Mountain High, A Writer At Large

And I will pray for her
I will call her name out loud
I would bleed for her
If I could only see her now

The landline on Lily Bay is in a dank garage, at a small desk by a grimy window. As I turn on the dim lamp in the corner I can suddenly see that I am the only source of light this high for miles. The rain comes down in an insistent sheet. Other than that it is dead quiet on the hill. Nothing in the woods that wasn’t huddled in some dry corner, like I was waiting for the phone to ring, the beer to run out or the rain to stop.
The first time I called someone picked up and said
Herro? in a mock-racist Asian accent. Eventually they hung up. After a few more tries I turned off the lamp and sat drinking in the dark with the rain pouring down. That was last night.

I was up by 5:30 this morning and I had 1,200 words down by 10:50. Now I write this post.  There’s nothing doing in town except of the Monster Truck/Kid Rock variety. There’s no television, no internet and only bad poetry to keep me inspired up here.
Most nights I read or get drunk…I found a copy of Raymond Chandler’s Poodle Springs and had a good night boozing with the old boy. He is absolutely one of America’s greatest writers; an outsider of the literary coterie but a giant as far as I’m concerned, and an inspiration for generations of Western Men like Charles Bukowski and me. Yeah, me.

It took me two days up here to lose the nightmares and I might not clear off the shakes for two more caffeine-riddled afternoons on the screenporch writing, white-knuckling it and hacking it out.
The evil in our hearts lurks waiting for the chance to spring upon us, when we are most vulnerable and w/o our usual devices of distraction. No cell phones or internet, no television and no women. Perhaps there is a poet somewhere loudly declaring that true love will never die. But not this one. Evil will live in our hearts forever. It is this dark mass that comes upon us in torrents while solitary and alone on top of a mountain, in a dark garage that smells of motor oil and compost. Somewhere too in our hearts is love, it’s true, but it is shrouded in the dark wings of love lost. This is Karma. All that we have done and had done to us is still with us. We can kill off that part of ourselves, join the walking wounded and march on like so many brave ones do. Or we can hang on to our pain, keep it alive and let it unfurl around us like smoke and bad prayers rising from the mountains of our isolation.

Bucolic grey clouds are moving in over Lily Bay, as persistent as iron, as I write this. The rains will bring with them the breeze. A glorious breeze that will bend the ginkgoes and rage through the screenporch. The thunderheads will take over the mountain and the lake will get flat as glass.  I’ll wait out the rains and ride out my blues.  It’s certainly better than spending a soaked night in a dark garage on top of a deserted mountain, waiting for the phone to ring.

The evil that men do lives on and on.
-Iron Maiden

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The Creative/Destructive Process of the Artist: No Help From Heroes

sthira-sukham-āsanam
The practice of Yoga is the cultivation of the balance between effort and ease.

Greetings. Perhaps you are wondering, where has the author been? I’m proud to report that my absence from this blog had nothing to do with writer’s block. The practice of writing and posting on here has fine-tuned my outrage and given me focus. Even when I’m out of material I’m able to write about that and when all else fails I’ve always got 1-4 blogs in the chamber, ready to be posted. The goal was to develop the skills and habits of a columnist and come up with 800 words every day, neat and fine. I have had vague aspirations to find work as a columnist, to fly it up on their pole and reap the benefits of a syndicated readership. These things have not changed. I am confident that I can deliver on the daily, should I find such gainful employment as a journalist. The practice has paid off. It worked, and it’s been nothing but kinghigh fun and real adventure in the great indoors coming up with these missives to deliver to you all.
As a devoted (and cherished) reader
you’re also aware of my deeper desire to always find ways to serve my Art more efficiently. Ultimately I have been finding for a way to have my Art serve me.
Aho. I am after nothing but the complete realization of the Artist, that one day my work will sustain me. Differing from these catch-as-can hours stolen from the dayshift and the dayjob-on the hustle, I envision a time, perhaps 10 years from now or even tomorrow, when writing is the hustle.
Throughout the 190 posts written over the last 3 years a common thread has emerged and reemerged and it is one of health. Getting better. Getting effective. I envisioned that my health and well-being would ultimately only serve my Art, maybe even add some years to my life, years that I could devote to this grand vision I have been serving for 21 years now.
And what a grand vision it is. The fucking weight of it is, at times, debilitating. Or buggerall, I’m flying so high that even less gets done. Oh well I didn’t intend for this post to be about my insanity. Or maybe I did.

Where I’ve been-the reason Going For The Throat has been relegated to a weekly publishing schedule is because I’ve been taking it easy. Yup. I know, unheard of right? Lazy sod. Wrong motherfucker wrong. Aho. I’ve been taking it easy in the grandest sense. It’s not like I’ve been stuck in bed or chasing tail around town. I’ve been taking a break from the inner critic. The mechanic, the motherfucker behind the wheel who calls the shots and gets shit done around here. He’s such an asshole. I’ve dealt with him a few different ways over the years but mostly I’ve had to face him with one burning. That’s right, smoking. Nicotine motherfucker. But some shit went down in the mansion and my smoke-free method has failed. The approaching heat of summer has forced us to turn on the air, which of course has opened up the vents, which of course just blows smoke throughout the house and into all the high rooms, even into the ones of tenants who don’t smoke and don’t want to smell it in their apartment. It was a condition of my hire here that I could smoke out the window. But every 6 months or so I get a text from Camp, next door:
The cigarette smoke is getting out of hand.
All this is beside the point. Or maybe it is the point. The act of creation is coupled with the act of destruction. I’ve ratcheted my focus with the help of caffeine and nicotine. Then, when it’s all over, I start to drink. My heroes have taught me well. Not only have they left me with a body of work that I can sink my teeth into, they have shown me how to live. My heroes have shown me how to survive, how to get through and squeak through with the smallest bit of light coming in through the impassive slow corners of nights full of fucked, too-small life. I owe it all to them. But they can’t help me get where I’m going.

As for the weight and scope of this grand vision, shit. I’ve been pecking away at it for decades. But this much madness is too much sorrow. And I’m 38 and it’s time to get this show on the road. Simply put, you haven’t heard much from me these last few weeks because I couldn’t smoke while writing and worse, I couldn’t imagine writing without smoking. So I just smoked. Outside. That was me on the porch reading Phillip Levine with a Dunhill in hand. That was me on the roof smoking MCDs with Hater Blockers on.

The thing is, even when I was writing/posting every day and my golden hours of productivity were up and I was drunk in the afternoon or spooned out in the damp night looking for a way to murder the day, the real fuck in the ass is that this method did not serve the vision either. It’s mostly either perpetuated the blues or helped me deal with them. For true.
When you consider that my plans include owning and operating my own printing press, equipping myself with a home studio for podcasts and getting out on the road once or twice a month, lying around like a fuckall Hemingway and whiling away the afternoons won’t cut it. Aho. It just won’t do.

So here we are. Up on the plateau but at an impasse. Finding for a new way to make this dream real, hoping the new ideal and trying to break through, listless and without product-derelict and bored with no help from heroes but-it’s ok. I can see a different way and it makes sense to me now.

From up on the mountain I can suddenly see the chain.