WORKING IN THE CREATIVE NONFICTION BUSINESS

It starts like this.  One word after another.  I snag you from out the ether and I pull you in.  Now you’re three sentences deep–we’ll need no introduction, but you’re gonna need a payoff.   The risks can be steep working in the creative nonfiction business and wasting your time is never an option.  Time wasted is incremental murder.  Time is as serious as death itself and that’s because it’s the only thing standing in her way.  Time is the frontier on which she advances.  I clap my hands around a chigger and it has no more time.  I’m a pacifist but I kill.  I’ve a big heart but people are horrible.  I write 600 words every day sipping sweet espresso and I never have enough time to become who I am.  The risks of working in the creative nonfiction business can be greater than its boons.  You’ve total access and I never wanted to hide but now I’m weary and the enemy has won the round.

Just remember you are also a person, she writes, in response to my declaration that people are horrible.
I am horrible!  I respond, which is no revelation.
We are all horrible, she writes finally and almost sage-like if not for being utterly passive-aggressive and horrible.

There is so much I wish I could tell you that I’ll only regret later if this post should fall into the wrong hands.  The need to stay undercover is strong and could trump my resolution to bring you 600 words of the Real, from the life of a Writer, weekly annals mired both in the daily and dirty of it.  I need to rethink it and I’ll need some time away.  For every horrible person I’ve transacted with in the last 3 weeks there is one of you out there who is golden–a guru of friendship and compassion that can hold Lady Death at bay, for a spat of hard laughter from the gut and a gleaming look in your eye worth more to me than a diamond.  You know who you are and I love you.  I just need to get away to get this rig unwound.  I go live in the truest sense this Autumn and I’ll need to lay low and recharge.  You should have more than enough to go on next Friday, when I unleash Take To The Territory unto the world like a map into the wilds of my unction heart.

I’ll still be here, you know I will, but I’m going deeper–hiding out until you find me, and from what I build, you can bet they won’t be able to get to us there.  We’ll be free and in love, in the thrall of real work, across the borderline tilling the hungry land. When I come down from the mountain you won’t be alone. They will be cast aside. The enemy will join us at the table or learn to gnash on themselves.

Calling out to hungry hearts
everywhere through endless time
You who wander, you who thirst,
I offer you this heart of mine.
Calling out to hungry spirits
everywhere through endless time,
Calling out to hungry hearts
all the lost and the left behind.
Gather round and share this meal
your joy and your sorrow
I make them mine.
–Zen Buddhist Invocation

Join Jim Trainer next Friday June 1, at Malvern Books, in celebrating the release of Take To The Territory, his fourth full-length collection of poetry, through Yellow Lark Press.  Featuring Brown Thought and Christine Schiele.  7PM

16/30

most of adventure is doleful
you sink within
until you’re in the good place
hold on to what you’ve got
and go with that
don’t get sold on promise and prize,
or a dream of the future
the day that never arrives
this isn’t to say it’s simple
or easy or black and white
the truth is, another day is victory
and how you spend it is on you
I’ve worked for them enough, though
choked whole days off, for their profit
at their worry—it’s a troublesome lot
to be beyond small minds but
still under the thumb of the masters
ain’t it though
I always found my work deserting theirs
made this language safe-cracking
and white-hot, ran past the guard
into the sky
and the world and all it knew
fell away like loose change
till I was drunk on the high air
broken, spinning, terribly free.

Please visit jimtrainer.net for 1 of 4 full length collections of poetry and prose.

