Remedy Ink has been gracious enough to offer to publish my first book, a collection of short stories. I am very excited and nervous. I used to be nervous that the stories weren’t very good, but now that I’ve immersed myself in them as much as I have, I am quite sure they’re good (I’ll acknowledge that all are different and will be regarded as more or less good than one another). In fact, when VV first proposed the idea, I had to go pull most of the stories out of a folder I titled “Probably Suck.” But they don’t. I don’t think so. You might.

And that’s what I’m nervous about. Maybe. Not quite. It will hurt if you don’t like them. But I’m used to people not liking me (and my stories are, of course, me and I will take every negative and positive thing said entirely too personally, but I’m aware of that) and have the perfectly unhealthy, but adequate defense mechanism of hating you right back in place.

What I’m not prepared for and don’t know how to handle or prevent, is no one caring. No one reading. Which will most likely happen. I’m aware of that. I know how many Twitter followers I have. I see how many people read this blog. I know my mom has more Facebook friends than me. I’ve always been a bit alone and have come to kind of accept that, or at least realize that’s who I am, but my stories feel different. Especially if they’re good. If they’re good, then you should read them, you should get to have that privilege (seeing as no one likes me (myself included), it’s kinda strange that I’ve managed to develop a self-righteous God-complex, huh?). I want you to see this, to read my stories.

But I don’t want to bring myself to the forefront of your brain. I hate talking about myself. On some level, this is why no one likes me (there’s the abrupt abrasiveness too). I don’t talk about myself and what I do, so I kinda don’t exist. Why take time caring about someone who doesn’t exist? I understand that. Acknowledging that I might be worth something kills me. It’s so hard for me. It’s going to take so much effort for me to post something on Facebook about the book, to build any knowledge of its existence. And when I finally do hit the post button, the post will be incredibly self-deprecating and turn off anyone’s interest immediately.

What’s wrong with me? Why do I want to be heard and not want to talk? Can the one person who reads this do me a favor and spread the word about Scenic Utah, out soonish in ebook format please? Thanks.

On a completely tangential note, Refused is so good. I always knew it, but I’m listening to The Shape Of Punk To Come on Spotify and it’s awesome. I really liked a follow-up project called Text for a while too. Gonna have to recheck that out. Maybe I suggest it.

Quick Work Complaints

It’s Thursday, which means I’ve worked 3 days so far this week: a 4-hour shift, a 4.25-hour shift (I had to fight for that extra quarter hour to do a small portion of the much-needed cleaning) and a 5 hour shift. Each one has also included an unpaid lunch. It takes somewhere in the vicinity of an hour to get there and back (not quite accurate, but close enough for an average) and bridge/BART is about $6. This week I’m working an extra (sixth) day and working fewer hours than normal.

I know the boss is making a ton of money right now.

Sometimes all this is frustrating, sometimes it’s dehumanizing.

It is nice to have so much morning-time to work on my own words. But my shitty, self-indulgent words won’t pay rent next month.

Unemployed

Kaiser Permanente has been running these radio ads (I spend an unfortunate amount of time in a car, listening to the radio) in which they claim their hiring practices to be super-exclusive. Only 1 in 10 applicants becomes a doctor with Kaiser, which they say is an amazing ratio. Can you imagine if the rest of the country had that ratio? My boss said he gets something like 200 applicants for every open position. You can’t just use numbers and pretend like it’s impressive Kaiser.

Look At Me

When I decided to update here again and more frequently (that probably doesn’t make sense if you aren’t in my head–at least not the sense I want it to make) I promised myself I wouldn’t get all whiny, but fuck that. What am I doing with my life? I’m 30 minus something (www.soleone.org), work a deadend job in the service sector, have not career future and try to sell stupid little zines.

