Journals of Lord Malinov

the poetry of madness

Selena

I really hadn't known much about Selena until the other day when I caught a show on her murder.  Incredibly lovely woman.  I love it when the Universe briefs me before an encounter.  These incidents have taught me to pay attention when the Universe seems intent on tutoring.  To my uninformed eye, Cynthia looks very much like Selena in some very positive ways.  I don't know if Cynthia sings or dances, but I would be glad to watch her do either. 

Her skin has a sultry tanned smoothness.  My thoughts dwell in indecency.

enjoy,

DC

posted by: Malinov at 19:35 | link | comments (1) |
words

soar

Cynthia asked me who she looked like, since I would be looking for someone who looked like her too.

"I really don't know," I confessed.

"Sometimes people say Selena . . . "

"Without a doubt, you look like Selena."

". . . but I don't see it."

"I don't look like John Travolta, either."

"Maybe these people . . "

"I don't know very many mexican girls, so I see the similarities rather than the differences."

"You don't?"

"I'm from Kansas and there aren't many mexicans there and then DC and . . . "

"There's no mexicans."

"Mostly puerto ricans."

"Plenty of mexicans here."

"Yeah."

enjoy,

DC

posted by: Malinov at 19:12 | link | comments |
words

acting

I took a dark stroll to Bunkies, just as the sun began to illuminate the eastern skies.  The aroma of freshly dipped donuts wafted through the cool air.  My mind churned slow circles, picking up speed for the daily time trials that would soon test my creative analysis. 

I love being barefoot.  I like the feel of earth beneath my feet.

One of the things I came away with from my meeting at the saucer was his eagerness, initially fueled by the encouraging words of my past and accelerated when I offered unique solutions to his present problems.  One word sealed his complete faith:  Pinchus.

I am wary of developing an inflated sense of self - an all too familiar precursor to painful deflations.  This kind of external eagerness gives me faith as I permit the inflation to expand my ego.  Cautiously.  I know the dangers of this path all too well.  I seek the safe path, the one I have never been able to maintain.  If history is any guide, failure is inevitable.  Success is usually unprecedented, except in retrospect.

Finding fault in other people is easy because we oversimplify their perspective.  We do not have the luxury of seeing our own perspective simply.  Sometimes, perhaps, someone can point out the missed simplification.  Much more usually, however, simple solutions to complex issues are annoying and insulting.

Children still object to oversimplified advice with the classic put-down: Duh.

I accept grammar as rules of observation - grammar permits us to capture elements of spoken language in ways that can be extended to express further ideas.  When grammar tells us the meaning of "screw you," we are grateful.  When kids begin saying "you screw," as you know they will eventually - grammar is wrong to tell them they are wrong.  Grammar must evolve to explain the new language structure.

On the other side, if I offer a reward for an essay written in pig latin with reverse capitalization, you will be obliged to obey my grammar if you want the reward.  Deviation from standard usage reduces potential audience, but when the message is intended for a specific deviant audience, failing to deviate from standard usage may render us silent. 

When have I been required to write standard English since leaving school - never. 

I don't believe any good comes from knowing the rules of English.  I have found that as we write and write and write, we discover those rules and the deviations, as we go.  Memorization is no substitute for putting one word after another until it works.

Kelly says that I'm the best.  Add that to my resume.

Eagerness.  I can appreciate being wanted. 

enjoy,

DC

posted by: Malinov at 06:59 | link | comments |
words, petting the cat

Veruca

I received a copy of Dahl's Chocolate Factory as an Easter present from my Aunt Lynne.  My mother's sister, Lynne routinely bought me books as gifts.  We spent that Easter at Lynne's house.  I read Charlie three times through before we left that evening. 

Many of the best old books in my library were kipped from my parents.  My mother's mother and adoptive father died in a hotel fire when I was three.  My mother's mother's mother, Irene Presby, had a penchant for good books.  I am my great-grandmother's great-grandson and so I have long held her books in great esteem.

One of the more interesting books I took is a 1936 annotated printing of Hitler's Mein Kampf.  The interesting part is the annotations - for every three lines of Hitler, there may be three pages of refutation in the footnotes.  I was perhaps fourteen when I worked my way through the Nazi manifesto and encountered the only incident of parental concern for my reading.  "Should you be reading that?" my mother asked.

"Don't worry, Mom," I looked up to reply, "I'm not an idiot."  Apparently my answer satisfied her, for she never bothered me about what I read again.

She was more concerned when she walked in the house one summer day to catch me watching Jimmy Swaggart do his thing.  "Why are you watching that?" she asked.

"I think we need to keep an eye on these people," I replied.  I loved watching the evangalists for amusement.  They were just damn funny, especially when Jimmy started crying.  Jimmy loved to cry.

Once I had gone into my parents closet to retrieve something - I forget what - when I chanced upon a stack of Playboy magazines.  I opened one up to read the party jokes printed on the backside of the centerfold and my mother walked in to find me.  She laughed as she turned to leave.  "No, really, Mom, I was just reading the jokes."  I don't know if she believed me.

Since Ulysses and Naked Lunch, we have routinely held that textual expressions cannot be obscene.  Justice Douglas refused to accept the concept of obscenity, while other Justices have held that they would know it when they see it.  The Internet, thank heavens, has obliterated the concept from the rolls of social justice and put it back into personal choice where it belongs.

Copyright is dying and I'll be glad to see it die.  When copying is free, it cannot be controlled.  The world is enriched, despite the protestations of machines fueled by the expressive monopolies.  Death to copyright!

I stopped by Deep Ellum Blues last night for a few drinks and a hefty dose of musical joy.  I am always improvising blues lyrics to slip into the riffs.  I really need to find myself a band, do the Morrison thing.  His poetry is immature - not surprising since he was young - and I would like to see the direction he forged explored into maturity.  Stupid Junkie.

Mojo Risin had a penchant for Blake - Tyger, Tyger burning bright.  I can appreciate an appreciation for Blake, although Blake's multi-media interests tended to lighten his poetics, focussing on the visual aspects of his words as much as the evocations.

I've been thinking about Eddie Murphy - he claims in Raw that "all men cheat."  The statement begs the question - who are they cheating with?  I've been doing the math and come to the conclusion that if all men cheat then either all women cheat, some women are receiving disproportionate amounts of sex, or cheating men are all gay.  I've never known a woman who didn't cheat, so I'm guessing the first hypothesis is on the mark.  All women cheat, too.