BEWARE THE FIRST PERSON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Sometimes I wonder, why do we tear ourselves to pieces?
-Paul Simon

Second chances are getting harder to come by these days.
-Michael “Corky” Corcoran

Do you enjoy being on this side of history?
-Someone commenting on Michael Corcoran’s Facebook Page

Jim Trainer’s writing is not for the weak. It’s like stepping in dogshit barefoot.
-Ignacio on Pterodáctilo

Writers feel like the best thing they have to offer is the worst thing that ever happened to them.
–Jia Tolentino, Editor
Jezebel Magazine

I am the pressman, acknowledge me…
-Primus, The Pressman

Warmest Greetings from the War Room.  I’m at a loss but what else is new?  Sometimes I wonder:  why do I have to be in trouble to create?  The last couple blogs on here, well, shit–pretty gnarly ain’t it though.  I’m on deadline so that means I have to mine for kernels of life, exceptional or otherwise. On a slow news day a bird on a wire can be newsworthy, especially if his beady yellow eye speaks to me of my own hungers and unsavory instinct.  Sadly, equally unsavory and unresolved relations with others make it on here, too.  Usually I don’t mind.  Revenge is a great motivation.  By the time I write about someone, I feel they’re long gone anyway.  Nothing to salvage so may as well trash ’em and get on with it.  If that doesn’t sound horrible enough, the truth is GFtT has cut too close to the bone, too many times.  Not to mention I hate when people write about me without at least consulting or attempting to address their grievances with me in person.  It seems passive- aggressive, which I can’t stand.  My horrible point is I only write about folks and situations that are resolutely in the rearview–or I write to put them there.  I can’t live with vague and unresolved.  It feels hopeless and futile.  I need to bury my dead and it’s a huge mistake simply because all of the people I’ve buried in print are still alive!  I don’t think I’ll remedy this dark flaw of mine, at least not in writing anyway, and as abyssmal as all this undoubtedly sounds, I don’t like writing about my life because it makes me feel like a hack.

We knew the dangers of this medium from the get, ain’t it though, but they didn’t feel like dangers at the time.  I achieved a goal of mine to be a columnist, by exploiting my own flaws and offering my own foibles, and it was incredibly satisfying.  The blog that started me posting every Thursday was written out of sexual frustration for Christ’s sake.  I was tired of playing ring around the rosey and I said so, in writing.  Don’t you know a woman I’d been courting up until that point called me repeatedly.  She was upset about it, the blog, wanted to talk about it.  We talked.  I told her it wasn’t about her and that our conversation would be the last time I ever explained my writing to her.  We made amends and made plans.  A week later she stood me up.  Now I had over 600 words up on here, I didn’t take that blog down–why should I, especially after she stood me up?  Which is no consolation.  I’d of rather gotten laid, which was the point of the thing to begin with, and I’m a writer so the blog stayed.  I’ve never taken anything down in over 7-years of writing for GFtT–but my point is when people get more upset about the truth being printed than the truth itself then I feel like I’m onto something and they probably deserve it anyway.  All this might justify doing what I do but it doesn’t mean I’m not a hack.  Which was ok, too–I figured at least I was writing.  I didn’t mind (much) until now.

Social media is killing me.  Better, depression is killing me and social media is one of its best weapons.  There are other things I’ve been abusing.  Flagrant misuses of my power and magic are well documented and are all rooted in fear anyway.  I don’t want to be a hack anymore and I don’t want to waste any more time on social media.  My own weaknesses sway any discussion about it.  A democratized media?  Nope, just creepin’.  A way to stay connected to others when I’m at rope’s end on an isolation jag? Nope just looking at selfies.  Staying in the loop?  Maybe.  The list can go on and on but none of these reasons are why I’m on there—scrolling as the sun comes up and scrolling as the sun goes down.  It’s making me perverted—well, it’s feeding my perversions.  So, I’m striking out.  I’ve got some resolutions for the new year.  You Bet.  One of the biggest is to get current on my website and post from there.  The other is to take to the territory.  If this is mid-life I am ashamed.  When I’m done being ashamed I’m almost excited.  After my excitement has been checked by my depression I am resolved.  I’ve miles to go before I sleep.  I’m thinking, long and hard, on how I can offer the road I’m on, this new media and me and my life and Art—as a service to you, Good Reader and the waiting world.  I know from your feedback that I’ve already done this for some of you, so I know all is not lost.

The world stopped ending in Boyd’s town at a very special wedding last month.  It got cold and I feel alright.  I’ve got so much work to do, especially if I don’t want next week’s post to be about bad blood or masturbation.

