Human Remains

Hello. Sorry I've been away for about five weeks, but the truth is, I've been waylaid by reality. I had a lot of writing to get done for the novel, and one of the first things anyone should know about writing a novel is that, on a good day, it's the equivalent of having half your blood removed and then getting beaten severely. I'm getting beaten a good 90 minutes a night, but pages are being produced. About 12 pages a week, 7 of which are salvageable.

Also, about three weeks ago, my 88-year-old grandmother suffered a heart attack. It was touch and go for a while, with me eyeing what to pack if my mom called to give me that dreaded signal: "You better come out here." Here meaning Chicago. Me on a red-eye flight from Seattle, cresting on the night sky, hoping I make it through in time to be there and do anything for my grandmother.

She's fine now, or best as can be expected. She has my mom and step-dad looking after her. She's been to the doctor, gotten some top-shelf meds, and is resting comfortably. But there's almost nothing else that can be done for her. Due to age and a mastectomy done in the Dark Ages of the procedure, surgery is out of the question. We have learned that the next attack would do her in. So, she sits and rests and copes with the specter of death coming just a little closer. Most of her friends are gone now. She is mentally clear but legally blind. I know she tries to mask being afraid. I know she is scared of the crippling pain of another attack, perhaps punctuating her last moments in this world. It's been a hard three weeks to swallow that she won't be around much longer. You make every phone call count. You pry your mom with deeper answers about how grandma really is doing, trying to decipher if the message is: "You better come out here."

Until then, I sit. My wife comforts me. We pet the cats. I write in the office. The routine becomes secure. Life goes on, until further notice.

During the hiatus, I also lost my writing conference virginity at PNWA, which had me dressed in non-black, non-denim for four days, a period long enough to have me seeing spiders on the ceiling and babies heads turning around. I don't do dressing up. I don't like buttons on shirts. Jeans. Pullover. Dark socks. Shoes or boots. Wearing khakis and a dressy shirt, I'm very out of my element walking the halls of an airport conference center, running into agents and editors, fellow writers, and panicking volunteers. Ended up sitting down for drinks with a Very Big New York Agent who was keen about the novel after I gave probably the best pitch I'll ever make. He wants 50 pages from me, plus a synopsis. Recognition. Excitement. I'm not in a place where I can give him the first 50, but he's game enough to let me hang back and send it in a couple months later. Very Big New York Agent was upfront and honest: "You only have one shot at this. If you need time, take it."

After the conference, after the networking and classes and the drinks that kept coming by writing comrades, after indirectly insulting a music biographer, after pitching with Zen Jedi skill, after believing I could write a best-seller, the Tuesday Morning Blues kicked in after the conference, and coupled with news about grandma, I surfed into anger and insecurity, and that's been lasting a good three weeks. I had been pushing myself to write, to get past the first-draft loathing, to create and soar and not let myself get in the way of the writing process (to deeply mangle what William Gibson once said about how he writes). I had been dredging up new feelings of loss, current vibrations of jealousy, old feelings of hatred to my father. The acid-tipped monkeys were back in the house, and taking up residence in my new cobalt-blue-hued office. I wasn't fun to be around, and it's only this morning, after folding myself in half at the gym repeatedly, that I'm emerging out of the funk.

So, I'm writing more when I can. Keeping myself from the distractions, whether online or the bookshelf, is the hardest task. Once I put fingers to keys, I'm soaring. The new Nine Inch Nails is far better than I expected, good fuel for Patrick's growing darkness. I'm mainly working on him now, going deeper into his conflicts. What Rayelle has to suffer through external pressures, Patrick does on the inside. I think I'm liking working on him if only because we haven't seen a lot of each other lately.

Today's Word: Appeal

You wanted the last chance, she whispered in my ear. How much would you give for a little more? How much would you sacrifice to spare your own life? Threaten a man with his life, and you'll see what life he wants to protect.

Celebrity Neural Colonialism, or Audrey Tautou owns my brain

This is a bit weird.

When scientists sampled brain cell activity in people who were scrutinizing dozens of pictures, they found some individual cells that reacted to a particular celebrity, landmark, animal or object.

In one case, a single cell was activated by different photos of Berry, including some in her "Catwoman" costume, a drawing of her and even the words, "Halle Berry."

The findings appear in a part of the brain that transforms what people perceive into what they'll eventually remember, said Dr. Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles, a senior investigator on the project.

The findings do not mean that a particular person or object is recognized and remembered by only one brain cell, Fried said. "There is not only one cell that codes for Jennifer Aniston. That would be impossible," Fried said.

Nor do they mean that a given brain cell will react to only one person or object, he said, because the study participants were tested with only a relatively limited number of pictures. In fact, some cells were found to respond to more than one person, or to a person and an object.

What the study does suggest, Fried and colleagues say in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, is that the brain appears to use relatively few cells to record something it sees. That's in contrast to the idea that it uses a huge network of brain cells instead.

Further down...

The researchers tested eight people with epilepsy who'd had electrodes placed in their brains so that doctors could track down the origins of their seizures. The electrodes monitored the activity of a small fraction of cells in a part of the brain called the medial temporal lobe.

The researchers kept track of which cells became activated as the participants looked at images of people, landmarks and objects on a laptop computer. One participant had a brain cell that reacted to different pictures of Aniston, for example, but was not strongly stimulated by other famous or non-famous faces.