At the club, a woman sitting at the bar pointed me out to her companion, leaving them both staring at me for a hefty dose.  I can't help but wonder what they saw.  She soon started talking about DC, a strange coincidence that had me staring at her, trying to discover if she was someone I knew.  No clues.

We need some pictures.  Off to the scanner!

enjoy,

DC

posted by: Malinov at 06:38 | link | comments |
words, tales of passing time

Rosalind

In act one, Romeo is ready to die for Rosalind and soon dies for Juliet.  Once again, this is not the emotional turmoil of a mature man, prepared to deal with the problems of life in Venice.  This is the fountain of hormonal youth, ready to rage in joyous madness.

Nothing he did would matter at all, except for the parents.  They set the stage and they reap the anti-rewards.

Enjoy,

M

posted by: Malinov at 11:46 | link | comments |
words

little Juliet

Juliet, as I recall, is twelve years old.  Now, in olden days, girls married when they became fertile, so Juliet's talk of marriage is not condemned as such.  At this tender age, she is prepared to begin assuming her familial responsibilities.  She is, in a very real sense, grown up.

But the fact remains that she is twelve.  I have known urban women who lived rough and began interacting sexually by Juliet's age, taking, facing and enduring far more responsibility than a typical suburban twenty-something encounters in modern days.  Even so, these street-wise youths remained twelve at the age of twelve.  Their ideas are juvenile.  Their emotions are unshackled.  Hormones course their innocent veins. 

Shakespeare portrays a child, incapable of understanding the games she plays.  Notice that when Juliet considers her affection for a boy, knowing that her affection will cause trouble, she laments - in some rather nice poetics - that her problems would go away if she could simply change his name.

This is not the thought of a mature woman.  This is the analysis of a child.  Shakespeare is not trying to show us the magical beauty of love - he is showing us how ridiculous a child's conception of love is.  Recall Shakespeare's sonnet - My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.  Shakespeare was mocking in roles that have often been taken seriously.

Put a twelve year old in the role.  See how seriously an audience takes the poetry coming from a child.

Most literary analysis ignores the writer's perspective.  Readers can't really understand where a writer comes from until they have learned to write themselves.  Every word has a reason and a feeling.

Enjoy,

M

posted by: Malinov at 11:15 | link | comments (6) |
words

aging

My newest take on Romeo and Juliet is that it is a story of parenting.  Romeo and Juliet are children and none of their decisions should matter a tinker's cuss.  However, the over-active parentage combined with determined hostility to create a situation where the decisions of children lead to their self-destruction.

Listen to the childish poetry they proclaim.  Their innocence is our sin.

Anyway, just a random thought before I go retrieve my daughter.  Tess is named for Theresa Derbyfield.  I have a terrible weakness for tragic women.  My Tess, however, is anything but tragic.  Having spent her entire life listening to my spews of analysis, she is smart beyond her years.  I never knew she was listening until lately.  I take her incredible beauty for granted - a man's daughter is a woman of an entirely different type than any other, and her beauty is just another positive reflection, an observation to keep in mind, something to deal with when the inevitable issues arise.

The children are my best witness.  I have done well.

Enjoy,

M

posted by: Malinov at 10:22 | link | comments (1) |
words

squirrels

I never asked my writing professor what he had against actors.  I understood his point. 

He came from the deep south - Alabama or Mississipi, I think.  He had married a black woman, an understandably bold move for a southern white boy.  The curious thing, however, was that he talked about it constantly.  "How can a southern white boy marry a black woman?" As liberal college youths, I'm sure most of us gave it no thought.  There are very few african-americans in Kansas, so we didn't have much prejudice to work with personally.  He made certain that everyone knew and understood the complicated motives that must have engendered such a match.

I remember learning one thing from that class.  Our professor told us of a former student who had written a story wherein a squirrel died.  The narrative explained that the dead squirrel sported a squirrelly erection.  Asked about this strange detail, the author said that it was true - when a squirrel dies, it has an erection.

Lesson:  Details are selected in furtherance of the fiction, not because they are true.

When I worked at one of the biglaw firms, one of the senior partners told me, regarding another senior partner, "he would fuck a squirrel if it slowed down long enough for him to catch hold."  I don't know if it is true, but I've never seen a squirrel move slowly around Pete.  Just in case.

Most of the authors I know will read their stories aloud during the editing.  Primarily, this exercise is performed to remove inadvertant rhyme and alliteration, things that do not rise from a scanned page but become distracting during aural renditions.  I don't read my stories aloud to edit them.  Reading a story aloud changes the story in significant ways and would suggest serious re-writes. 

Poetry is the same way - which is why I have no interest in the poetry slams.  Poetry read aloud is not poetry - it is performance art.  The arrangement of words on a page affects us differently than the voice of a human being rendering the same words aloud.  If a word cannot survive separation from the author, it is not a persistent art form. 

The same is true of lyrical poetry - to write the lyrics for a song is not writing poetry.  The intention to render the words aloud places us in a completely different artistic realm. 

I'm not trying to stratify these art forms - implying that one is superior to another in some esoteric way - but rather to emphasize that they are very different and that the choices made in the formation process are radically different. 

Shakespeare, I would assume, was never written to be read from the page.  This intention to auralize the work creates word choices that resonate to a greater degree than they infiltrate.  Bill spoke to us vocally rather than sliding into the psyche by indirect syllabic intrusion.

I love making up word-strings for non-verbal concepts. 

I spoke at length with my newest recruiter yesterday.  His excitement is palpable.  "This is a really strong resume."  Once I gave him the go-ahead, he was bubbling with possible positions. 

One of the greatest benefits I have now is that I have escaped my golden handcuffs.  When you make a great deal of money - in excess of $200,000 a few years ago - it becomes impossible to earn less without a serious impact on lifestyle.  Since I have enjoyed an annual income of less than $10,000 for two years, virtually any lawyer salary will make me feel incredibly rich.  I was assured that it was highly unlikely that I will be offered less than $200K, but it is nice to know that I don't have to pursue the grand sums for their own sake.

I'm going to throw my resume out to the national winds, see if I can't score some all-expense paid visits to parts diverse.  Who knows - maybe I'll discover some new El Dorado.

