i smell murder and drugs and bears.

It’s been a week, maybe, since my last posting. I think, because I never go back and read them, that I was droning on about what to write or where to start or why Dr. Seuss is such a fracking genius. Either way, today as I was carrying on conversations with insurance reps from United Healthcare, I was hit with an idea. While trying to translate the fellow’s broken Indian-English, I realized what it was that I need to write.

It is to be a story of love. A story of good decisions gone wrong. A story of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Of hot summer fun and cold winter nights. Of danger and intrigue. Of shallow and jaded youths with nothing but time and money. A story that will go absolutely no where, but end at a destination all the same. It will feature chapters titled: “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine”; “Midnight Show”; “Everything Will Be Alright”; and many, many more! (actually, like 8 more, but who is counting?)

Working Title: The Killers. See where this is going? I bet you do.

In other news, I had a horrible dream last night. I can’t remember much of it except for being in a locked classroom with a bunch of other random people. I was seated next to Ryan and my co-worker, Mary Beth (this time alive and well) was seated in front of me. I was all panic-stricken and hyperventilating about a serial killer who (for reasons unknown to me) was out to kill me. Like, he would stop at nothing to end my life.

Well, Mary Beth is telling me to calm down and not to worry. After all, we were afforded the protection of a locked, wooden door right? Clearly she had never heard of a little novel (or film) called “The Shining”. Anyhow, the woman who is in charge of the classroom lets us all know that she has a squad of police officers coming to show us what to do in the even we encounter “a dangerous, psychotic escapee mental patient”.

So the cops show up with a tall man. The chief fellow introduces himself and holds up this orange jumpsuit-type thing with two very thin, very long sleeves. He says something like: “All escapee patients will be wearing this. So don’t worry too much because they can’t move a lot with them on. So, you know, you’ll be okay.” Then he calls for a volunteer to help demonstrate his moves. Naturally, since this is my dream, I get called.

So I come to the front of the room and get positioned in front of the guy and, sure enough, when he looks down at me I start screaming: “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD ITSHIMITSHIM!” And then his hands are on my throat and I can feel it crushing and I’m dying and-

I wake up.

PS: I was streaming KROQ (THE world famous) on my computer this morning and listening to the Kevin and Bean Show. Anyhow, one of the news reports coming out of LA was that like, some 100 people died the other night due to overdosing on Ecstasy. Which brings me to two things:

a) I do not want to die with a pacifier in my mouth
b) I am too freaked out to try that shit because I know if I did I would be one of those 100 people.

One other note. I spoke of my dream to a coworker and she stopped me midway through to tell me that she’s always had this creepy feeling that I will be murdered. She couldn’t explain why.

That’s all.

these things i do are not for you

I’m not sure where to begin. Ideas have never been that big of a problem. I guess for me, right now, my biggest obstacle is my own inability to formulate a proper starting point. I have been told, by more than one person that if starting at the beginning doesn’t work, to start somewhere else. After all, it’s not like I’m chiseling any of this in stone. As a matter of fact, the beautiful thing about computers is how easily information is manipulated. If I don’t like how one thing looks or if another doesn’t quite match up to something else further down the line, I can simply delete it and it’ll be as if it had never been at all.

So, we come back to my main dilemma. I don’t know what idea to focus on. I’ve always been the type of person, for as long as I can remember (which isn’t all that much because my memory sucks), to get bored easily. Or distracted. Or bounce from one thing to the next without the slightest bit of thought or consideration. I’m impulsive and prone to random acts of sheer randomness.

I have ideas floating in the cesspools of my imaginative brain, but I just don’t know which to try and cultivate. Previous attempts to keep my focus on more than one thing usually lead to finishing absolutely nothing. This then results in my writing folder on my hard drive to contain a million little word documents that contain small blurbs that ultimately mean nothing.

I feel I need to start with shorter stories. I feel that writing short stories takes a little more effort than writing full on novels or books. A writer of short stories has to learn control. They have to learn how to hone a plot with laser-like precision from start to finish. They have to be short, but contain near the same emotional impact that a novel might contain. They have to be entertaining and keep the reader engaged. They have to be nearly all that a novel is, but…shorter.

Then again, I have to wonder if the ideas I have could formulate into a full-length novel. I’d hate to be one of those writers who publish some 1,500 page book with 1/3 of it containing actual meat while the rest is just that steroid injected chemical attempting to boost the word count. The longest thing I’ve ever written amounted to exactly 91,470 words and it’s a StarCraft fanfic that I wrote back in high school. And, shocking I know, never finished. I actually skimmed through it not too long ago and, wow, it’s horrible in this “my words are all over the place helter skelter” sort of way.

Where was I? Where am I? And there goes my entire train of thought. I’ve been wading through my music library on iTunes. I find myself very connected to whatever creative mojo I have when a damn fine song is playing. I can’t write while the song is actually on, because I end up typing the lyrics (if there are lyrics. I know, music without lyrics nowadays is something most people can’t seem to grasp. Or if the lyrics are about melting popsicles. Really now. Did a five year old write that song)? It says something too, I think, about song writers who can, through the course of an album and with so few words, capture nearly every spectrum of human emotion and lay out the soul in a way a book or a story never really can.

Which is ultimately what I want to do, at some point. I just want to write something real and honest. I’ve been second guessing myself. I’ve been worried about the kind of response I’d get from people. Would my parents approve of this? Is so-and-so going to be mad that I’ve portrayed this like that? Would people think me a loser for writing such and such?

