Ah, damn.

Well.  Shit.  I tried.  It's now January.  It's now 2012.  And I didn't manage to finish my novel.  You'd think with all my frantic interest in the new protagonist, I'd have rushed him headlong into a climax.  Yeah, no.  Sorry.  I feel like crap about it.

I managed to get about 15,000 words into it.  And, to my credit, the plot moves.  That's good.  So, I suppose, I can give myself a pat for trying or at least churning out a little.  Where's my ribbon?  Does everyone win?

I'm told I should be compassionate with myself.  It was the holidays.  This is true.  I struggled to sit down at the computer, this is true.  Summer finally bloomed here and after weeks under clouds, I couldn't bear to stay inside.  So be it.  I'm alive.  The new year is good.  My goal post has moved a little but it hasn't disappeared.

Oh, and I started a new blog.  Is that appropriate?  What the hell do I keep this one for?  I may need to politely redirect you now.  If you please... megandoylecorcoran.com.  See you there.  And Happy New Year!

The story goes like this.

Last year, I wrote a book.  It took about seven months.  I edited it for another seven and here I am.  I've got a third draft of a manuscript that needs more than a drawer-- more like a coffin.  It's ample and I'm not entirely sure what to do with it going forward.  I've sent out about 20 query letters.  Not enough.  I've heard back from one agent who wanted to read more, but not the whole thing.  I've received five rejections.  Everyone else remains intractably quiet.

The book is about dead kids.  Who doesn't love them?  Before you get in a huff, they're teenagers-- human enough that compassion doesn't have to take the shape of repulsion.  The kids are in charge of the stage set; without them, we'd live among bleak utility.  The context wouldn't be inspiring.  We'd wonder why anyone ever bothered to write poetry or take pictures.  Not that people don't wonder that already.  To them, I say, be grateful something is there to catch you up when your head gets too full up of self.  To them, I'd also say, good luck in love.

This December, I promised myself to try to write a novel in a month.  Sure, I was supposed to do it in November, but I was busy with some stories and a fair bit of hysteria over my future.  This month, I'm calm.  And I'm rushing headlong into a loosely outlined story to follow up on our heroic dead kids.  I'm promising myself it won't reach the paunchy proportions of the first.  After all, I only have a month.

So here's the thing.  As with all phases of delightful hysteria, its passage has left me feeling a little rambunctious; I'd like a little upheaval in the story.  So while the first book concentrates on the young female protagonist, this one is following her partner, a guy who knows just a bit more but doesn't realize what he actually knows.  I guess my question is whether this is a ridiculous mistake?  I like his voice and I wanted to hear it.  So fuck it, I suppose.  It's my story to tell.  And if I want to tell the second part through him, then I guess I get to do exactly that.

You've been most helpful.

Surprises in various sizes

The news this week is good.  I'm admitted to a Masters program at Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters.  I heard a couple days ago after I'd spent a fair amount of energy convincing myself-- and concocting pretty decent stories in support of-- a rejection.  Rejection is sometimes easier than success.  I know how to file it away.  Even after a couple nights of decent sleep, I'm still not sure how to respond to the good news.  Instead, I'm sort of pretending like there might have been a mistake.  When March rolls around and the class starts, I'll attend and deal with a new reality.

Although not so much a surprise as a shock, I discovered this morning that we've stumbled into December. Once again, I'm faced with the brain twister that wants me to reconcile Christmas trees with summer light.  I may have grown up in San Diego and I may have experienced winters far warmer than any summer day down in these island parts, but at least we pretended.  We wore scarves and boots because the calendar-- if not the sun-- asked for it.  And no matter the temperature outside, we weren't throwing carrot sticks on the roof under a sky that slowly goes grey after 9.  At least we all take many days off.

The novel writing project starts today.  I've written, oh, a paragraph or two.  With the news about the MA program, I'm a little more committed.  I want a second book in draft before I start all the shenanigans of the new year.  And then, when the Mayan calendar collapses us, I'll have three, which is nice little way to complete my universe.  Ah, good thoughts.