Where did this come from? The East Bay Zinefest. It was kinda awful for me. It didn’t feel like a community. I know how much my own isolationism contributes to this, but I did also try to reach out some too and that didn’t go very well. I felt like a museum display or an idea generator. No one was there as a consumer (I know my political standpoint kinda makes that a hypocritical sentence). People came up, looked, asked where the inspiration came from and left, as though they were trying to get their own ideas from mine. I know my ideas are clever, nauseatingly so. I know seeing a 2-sided story should trigger an impulse to buy. That didn’t happen though. I got rid of one Separated and that was only because I shoved it into someone’s hands. Wes sent me girlcrazy to give away and I had trouble doing that. Okay, so that seems like I’m taking pity on myself. Here’s this then: Emily Alden Foster (no website)  has a zine called Cross my words and hope to _____(verb). It’s stories, poems, art, madlibs and crosswords all rolled into one. It’s batshit-crazy awesome. Like possibly one of the most original and genius ideas I’ve ever heard. She sat behind me and I didn’t notice many people buying her zine (I did even though I’m crossword stupid). It was $6 and was worth every penny. Emily sat next to me and sold only glow-in-the-dark stickers, and only 4 or so at that.

I had problems with the event, yes, but more so, I have problems with myself. It’s hard to admit, but I think I’m good at this. I want to be noticed. (Those may or may not be related.) I do think I’m clever and I do think that if I were a consumer and saw what I had to offer I would buy my stuff (pronoun problems!). I question why I do all this work if nothing will come of it. I did a new issue of I Hate My Job just for the Zinefest. I made 20 copies. I still have 15 (which doesn’t count #1, which I kept for myself) (oddly #20 and #8 are missing: holler at me if you want a lower/different #). Getting rid of 4 of them is more than I thought I did. I feel a little better now.

I’m just afraid that the way things are is the way things will always be. I want to be noticed, but don’t want to say, “look at me.”

Does that all seem ungrateful? I hope not. I’m trying to say that the problem lies with me. I actually really appreciate the opportunity that RPS gave me. I just wish I was different/better

Thanksgiving

This is the first Thanksgiving I’ve ever spent alone. I haven’t spent a major holiday with family in 8 years, but have always had other families/people to fill that space. This year that is not the case. I’ve always dreaded these holiday-families a bit, even when they were my own. I’m quite poor in person, can never really be myself. I feel nonexistent in a roomful of personalities. Though I do eat and eat and eat. But that wouldn’t be possible this year as my stomach has shrunk, I think, from eating less in general.

But am I okay with being alone?

Truthfully, I don’t know and I don’t know that I intend to find out. There’s football (Go Pack Go!) and I’m going to print an assemble zines for the zinefest Sunday. My mind will hopefully be elsewhere.

Seriously though, this zinefest is gonna be awesome. I’ll have Separated, I Hate My Job 4 and a special zinefest-only edition of I Hate My Job. Also I’ll have miscellaneous zines for trade sent to me by the wonderful Valerie Valentine (with whom I do Heart of Lit) and I’ll have a couple copies of her book of poems, Months. And I’m not done yet. I’ll have Girlcrazy by WC Tank (of Stumblesome, rap, and films) too. No other way to get your hands on some of this stuff if you’re in The Bay. Do it! (And be nice to me if you come because, despite that exuberance, I’m actually really scared and nervous about this thing and what if I don’t sell anything at all and let my friends down?) And Emily Goldface will be there and I saw her zine An Evil Cabin in the Woods at RPS the other day and it looked amazing. I’m kinda ashamed to put what my slapped-together zines in the same category as her art.

Original Flaw

Perhaps we weren’t born with original sin, but original flaw. Maybe we all have this one thing that’s wrong with us, that we would change if we could, but we can’t. And we never will be able to either. This is the thing we have to accept somehow and figure out a way to deal with because it isn’t going away. A fundamental flaw upon which the rest of ourselves are built. This isn’t a drinking problem or emotional eating. These aren’t things we do, but who we are.