See you in the territory motherfucker.

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A post shared by Mari Andrew (@bymariandrew) on Nov 7, 2017 at 4:33am PST

DRAG ME AWAY

 

Recorded live at Brewerytown Beats in Philadelphia on October 25, 2017.  Bevan McShea and Charlie O’Hay were also featured.

FOR MADMEN ONLY

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
-Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

Up until 30 minutes ago you had no idea what I did for a living and now you know more than me? Great. I should just quit and write poetry.
-theoriginal_jem on Instagram this week

The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.
-Charles Bukowski

Sometimes I write just to keep from falling.  It’s been the luckiest goddamn thing, the writing.  The other, well, we all have our row to hoe, don’t we Sister?  Some of us toe the line, we fit in to their scheme nicely, or we want to and our days are orderly, it all makes sense or it will someday.  The rest of us run slipshod, in turns raw with fear and bold with alacrity, pioneers of lost and lonely kingdoms, we answer to none and don’t tell anyone.  As treacherous as it gets it’s still safer than living in their world.  I don’t know what kind of voodoo’s been run down on me but–I burn out now on crazy, faster than ever before.  The IG quote above is from an unfortunate interaction on social media this week.  I spoke on corporate culture, which I gladly know nothing of, and should’ve just kept my mouth shut.  On the other hand I wouldn’t have known this person to be so self-identified with it–square life.  I can’t speak to it.  I can’t recommend the road I took.  I’m not proud of it, it still confuses me–but I’ll never suffer anyone’s shame of it.  Out of necessity, really.  Believe me, I’m plenty enough ashamed on my own, that I couldn’t make it, do the thing and participate.  I just happen to be more ashamed of them and their life–the squares.  Which obviously, and again out of necessity, is a perfect intro for this week’s post.

I’m terrified.  I struck out again, left my gig of 5 years.  Couldn’t hang there anymore.  It was the longest job I ever had–which isn’t to say I’m irresponsible.  I could never stick around long enough to let time get on me, which is what happens.  Familiarity can be a pecking away, unless it’s from people who you love but even then sometimes you’ve got to get away.  I never met a more concentrated group of horrible people than I did at my last gig and living where I did, but I never stayed anywhere longer than a couple years either.  The problem is the Fear.  I’m suffering good Reader.  My karma’s wearing me down.  I can’t do it, out here, without some soulsucking handjive day paying jerkaround.  Know what I’m saying?  It’s fucked and I feel fucked.  Terrible depths of despair until I take to the outdoors and the sun and the trees of Hyde Park take me like a familiar but distant planet.  I can let go a little, on my walkabouts here, and forget for a spell that the future looks as fucked to me as the past and I don’t know how I’ll ever get this rig unwound.

I got some side hustles.  Little time sucks for gas and food money.  I’m not starving to death.  I’m booking ’em, too.  December’s shaping up and 15 $100 gigs still seems doable, on paper anyway.  I’m interviewing for another caregiving position tomorrow, I got irons in the fire for everything from moving furniture to hauling trash.  Everything’s fine and I’m terrified.  I regret my decision and pretty much every other one I’ve had to make since I first stepped foot to this savage road over twenty years ago.  I don’t think I’ll make it most days.  The wisdom, I guess, is I never thought I would but yet here I am.  It’s been heavy, man, and harrowing.  Second to second sometimes.  It does add up, though, I’ve got a body of work.  Three books in and my stuff is getting better and better.  Storytelling is second nature to me now.  It only takes a draft or 2 before I can take it to the boards and tell it under the hot lights.  Writing is still one of the only failsafe things that will save me.  Refuge.  Most days feel like falling until I’m beat by night’s billyclub, and then pulled off to dream silly dreams in some thick veldt between lust and madness.   I think I’ll make it, after all, even if it never feels like it.  She wouldn’t last a day.

See you in the territory motherfucker.

