Like most people, I set goals at the gym. Not heavy and hard numbered goals, but still goals.

This will sound ridiculous, but my goal weight was 190 by January. I was doing good. Staying lean, because that was part of my goal. Hitting the gym six times a week religiously.

But then I had a sort of melt down. I try as much as I can to avoid ever really talking about what is actually happening in my life, without pretense or metaphor. I don’t like talking about such things. But I will make this one exception.

Someone I care a lot about is gone. The details don’t matter. It hurts. I am a lot more grown up about this sort of thing than I have been in the past. I’m throwing away the useless parts of the process and internalizing what I can use. But it took a minute to get there.

I spent a whole week drunk. Not a little. I probably shouldn’t have driven to work in the mornings. In a strange way, it was on purpose. I don’t want to even register any of these emotions in another week, so I power-sulked. And it worked, to a point.

I’m being this honest for a reason, knowing full well you, the reader, are probably as uncomfortable as I am with it. I weighed myself in the gym and saw that one of my goals is impossibly far away. I wanted to be around 190 by January. I lie to people and tell them I’m close to it. I’m not.

I weigh somewhere around 170 right now. It’s easy to see why. I forgot to eat for a while. I’d be too sick with the liquid flu to get to the gym. I wouldn’t eat in the mornings. I sort of lost motivation to buy food. Really let myself down on that one.

So, there it is.

I was doing good. I was brushing up against 185, three weeks ago. I could have done it. I don’t see any way I can hit my goal.

I’m a sad Panda.

There is a welling hatred in humanity. It belies any struggling claim of divinity that a religion can muster.

It’s a black laquer artery.

Some of them are redeemed. They make guitars.

Or breakfast.

Other than that, fuck ‘em.

The slanting beams of light scraped clean the corners of the room. The piles of clothes and darkness held onto small points, crucified, where the heavy blinds failed to occult the day from the room.

There were her thoughts. Memories, unwelcome and ruthless.

There were the nights where the whole night sky of the ceiling flamed above with the grasping and sighing. There were the conversations, ideas submitted to the medium of sound, that lit the corners of the mind with sacred silver fire. There were both, and vacillations untold between the two. There. On that bed.

You can sense The Gone. You may not know hate when you see it or violence in another’s words, but The Gone is a real thing. And it was everywhere. The room, constricting and claustrophobic had a great gravity and void of immense empty space where once bodies had shared and minds had mated in the air between. The Gone bleeding out in the holy sepulcher of the dark.

Spiritual death among the still quickened breathed in the world entire.

In the desert, past the confines of her there would be a truck crossing some bridge over the playas and bajadas.

The Gone would be there, too, but in higher form. In the form of honesty and the return of a lover to his estranged. Eight years sober, but never clean. Never without it in him and through him, that hunger and need.

And the needs of a person are their world entire. He had been sober and been happy, but all for her. For the need, for his real love, he was never sober or happy. Those were not the requirements of that love. The love of any substance is the love of the holy darkened self.

And so she sat watching her glass go clear and the lines form like tree rings as the water evaporated into the expanding universe of The Gone.

Look, I don’t write a popular blog. It has briefly collided with a sort of popularity and crashed back down, but never sustained more than a small, but most appreciated, readership.

But you know what I can do that very few of those fancy 45 comment a day bloggers can do?

Stop by Border’s, tip back some coffee, browse the rack, the real, honest to god (not Local Authors) rack…and find my own name.

Suck it, bitches.

Ok, that was rude. But really. Suck it, bitches.

Ok. So, there is a swelling of pride I was not anticipating upon seeing my name printed in a nationally circulated magazine.  Is it The New Yorker or Darkhorse? No. But it is a magazine I’ve read and loved for years that is circulated widely. And now I have a terrible write-up and a worse picture on the contributor page.

It also does something else in my head. This is a real magazine. If I can publish a goofy short fiction and get a sweet 29′er out of it, I guess that means I’m a real writer. An author.

I have no more excuses.

Update! For NurseMyra!

Casey Smart has a bred-in Calvinist inability to say nice things about himself.  That inability is the product of a religious upbringing in his native Southwest Colorado. He lived an eventful childhood of arson, petty vandalism, car-theft, and train hopping.

His academic career is spotty but storied.

He mostly lives and rides in Grand Junction, Colorado.  His time is spent as a cartographer and occasional geologist working throughout the Colorado Plateau.

His writing is generally middling and his riding skills are such that he is rarely injured.

I woke up in someone’s bed this morning. There was a minute of panic that never made it through the headache entirely. Then I realized that I was waking up alone, and had slept the same way.  Possible disaster(s) averted.

Upon further memory investigation, I determined that I was at a friend’s house who didn’t let me drive home. Further still, I had woke up in that exact place before. And under nearly identical circumstance. And I had spent the previous night drinking the same person off my mind.