I sent the children home yesterday, after the eX asked for a last-minute extension.  It isn't hard to remember why I struggled so much in dealing with her.  She had gone to San Antonio for a conference, planning to leave early so she could pick up the kids on Wednesday afternoon.  At 6pm on Wednesday, she called me to tell me that she was just leaving San Antonio, so it would be another five hours before she returned home and could I get the kids, who had been sitting home alone waiting for her.  All sensible, except that she obviously knew much earlier that she wouldn't be home until late.  By not calling, she made a simple situation complex.  Sigh.

Since our relationship has normalized, she calls me more often than she did when we were married.  I inevitably experience a certain amount of stress in talking to her, left over reverberations of the panic she used to induce in me.  I would run away from her calls, but I can't and besides, anything is better than the irrational war-chants she used to give me. 

A little tequila - a margarita to stave off the cold - sent me spiralling into a deep sleep.  The week with the kids was completely exhausting.  Friday.  I'm in love.

My daughter has become an avowed curehead.  Since her parents have been cureheads since before the beginning, it is no surprise.  Listening to her exclaim the genius of Robert Smith is almost funny, listening to echoes of my own youth in her exuberance.  I have so much to teach that beautiful, brilliant young lady.

Monstrous heat.  People are going to hell, just to cool off.

Enjoy,

M

posted by: Malinov at 07:26 | link | comments |
words, tales of passing time

unsatisfied

I find myself struggling to read.  I find it particularly difficult to read fiction. 

Not because of my complicated schedule and constantly straying attention - I have managed to read tens of thousands of books under more complex circumstances.

I struggle to read because I find the words unsatisfying.  I want to say it is because everyone is a terrible writer, but I know that is no more true than it is kind.  Writers are failing to write in a way I find satisfying.  I read one, two sentences of a work of fiction and I am already rewriting to suit my taste.  By the third paragraph of anyone's fiction, I have concocted an entirely different work in my head.  Writing my story becomes far more interesting than reading theirs.  So I put it down.

I never want to discourage anyone from writing - that would be perfectly counter-productive.  But I think my days as a reader are coming to a close.  The time has come to spend that time stringing words that do satisfy me.

I could probably cure myself of this dissatisfaction by returning to a few writers that I know will knock me down. 

Story is easy.  Poetics is the art.

I was again considering some of the Alyssian propositions regarding aural writing.  She asserts that documents like the Declaration of Independence were written to be read aloud.  A few copies of the writing were made and dudes walked around reading the document to crowds. 

The invention of the moveable type press provided the first opportunity for reading to become a general skill, but we must remember that it has taken centuries for even a portion of the populace to be literate.  In 1776, most people could not read.  If a document wasn't read aloud, it was not generally read.

If I had taken a foreign language in college, I would have a degree in English Literature.  My engineering degree didn't require a language.  With the language, I would have only needed nine hours for a degree in physics sans engineering, but those nine hours would have been harder than all the rest of my classes combined.  I graduated in four and one half years with over one hundred thirty credits.  My gpa sucked, but I knew almost everything they could teach me.

Then I went to law school for another four years.  Damn, I'm overeducated.

Anyways, to make a long story short (ha) I took a creative writing class.  We each wrote five stories, read them aloud for criticism and got As.  Classes in creativity are about as silly as life gets, but I loved the class.

All my stories have always been love stories - stories of adult emotional relationships.  I think it was the third story when I cast my tale with political males and introduced an almost-sexual intellectual relationship triangle.  I still find the story intriguing and I was the first to read mine aloud.  After the criticism, I went home and completely rewrote the story , although there was no incentive for me to do so, other than personal satisfaction.

When I read my next version, my professor asked me if I was a drama student.  "I don't trust actors," he said when I denied any thespian involvement.

My first story had been written to be read within the mind.  I used expository language to tell the tale.  The second version was completely aural - I wrote it knowing that I would be reading it to the class.

Alyssa decried the decline of the aural component in our writings.  Now I am convinced that she was completely off base - radio, television, movies and computers have come to dominate our communication systems, and they rely almost entirely - or more and more - on aural renderings of information.  We are inculcated with aural readings, to the extent of creating a third, generalized aural language.

Damn, I know I've read that somewhere.  Credit to whoever taught me that.

Without the written component of the Internet, written language could disappear entirely.  It may still.

There is a huge difference in the communication channels of aural and written languages, and they are not completely fungible by any means.  Our newspapers do not consist of transcripts of our newscasters, even when they provide the same information.  If the newscaster is quoted, the written material provides excesses of parallel information.  Writing is not interchangeable with speaking.

Fascinating Captain.

I'm meeting new girls every day.  I love to watch the fires of excitement burn within them.  I love the joy of a kind smile.  One of the recruiters declined to help me, saying that with my credentials, I could find twenty jobs on my own before he found me one.  The hardest part for me is dealing with the world.  The road into my mind is downhill and so much easier to walk.  I must find joys outside these walls. 

Enjoy,

M

posted by: Malinov at 08:21 | link | comments (2) |
words, tales of passing time

aurally

I have always envied Sam Shepard's writing.  He utilizes an economical dialogue that manages to express worlds of unspoken drama and character.  As a playwright, Sam uses an aural vocabulary.  Only the playwright - and Gaddis - are free of expository needs, so the use of an aural vocabulary will be more naturally understood than a play using an expository vocabulary.

The problem is that our aural language changes with incredible rapidity, so a play written with aural vocabulary has a much shorter shelf-life than one written with the less natural expository vocabulary.  Sam's plays may be inscrutable to an audience of the next century.  All the non-verbal content of the aural vocabulary is lost when the aural language shifts significantly.

The expository language changes much slower, and so persists for much longer.  Although it is an inferior language for performance, the use of expository language creates a work that can endure for centuries.

Take Shakespeare, for example.  His plays were written for performance and so we can assume that he used a typically aural language for the time.  We, as non-contemporaries, are incapable of understanding levels of his work, the vast majority of the non-verbal elements of the aural language that have not been recorded, as they typically are not because they are non-verbal.

However, Shakespeare persists nonetheless - because he integrated an expository vocabulary into his aural work, providing ample material for enduring enjoyment.

Here we discover a complexity that keeps us searching - the best works would be integrated.  How do we accomplish such a weave?