For me, it’s that it’s a gorgeous Saturday on which I’m not working and I would prefer to be sitting at my computer, reading The A.V. Club, listening to mopey metal than out in the world with people. (Most times this is a choice. When I wrote that, it felt like a choice. Now, as I go back over this post to edit and delete things I can’t say, it feels less like a choice.) I’m a loner. I am alone. People scare the shit out of me. I can’t relate to individuals. I can’t hold a basic fucking conversation. “Hey what’s up with you? How’s school going?” Nope, never, ever going to occur to me to say that.

More than that though, it’s that I can’t talk about myself. I can’t reveal who I am. Because if I reveal my true feelings, you will hate me. Because of course you will. All the dourness, all the anger and self-righteousness. What’s not to hate? Or I’m terrified you won’t care so I don’t say anything. What I do seems so important to me, but I won’t tell you about it. So much so that this is going out into a vacuum. I turned Facebook Connect off here because I was scared someone I know might actually find out how I feel about something. Might come to know me. If I hadn’t told myself I needed to start putting more up here, this post would absolutely not exist.

I don’t know why I feel this way. I feel very different, very separate from most of humanity unless I can choose the terms on which we relate. I want to be loved and adored, but only for what I control, what I allow you to see. Stories, half-truths, tweets, written and controlled words, parts of me. Which, I’m pretty sure, is some serial killer shit.

Now that that’s over, the truth is, I know no one gives a flying fuck about what I do. No one asks. No one takes interest. I’ve made hints. My own parents don’t ask.

That’s not what’s relevant right now. Here’s what it is: Jenny said I wasn’t close enough to her family, that this was a fundamental flaw in our relationship. As much as I could try, I tried. There was a particular time, when I met her extended family, when I was the closest to a complete and total mental breakdown I’ve ever been. Gena Rowlands in Cassevetes breakdown. Which kinda set a poor tone from then on. Not that I would have been enough had I been sane at the time. But it was over then. That was my chance. I gave all I could and came up short. Doomed. Bound to fail.

This is terribly self-indulgent and would make a much better story than shitty blog post. Not that it would be a good story, but at least tolerable. I can barely read this thing. Hopefully you won’t. (Even in the self-aware part, it turns into a pity party.)

East Bay Zinefest

Rock Paper Scissors is hosting a zinefest at 924 Gilman on Sunday, November 27. I’ll be there, sharing a table with Emily Goldface. $5-10 sliding scale cover. I’ll have Separated, I Hate My Job 4 and a special zinefest-only edition of I Hate My Job that I started this morning. Come to it. Look at all the pretty zines.

My City Burns Itself

I was not at Occupy Oakland. I have not gone to Occupy Oakland. There, now if you wish to dismiss me you can do so upfront and not bother reading the rest of this. I was not there because I have a job. It is not a good job. I work very hard, kill my body, and will probably be physically unable to do this job after age 30. I make okayish money. Enough to live on, but not much more than that. I had to take my car into the shop yesterday and now I will eat rice and beans for a month. I live two people in a one bedroom apartment. That gives you a good idea of what I make. I do have health insurance though. That said, I wouldn’t have been there even if I wasn’t working. If I was jobless, maybe. Though it’s doubtful because I’m scared of even small things, so large things like this are almost too overwhelming for me to comprehend.

I love this city. I hate this city. This is one of the greatest, most terrible places I have ever been. This is home. Really, I don’t have a ton going for me here, but I stay because it is home and home is where I belong. Oakland is my heart. It is the arms that wrap me up at night and tell me I’m too fat the next day. Alright, enough with the inadequate metaphors. You either understand Oakland or you don’t. I’m sure your city is the same in some respect; multiply that by2-10 depending on where you live and you’ll get to Oakland.

So it kills me that we do this to ourselves. And I’m not sure that’s an accurate sentence. But I’m not sure that, “They do this to us” is more accurate. This violence against our city is gut-wrenchingly sad. I had to walk home from BART last night and I could feel the tears and residual tear gas in the air. The sadness was palpable. I was a good 10 blocks from the highest point the protesters reached.

