On Poor Writing Thursday, Aug 6 2009

I’m sitting at a red light. To my right is a video store. In this day of the download, those old brick-and-mortars don’t look so hot. Oh, they try — but so do the trannies in fishnets back on Santa Monica boulevard.

Still no green. I look at a very large poster for a movie I’ve never heard of.

The design elements are:

* a whole lot of white space

* a title I don’t remember

* a tagline in a font too small to read from the street despite the poster’s window filling acreage

* a man

* a woman who is Beyoncé

* another woman

* the arrangement of man-woman-woman to imply a love triangle of menacing nature

So, an awful poster for what looks like an awful movie.

I grew up in this neighborhood. I know this is the longest red light in town, but still — get me out of here.

Then everything that is on my right resonates with everything that is off in my life:

What if I write a movie like that? What if I write a screenplay and I think its really good because its the best I can do but then I see the poster and its something like that because frankly the marketing guys just don’t have a lot to work with? And the movie is awful and uninteresting and even I want to change the channel because I caught it on TV — didn’t even bother to DVR it — because frankly the director and actors and even the art department didn’t have anything more to work with than the marketing guys?

What if I write a bad movie?

I relate this story over sushi to my friend, a business director in her position and a novelist in her soul. The sun is now disappearing outside.  “Well,” she says, handing the black check presenter back to our server with her credit card inside,  “At least you’d get paid.”

My friend is very clever, and she’s right: I should be so lucky.

Back in the car, and now I’m looking out at the morning sun in the rearview mirror.

You should be so lucky, to write a terrible movie. If your first draft is coherent at all, it would be a happy accident.

I think of a screenplay sitting in my closet at home: a copy of an early draft of The Last Samurai. Its radically different than the story that Edward Zwick actually filmed, and not nearly as satisfying. Captain Algren isn’t a drunken soldier of fortune haunted by memories of genocide — he’s the darling of West Point. Katsumoto is the enemy and he stays the enemy. Algren is married, and his wife dies — predictably. All in all, rather bland.

“I’m like that too,” my friend says between sips of water. “I want it to be perfect the first time.”

“I guess it’s like what Hemingway said about first drafts,” I reply.

We smile at each other. We’re both writers; we know the quote. No need to curse during dinner.

The light turns green, and I pass through the intersection and continue towards the onramp. Time to go home and write something awful.

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Feedback Tuesday, Jun 10 2008

Went to Monkey Butler last night. Gabe was giving us personal evaluations, so it was a good chance to get his observations on where I need to develop as a performer.

So funny how improv training is synonymous with life training.

After class I went over to Chris Taylor’s house to see my buddy Nate. Chris is out of town on business, but his girlfriend Jeanne was there. She is an amazing woman, and becomes more amazing to me every time we talk and I learn more of her story. Last night she looks at me and says (with her wonderful French accent), “You’ve changed since the last time I saw you.”

Jeanne’s incredibly perceptive, so that got me to sit up and take notice. “Really? What’s different?”

“When I look into your eyes, there’s confidence. It wasn’t there before. I could see it even when you were outside, coming up to the house.”

Nate echoed the observation. “Oh yeah dude. You’re totally different then you were when I met you.”

I know there are still huge gaps in my life where I’m not confident at all, things where hidden terrors hold me back from moving forward.
But I am coming to accept that I can move forward. I have in other areas, I can in all others. Its the paradox of taking responsibility: you are where you want to be. You brought yourself here, but by the same token you can take yourself somewhere else.

Jeanne and Nate finished their wine, I had a beer. We talked more about adversity and purpose, relationships and vulnerability.

I haven’t achieved total victory over the darkness in my life. But the fact that my friends see the light that has come, the ground that’s been taken; this a great encouragement. I’m totally in love with these two people.

The couch was offered for me to crash on, and I accepted. These days I take every night I don’t come home as an adventurous accomplishment.

Nate’s off to visit family in Indiana for a week and half. Said goodbye and see you soon, then hopped on my bike and rolled down the hill to my place.

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Not enough dough in the pie. Monday, Nov 5 2007

Choices.

I didn’t choose this situation.

[Or maybe I did, but I'd like out now, thank you...]