 

 

Just Like October

I can’t even begin to tell how much I love you
I was born to hold you, to look down in your eyes
I was come upon this earth to be right by your side
you’re the one who come out of dream to me, woman
when you sleep you’re curled in some distant heather
it’s windy and wet there, just like October
something deep inside of you that I remember
there are many lives that we have lived together

no don’t get up and try and speak love
God’s pourin’ light down on you from above
if  all I ever really do is love you
then God came down and did this for me
You’re for me

I’ve walked a million burning miles to look at your smiling face
suffered my whole life long just to be healed by your grace
if you ever go away I’m with you
in every breath and word, every motion, every moment
I am yours
no don’t get up and try and speak
it’s late now and this train’s gettin’ up to speed
winding through the heartland into the deep
fertile and green land of a woman and a man
this is real

so don’t get up and try and speak love
God’s pourin’ light down on you from above
if all I ever really do is love you
then God came down and did this for me
You’re for me

Ashen and boot black, I come up the hill
brushing the fresh dirt from my knees
it’s windy and wet here, just like October
this is the end of our lives together
tomorrow there’ll be another sun
come up mighty even though you’re gone
trains whistle cold out into the vacant fronteir of night
without a word from you, without a whisper
I am yours

I am yours

Recorded live on Flaming Arrow Radio with DJ Diane on WKDU, 91.7FM Philadelphia on October 24, 2017.  Jim Trainer performs tomorrow night, in Manayunk, with Psalmships and Cardinal Arms.  For more information please visit here and here. 

Goodbye, Goodbye

It’s been a life, blown and bowled over, marveling at the destructive act.  It’s been nights cornered by lust, like a fly in a tarantula dream, and days that split the long beams down my eyes.  It was a white sun in Lafayette in 1999 and the only time I truly knew would never be again–in youth.  There was a heavy, grey lead blues and a black flapping ‘gainst the pane blues.  The yards, up north–burning down Camel straights through the chain link, and spitting out hot sugared coffee in the snow.  It’s a good thing to remember now as I can’t turn, I won’t turn, I can’t be–any of these but all of it now and roaring.  The cadence of my later years has laden each day with all the days, each day carrying a load of the days before, my past like a bushel of coal and future that cuts prisms of mash.  I love and lose and I am born and I sink.  I am tequila on Ocean Beach and I am warm Lager above the Dawson in her hot 3rd floor.  If I am all loves then I am all love and every sky is winding and every whisper knows a scar.  Ravenous I am without regret, I revel and twist and dwindle in a reverse sailor’s dive.  I stitch my dreams with nightmare silk and I feed fear to courage, my love is in the mouth of a lion, my love is the cutting stink of a locomotive train.  Everything that was true is still.  Everything that’s false will find you out, and crack you from your earthen bed but if you wave from Heaven we’ll see you and we will wave back from Hell…

Eunuch Blues

Recorded live at Brickbat Books, Philadelphia, September 2016.

Catch Jim Trainer speaking in Boston next Wednesday April 26, at the Middle East Corner, with the Reverend Kevin O’Brien, Duncan Wilder Johnson, The Droimlins, and Jim Healy.
8:30PM, $5 advance tickets, $8 day of the show.  Please click here.

Jim Trainer will be speaking and reading from All in the wind, his latest collection of poetry and prose, at Toast Philly on Thursday April 27 with local favorites Charlie O’Hay and Lamont Steptoe.
7PM, Please click here.

Jim Trainer returns to the Mill Street Cantina for a special 90 minute set on Friday April 28.
9PM, Please click here.

