AManicPandaBear

Say from the end of 1997 until after you returned from visiting family in Vietnam for a few months in the summer of 1999, was spent wallowing in a deep depression.

Remember father had to give you your morning pills before he went to work. A cocktale and ever changing array of pills for depression, anxiety, panic, insomnia, and antipsychotics normally given in high doses for schizophrenics, for you it treated Tourette Syndrome.

Kept forgetting to brush your teeth, but always looked in the mirror. Still here. The loudest voice in your head was suicidal ideation. Persistant, every moment of your waking hours. Whatv little sleep there was, no dreams. They went away, to this day are still gone. The muse that gave you reason to write those nightmares and fairytales.

Sometime in the afternoon, you found your way to the living room couch and watched Sailor Moon, every episode on Toonami.

Mother worked late at her restaurant. Dad would come home from work and took turns with you making dinner. Sandwiches and salads one evening. Meat and potatoes the next. Alternating between a large tabuli salad and S.O.S. served over potatoes and with a fried egg sitting on top.

Dad unwinds in front of the television or a novel, you drive to an all-night diner with a book and journal that stays mostly empty. Iced teas, french fries, salads and reading Heinlein, Nietzsche, Thich Nhat Hanh, maybe an obscure fantasy paperback.

Friends often avoid you, that black rain cloud easily turns into a sucking black hole. You do chat with a friend about Sailor Moon. Another about politics, or the American Civil War. Lucky ones hear you tell a a fragment of one of your own stories.

But that voice in your head is always there. Die, give up hope, surrender. Another fights back, anger, directed back at oneself. Horrible anger and self-loathing. In spite of the misery, the black hole, the list dreams, your smoldering hate of yourself keeps pushing you forward. You'd rather hate yourself, and keep pushing forward with your politics, and nightmares, and fairytales waiting to be put on paper.

Years later, today, the self-loathing is still there. The anger bubbles up. Too many voices and noises demand attention. Books collect dust, the pages of stories sit in a showbox.

Today turns up a free jazz album, trying to drown out the voices. A story dances around inside that head. Again, missed another friend's event.

Mom is visiting Vietnam. Today, 3AM, a pot of Irish stew is on the stove. Dinner for you and dad. Leftovers for your sister when she is feeling better.

Next week, a ratatouille stew like mom once made. Banh mi? S.O.S. over mashed potatoes with a fried egg on top, doused with tabasco sauce.

Don't talk politics, don't listen to your voices. Surrender to the anger, the skewered gonzo idealism that you hold close.

Enjoy the Irish stew.

Have Pen. Will Travel.

A friend of mine is currently applying for her passport. I suggested she take a grand tour of the world and follow the route that Phileas Fogg took is Jules Vernes novel, "Around the World in Eighty Days," a route investigative journalist Nellie Bly took in 1888, in 72 days, after only two days of planning I would add.

Fogg's adventures took starting at the Reform Club, to him to the following locations; London, Paris, Turin, Brindisi, Suez, Aden, Bombay, Kholby, Allahabad, Calcutta, Strait of Malacca, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Chicago, New York City, Liverpool, London, and lastly the Reform Club.

My friend would obviously start in a different location and I believe Teapioca Lounge (north) is a good enough starting point as any, considering it's a favorite place of hers. Her travels would take her from Austin, Chicago, New York City, Liverpool, London, Paris, Turin, Brindisi, Suez, Djibouti, Mumbai, Chitrakoot Dham, Allahabad, Kolcata, Malacca City, Singapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Austin, ending back at Teapioca Lounge.

As you may notice a couple of her stops have changed. Due to safety concerns Aden has been replaced with its sister city Djibouti and instead of traveling through the Strait of Malacca and its problem with pirates, it's been replaced with separate stops (likely by plane) to Malacca City and Singapore. The names of both Bombay and Calcutta have been replaced by their contemporary names of Mumbai and Kalcata. And since Kolby doesn't even exist, it's been replaced by Chitrakoot Dham which comes closest in cultural description and physical description to Kolby.

Oh, and if my friend were to want to travel with her own "goes-anywhere" and Passepartout to her Phileas Fogg, I am an relatively experienced world traveler with a passport. Just saying... 

Edgar Allan Poe and the horrors that have become my own imaginations.

21Apr14

You may say I enjoy reading and especially performing from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. At least I used to devour his stories until one summer month in 2007 when my own imaginations consumed my ability to sit and read much of anything to this day.

Poe best explains my continuing fascination with the adventures of Jules Verne, American Romanticism, Lovecraftian horror, Absurdism, and the early horror films of Vincent Price, as well as the tone some of my own nightmares and fairytales take themselves.

the reason why i am here

01Apr14

I blog to not just post my stories but to also share the process that goes into writing them. Over the last 14 years, I haven't gotten around to publishing any stories, much less finishing what I have stowed away in my computer, along with printed pages of stories that date back before those 14 years, as well as a desk drawer full of scraps of papers with ideas of stories scrawled on them and usually forgotten after.

In time the idea is to post here daily, sometimes it's more of a journal entry like this, other times a writing prompt I try to give myself every night before I sit at my old desk and try to write. A lot of the time it'll be old and new stories that I'm working on, sometimes it'll be notes and ideas, other times drafts that I'll keep coming too.

The story I am planning on posting tonight is essential a draft. This story is essentially the prologue to a string of flash fiction tales under the umbrella title, "The Door Past Monday," The theme is a string of tales involving the same character and always beginning or ending with him entering a door. The prologue is entitled, "Patience," and it is one I've previously posted on this blog.

I think I'll add to this string of stories every Tuesday since it is a tale that other spoken word performers have asked me to tell every Tuesday night at Espresso Gallery during the poetry night with the Jazz Poets. Tonight, I am going to miss the event, but in exchange I'll begin the story, again, on this blog on Tuesday night (or very early on Wednesday mornings).