By trying

Enjoy,

M

posted by: Malinov at 09:28 | link | comments |
words

spirited

The Universe rewards maturity.  That's why we tend to mature.  People who refuse to mature offend the Universe and are duly punished.  The Universe seems to enjoy smacking the foolish.

Oh, Lord, thou art so big.

The biggest part of maturity is patience.  The remainder is selflessness.  These are counter-intuitive truths that can only be appreciated with maturity.  People who proudly declare that they are irrefutably impatient or selfish have adopted a dangerously immature attitude.  Patience and Selflessness require constant work.  To declare ourselves incapable of doing this work is to adopt the stance of a helpless infant. 

Counter-intuitive concepts are tricky to recognize without strong analytical skills.  The highest art must be counter-intuitive visualization.  As we might expect, I can't even imagine what I mean.  The counter-intuitive cannot be intuited.  Duh.

I remember reading a book as a youth where a young man did some quick calculations on a nearby mountain and determined that the earth was flat.  Only when he recognized that the atmosphere was acting like a mirror to create a displaced mirage did he realize the mistake in his calculations.  The mirage is counter-intuitive until our model includes atmospheric lensing.  Suddenly it is completely intuitive, but only to someone with the new model.

We each carry different models, so our intuitive analysis will differ in accordance with our models.

Our intuitions include redundant languages - mathematical analysis in polar coordinates can be significantly different than the analysis that can be done with cartesion coordinates - what is intuitive in one coordinate system is completely counter-intuitive when expressed in another coordinate system.  Choice of model dictates intuition.

I wrote my sprite a long brilliant letter yesterday - her fourth without a response, which is a pretty good extension of etiquette.  I don't know what I'm doing to her, but it seems clear that I'm affecting her.  Her attitude towards me seems suddenly very positive, while still distant.  She's acting like the kitten did as he rampaged the bushes outside the Pit.  Always just out of reach, but so glad to have some company.

We stopped by last night, so Cats could give her number to one of the bartenders.  We're going to see some incredible lounge singer tonight.  Fingers crossed, the sprite will join us.  She spoke at length with Cats about cats and suggested we might get together last night although we never did.  Even an empty invitation is a positive sign.  She is clearly fascinated.  I only have days to enjoy her.  Unless the Universe has other plans.  We never know.

When I was a big-firm lawyer, I worked with a summer associate named Caroline.  She was the most beautiful and brilliant and charming and . . . and she seemed to really like me.  We even went out after she moved onto another firm for the remainder of the summer.  As much as I wanted her, I wanted to see her blossom even more.  I have often questioned that choice since.  I probably should have been more selfish.  Che sera.

At the government, I worked with a file clerk named Titi.  I believe her name was actually Titiana.  She was the daughter of an African ambassador.  A tall girl, she was incredibly pretty and twice as smart.  Kind, of course.  I was just getting serious with my eX at the time, so after developing a serious friendship with Titi, I backed away when things began to evolve.  I never took advantage of Titi, another decision I have questioned, for I suspect she would have been glad to have been advantaged.  I have only met a few truly remarkable people in this world.  Many slip away.

At my first job, I worked with a blonde-and-blue beauty named Ann.  My relationship with Ann set the tone of my relationships with women for many decades afterwords.  We were very close friends, but she fished the more mature ponds of pretty boys as I continued my road hence.  Unfortunately, she became a serious fag-hag and moved to LA.  I say unfortunately, because it was 1982 and every single one of her friends died of AIDS.  I realized recently that I have known far fewer homosexual men in my life than I would consider average.  Then I realized that most of the gay men my age died long ago.  My generation has few living gay peers.  I wonder what that will do to us?

I suppose I have known some other remarkable ladies, but skills and talents are often disabled by serious emotional problems, so the potentially remarkable are common while the truly remarkable are rare.  Emotional stability is a difficult quality to find.

When we were at the wine bar, Alyssa and Nathan eagerly sought to learn the story Cats and I share.  I claimed the story was simply too complicated to tell, at least without another bottle of wine.  "We were divorced simultaneously," I offered as a short version.  All I know is that my biographers are going to love it. 
The forensic psychologist asked me if I lived to provide stories to write.  I laughed.  I struggle to explain why the proposition is ridiculous.  That's just not how it works.  It is infinitely harder to write about things that have actually happened, trying to replicate rather than create.  My sense of story provides me with solutions to life's troubles - extending my models to provide insights. 

Influence is all we have out here, and damn little of that sometimes.  If you want control, write a story.  If you want to write a good story, forget about control.  Focus on poetry.

Without poetry, writing is meaningless.  The only way to learn poetics is to string words, line by line, page by page, decade by decade.  Having learned poetics, it has become nearly impossible for me to tolerate unpoetic writing.  Feel the rhythms.

I'm learning the advantages of patience in dealing with women.  Things that have always appeared negative to me soon become positive with a little time.  Emotions introduce turmoil into people's lives and whenever anyone loses their sense of balance, they tend to react to restore the balance.  Once calmed, they can reconsider the source of the wave and often decide that it was surprise that sent them reeling and begin to pursue further encounters.  By waiting, I can turn their resistance to eagerness.  What a difference a day can make.

Whenever I run out of ideas, give the situation up as worthless, they always seem to make a move.   As much as they may retreat, they are always careful to make sure I keep following. 

Sometimes I retreat.  No matter what I do, I seem destined to having an impact.  The only thing that seems to matter is that I remain calm. 

Enjoy,

M

posted by: Malinov at 08:47 | link | comments |
words, petting the cat, psychobabble, tales of passing time, she blinded me with science

whoosh

The kitten, Bruce, sits on my foot while my biofeedback training clatters behind me.  A deep calm settles as the echoes and shadows are all that remain of the kids.  They'll be back soon, no doubt.  The eX and I are communicating as well as we ever did, which is less than adequately although it seemed great at the time.  Oh, what a difference a few years can make.  We have become mostly fungible to the younguns, so there is much more shuttling and load-sharing.  It feels so good.

People tell us what to think, more than we think, I think. 

Detectives talk about pressure to solve a case.  That pressure only exists within themselves - the behavior and attitudes of others are data, not pressure.  Cronkite just told me that a failure to succeed in pushing Shepard into space would have been a horrible cold-war defeat.  Politicians are always saying things like that.  Failure is not defeat, it is part of the process of succeeding.  Failing to fail would be self-defeating.

