out, born from that place and time, and bring with them the beginning or near-beginning of the story. After that, when the beginning and some of the middle have congealed, the end is directed, even dictated by what came before it. This also means he never sees how things are going to end until they’re about to end anyway, and while I’ve never been capable of properly ending a novel-length piece of writing, I see this in my short work a great deal.

He mentioned his amusement with steampunk having become the subgenre it is now; he thinks of steampunk as “a Pantone chip” in a book of swatches. Another small point I just now remembered: Cyberpunk, science fiction and indeed any “future” proposed in a piece of fiction is best written, Gibson said, from the exact time in which it’s being written; that is, 1984 was written from the point of view of 1948 with sensations and motivations derived from the time, and one couldn’t hope for more, otherwise the story is not set in a future that could truthfully exist and someday look like life does now.

I asked him while he was signing my copy of Neuromancer if he still blogs, as I had read his before it went on hiatus a few years ago; indeed he does, you can find it here. There are also some short but good interviews with him floating around, specifically one from Wired that addresses topics more involved readers of his would find interesting.

Rocket in the Sky

This was written mostly on the plane to and from Arizona, and finished the night I got back.

When the churning begins, the ship shakes, oscillating from side to side. You are about to take off, but I’m not sure when; I’m too far away to hear the countdown, much too far away to hear your lips listing the numerous mechanical tests as you perform them, double-checking all the equipment that’s about to carry you away. I am sitting on the roof of the car like we used to years ago. It’s dark, but if I squint, I can make out the small dent on the edge of the passenger side where you would normally be sitting with that look of awe and pride on your face. You would be there and I would be here, watching the space cowboys that came before you throwing themselves at the mercy of the void above.

“This is it,” you said to me while you were packing your suitcase, “I’m almost there,” grinning wide.

“Almost there,” I said as I drove you up to the security gate of the aeronautics building. Your excitement couldn’t be contained.

“I knew I could make it. I knew it.”

So did I.

The blue flares of the main engines light your ship up from the underside, casting dramatic shadows across the launch pad. I recall that day the trip you wanted more than anything came within arm’s reach, a day that is now buried some months back but still clear in my mind: an upcoming mission needed an astrobiologist and you were at the top of their list. Details were scarce except for the destination; all crew members assigned to the mission would be going to Mars. Your wildest dream come true, you broke the news to me and we celebrated. Family get-togethers and congratulatory parties. “What a wonderful opportunity,” everyone said to me. “He’s come such a long way.”

The light coming from the enormous engines is a brilliant white in the surrounding dusky night as you rise upward. Smoke and steam billow out across the tarmac. I watch your ship separate from the ground, imagining what it must be like for you inside.

Training exhausted you, but you couldn’t have been happier. Late at night, trying to keep me from waking up, you would slip into bed, put your head in the crook of my neck and sigh contentedly. Whenever you had a spare moment to talk, the subject of your mission would always come up. What little you could divulge to me I listened to with rapt attention, sharing in your enjoyment.

The crew members all around you, anxious and excited and afraid all at once. Wide switchboards laid out in front of you, the harness holding you in place. Gravity tries to pull you back down, but your determination overwhelms it.

You came home one evening and sat me down in the kitchen. “I have something to tell you,” you said. “You need to hear this,” you said. “This mission that my crew and I are training for, they told us today there’s no planned return trip.” I didn’t understand at first, but the grip of your hand was enough of an explanation. I held your hand in mine; you understood.

Cutting a path high up through the atmosphere, white and at an angle, your ship prominently bright against a nightsky backdrop. Everyone for miles around must be able to see you now. For some reason, I can feel you smiling, and this makes me smile in turn.

An Irritation (Written May 14 2008)

I’m finding it a little odd that the small conversations I hold with people I don’t talk with often are unearthing the cores of some things I’ve been debating with myself.

(And then you say, “Like what?”)

That’s a less important question, as opposed to the one that needs to be addressed: “How so?” It had been through the vocalization process that my mind lead itself toward the answer. Not that I can’t do that in my own right eventually, on my own time, but the nearly insignificant interaction with another person allowed my mouth to say the words my mind has been struggling to produce.

It had been bothering me as to why I didn’t feel compelled to draw during class, or even when working on pieces of art for homework. Some small comments to Sarah — a little wave on the seismograph of my day — and all of a sudden I have the answer: I don’t want to draw real life as it is. A relief washes over me gently. Finally! I’ve figured it out, it’s been pinpointed. And, as a bonus, it makes sense; I don’t like writing real life as it is either. (Someone laughed to themselves at this, and I know who it was and why; trust me, I may have done it a number of times recently, but I certainly don’t enjoy it.)

