You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. ~George Orwell (more…)
Today, a new act debuts.
No longer a tragedy.
*Author’s note ~ This is a random excerpt from a currently in progress novel.
… Don’t look for the pain in my heart, my suffering is crystal clear and worn on my face. All you need to know of hatred and grand failure can be read through my eyes. I have transgressed and I am eager to atone. I’ve lived a greedy, selfish life; always demanding more, always wanting what I didn’t have – trivializing and insulting anything real which I might have been fortunate enough to actually hold in my filthy hands. I’ve lived professing a love for beauty, yet continually killing and denying it in actual practice. I squander what I have while others starve. Realizing in private that, deep down inside, when I’m truly honest, there’s nothing honest about me at all. I can’t even be honest with myself. The fog, the confusion, the distraction of myself blinds all my attempts at understanding how I feel-what I need and what I should do. What is right, what is wrong… what do I love, what do I hate? Honestly, I cannot tell.
All I have is want; “THIS” , this very second and perhaps not at all the next. I never know if anything that happens is real. I never know if what I’m doing is true. As if I’m paralyzed, yes I move, talk, act, fuck, shit, breathe… but I’m immobile and atrophied inside. I’m a sad and contemptible excuse for a man. I’m horribly poisonous and I’ll ruin your life. A creature of vice and artifice. A sham nigger. A ridiculously antiquated joke which has run its bloody course, wearing out its welcome long, long ago.
I feel everything, acute, sharp edges which dig into my heart. Yet I feel nothing at all. I’m pathetic. A distortion, an aberration, a disease… and I’ve eagerly , gleefully infected so many innocents throughout my life.
Yet a heart may grow too hardened. A mind as sick as mine can evolve to the point of wishing for nothing more than a bullet to break through its skull and bring with it a brain whose only thoughts will be oblivion. A mind can demand that the lies truly end. My mind fights an endless, foolish war, an eternal war of internal genocide. Just senseless chaos and mania. All feigning sacrifice, all jumbled lies and affectations which taint every syllable sliding around my tongue.
And my heart refuses to pity me. Even for just a second… no, no I’m cursed to remember. I ostensibly remember everything and all attempts to destroy those memories have been in vain. My mind desperately clings to them… stirring up my fears greedily. Tenaciously demanding that I live in constant knowledge of my self-inflicted pain.
Here is my small red mouth, filled with lies to spit at you.
Here is my long dead heart, filled with fears to torture you.
EDIT: there is a new updated version of this here: http://surrealistgesture.com/2008/08/08/a-peek-at-the-most-recent-draft-prologue-and-first-chapter-again/
I present to my readers the prologue and partial first chapter of the novel I’m currently wrestling with. Be aware: This is very much still a work in progress and almost certainly subject to very definite and far-reaching changes. For your consideration: (more…)
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