I have always tried to fail, but I failed.

If you never failed a class, you failed to become educated.  Take that, you over-achievers.  Someone with perfect grades never challenged themself.  How can someone call themself smart without challenging themself?

Aren't I frisky today? 

A client I had long ago written off sent a check.  Oh frabjous day.  Callooh.  Callay.  Chortle, chortle, chortle.

Cats has been disturbed for a long time by my complete faith in the Universe to provide me with whatever is necessary.  I didn't live to be old without noticing that pattern.  I'm sure the Universe will tire of me eventually, but it seems determined to keep me going for some reason.  It goes beyond my discoveries in anxiety, so I like to think the purpose is important.  I have this bad feeling that my ultimate purpose is to move a soda can.  Busy, busy, busy.

If Shepard had died, that would have sucked, no doubt and Kruschev would have made a joke at our expense, like the time he came to the US and said "You are good at making hotdogs, we are good at making rockets."  What a joker.  How could we dare let an astronaut die with such impending mockery?  Failure was not an option.

The Saxons were defeated by a good taunting, so there is precedent for the concern.  If we forget history, we are doomed to repeat it and we don't want America to be remembered as the country destroyed by mockery. 

But when Cronkite speaks, I am forced to believe.  Watching TV almost incessantly since 1961, my first understanding of the world beyond my doors came from Walter.  His voice has an archetypal quality in my mind.  Even now, I find him worthy of my continued respect - I've never heard anything to make me think particularly less of him and he was straight about Vietnam, which took balls.

I saw film of a young Capote yesterday - I'm used to the old man with the squirelly voice but it was weird to see the young fop talking like that from nowhere Kansas.  His analysis of On the Road - That's not writing, that's typing - hits the nail on the head. 

Kerouac was a poet rather than a novelist - the power of his work comes from the words rather than from the story.  As such, he doesn't always read well.  He did tell some good stories - The Subterraneans, for example, but mostly he streamed some good syllables.  Genius rarely conforms to expectations.

Dropping by the Pit last night, I ran into Jessica, a pretty lady from the birthday party.  Hairdresser, I believe.  She was detoxing herself at the time - no drugs, sex or rock-and-roll, including alcohol or bad foods, weird stuff like that.  We had a long discussion at the party about the difficulty of sexual fasting, particularly with a rogue talking dirty to her.  Last night, she let me know that her sober state left her in full memory of our conversation.  Her fast ended last night at midnight. 

I think I'm on the menu.  Fascinating, Captain.

Hmmm.  Having some cash provides new questions to consider. 

Gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day.

Enjoy.

M

posted by: Malinov at 07:58 | link | comments (1) |
words, tales of passing time

busy, busy, busy

I was quite amazed to witness the machinations of our Universe as the grey kitten was delivered to my lap.

My amazement had only just begun.

I finally snatched another opportunity to speak to Elyssa.  I approached her as someone complained about her plans to leave Dallas in another month.  She told me she was going to Massachusetts.  Brrr.

What would she do there? 

This is where the Universe makes certain I acknowledge the machinations.  Busy, busy, busy.

"I'm going to direct Shakespeare."

The spew of words following would quickly out any posing.  We delved and tested each other, detailing our bardish tendencies and finally settling on a discussion of Pirandello.  Real deal.

My social mission has been to get to know people without becoming emotionally entangled.  I have this strong pull to care, even about people I have no reason to care about.  While there are many positive to empathy, it becomes a severe limitation when caring about others overwhelms care for those I seriously care about.  I must care less about people I have no reason to care about.

Got that?

So I'm practicing maintaining a proper social distance, with great success.  Is the Universe going to make this easy?  Not bloody likely.

My mother used to say, "Easy?  Why would you want things easy?  That's no fun."  Apparently the Universe has been consulting with my mother.  And I have to agree.  This won't be easy, but it will definitely be fun.  I could frolic with a dramatist for ages.  I have so many ideas.

She has been playing Puck, hence the ultra-short hair.   Busy, busy, busy.

M
 

posted by: Malinov at 06:26 | link | comments (1) |
words, tales of passing time

expressions

untactical repression results in psychic pathology

expression counters most of the effects of repression

criticism is not expression, it is meta-expression

nothing positive can derive from criticizing another person's expression or critizing them for expressing themselves

if you can express yourself better, do so

I believe in encouraging those who dare to express themselves.  At the least, I leave others to express themselves as they will.

As with all free speech, there are time-place-manner restrictions. 

I was wearing a red t-shirt with a cute and nasty looking devil on it.  I changed it before I took Cats to the orthopedist - she had her pin removed, so lots of happy pills for her - but I changed my shirt because most patients of such doctors are old and they scare so easily.  I don't mind expressing myself before strangers - obviously - but I don't enjoy expressing myself inappropriately to the situation.  Usually, my intent regarding other people is either neutral or connecting - rarely do I desire to offend for the sake of causing a ruckus.  If I did, I wouldn't start ideological wars with old people.  Might as well go to campus if I want a debate.

I have a shirt that says "obscene."  No one has any idea of what to think of me when I wear it.  I don't have any idea, myself.  At the mall, the effect is not positive, but very weird.

I learned, strangely enough, from hanging out with swingers that being physically attractive is a very superficial advantage.  Being emotionally stable is far more important.  I learned not to mind who was naked and while drinking in young loveliness with mine eyes when the occassion arose, learned that the woman behind the boobs is the key to getting along.

I learned from hanging out with strippers that there is a world of sadness out there.  No matter how bad you have it, there is someone suffering more.

I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.

ain't it the truth?  ain't it the truth?

M

posted by: Malinov at 07:32 | link | comments (2) |
words, tales of passing time

scrutiny

"Is that is? Can I read it?"

I was pushing the folded pages across the counter and stopped.  Cynthia paused, waiting for my words.

"Sure," I said, "but you have to understand that I wrote this several years ago.  Three years ago.  Also, I wrote this about you, not for you, so it is a bit direct."  I don't know what I expected her to understand from that statement, but she wasn't really listening anyway.  Her entire attention had been focussed on the papers between us.

