In Parts

NOW GODDAMNIT NOW?!
Yes.  This week.

It was the publicist, calling to tell me to run the intro and now.  Her voice is soft and svelte, a birdsong compared to the panicked rasp at the other end of the line.
BUT…WHO WILL JUDGE THE RIGHTEOUS?, I yelled.  FIND YOURSELF HERE!  and, stammering now, AREN’T YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?!

She’s a good girl.  She’s wont to break it down country simple and gently “talk me down” when I get like this.  I had been on the roof for 7 hours.  I had over 3,500 words written in tribute to guest-blogger Don Bajema but it was not a kind journey.  The kids at the Khabele School across the street were giving me queer looks and I  glared back at them, crunching down on a burning cigarillo with hater blockers on.  I was greasy with Deet and the shit was giving me a chemical high of the worst kind.  I had drunk more coffee than the APD working nightshift on Judge’s Hill.  The bugs and the heat and the caffeine and the smoke were making me jiggy.  Not only that but every time I climbed in through the window to get more coffee I took a piece of hardware with me.  The dead mouse hung by its cord out the window and earbuds were tangled, twisted and burning in the ashtray.   My spare hardrive lay in sorry pieces scattered all over the roof at my feet.

Just send me what you have.  I’ll take a look and we’ll run it tomorrow, mk?
OK?!  Ok.
Just focus on your respect for the man.  Don’t get too bogged down, and, parse it out.

I hung up and stared at the pile of hardwire and the mess of black wire twisting at my feet.  What had happened to my life?  Whatever could it be that has brought me to this loss?  All my efforts to write smoke-free had been usurped, laughed at and thrown down by the bad bitch of a deadline.

Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
-Ernest Hemingway

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s a good life.  These days the worst kind of trouble is no trouble at all.
Some folks are better writers simply getting out of bed in the morning than I’ll be all day.  And some writer’s blow their brains out with a shotgun in a remote cabin in Idaho.  We’re all mad here but deadlines, like time, will wait for no man.  Being on deadline is kind of like having a nervous breakdown.
Any seasoned journalist, like me, has many tools (drugs) in his toolbox.  But as the heat index pushes temperatures above 102, and the caffeine wears off and the scales of life teeter dangerously toward the suicide option side, it’s best to call it a day.  Most wise.  Pour yourself a drink and watch the sun set on the Empire, burn down another night and blast that banshee with rock&roll and loud, motherfucker.
Aho.  I’m glad for writers like Bajema.  There is no finer an ally to enjoy sunset in America with.  And I’m just as glad for the gentle and kind folks who tolerate me, who at times offer me guidance&support as I cleave down the savage road I first stepped foot on nearly 27 years ago.
The publicist, the editor, readers like you-you’re all keeping me alive.

The girl was right about parsing it out.  It was Labor Day Weekend.  School was letting out across the street.  My ankles were raw and bloody.  I was covered in sweat.  Another day at the Office.

It is my great pleasure to present to you an intro for guest-blogger Don Bajema.
In parts.

fml

STAY TUNED FOR PT I OF:  WHO WILL JUDGE THE RIGHTEOUS?…Guest-Blogger, Beautiful Writer&True Patriot Don Bajema Makin’ em Know on Going For the Throat With the First 3 Chapters of his Latest Work…NEXT WEEK

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.