However, I can’t say I’m no longer irritated. After that happened, the irritation was assimilated into my growing brain tumor of “I could do most of the things I’ve been studying in school faster and more efficiently — and probably even get more accomplished — by myself.” And as it grows, I’m obliged to put the thought under scrutiny, sample its truthiness and come to a conclusion. Right now, I’m leaning toward this growth being something of real weight, an idea that may indeed be true and if acted upon, beneficial in the long run.

Someone’s bound to say something like, “What, are you going to leave school?” No. Of course not. We’ll get to that later. I’m more concerned with rebuking the thought of, “But it’d be entirely upon you to get anything worthwhile done if you pursue something on your own, do you really have the motivation to do that?”

The answer is a succinct yes. In more words: one of the greatest struggles of being human is overcoming internal inertia. I intend on pushing myself as hard as is necessary in order to do so. On any arduous journey, there are many road blocks and setbacks that must be faced head-on and overcome if anything great is to be achieved. What’s more, it takes the same kind of motivation (not necessarily the same amount) to go to a university, put up with the incompatibilities, tune out the idiocy, and suck the marrow from your choice of fields. There’s nothing making sure that anyone’s actually accomplishing anything here; in fact, since so few have even attempted to define what accomplishment would mean to them, the majority are going through the dance-like motions of their day-to-day without listening to the music in their heads. Sure, I say to these people, make it look like you’re doing something worthwhile. I can see right through you, and it’s no matter for me either way so long as nothing you do affects me significantly. (Sidestepping swipes at my resolve is becoming an art unto itself.) If that’s what they’re happy doing, then by all means. And if they’re not happy, then why are they doing it, hmm?

I have re-realized that one thing which I so furiously upheld as a teenager: Who you are comes out in what you say, what you choose to do, and how you respond to given events and circumstances, therefore if you are not happy with how you are going about doing these things, then you change how you do them. You should present who you really are to everyone. If you cared about being this true self at all, you would show it through your actions and words. Those who don’t care, are content faking it, are too weak to say what they’re thinking and then defend it, it’s obvious what you’re doing and who you really are. This idea of being true to oneself is necessary in order to get to a place where you can accomplish what you really want. I will continue my support of this concept by holding it up to myself and everyone I know, and will not hesitate to step in when necessary.

As for the here and the now, why do I persist here? Why do I stay in college, knowing all of this? Lots of reasons, the sum of which has so far been enough for me to stay. A few of the more pertinent ones would be that as a writer, it is important for to have access to a wide pool of knowledge and potential interactions. Available to me are a dozen libraries, a gym, thousands of classes on any number of topics taught by researchers of every field; it’s enabling just being here every day. It’s also maintaining my razor sharp abilities to read other people and question their thinking (perhaps that someone laughs to themselves again) and to have mine questioned in turn. My choice to stay here has little to do with how many credits I have or whether I look marketable as a potential job candidate for X company. If I continue with my plan — that is, to craft myself — then anyone looking to hire someone that does what I do will plainly see that I am worth their time. The piece of paper I will get at the end of all of this will, among other things, grant me easier and longer access to international travel. All in all, if I plan my days just so, I should have ample time to pursue the things I want to outside of class, and in two or three years, I’m free to throw my whole self at this ambition of mine and unleash my wrath upon the “good enough” and the “I don’t care”.

Then there is the drawing, the writing, the web design, the violin, the physical ability, and all of the other things that I want to accomplish something in outside of my time spent in class. If I really want to achieve accomplishments in each of those pursuits, I will make the time and put forth the effort to get myself there. This will require me to completely dismantle my current beliefs on how my life should be structured when I take into account the chaos of my imagination. I have been treating it like it’s running the show for a very long time, but I aim to have an agreeable compromise between when it’s time to tap into the rich seam of my molten creativity and when it’s time to take care of my responsibilities. This will help streamline me to the point where I’ll have time for all of those activities, and in being able to actively build on all of them, will significantly lower my stress levels and allow me to enjoy myself instead of placing the heaviness of “why didn’t I?” on my already weighted mind.

Knowing that I know all of this thrills me, and doubly so when I began to work on all of these things, straining myself and feeling myself get stronger. It’s less than a month to camp now, my self-imposed endurance test. I’m excited to see how hard I can push myself, knowing that if I do have a limit, this would come closer to it than most other things I’ve overcome.