It’s funny, if I put half the amount of energy I put into debating with myself about how people perceive me, I think I might actually have had finished an entire writing project. Imagine that!

Sometimes I talk to myself, but not because I’m crazy or alone or because I like the sound of my own voice (though, come on, like, who doesn’t LOVE my voice); I talk to myself because sometimes vocalizing puts things into a greater focus than just thinking. And sometimes typing out words and posting them on a whim brings a certain sense of clarity. Even if, come the next morning, I find myself wishing I hadn’t.

There is a passage from “Oh The Places You Will Go” that always struck me as the most poignant. It’s the part where our intrepid traveler of life’s highways comes to The Waiting Place. As a kid the imagery sort of freaked me out because everything was so dark and damp and unpleasant. As a kid I never understood the message being conveyed, but now with adulthood and the various experiences that has, for better or worse, helped shape me into the person I am today and will, through the course of more experiences, shape me into the person I shall be tomorrow and the day after, etcetera, etcetera that passage gets to me.

So much so that, after having posted that passage in one of my various other blogs (now all long forgotten R.I.P.) a friend of mine asked me what I was waiting for. Perhaps because I’m impatient and impulsive and prone to flights of fancy, I was waiting for something to fall into place without really having to do much. I mean, come on, awesome things like that happen in movies and television and books. And then throw in the fact that all that kind of imagery is practically force-fed to us by society and wham! But seriously, Jacob, I still don’t have an answer for you.

So back to the beginning. Where to start? Maybe tonight, after I’ve tossed and turned and flipped my pillow end over end to keep it cool and wrapped myself all mummy-like to keep warm and that illusive beast we like to call “sleep” is just within my reach and I’m just shrugging off everything and slipping away it’ll come.

I mean, after all, if not now, when?

a dream in which mary beth dies.

I don’t know where the beginning starts, so I’ll simply share what I remember.

There is a house, Victorian perhaps, or maybe it isn’t a house at all. We’ll just leave it as a building, constructed of wood and aged to the point where most would consider it derelict and uninhabitable. I can say nothing of the surroundings outside, because from where I remember we were already inside.

The room is expansive and dusty. The floor is rotten, the walls seemingly wet. One wall is comprised of a series of large, angled windows that favor us there with a view to the courtyard. It isn’t noticed at first, but on the ceiling are a hodgepodge collection of wrought iron fences, nailed loosely and hanging precariously.

There are only four people in this room. Myself, Kitty Walker and her mother Nora and Mary Beth Richardson, a co-worker of mine. Kitty and Nora are characters on an ABC television program, Brothers & Sisters, but it doesn’t occur to me that it would be odd for them to be present.

An ominous voice-over states, with a touch of dramatic flair, “and by the end of the night, one of them would be gone forever.” And, almost on cue, the whole room starts to shake. Debris begins to fall. The wrought iron fences swing downward. Mary Beth is impaled. From her chest, four iron spikes protrude like the fangs of some ancient, evil beast. Circles of blood blossom around the spikes and she gasps.

I find myself shouting: “No! It can’t possibly be Mary Beth! She isn’t even on the show!”

Everything transitions seamlessly to another room. It’s a hospital room like any other generic hospital room around the country. White walls. A window. A curtain. A bed. Mary Beth lays there, seemingly asleep. I ask: “Are you awake?”

And her eyes flutter open. She sighs. “I feel like I’ve been asleep for so long,” she says. “I feel so rested.” I smile, thrilled to know that she was able to survive the horrible incident from before.

I turn to the door and call for everyone to come and see Mary Beth. No one comes. I find this odd, because I know they had all just been outside not but a moment before. I turn to face Mary Beth, words forming on my lips, but lost in an instance.

Everything has morphed to various shades of white, black and gray. Mary Beth is on the bed, circles of blood forming where the fence had impaled her. She is ashen and sickly. Her hair is stringy and lifeless.

I run from the room, terrified and in disbelief. As I move down the hallway, I see Diana, another coworker of mine, seated at a computer terminal, typing away. Quickly I reach her and ask:

“Diana! Have you seen Mary Beth? She’s awake!”

At this point, she looks up and gives me a blank stare. “Corey, that’s not funny.” She keeps typing. “Mary Beth died. You know this.”

I return her stare with a dumb one of my own. “But, she just woke up. I saw her in the backroom. She was sleeping.” I turn to look behind me. Mary Beth is standing there, a few feet from the two of us.

“See! She’s right there,” I say, pointing at Mary Beth. Diana looks past me and I can tell that she sees nothing. Her face remains unmoved.

“Maybe you should see someone,” she tells me. “Clearly this has affected you.”

Ellen walks up from behind Diana. “What’s going on here?”

I look to Ellen. “I’ve been trying to tell Diana that Mary Beth is alive, but she keeps telling me she isn’t. Which I don’t understand because she is standing right here behind me. Can’t you see her?”

Ellen raises her brow and I know that she must think I’m crazy. I walk to a row of cupboards to Diana’s left. I point them. I look at Mary Beth.

“Mary Beth, please open one of these cupboards and prove to these two that you are still alive!”

Marty Beth steps forward and grips the hand. She pulls it open. I see the door swing. If she were dead and merely a ghost, it stands to reason that her hand would have simply passed through the material. Here she is, however, pulling open the cupboard.

Diana and Ellen stare, unmoved. I look at them, smiling. I look back to the cupboard. Its closed. “But,” I begin to stammer.

“Corey, I think you should see someone. Mary Beth is dead.”

I look back to them with my mouth hanging open. I look behind me again. Mary Beth is gone.

-END OF DREAM