Here's a picture of clouds over Sydney.  These clouds existed at a moment when you were not there so you should feel very lucky for a peek.  I'm just saying.  Be grateful that you stumble into December with me.  Because even with clouds, it's a pretty spectacular moment in time that hosts them.

And when you're in Sydney next, consider that you've already missed this particular grouping of cloud bits.  You'll get your own, I promise.

An Indulgent (star-crossed) Thanks.

Back at home, it's Thanksgiving.  Here, it's just Friday.  I could stand smug-- been there, done that, like six days ago-- but I'd rather have more pie.  It would also be nice to hug my mother.  She's being held hostage by siblings, however, who have turkey on their table and limited time, I guess, to turn on the Skype machine.  I moan to the drone of my dishwasher.  It holds the plastic tubs that held leftovers until today.

Lately, I've been spinning in the silly pirouette of a seven-year old's unrequitable lust for the remotest likelihood.  Like I want a pony, but that's not it, exactly.  I've never liked horses and smaller versions, oddly, provoke a greater aversion.  It's the greater potential of the miniatures to climb on my lap and expect me to like them that makes me shudder.  That, and the impression I've always had that smaller versions are always malformed.  See, supra, several posts about my childlessness.

Back to the clumsy dance: god damn it all if I didn't want something too much which is a surefire way to disappoint yourself and spoil all the perfectly slow moments transpiring between hoping and dashing the hope.  If time could remain as slow as I settle my soul with other candied morsels of future possibility, then I'd feel like the wanting was at least fruitful.  I'll keep you posted.

The thing I wanted?  I'm not saying.  It's not really so sad.  There's tons to do and now a few more moments in which to do it.  Slower moments, fingers crossed.  Although, fingers crossed didn't work so well for me previously.  So fuck it.  Fingers wide apart and busy.  I'm going to see if I can't write a 50,000-word novel in December as a follow-up to my first.  Then, I can self-publish both and feel productive.  I got the idea from the National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known-- maybe?-- as nanowrimo.  Of course, it was supposed to be done in November, but with my fingers tangled up on the doused fuse of my anxious pipe-dream, I delayed.  Now, unwound, they're ready.  And I'm ready.  Third revise on the first book tells me that I may as well march on.

And so, as I resign myself to the notion that all that lost hope ain't found somewhere in a cluttered box-- St. Anthony, where are you-- I cruise along.  Maybe you saw that finger flip or maybe I was stretching.  It's all the same.  Thanks for freeing me up.  Really.

Fools and rules and pepper spray

Hey there.  Well, the Super Committee is failing.  But here's something that the U.S. Congress seems competent to do.


Did you hear that they might actually get their shit together to classify pizza as a vegetable for the purpose of school lunch menus?  They say it's just too expensive to provide healthy foods and besides, food companies that make frozen pizzas, the salt industry and potato growers are sad at the prospect of losing so much business.  Ah, there's the propulsion for forward momentum.  Of course, it's not parents.  Despite the fact that the lunch program was modified based on recommendations by the Institute of Medicine, as an attempt to curb childhood obesity and skyrocketing future health care costs, Republican Congressional members say that the government shouldn't tell kids what to eat.  Unless, I guess, it's telling kids to eat frozen pizza and french fries in support of the food lobby.  Then it's a-okay.


And people wonder why protestors won't break camp and head on home.  Speaking of.

Have you watched the paramilitary forces of the UC campuses brutalize its students?  At UC Berkeley, students who linked arms took the brunt of baton-weilding policy in their bellies, ribs and spines before many were arrested.  A former U.S. poet laureate was bashed.  And the UCB chancellor said "linking arms is not non-violent civil disobedience."  Um. 