Slow Day At The Office

It had nothing to do with drugs, the F word or being cool, and everything to do with the fact that Thompson never lost his sense of appropriate outrage, never fell into the trap of accepting that moral compromise was somehow a sign of growth and adulthood.
-Matt Taibbi’s Introduction to the 40th Anniversary Edition of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson

Nothing on climate change, nothing on poverty, nothing on ending the war in Afghanistan, nothing on banks, on housing, on education, on campaign finance, health care, racial injustice….
–Jeffrey St Clair on the Presidential Debates on Wednesday 

Welcome back moWelcome back motherfucker.  ‘Tis I, the bitter and grizzled one.  I’m sitting here sipping iced coffee with a bum leg amidst piles of poetry, calendars, lists and Hunter Thompson texts.  I just finished re-reading Generation of Swine and I’m a quarter way through Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72.  I don’t have a damn thing to say about what was going down on just about every TV set in the country last night. To the disappointment and chagrin of every hard working and earnest participant in this thing we call democracy I am not voting on November 8.   One less voice oughtn’t tip the scales, right Brother? The way some of you are carrying on, my silence can only improve the landscape, or at least afford me the peace of mind to get these 600 words written and posted up at Going For The Throat.

The psoas is cranked tight.  11 days on shift as a caregiver has fucked me.  I take hot baths and do what Yoga I can. Sessions with the lovely Cecily coupled with long bouts on my back have been the sum total of my time off.  I stepped out to see Turning Tricks With The Darlings chop a man’s dick off onstage last night at Bedpost Confessions; and with these scant hours before my Third Thursday at House Wine tonight, I’ll try and get to the kernel of it.  The Wisdom, as Dr. Thompson has eloquently referred to it. The reason, the meaning, the gist and the thrust–the why if not the how.
Truth is I can’t tell you nothin, man.  I mean I just spent 296 words telling you how I’m gonna come through with 300 more, and just as I set that up and build enough tension and thrust around the thing, I tell you I’ve got nothing.  That I’m laid up in between gigs and the day job with a bum leg and an anger problem. That I couldn’t give less of a fuck about the dog and pony of Presidential politics, I’m behind deadline on the next book, I should’ve been in Portland by now and without drugs or alcohol and the cigarette I need so fucking bad right now—the only thing I can do is write you.

Oh but what a blessing, eh good Reader?  That what’s wrong with me is what’s right with me.  That anger and anxiety, lust and greed and spiritual poverty is what spins the wheel of dharma round.  That I’m totally gone and halfway to nowhere and I don’t mind standing at the back of the theater, dressed in black and sipping seltzer.  I’m the King of Irish Goodbyes and don’t mind being alone for long swathes of time. I’m a freak and you’re a freak and we’re all freaks in this Circus of Life&Death—except for squares who are far more vested in a rigged game of Presidential Politics than their own mythology.  I feel like I’m going to want be sober for what comes next. Life is the strangest trip and I don’t want to miss a thing. The dark can take its turns, the job can take its pound of flesh, and the TVs can blare blue light into every house and home as Autumn in America rages and we find what little love there is and dare to give it all.

That’s all it is.  This blog. You, me.  This thing we got is a torch.  Thanks for carrying it. See you next Thursday motherfucker.

Trainer, Going For The Throat
Austin TX-Nationwide

Dharma…it has to do with one’s life calling. It seems that many people either get way off-track or come close but no cigar. Few actually hit it right on. I’m not necessarily talking about the ‘dream job’. It’s nice to be able to monetize a passion, but there’s often a compromise that happens there.

It’s bigger than that. It’s the burning desire that drives you… its the process of it, the feeling you get from it, it’s all that good stuff you’d do if money, situation, practicality and laziness were not an obstacle.  All of it.

I feel like you have to persistently and tirelessly head in the direction of your Dharma, always. You might feel depressed and unfulfilled if you don’t. Sometimes that can be suppressed and sometimes you have what I call a “self-correction moment”-a midlife crisis, a Saturn Return, a meltdown, or just a big, bold-as-fuck life changing decision. The decision has to be to move toward your Dharma.   It has to be. 
-Brother Chris, from out on the road somewhere in the Pacific Northwest

FLOWERS OF RAGE

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MY 67TH POEM OF THE YEAR. #poem #poetry #poetryislife #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #poetryofig #poetryisnotdead #poetryporn #poetryloving #poetrygram #poetry_addicts #poetrylovers #poetrysociety

A post shared by Jim Trainer (@goingforthethroat) on Jun 29, 2016 at 1:34pm PDT