One of Those Moments (Written April 22 2008)

Going to try to do my best to post what’s been on my mind lately. It’s a little jumbly, but those with a keen eye should be able to sort it out.

There are a handful of shared sensations between those who are writers. (I say those who are writers to mean those who cannot help but write, hopelessly bound to the art of language.) Truman Capote managed to outline two of them in what little I have read of his thus far. One of the two he mentions is that feeling that one either is a writer or isn’t. I had always known of this as a child, but never really understood what it meant to accept your position on either side, or what it would be like to pursue such a passion. It’s easy to say you are something, to perhaps even feel that sensation of being it, but for that thing to be thoroughly challenged as it had been for me? In the last year or two I have spent countless hours on other pursuits in an attempt to forcibly expand my horizons and stuff myself with information. When I returned home last summer, in the ensuing internal pandemonium I hastily decided it was necessary I put all my effort toward catching up with where I thought I should be. So much wasted time, I was thinking to myself then. So much to gain and so little time in which to do so!

This was a very unwriterly way, a very un-me way to think about the consequences of the choices I had made. I should have known, based upon that, that it wouldn’t suit me to go down the path I chose, but should-have-knowns are useless here. My application to school accepted, I moved into academia and away from most every friend, acquaintance, or everyday situation I had come to know since beginning work at Nintendo. At first, head-strong and stubborn as I tend to be, I marched into the thick of school without giving myself time to think or breathe. Distinctly I remember having the epiphany in August that my knee-jerk reaction to keep myself infinitely busy was preventing me from being Adrienne. I had become a machine that past year, and earlier this year I again became a machine. My pursuit was of lost time, and there is not a man on earth who can conquer it.

I voluntarily pushed myself through my first quarter back in school, staving off depression with little else but the hope that things would finally fall into some kind of comfortable arrangement and the edge of uneasiness digging into my chest would fade. Spring break came and I did next to none of the things I proclaimed I wanted to do, instead too tired and withdrawn to leave my computer most days. I signed myself up for classes that both scared and energized me when I thought of actually going through with them.

At this point, I have done chemistry, math, painting, drawing, music, and social science. And what have I learned from my intentionally broad-stroked choices these past months?

That I am a writer.

Let me explain it to you.

The engine I was basing all of these decisions on in the vehicle of school and private instruction was the need to learn, plainly and simply. I was pursuing topics I knew nothing about and had never participated in, or topics I had previously set aside for a later point in my life, or even topics I knew I would dislike. The point of doing all of it I told myself explicitly: to have new experiences, learn new things, train my brain to make new neural connections and, of course, to gain that lost time I was always looking back at.

Never did I once consider for these past months that this drive could be directed in any other way. I did not stop to ask from what source it was stemming. Those of you who are writers, or perhaps know me well, can say where it would come from. It is one of those unique writer’s sensations, that strange combination of wanting to experience and learn everything, and understanding that those experiences are necessary if one wishes to become better at writing. I was misdirecting that sensation, pointing it at all sorts of other things, looking for something that would never be found.

Starting maybe a week ago, I had a creeping realization of this. It was only finalized when I read Truman Capote talking of the exact same sensation and its necessity to good writing. I am a writer first. I can be a violinist second, a painter, a comic artist and so on, but I will always be a writer first.

When you are something, and you know it through and through, that is where it all begins. What you do with it is what separates the good from the great. As for me, I will be writing to my heart’s content. My goal is to be a clear writer, a great writer, one who approaches the pinnacle of what writing can become if one puts everything one has into it. Of course, I have more personalized goals, especially for specific pieces I someday wish to create, but if I put all of myself toward it, those will come with me and manifest themselves in the journey ahead.

An Endless Waltz

There is something about 3/4 time that crawls inside my skin and sets my nerves tingling. I can't help but listen to songs in 3/4 time over and over to recreate that same feeling; Danse Macabre is no exception, it being my favorite instrumental piece to date, and I find myself listening to it as I write these first words. The edge of the violin's E-flat, that principle violin instantly arresting attention from anyone within earshot, proudly declaring its existence, sparing nothing to have itself heard... And the call and response of the horns and the strings... I get positively high. Saint Saens and Bach and I'm set for life it would seem, but there is so much more left in the classical world, and in the realm of music in general. We'll see what tomorrow brings me.

I'm carrying over what posts from the temporary location I still think are worth laying eyes on, and from there we depart all previously known comforts and sanities.

May nothing hold this place back.