Heck, I could have told you that the brain's gonna remember Halle Berry in her Catwoman outfit. I mean, sheesh.

Today's Word: Know

He grabbed on to it, that one immutable piece of knowledge, the thing that would remain real and true. His brain was fading, dripping away as the drugs kicked in, and he needed something to remain his true North.

This whole shtick, being hard on myself for not being original, for thinking that everything's been done before...it's getting old. I'm tired of projecting my novel into everything that pop culture is tossing up these days, from Riverbend to Land of the Dead. Tired of this paralysis, this numbness that I have to rub out of some psychic skin to get the blood flowing again. It's bad enough to have an acidic demon monkey poke me and say what I'm writing could be better. At least I've trained that monkey to give me visions of how a draft could get polished. This projection shit is getting wearying, as if obsessing over if people will think of my novel as a cheap knock-off is some healthy alchemy that'll make the end-product better. No, wrong way. Worked out a decent first draft of a scene for Chapter 3 last week. And while I'm not trying to worry about audience thinks, I felt a little more confident when the scene passed the Tuesday Night Writing Group's sniff test. It's a crutch, I know, but crutches can help you walk on your own. You need to know when to wean yourself off of them.

Speaking of weaning, it's time again for another sabbatical from poli-blogs and their comment boards, locations that are all fists and no ears. Tired of textual yelling. I've got more important things to do with my time. As great as poli-blogs are for ready-mades, the snark and caustics are getting to me again. I'll stick with Cursor for now, as well as a few guilty pleasures: IGN, slashdot, This Modern World (a comment-free poli-blog), Morford. I'm reading for the articles, I suppose you could say. I'm cutting myself off of the peanut gallery. Too many fists, not enough listening.

Note: I've been writing this entry in fits and spurts all day. Sometimes very angry, sometimes snarky. There's a lot of problems I have with the general sniping that goes on at blogs and message boards. Too much noise, not enough signal.

That said, I found this at ThisModernWorld.com. It's in regard to Sen. Durbin's recent mea culpa about earlier comments over Gitmo, torture, and the growing stain on America's soul. The last line, however, stands on its own, a veritable Swiss Army Knife of wisdom to be used in so many locales.

And you can't allow yourself the luxury of being afraid of your own words.

Stepping Out for Six Years

Hi.

A brief note. Sunday is going to be the six-year anniversary for my wife and I. It's going to be a whirlwind weekend of painting the dining room, live theater, and plenty of surprises. It's also going to be a nice quiet time for both of us, so won't be updating this weekend. I'm going to be celebrating how lucky I am, and how much we have shared in the past six years. Every once in a while, when I'm not wrapped up in the in pea-soup fog of novel-fu, I get struck how remarkable and beautiful she is, kind and loving and supportive and, yes, sexy. I can't remember what my life was like without her, and I'm not too eager to venture back into that jungle. I prefer now, especially when she randomly touches me and says how much she loves me. For the longest time, I held affection like that at arm's length, suspicious of its true intentions after getting my developing brain blended by an abusive father. Sometimes I get haunted by back then, and I wish I was a bit more aware of what she offers at times. Again, it's that jungle you shouldn't venture into. It gets you lost with darkness and inhuman shadows and sounds. Just be here now. Love what you have when it wholeheartedly loves you in return.

And I do. Happy anniversary, my dear.

Periscope Up

Been working on the novel as well as putting my new office together. Sorry I haven't checked in, but writing and painting and building Ikea furniture puts the blog down a bit on the pecking order. The office, coated in a pale sky blue, is now this cavernous womb of creativity. "Great things will happen in there," my loving wife tells me as we wearily fall asleep Sunday night after a weekend of domicile makeover. I love her, and I believe her when I finally get past all the acidic demon monkeys who like to plant lies in my head.

That said, the new writing group I'm in, starring my cohorts from the year-long writing program, has some members who are willing and able to shake the tables with some well-cooked prose. While I try not to make this a competition, I'm moved to write harder and sharper, trying to get my offerings as worthy as I think theirs are. We have one member in our group who has her manuscript done while starting on her second book. Meanwhile, there's another author who, like me, is a member of Club Dystopia and the scenes we brought Tuesday were similar in a couple parts. I laughed "I know this because Tyler knows this" sitting next to him, flipping pages of our stories between my fingers. We intersect on a few things, content wise, even if we rocket into different tangents. Sometimes I wonder if we pollute each other. Well, there's always the rewrite.

And in an unrelated note, I found this article about CNN anchor Nancy Grace's complete meltdown after the Michael Jackson verdict was announced. While I have little patience for pundits, this bit caught my eye. It's something that screams ready-made if you look at it the right way. It's also a slap at the technotopian dreamers who think that the Web will erase ignorance forever.

So it is that we find ourselves in an age when people flip to a favored television channel, or buy a specific publication, or click on a particular URL, for one reason -- because they know that when they go there, inconvenient information will not intrude, and they will find their dearest beliefs, their strongest prejudices and their deepest fears reinforced rather than challenged.

The phenomenon doesn't have a name yet -- to our knowledge, anyway -- but it's the opposite of the ancient Greek agora or the New England town hall to which people flock to disagree with one another and to hash out differences.

I think "Logic of Positive Fallacy" is too long. Needs to combine sex and violence and the glitz of 21st century media warfare.

Foxllatio, anyone?