And then, this past weekend, it was time for the junta of UC Davis to give their arsenal an airing.  The students of UC Davis-- truly my alma mater-- sat quietly on a path running through the student-occupied quad and refused to move when the cops demanded.  They refused quietly.  They refused non-violently (as per the standard definition and not Chancellor Birgeneau's inexplicable misconstruction of it-- would he even get into Cal?).  And because they didn't move, and perhaps because they didn't threaten enough to warrant the frustrated presence of the police force, the cops vented their pepper spray directly into the somber, scared faces of the students.  From three feet away.  Students gagged, coughed, coughed blood.  But they didn't fight.  They sat.  And others, who were not in need of medical attention, kept the peace where the cops could not.  After a mic check, the UCD protestors informed the cops that they could go in a chant.  And the cops, proving themselves to have an ounce of common sense, went.  This was the most impressive demonstration of peaceful protest I've ever seen.  The protestors released the cops and the power of calm prevailed over force.  Hold your tears or maybe let them flow.

The First Amendment is always messy and often expensive.  Violent police response in the manner we're seeing will only accrue benefit to the protestors.  Leadership, whether on campuses or in cities, has failed to recognize that the media savviness of these camps is far beyond government understanding.  Videos of peaceful protests join our second lives on Facebook among pictures of friends and family.  The old red herrings of black-hooded anarchists have rotted to nothing but a stink, which is all they ever were.  The protestors hold each other up intelligently and amorphously; they have books and self-control.  And, in a resounding censure of government, they don't talk politics.  It's their silence on this particular issue that peals loudly against the current status quo.  The system as it stands is too dysfunctional to even contemplate the changes that would be required to alleviate its problems.  And the leadership is forced into a corner of befuddlement.  Confusion among those who hold power makes them vulnerable; they act stupidly. See Mayor of Oakland and the dumbs chancellors of UCB and UCD.


For those who squealed with delight at the pepper-spray that saturated the scarves and hoods of the UCD students because you thought "that's good, they were breaking rules," I'll wage a gentle disagreement.  When you consider rule-breaking, also consider the surfeit of rules codified to the benefit of those who hold power already.  "Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it," said Thoreau.  There is always a rule or law to be broken, without even an intent.  Standing for too long becomes disorderly conduct.  Not moving quickly enough becomes failing to obey the order of an officer or, worse, obstruction of government action.  So the rule becomes convenient for the imposition of power.  The First Amendment states that freedom of expression may not be abridged but you can't stand there, sit there, stay there after a certain hour.  Only fools would grant priority to these rules over the peaceful objections of those who suffer.


Finally, Go Ags.  Continue to be great.

Fear and Loathing

Occupy Wellington.

Woke up this morning to hear that the folks of Occupy Wall Street had been forcibly removed in the early hours of the morning by the NYPD.  I sighed.  And then of course, there were the ridiculous status messages on Facebook that insisted that this was exactly the right course.  A lawyer "friend" rejoiced that the court action considering the protestors rights to remain in the park meant that the lawyers win.  This particular guy is always on the side of lawyers making money.  At least he's consistent if not cynical.

More troubling is the subscription to a belief that the first amendment can be abridged by a frustrated government.  That, actually, is precisely the purpose of the First Amendment.  In a New York Times article, Mayor Bloomberg is described as becoming increasingly "fed up with their inability to police the park, with complaints about noise, disruptions to businesses and odors, and a leaderless movement that they just could not figure out how to deal with."  The Mayor ordered the middle of the night raid ostensibly because public health and safety demanded it.  That was his message to the media anyway.  There had been a few assaults among campers, true, and a large encampment, as all summer campers know, generates less than lovely smells.  But when the cops surrounded Zuccotti Park to vacate the occupiers, they also threw 5000 books into a dumpster.  And when the occupiers who were not arrested-- as approximately 200 were, including a City Councilman-- walked off to find other venues, the cops appeared to disrupt their continued efforts.  As in, your first amendment rights are no longer welcome here.  Anywhere.  The protestors set up in front of City Hall and were dispersed.  They went to a park along Canal Street: same thing.