Here’s where I’m at:

I have never made enough money to support myself, let alone my wife and child.

Just need to come out and admit that.

I was always chasing a dream. But I think now that while my dream of becoming a working screenwriter was and is perfectly valid, the motivation behind my pursuit of that dream was not. To wit, right thing wrong reason.

I was looking for the silver bullet. The solution to all of my problems.

Well, now the Writer’s Guild is on strike (a friend of mine is reporting for his shift on the picket lines tomorrow). Now even if I did finish the world’s greatest screenplay and the studio’s wanted to start a bidding war for it, I can’t sell it.

So now even the silver bullet is a blank.

I think this is a good thing. I think this is one more thing God is stripping away right now.

Because now I’m starting to own up to some failures. Starting to develop some much needed hustle.

Here’s the math: There are three things that require most of my time, aside from eating and sleeping.

1.) Work – 5 nights a week

2.) School – 2 Days, 1 Night, and much more for homework

3.) Single Dad – 3 Days and Nights a week.

Net result: 1 Free evening and 2 Free half-days. Unfortunately, my financial aid got yanked this semester, and I’m not making enough at my job to meet expenses. To sum, the situation is unsustainable. One of these three has to give.

Money is what is lacking. Time and Energy devoted to Employment has to go up, not down.

I can be finished with school by January. I’ve decided that its not progress for me as a person if I quit. Better to achieve this goal sooner rather than stretching it out to June.

Which leaves my time with my daughter. I can’t take care of Adee by myself anymore.

But I am by myself.

So I can’t take care of Adee. Not if I am going to take care of–provide for–Adee.

I’m already missing out, I guess. Adee changes noticeably between each time I see her.

I wish there were other options. But I don’t get wishes.

Just choices.

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Chronological Complex Wednesday, Oct 24 2007

So, I think I am going to have to abandon the idea that this blog is going to work on a chronological basis. I simply don’t have the time and there is so much happening so fast for me to get it all down. I get overwhelmed and ignore the thing, which is even worse.

Instead, I’m going to switch over to an idea-centric approach. This seems to be the way I write anyways. But since I’m committing to the idea of posting along the line of ideas, rather than “and then this happened,” I won’t feel like I’m failing to get everything posted.

This should also help with the problem that a lot of people, from what they read here, are going away with the impression that I’m really depressed. For the record, I’m not depressed. Depressed is when you feel bad more than you should. That’s not me.

You see, I’m really hurting.

But something would be definitely wrong if I wasn’t. I see this in some of the advice I get–that if she doesn’t love me like she should, I don’t have any obligation anymore, that I’m being unhealthy or unaccepting by pining away from someone who’s over me, that I should accept her choice and go find someone who will treat me better.

Well, I think the only way to take that advice is to take all the hurt and pain and pretend like just because its wrong it doesn’t matter. Sorry gents, can’t go with you on this one. It hurts precisely because it is wrong, and its wrong because it hurts. That’s the inverse proof of the golden rule guys.

I mean, seriously, this is the single worse act of rejection in my life. Let’s say–theoritacally, because I don’t believe this is in the cards and even if it is I don’t know if I could play the hand–I get married again and then that woman–let’s call her Suzanne (wow, two dashed parentheticals in one sentence [and then a parantheticalled wry observation {okay this has got to stop}])–let’s say Suzanne divorces me, is that going to be as bad as the first time around? No. It will be bad, but as they say: you always remember your first.

I mean, how many other relationships do you have in life where someone stands up in front of everyone who matters to them and takes a vow to stick with you for life? Any employers doing that? Friends? Family didn’t get an option.

You see, I am still under an obligation, because when the pastor asked me to make my vows, he looked at me, and he asked me, and not once did he say “As long as Christina keeps vows too.” Nope, didn’t happen. My vows were just that: my vows. Christina can do what she wants. I’m going to keep mine, because that’s who I choose to be.

Am I crazy? We’ll see… but I’m staking everything on the belief that when I married this woman, God made us one, and that no matter what happens, he won’t abandon us. Because I don’t believe God is trying to screw me over with impossible situations. I believe he is trying to save all of us and show us the true meaning of joy with impossible situations.