"I understand," she said and began to speak a confused jumble of words.  I soon gathered that she was searching for the word "perspective."  She apologized for her weakness of language and added, "I'm mexican."

I'm too old to think about ethnic differences other than in terms of culture.  She hadn't told me anything I hadn't guessed, given the way she looks and her proficiency in spainish.  The words she spoke, however, melted my thoughts.  They exposed a deep current of unassuming vulnerability and gentle fears.  I haven't been able to shake the feeling. 

A three minute conversation and I'm into my eighth page of transcription and commentary.  Every word is a universe.  In the beginning was the word.

I believe that reality is a manifestation of consciousness.  I just need to find an experiment that will prove it is so.  And do the experiment.  And draft the proof.  Is there a lack of reality in unconsciousness?

to sleep, perchance to dream.

M

posted by: Malinov at 06:52 | link | comments (2) |
words, tales of passing time

pizza girl

I've posted this before, but since it is relevant to current discussions . . .

~~~
"Hey there," the pizza girl said, "David?"

The question mark is part of the flirtatious game we play, this lovely
pizza girl and I.  For about six months, at least once a week, I drop
by to pick up a pizza for the family.  Usually she gives me a big
pepperoni pizza, although every so often, I manage to sneak a supreme.
 The kids aren't entirely ready for the full blown pizza experience,
but on well chosen occasions, they'll bear the excesses of flavor for
my sake.

The pizza girl knows my name.  I can hear it in her voice when I call
to make my order, see it in the bright smile she gives as I enter the
tiny shop.  The pizza girl knows my name but pretends she doesn't.  On
the other hand, I don't know her name.  I'm too shy to ask.  When I
imagine talking to her, I call her "beautiful."

"Hey, beautiful," I imagine myself saying, "how's the pizza business?"

"It sucks," she'd reply with an infectious grin.  Sometimes I imagine
the conversation will be easy.

I picked up five pizzas on Halloween, feeding a party of kids before
they assaulted the streets on their annual candy begging mission.  I
arrived a bit early.  The pizza girl wore low slung jeans and her
pizza t-shirt tied up to expose her smooth midriff.  I licked my lips
as she checked the pizza progress, turning her back as I feasted my
eyes on the delicious vision of her behind.

"It sucks working on Halloween," she said, after telling me I'd have
to wait another ten minutes.  "I'd rather go out and get fucked up."

My mind reeled with responses to that opening, so many witty
rejoinders assaulting me that I found myself unable to speak.  That's
my usual technique - smile and imagine all the things I might say.
It's not an effective style, generally, although my apparently
handsome visage tends to carry the amused silence better than we might
expect.

"I love your costume," I imagined myself saying.  The pizza girl
blushed.

In most instances, the pizza business is too busy for me to manage
more than a few words with her before another customer calls.  I don't
worry, for our demand for pizza is incessant.  I will soon return for
another brief tete-a-tete.

"You seem tense," she'd say.  I love to imagine it will be easy.

"Was that your wife who called?" she asked, last time I picked up a
pizza.

"Sure was."  I'm not one to deny the obvious.

"She doesn't like picking up the pizzas?"

"I guess she doesn't," I replied, once more at a loss for anything
witty to say.

"Or maybe you just like coming up here?" 

"Yes, I do."  I am a self-proclaimed master of dialogue, yet
profoundly unable to actually say anything clever on the spot.

"Have a nice evening," she says.

"You seem tense," I might reply.

"I am so tense," she replies.

"You need a massage," I observe, confident of the fact that, in fact,
everyone always needs a massage.

"Oh, I do," she replies, her dark eyes aflame.

"I have a table and very strong hands."

"Do you?"

"Give me an hour and I'll relieve some of that tension."  My voice had
dropped to a smouldering whisper.  I am so seductive in my fantasies.

The pizza girl has very long black hair, down past her shoulder
blades, silky straight and flirtatiously alive.  I imagine brushing my
hand through her hair, drifting down along the smooth curves of her
satin latte skin.  Perhaps twenty in age, giving or taking a few
years, the pizza girl sounds coarse and abrupt with the rest of the
Spanish-speaking pizza crew, but energetic and delicately warm with
me.  I know she thinks about me.  I can hear it in the way her voice
changes for me.

"That'll be eight sixty-five."  As I hand her the ten, I'm watching
her breasts move gently beneath the pizza t-shirt she always wears.
Full, voluminous boobs jiggle slightly with the energy of her
excitement.  I blindly imagine the dark nipples beneath the cloth,
catch vague hints of the hardness that develops under my gaze.

"I love your titties," I imagine myself saying, suddenly crude for the
sake of acceleration.

"Come back at ten," she might say with a laugh.  "I'll introduce you."
 My cock stirs, anxious to participate in the proposed soiree.  Don't
worry, big fella, we won't forget you.

As she takes the change from the cash register, her hand stretches
forth.  My hand reaches toward her and she lays the bills and silver
into my palm, gracefully touching my hand with hers, lingering in the
connection for as long as pizza decorum will permit.  Our eyes meet.
Her nipples harden perceptibly.  I want to speak.

"Thank you," is all I can bring myself to say.

The pizza guys always seem to be watching, curious, amused or jealous.
 Since I don't speak their language, I have no clue.  The pizza girl
doesn't do anything overt to express her feelings for me, so I assume
she doesn't want them to know anything.  Maybe she does.  I can only
imagine.

"Don't tell me you weren't coming on to him, slut pizza girl."

"So what if I was.  Mind your own business."

Suppose we meet for a cup of coffee, a dish of ice cream, a bottle of
beer.  She wanted to get "fucked up," so perhaps the beer is what
she'd prefer.  We might share a twig, put the daze in our
lust-enflamed eyes.  I brush the hair back from her face, caressing in
a moment the soft flesh of her browned cheek.  She kisses me.  I
enfold a breast in my left hand, squeezing the heavy flesh and teasing
her thick nipple.  She takes my rigid cock in hand, slips the
stiffness between her sultry lips.  I kneel behind her, hands grasping
her young round ass, riding our hunger home.

"Do you want some Parmesan or peppers?" she asked.

"Sure."

Fumbling with the pizza box, she graces me with garnishments.  I smile
wantonly, wishing I could dare to ask her name.

"Have a nice evening," she said.  I could feel her wish to be part of
that imagined time.

"I will," I replied.  "You, too, beautiful."

posted by: Malinov at 12:41 | link | comments (4) |
words

wizardry

This is the story I wrote in the write fight - I believe we had three hours and I used about an hour and a half to compose this one.  A special prize for anyone who can identify the six seed words I had to use in the story - three from Katie and three from Denny, our judge.
~~~

"Please come out with us, Daniel. It will be fun for you, I promise."