When I say “do this to ourselves” or “done to us,” I mean this, I mean Oscar Grant. I understand why the Grant protests turned violent. (I don’t understand why they were Oakland protests and not BART protests, but that’s not relevant anymore.) The rest of the country gets to express itself. Or, if they’re booted, they’re booted peacefully, as seems to have happened in Atlanta. There are conflicting accounts of what happened (surprise!). Truthfully, I can’t construct any sort of realistic picture of how this happened. It was completely neat and organized. It was bedlam. I think the truth is closer to the second link than the first, police-sponsored story.

God, I don’t even know how to talk about this. I don’t know where to start. This is as good as anywhere. Mayor Jean Quan is out of town. OPD chief of police just quit and interim chief Howard Jordan is in charge. So where did this come from? Who was in charge? Why did they think this would go well when the authorities had no one in charge?

The protesters were told they were fine then that story changed. They had to disperse because the camp was unsafe and unsanitary. Oakland is one of the most dangerous cities in America. We kill each other all the time. We’re somewhere around 90 homicides this year. I can’t find the number right now. The closest is 80 as of September 7. There have been more since then. And an encampment of mostly peaceful people (I’m willing to capitulate that there may have been some skirmishes as cited by the city) is the concern? How can we bring in 10 cities worth of police and helicopters for this but not to stop murdering each other? It’s sad and it’s stupid.

I can’t find it now, but I read the protest camps was bean bagged and woken/disbanded fairly violently. The police say the protesters threw paint and rocks, even, at one point, a sink at the police and so they had to be gassed. It doesn’t make sense that the protesters would just start throwing things at the police if they were all just there. A coherent narrative doesn’t exist, at least not that I’ve found. And if the concern is camping, then once the camp is broken up, it’s over, isn’t it? Why continue to gas people? Four times in three hours. Tear gas so thick that @matthai (who is a reporter for SF Chronicle) says his eyes burned two blocks away. Arrested being held until at least Thursday (when arrested very early Tuesday morning) and held on $10,000 bail. The violence from above seems so disproportionate. There were also neutral accounts of police cars smashed, a store looted. But there’s a pretty big difference between violence against property and violence against people. And violence with authority and violence without authority.

It just makes me so sad. This wasn’t a dispersal. This was violence. This was an attack. This was a personal vendetta. No matter how it started, it seems to have turned into gassing people for existing downtown. It seems to have turned into not allowing any sort of assembling, whether they were marching through the streets or stationary. The encampment may be illegal, but assembling isn’t. By all accounts, what used to be the encampment is now a mess. Litter, garbage, tents, all left to avoid the gas and violence. So, good work Oakland. You obviously got what you wanted, a clean space.

This is a shitty response and I’m not sure I’ve communicated what I wanted to, but it’s my response. I wish we didn’t hate ourselves and each other so much. I wish we felt safe with our police. I wish our police felt they were part of us, not against us. They’re in the 99% too (though only barely in Oakland with the ridiculous pension plan and high wages). Do we expect violence in Oakland so this is what happens? I wish our response wasn’t always to burn ourselves to the ground.

Bed-Safe

He woke up snugly nestled in her arms. The dog was whining. Normally, he would take the dog on a longer walk–their exercise for the day–but today he just wanted to get back into bed with her. He took the dog to the front yard, let her urinate and bounded back inside. The windows of their bedroom were covered by trees and it was still cool and dark. He crawled back into bed. Her arms felts strong and safe. Nothing could possibly get to him, nothing could hurt him. He hoped she felt the same.

Religous Experience

I know you weren’t a church-goer, but in church they talk of basking in/being overtaken by God’s love. Holding you before bed Thursday night is what I always imagined that to feel like. Whole. Complete. Perfect.