I don’t think anything one person does can ever be blamed wholly on another, as that would imply crass causality. But neither can the blame totally settle on the self for exactly the same reason.

That statement sums up, more or less, my entire philosophy on human relationships. There is a network of experiences and relationships that pull or push people into their behavior, good or bad. It removes blame from the individual, and I bristle at that.  ”What about justice!” I yell over the sound of me sharpening my spear.

But  first bristling instinct is generally wrong in these cases. It does allow a certain laziness.

I have noticed fundamental differences in the way we think. I never trust first instinct until I have ran it through possible interpretations, dragging it through a mired and horrible place feelings go to die.  It is a struggle toward a more accurate reality.  If I had to point out anything in the causal network that would make me think that way, I would be split between being raised around religion that was sometimes harmful or deadly to its believers and the justified and pleasant feeling of killing people you were told you fundamentally disagreed with. Because we were right(!). War is the ultimate act of gut instinct. That’s why warriors grind their teeth at the idea of diplomacy. It gives everyone a chance to come to their senses. This way is hard and slow and takes away that great feeling of being absolutely right. It removes being right entirely in most cases.

The other method of thinking is one where you already know the world around you. It’s color and shape and they way everything moves. And when anything doesn’t fit it, you kick it out. I think that’s how justice systems work.  Anyone who has ever been a cop or criminal with any critical thinking at all can determine the impossibility of justice.  What generally happens is that a person is determined to not fit, and the conviction follows.  Meaning, the person is tried for fitness in the system, not for their crime, though we take great measures to be just.  This way has the advantage of allowing a person to be right and to feel right about something.

Neither way is stupid. If I had to name them, I think the first process would be scientific and the second philosophical.

Those two modes of thinking, and they probably both exist in every person, have no ability to ever make anything better for anybody.

You don’t know what a long time is, she said.

And that was accurate. I was gone less than half the year, so I figured it was nothing.

You don’t know what sad even is, another one said.

Maybe that’s true. Maybe I don’t.

Neither realized they weren’t being nice.  People are unfair that way.

Something in the booze makes you remember the things people say. It is unfair that way.

If I had a full tank of gas and wasn’t slowly listing to port already, I’d be in Mexico.

Fuck ‘em.

One:

I am not convinced that stirring raw egg whites into orange juice for breakfast is the weirdest thing I do from day to day. Because, really, I do some weird shit. Before you get all judgy, consider how much weirder it is to mix some whey powder out of a plastic jug full of chemicals into water and drink that for protein. Egg is about the most readily absorbed protein out there, and pretty much the original diet for mammals.  Yeah, I just went fucking Triassic with that shit. What?

And I also submit the fifteen pounds heavier, by weekly average, I am than I was at the end of October with no real change in waist* size. I am getting monstrously, laptop stealer strangling huge*. And it is probably because of the dozen eggs I drink a day.

So quit looking at me funny.

Two:

So, I had to come up with a plot piece the other day. I whined about it previously. Anyway, with fifteen minutes to go, I googled “Plot ideas stories.”

There was this one that looked promising where you pull out reading materials and start pointing at words. I only had my geology books nearby. I came up with “Rock Hammer must stop machine.”

At ten minutes and four pages into where that awesomeness led, I realized I needed to wrap it up. The story was called The Passion of the Rock Hammer. And it needs some definite work, but is awesome. Awesome enough to be put in the anthologies.

Of Awesome.

Anyway, the next few days will see a big departure here. I would like to really focus on this Rock Hammer thing, but I’m not sure where to go with it. I never saw myself as a humor writer, and most attempts at being funny in writing go over poorly.

That rings truer the last few days than any other time I can think of off hand. I just had to physically restrain myself from ranting about Facebook.

The point is, I have to have the thing built up before the end of the day Sunday, anyway, so I’ll post it on here. And if it’s easy, then I’ll just keep going with it.

Three:

No, really. Fucking Facebook, I swear to fucking god. That shit is retarded. It does not belong in the anthologies of Awesome.

Because it sucks.

*Not really.

**How in the fuck is this word not recognized by WordPress? Every other blog on the internet is some chick bitching about her waist.

I ran today. I’ve been creeping back into the habit, but it’s not the easiest.  The reality of Colorado in the winter is that the air is cold and dry and there isn’t much of it. It causes physical pain to breathe it at the rate needed for moderate exertion.  It causes something primal and agonal when you push it a little harder.

Killing it.

My concerns about a fundamental change in myself were probably premature. There is still within me a desire to hurt and exert. Thank God.

I kept pushing through two miles and my lungs were on fire. I coughed and coughed and every time, my chest ached across my collar bone and down to my sternum. The muscles were cold and sore.  My knees hurt and my ankles were threatening failure. But I kept going.