Now, less than 24-hours after the raid, and a court hearing that validated the city's assertion that the first amendment does not also guarantee the right to form an encampment-- funny because it does guarantee the right to spend money on elections, so maybe the NLG lawyers could have argued the value of the tents as expression-- the protestors have reclaimed Zuccotti Park.  It's been power washed and barricades surround it.  Cops line the perimeter and have formed a bottleneck to permit (slow) re-entry.

Whatever you want to think about the Occupy movement, it's a tribute to them that they've successfully confounded the leaders of several major cities across the country.  Portland and Oakland camps have been raided; leaders of cities are trying to coordinate with each other to deal with the predictable joining of cities'  homeless populations-- and their drug and mental illness problems-- to the movement.  It is to their credit that cities are trying to determine how to balance the expression of the movement against the possible infiltration of a criminal element, but I have to wonder, just how much of a criminal element is present?  It's convenient to assert that bad things-- crimes!-- are occurring among a large gathering of people seeking to claim their pro-rata share of governance in this world.  And to object to the possibility of crimes preemptively, as UC Berkeley did last week when the cops violently "nudged" with batons an incipient group of Occupiers, well, then, it's clear that the vulnerability of the leaders is their befuddlement and not a more media-friendly concern for public safety.  I've got an idea!  What if the cops, who clearly want something to do and are getting a lot of OT hours to do it, were to target the crimes that have been committed by the bankers from their lofty offices in skyscrapers looming over these paltry encampments?  Yeah.  What if.

Occupy Wellington's second suburb.

What I hope people come to see in this cycle of protests is precisely the vulnerability of their leadership.  Because that's who we have the power to seat or unseat in elections, to call upon for assistance in our communities, and to demand accountability from throughout their tenure.  And I hope that people come to see that these leaders must be accountable to us, and not to the corporate interests who pay for their protection.  I hope people are inspired to become leaders themselves, for the good of the people and not the possible girth of their wallet.  And finally, I hope that people come to see that we are all given a voice that we can use to seek change.  When we finally start using it again, for our own benefit and not the benefit of banks and multinational companies, then we will indeed be more powerful than the corporate interests currently in control.  At least, I hope.  We can and should first say, "fuck this system."  Then we need to demand another.

I also hope that despite their frustration, our leaders will remember that we have rights to assemble and rights to speak.  The First Amendment-- shit, democracy-- is inconvenient, expensive, messy.   No one likes to hear things that question their imperatives but, hey, if they relax and listen, they might see that they have a player in the game as well.  And when they say that our rights are guaranteed for only as long as we break no laws but there are far too many laws at their disposal, then we need to sit down and resist.  Some laws are going to be broken; I hope that the offenses are nonviolent and the response as well.

Maybe time liquified.

I recently finished a collection of Murakami's short stories called After the Quake.  Published in 1995, each story references the tragedy of the Kobe earthquake-- what was horrible then remains horrible in the compounded complexity that another quake brought 16 years later.

I read the stories in a quick sitting and then re-read.  I sat alone and thought.  I finished some work and read again.  I came away with the following: alienation and solitude never grow old; they wax and wane until we accept them as natural conditions.

But maybe I'm saying that only because a box arrived for me in the middle of the afternoon.  Inside the box was every report card I received until I was 20.  News articles with my name in them.  Letters home inviting someone to an award ceremony.  Certificates.  A college entry essay and a booklet of poetry.  There were photos of friends doing things that shouldn't be photographed.  Photos of me with a drooping, rolled cigarette hanging on my lip.  Photos of my dad appearing sober or at least happy to see me.  All of this from another life that was long housed safely in a metal filing cabinet.  It would have been easier to control the girl described by all that paper if she'd been kept there too.  Now, I get the papers.

I finished a couple stories over the last couple weeks.  One is about family and the other about a movie star who lives next door.  Neither are experiential so don't worry.  I think now I'd like to work on something so all that paper finally gets to mean something.  Alternatively, I could put all that paper on the deck and watch the gales pick them up and take them away.

But I wouldn't do that.  That would be littering and my life really shouldn't be litter.