So no, my friends, there is nothing else that I will ever experience that will pack more personal rejection. The whole world could have turned its back on me; if Christina would have still held my hand, it would have been fine. I’m hurting. A LOT. But I should be, given the situation. The real question is what am I going to do with that pain? There is no not hurting, there is accepting and acknowledging, or ignoring and being made a puppet.

I can’t control the pain. But I can find the purpose.

I list all the pain and hurt in my life because that’s what I’m using this blog for. To use this situation to get out all the bad stuff I’ve tried my whole life to cover over, and to do it out in the open so it might help others to do the same. So I’m sorry if what I have written has given the wrong impression. I haven’t been able to post everything here, Sadly a lot of what I’ve left out is the good times. For instance, last Saturday was wonderful.

—————-
Now playing: Angels & Airwaves – The Gift
via FoxyTunes

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The many waves that have prevented my course Tuesday, Oct 16 2007

So, here’s a list I made this morning of all the inner fears I can think of that are calling the shots in my life, that have got me where I am. I figure a good way to admit both the truth and lie of them is just to throw them out for the whole world to see. Once the secret is out, it loses its power, right? So here we go.

I am afraid that…

-I am worthless

-I am rejectable

-I am not good enough

-I can’t be good enough

-No matter how hard I try, I will always fail

-I don’t deserve anything I want

-I will make a mistake that will cost me what I love

-I deserve to be punished

-I cannot love

-I will never be loved

-I am meant to be lonely and alone

-I am not really interesting.

-I am irrevocably flawed

-I am incapable of rising to the challenges of my life

-I am a bad friend

-I am detestable and hate-able

-I cannot be trusted

I’ve saved the best for last. I think the number one thing that makes me a controling person is the fear that

I CANNOT DEPEND ON ANYONE and NO-ONE CAN (OR SHOULD) DEPEND ON ME

I write these things, and I know that they are both true and false. In myself, they are true. The evidence is everywhere around me. But in God, they are false. And God is much greater than myself, and thank God for that.

What I do know is that until I admit and embrace the elements of truth, I cannot transcend the lie. I look at this list and consider my life and the two go together like a ring on a finger.

Well, I’m willing to wear a different ring now. I’m ready to admit and accept and then see what life is after that.

It may look awful on the surface, but like the ocean, there’s a lot of peace just below. I’m already a dead man. Corpses can’t drown.

God be with us all on our journey. May He romance your heart and soul.

—————-
Now playing: Chris Tomlin – Enough
via FoxyTunes

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Dichotomy unpeeled–this blows my mind. Sunday, Oct 7 2007

I am two people. A dead man and a living one.

I have complete freedom from myself because myself is deserving of nothing–on my own I am as dust.

I have complete freedom in myself because Christ is in me and He is deserving of everything.

These things were revealed while meditating several days ago. I’ve been trying to discern the right path between two unmovable truths:

1. My repeated actions have completely disqualified me from any claim to my marriage to Christina based on my own merits, etc. I made promises and didn’t fulfill them. I habitually broke her trust. I did not honor her as unique and special. As a lifestyle, I sought to control and manipulate my circumstances and therefore her. I ignored her feelings unless they threatened me; then I would approach them as a problem to solve, something to appease so the conflict would go away, rather than someone to love and care for. I demanded authenticity from her life while my own was rife with hypocrisy, demanded she give while I was selfish to such a degree that I couldn’t even see it.

2. I love her, and if I am not pursuing her I am less then who I am. She is God’s embodiment of love to me, and I to her. While I may have warped the way the truth was expressed in our lives and marriage through all the things listed above, that doesn’t change the underlying, certain as the orbit of the stars and the moon, reality that she is my wife, my soulmate, my Beloved. God joined us together in marriage, and we are One.

The confusion comes when deciding what actions to take. How can I act on the second truth when the first is inescapable? These realities both ARE, they exist, yet they have completely opposite velocities. How can their co-existence be reconciled, especially when all I have available is my own limited place in time?

Dana spoke at Mosaic last week. She chose the moment when Moses stepped forward and told God that if He wanted to destroy Israel–who had just blown it with the golden calf–that God was going have to zap Moses first. In fact, he threw more down on the table than just his life–he put his soul at risk.