I remember one time a freshly unencumbered ex read what was basically an online workout journal I was keeping. She said, in a most egotistical way, that she was concerned with how I was coping with my loss. The loss of her, in case you’re not following.  I told her I was fine. She said I was making unhealthy decisions. I told her I was fine. She said she was concerned with my running routine. I told her running was healthy.  She said running until I puked was not healthy. It was, indeed, a detailed log she had been reading.

It pointed out to me a fundamental misunderstanding on her part of what I was then and probably still am. I don’t run until I puke because of anyone. Because I’m sad or angry or any other reason. I run until I puke because it is Run Until I Puke Day that day. Have you ever pushed yourself like that? If you haven’t, then you probably wouldn’t understand.

There is a point of exertion where you are no longer yourself. It’s not a runner’s high, it’s a runner’s particulate extinction.

I found my forever pace again. Everyone has one. It’s the pace you can hold forever. Lay it in and you can glide for miles and miles and miles until the run is just another thing you do. Like breathing or hearing. Five miles or ten miles, it doesn’t matter. It’s the pace where your footsteps are silent and your breathing is another orbit of another world, important but not pressing.

Somewhere in the 30/60/120 sprints and four mile motto runs, I lost my forever pace. It was gone. I only knew how to push it or stop.  I could burn it up or leave it cold. Words I have heard a few too many times in my life: It’s all or nothing with you.

But I found it again, though it is not necessarily between all or nothing. It isn’t some middle path. It’s another world of deep convergence. I’m not even sure what that sentence meant, but it describes it perfectly. It’s all and nothing.

But then there’s those times you hit two miles and just want to run hard and fast in the cold until your lungs bleed. And that is greater than happiness or sadness or contentment. This is the greater part of me.

Killing it.

I’ve adopted the role of songwriter for my band. It’s not as easy a fit as one would think. I find any form of poetry difficult and approaching impossible. Luckily, all our songs are about fast cars or hookers.

I also dug up some old recordings I made years ago on a four track tape deck. They suck about seven different ways. It’s amazing. If I find some way to host them, I’ll make them available to download for all you nice people. It reminds me of a very true thing: I really, really like over-driven vocals. No really.

I used to run an improvised effects loop (out the headphone jack, back into the input) with my guitar stompboxes as standalone effects. A Big Muff Pi running into a Tubescreamer really turns ghosted out reverb soaked vocals into something amazing. I had to do all this crazy vocal fucking up because I can’t sing for shit.

Why am I telling you nice people all of this? Well, I plan on firing up my pirated copy of Cakewalk Sonar and plugging in my $40 USB interface and starting up the whole project again. I have a hard time writing non-folky singer/songwriter type crap when I’m playing guitar at the same time. And now finally, the whole point of this post:

Don’t you think it’s funny how you have to separate yourself from your true talents to do something truly creative?  I can play guitar all day. It’s what I’m good at. But to write (good) songs, I have to be hearing fully realized and coldly rendered music divorced totally from my hands.

Lately I’ve been thinking about writing as a vocation instead of a hobby. Maybe to be able to tell a real story, which I am bad at, I need to divorce myself totally from my main talent. For example, maybe I should lay off the settings and characters.  That John Pine project, among others, is kicking my ass. Probably because I can make it beautiful as long as nothing ever really happens.

My biggest challenge in thinking up plots (this relates to a recent school project) is that I don’t see the world around me as plots. The stories never really start and never really end. Characters don’t arc, they sine wave. So, how do you capture a cyclical universe in a plot pyramid?

I just don’t know.

As an aside: http://www.dirtragmag.com/print/article.php?ID=1244&category=features

I took a break from this blog for a while. About all the posts the last couple weeks were in queue from a while back.

Honestly, I’ve been taking a break from everything. Most nights I’m home, I sit with a my guitar and watch reruns on Hulu. I haven’t cooked a meal in quite a while.  I haven’t done a lick of mechanical work on anything. I don’t hang out much with family and friends, short of holidays. This has been going on almost two months.

Some astute people have noticed. Others have not. I judge neither.

If I’m not at work or the gym, I’m probably just killing time by myself.

Those readers who have Facebook privileges probably know not to worry about me too much.  Someone posts at least one picture of me a day where I look happy. That may be what’s nagging at me.

I’m maybe a little happy.

It’s probably not the new friends or the old friends or being in the best shape I’ve been in a long time. It’s probably not the girl. I don’t know why I’m happy. I grew a damn beard to try and regain my normal winter misanthropy. The beard is more whimsical than anything. I try to brood and drink, but I just end up getting tipsy and laughing at The Office, which seems to have recovered itself.

This is awful.

Prickly unapproachability is 85% of my charm.