"Not tonight," Daniel said calmly.

"Why not?"

"I have plans, Elise. Maybe some other night."

"What plans? You haven't been out in almost two years."

"I go out."

"Haunting used bookstores isn't going out. Besides, we're just going out for a drink and then to the Avalon Theater. You like plays, remember?"

"I have plans tonight."

"With whom, Daniel? A date with a book? A woman?"

"Yes. I mean no."

"It isn't healthy, Daniel. You're getting a reputation as a real crank. People are talking about you. My friends are always talking about you. People always ask me when you're going to start dating again. Just go out with us tonight."

"You're sounding like Mom, Elise. Some other time."

"I'm going to come over."

"Fine. But not tonight."

"I'm sorry. It's just that I love you, Daniel. I worry about you."

"I love you, too, Sis." Daniel hung up the receiver with a sigh. The idea that people were talking about him disturbed him slightly. Daniel didn't consider himself a crank. The thought that Elise and Jim and Karen were going to talk about him irked him deeply. They didn't understand what he was up to. No one could possibly understand. "Tonight," he said to himself, "tonight has to work."

The sun receded finally beneath the crest of pine trees and the huge space of Daniel's study filled with creeping shadows, the dull orange glow of a distant sunset giving a ruddy tone to the pale wooden floors. Daniel rubbed his brow. A sense of possession stole over him. He began to pace, walking slowly toward the twenty foot windows that faced the bloody sky, and turning to walk back toward the blazing fireplace at the far end of the hall.

"Two years?," he asked himself. "Two years, and when will it end?"

Daniel's boots marked an even interval of time as his walk led him to the deepening night and back to the blossoming flames. A sinister wind stole through slight cracks in the upper reaches of the grand room with a howl. His heart began to thump when his resolve broke down and he stole a lateral glance at the long shelves of books covering the study's northern wall.

"Once again," he muttered in surrender. "The last time, again."

Still trying to resist the allure, Daniel's dark eyes fixed on a book standing alone behind his desk, an outcast from its mortal brethren, shimmering unnaturally in the nocturnal gloom. "Five hundred times," he mused as his feet slowly drifted off the well- trod path and toward the dark shelves. "At least five hundred times. This has to end."

Although the last gasp of Daniel's resolve had been exhausted so many times before, the same shudder that had rippled through him on the very first night struck him again. The ritual was well defined, but the thrill was far from gone. Tonight, he thought and not for the first time, will be different. Even without the hope that gripped him on this night, there was no bravado in his thought. Every night had different.

As he touched the ancient leather spine of the tall book, Daniel shook. It had been a week since he had opened the pages, an arduous week of incredible self-control since he had read the mystic words. It was the longest stretch of abstinence that Daniel had endured since he found the book in the tiny bookstore in East Berlin. There had been nights when he read the page three times in six hours. Resistance had been inconceivable, until he had a reason to hold back. Tonight would be the payoff. Daniel spoke a Latin prayer.

The old grandfather clock struck a sweet tone and Daniel nearly dropped the book in fright. Adrenaline poured through his ragged heart and he collapsed into the chair behind his desk. "Good," Daniel said when he recovered his senses. "Tonight will take every ounce of my emotion. Blow storm!" he yelled.

The book fell open at a touch, directly to the page Daniel sought. It seemed his whole life had become contained in the words stretched across that single piece of parchment. At first glimpse, the words seemed to burn and writhe. Daniel knew he was tangling with ultimate darkness, an evil beyond any human conception. Still he continued. He couldn't care for good and evil. He could only care for love.

Some nights he had to make a decision before he began, but not on this night. A single name possessed him, ached within him. His eye caught the first word of the incantation. Daniel braced himself, like a patient preparing for the undoped touch that would begin the cut of a scalpel.

"Katrina," he said, giving in to the passion. "Come to me." Strange words followed and the spell was begun.

A flame rose from the center of the study, a tiny flicker of orange and a dazzle of white sparks. The fire slowly grew until the heat touched Daniel's face and called forth a wash of sweat. Smoke poured from the flashes, choking him cruelly. The root of the bonfire spread until ten feet of Persian rug seemed to be feeding the conflagration, flames shooting up as though it consumed a middle- aged pine. The last word left Daniel's lips and he closed his eyes and turned away from the fierce blast of infernal fire.

A crackle tore through the roar and a cool breeze suddenly caressed Daniel's burning body. He opened his eyes. A vision of white light nearly blinded him, but still he stared, knowing what sight awaited him. The light dimmed and the spirit Katrina stood before him. Daniel wanted to cry.

Everytime she was conjured, Katrina appeared differently. On that night, her long golden hair was tied in ponytails, reminding him of a sweet girl he had met when he was young, a simple cowgirl at a country dance, hoping for a little dance and romance. Daniel had often wondered how much of Katrina's form came from within him, but there could be no answer. She was always like someone, and yet like no one he had ever known. Katrina was whoever she was. Daniel could know no more.

"It's you," she said with a smile. Her voice echoed with the sound of crystal bells and young birds.

"It's me," Daniel replied, his heart bursting with longing.

"I'm glad," she said.

"Do others conjure you?" Daniel asked, surprised by a thought he had never considered.

"Sometimes."

"It had never occurred to me," Daniel said, frowning. "When was the last time?"

"I have no sense of time," Katrina said. "I don't know."

"Do you . . . ?"

"They're foul, twisted men, used to abusing power. I hate them."

"And me?"

"I long for you, Daniel. You draw me to you."

"I think of nothing else."

"I can feel your devotion. It makes me live."

"My life is in trouble. I have an idea. I need you."

"What can we do?"

Daniel walked around the desk to where the apparition seemed to stand. Her lean body seemed fashioned of fog, a translucent shimmer in the form of a lovely woman. A silver gown hung from her shoulders. A worried look streamed in beauty.

"I believe we can set you free." Daniel reached out to touch Katrina. His hand passed through her arm, as though he had grabbed a puff of smoke.