How does a man do that? I think it’s because Moses knew he was already dead.

I think Moses always remembered that when he had tried his hand at delivering the Israelites from Egypt despite all the learning of a prince all he was able to come up with was violence. Murder. And the Israelites, who were experts in recognizing coercion, called him on it. “Will you strike me dead as you did the Egyptian yesterday?”

I think Moses knew the only reason he was still alive was because of grace. The very law he was delivering to the people said “An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth.” The punishment for murder was death. Moses had committed this crime. The very fact that he was still breathing at all meant he of all people understood the necessity for love and compassion and mercy rather than judgment.

Does this mean he got off the hook? No. It meant he understood that God had a complete right to do whatever He wanted with Moses life.

Same with me. Ive committed sins that God clearly considers to be capital offenses. It doesn’t matter the sin. What matters is that I’ve blown it. My own life is forfeit. Will I physically die? No. I’ll just keep living this slow death of trying: trying to be loving, trying to be creative, trying to be effective, trying to be a leader, a good son, a good father, a good brother, a good husband.

And I will continue to fail, and to fall. Further and further into a pit of futility. Because all of my trying will be an attempt to deny the truth that will not go away. That I am NOT a good anything. I am not good. I am selfish. I am a thief and a murderer, if not of material goods and lives then of souls and love. On my own, my ultimate contribution is dust and worms, a plague on all people. And the harder I try to deny it, the more I’ll prove it true.

But if I can admit all of these things…

Then I can place this wretched life where it belongs. On a cross. And Christ can come off of His. He hung on his unto death. His work was completed. Now He lives. And unlike me, He lived a life of submission and love. He never sinned against God or man. He created all things and redeemed them. He is worthy of everything. And He lives in me.

When I show someone love, I love Christ. When someone loves me, they love Christ. Therefore, I can reconcile any guilt or feelings of unworthiness I have about receiving anything good in my life because it is really being received through me to Him. True, I don’t deserve it. But deserving and merit and works are appeased by the body hanging on the Hill of the Skull. I live because God lives in me, and whatever good I receive, it comes by mercy, by the understanding that it is right for Him to receive goodness and love and affection and joy through me.

And so I can be free. Both truths are acknowledged. The ways of the universe are appeased. And we may all live in fellowship and joy.

Found this little bit of advice on how to actually put some of this into practice:

“After you find the specific hurt that you’ve been running from, the next step is to do the opposite of fighting it, which is to face it and then embrace it. Allow yourself to feel the hurt of being this way. Cry if you can. Then, while you are feeling this hurt, look over your life and see all the evidence to prove that this is indeed an aspect of you.

Find the evidence to prove that you are worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, a failure or whatever else you’ve been avoiding.

Remember, this isn’t true in reality. This is only true in the realm of thinking and emotion. But in this realm, worthless is very real, and this is the realm where the healing needs to take place. So put yourself in the hurt of feeling this way and look at your life and see all the evidence to prove that you really are this way.

The evidence will be there if you are willing to see it. It has to be. It wouldn’t keep showing up in your life if it wasn’t there. You don’t have to like it. You just have to tell the truth about it. Let it in.

Worthless is part of you. It’s also no big deal. You are also worthy. Worthless and worthy are both aspects of being human. So allow yourself to be human.

Allow yourself to feel all the hurt of being worthless, not good enough, a failure or whatever your issue is. Feel the hurt willingly like a child. Let it come and let it go.

The more you let in the fact that this is an aspect of you, the more impossible it is to run from it. When you can’t run from it, you can’t fight it. When you can’t fight it, the issue loses power and disappears.”

—————-
Now playing: Honey – Force Majeure
via FoxyTunes

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Handling Fear and Pain Sunday, Oct 7 2007

So I’m really taking a look at how much of my life is regulated by fear. How many things am I set on doing that I don’t do? Why? Am I incapable? No. Uninterested? No? What stops me?

Fear.

Of what? I don’t know. Lots of things, I bet.

Number one: Not measuring up.

Here’s an identity I’m trying to leave behind. “He’s so smart and talented. If only he’d finish something.”

I’ve been living with that assessment since kindergarten.

There’s a lot I don’t know. But I know that I don’t need to live under the shadow of failure for the rest of my life. I don’t care if I blow it. I care that I went to the end of the line to make it. I care if I can place fear to my left side and carry on all the same. I care that my life amounts to more than a winding down clock. I want more than just to get by with the least amount of pain possible. Pain is a means to an end, and it will come regardless. How pointless to not achieve that point yet suffer the pain all the same.

If more pain means that I’ll finally get it and knuckle down and deliver, make a reality out of the dreams that God and everyone and myself are hoping for, longing for, dying slowly without, then bring it.

I can take pain.

I can’t handle meaninglessness.

“To have a fear lose its power, you need to do the opposite of resisting. You need to be willing for the fear to happen. You don’t have to like it, and you don’t have to sit around and do nothing. You just have to be willing.

Letting go is strictly a state of mind and is totally separate from your actions. Letting go is what removes the fear and upset so that you can see what action works.

For example, in your heart, be willing to lose your spouse. But in your actions, do everything you can to create an environment where he or she would never want to leave.”

—————-
Now playing: Josh Kelley – Home to Me
via FoxyTunes

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A Lily Among the Thorns Friday, Sep 28 2007

So Christina wanted to check her e-mail while she was over. This blog is my homepage, so she saw it and she asked what the Fleur De Lys at the top was. I told her it was French. She asked what it meant. I didn’t really know.

Turns out its been around a lot longer then the French, although it is most strongly associated with their monarchy. The symbol is a stylized flower. Good ol’ wikipedia tells us that its also associated with the Trinity and the Annunciation of the birth of Christ by the arcangel Gabriel.

There’s also a reference to Song of Songs, where Solomon says:

“Like a lily among thorns,

So is my love among the daughters.”

Later, his Beloved responds:

“His left hand is under my head,

And his right hand embraces me.”

I think that will be the idea we are going to symbolize here.

—————-
Now playing: Paul Oakley – House of Gold
via FoxyTunes

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That’s how I roll. Thursday, Sep 27 2007

Sleep has just been upgraded to a luxury, which means I’ll have to get by without it.

I’m just getting squeezed in too many ways.

My coming financial aide isn’t, and I just found out yesterday might not ever.

I’m getting smoked by deadlines in Biology and Business Algebra.

I’m watching Adee or working most of the rest of the time.

I’ve got overages on my cell phone for the first time ever, and they are hefty.

Guerrilla Theatre is still in the starting gate, and the school club deadlines are slipping by too.

So get ready for insomniac Remy… assuming I have the willpower for it.

Course I do. I can’t NOT have it, so I have it.
—————-
Now playing: Delirious? – All the Way
via FoxyTunes

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Three finger salute Wednesday, Sep 26 2007

I wonder if someone is praying for me right now…

I just had a realization that is so obvious, yet hasn’t occurred to me until just this moment.

While Christina was drifting away during the last few months, I pleaded with her: find a spiritually mature woman in your life who has been through what you’re going through now. Connect with someone who can give you hope, who’s own life proves that you can make it through your own struggles.

Sadly, Christina didn’t do this, but rather withdrew from most of the friends she did have.

Am I blogging about this to point the finger at Christina? Nope. Because as the old saying goes, there’s three more of my own pointing right back at me.

Where was my mentor?

Sure, I had counselors and friends and buddies and whole bunch or support people. But where was the more spiritually mature man leading me? Whose authority did I submit myself too?

Where was I setting an example?

There wasn’t one.

What does that make me? Telling someone else to do something I hadn’t done myself?

A hypocrite.

So interesting that such a blatant failure to lead should have escaped my attention for months until now.

The flipside is that whenever I discover a way I have been doing exactly what I’ve seen my spouse do or vice versa, when I see these thorough connections between our two lives and personalities, it makes me feel that we are really expressing one life–that we truly are soulmates.

Time to find a mentor. I’ve got a candidate in mind. Hope he’s not too busy. That’s the thing about mentors: they tend to be successful by definition and therefore subject to previous commitments. . .

—————-
Now playing: Red House Painters – Silly Love Songs
via FoxyTunes

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