"I'm frightened," Katrina said. She wanted to cry but no tears would come from her ghostly eyes.

"Trust me," Daniel said.

"What will you do?"

"Have you noticed," said Daniel, aching to touch the sad woman he loved so deeply, "that there are times when you seem to take substance."

"Not really," Katrina said softly.

"There have been nights," Daniel confessed reluctantly, "when I have conjured other spirits. I haven't always known . . . "

"You've conjured other women?" Katrina said.

"Sometimes. Some evil spirits."

"Were they beautiful?"

"Yes. Not like you, dear Katrina, but in their own wicked way. They seem to know something, or at least believe in it. They have tried to arouse me, to make me want them. And it seems to me that the more that I do want them, the more substantial they become."

"You wanted them?"

"Lust is a powerful emotion. But I also feared them, and I don't think lust is enough. I don't know, but it has always fallen short. When the moment comes that my desire for them subsides, they quickly fade away. It is the nature of lust to dissolve in satisfaction. Love is different, stronger."

"I see. So if I make you want me, I will be alive."

"I don't know. Maybe there is no threshold. But the substance they take is strong - some have even been able to touch me. I believe there could be some way."

"They've touched you?"

"I'm sorry."

"No. Don't be sorry. If I could only touch you, for just a moment, I could forgive everything."

"I know you, Katrina. I love you as deeply as a man could ever love a woman. I love the sparkle in your eyes and the curve of your flesh. Rouse my emotion, make me want you."

"How?" Katrina asked, blushing as only a ghost can blush.

"Do you dance?" Daniel asked.

"I think I can."

"Then dance for me," Daniel said, leaning back against the mahogany desk and smiling. "What do the foul, twisted men ask from you?"

"They ask me to dance," said Katrina. Fire seemed to spark in her pale eyes, a desperate hunger that began to move her hips, a lick over her grey lips. "I must do as I am asked."

"I can't bear to imagine you in the clutches of some other man," said Daniel angrily, furious, ready to strike out at any man who would dare intrude.

"They're handsome men," said Katrina, picking up her skirt to reveal the smooth lines of her lean legs. Daniel felt his heart begin the throb furiously. "Do you like me?"

"Beautiful," he replied, tingling with excitement.

"Can I take this off?" she asked with a coy smile.

"Please," whimpered Daniel, his gaze fixed on her.

"It isn't hot," Katrina said as she lifted the robe up. Her wide hips gyrated slowly as she left them bare. Katrina turned to show him her creamy full bottom, a hint of form without color, like an old French postcard of a girl reason tells us has been long since dead. Daniel burned with desire, his attention caught by the swells and valleys of her shadowy body.

"I want you," she growled as the robe fell to the floor. Full breasts bobbled slightly as though excited by his heavy breath.

"I want you," he replied, reaching down involuntarily to scratch the tenseness of his loins.

"No," she said sharply, ceasing her dance.

"What?" he asked, pained.

"Don't touch." Her head nodded toward his swollen crotch. "Don't release your desire."

"Yes," he said, wondering if he could really restrain himself. "You're right."

"I'll do the touching," Katrina said, placing a finger at the shimmering crest between her thighs. "So hot for you."

"Yes."

"My boobs, too. Do you want to taste my nipples?"

"Yes."

"I've always loved you, with all my heart. You make me hungry."

"Yes."

"My pussy's so swollen, so moist, so fiery."

"Yes."

"My ass?"

"Yes."

"I can almost feel your hands on my shoulders, your kiss on my lips."

"Yes."

"I need you this way, can you touch me, do you want me?"

"Yes."

"I grow richer and fuller. You were right. I will live."

"Yes."

"I will live and we'll fuck."

"Yes."

"I can almost feel you. Do you want me? Do you want me?"

"Yes."

"Come here," Katrina said, her voice sultry and commanding. "Come kiss me." Daniel shook in anticipation. Her body seemed almost alive, a woman's naked flesh, aroused and drawing him near. A demonic look flashed through her eyes, lust overflowing her soft demeanor. Daniel rushed three steps forward and took the girl in his arms.

A kiss melted on his lips with the intensity of kissing a burning hot iron, yet at the same time luscious and sweet, a sudden sense of fulfillment, of holding all love in his arms.

"Lover," Katrina moaned as she held him tight in her arms. Her body melded to his, caressing him gently as she kissed him with all her soul.

"No," he said as convulsions exploded inside him. The woman suddenly began to fade. Her touch turned to a cool mist. "No," he whimpered and Katrina vanished away.

Tears flowed from his dark eyes as Daniel collapsed on the floor of his midnight dark study. A dampness in his trousers echoed the tears.

"Tomorrow," he said finally, desperate in failure. "I'll bring her back tomorrow night. One more time, one more try."

posted by: Malinov at 12:39 | link | comments (6) |
words

Katie

Almost three years later, Cynthia received her own copy of "The Pizza Girl."  Despite my caveats, the direct nature of the story is bound to affect her.  What will she say?  Same bat time, same bat channel.

She thought I was twenty - a bit unrealistic, given that she knows my fifteen-year-old daughter - but about as kind a compliment as a young lady can give an aging poet.

In network terms, I am an ancient one from the age of legends.  For about a decade, I hung out in the newsgroups assd and assm - alt.sex.stories.discussion and alt.sex.stories.moderated.  We posted our work to assm and talked shop in assd.  Despite the constant flow of stroke stories - masturbatory bits of naughtiness - there was a strong gang of serious writers of every kind.  Not just every kind but every kind.

I guy who wrote stories about sexual relationships with dogs.  A pedophile.  Shock writers. 

There was a girl named Katie who arrived on the scene long after I had become an elder of the flock.  She was an unskilled fiction writer on most every count, and she wrote horrible tales of violent sexual encounters.  She responded fiercely to criticism of her stories.  I interjected that skills can be learned but there is no substitute for passion.  I assured Katie that she could easily learn to write well, for she had the wild desire.

I'm always postive when dealing with inexperienced writers.  We can be so easily frightened away.

So I go about my business writing saucy stories of friends and consequences, ignoring most of the arguing that keeps a newsgroup alive.  One day, I recieve a letter from Katie, offering me a story she had written about me.  About my persona, Lord Malinov, anyway.  Lord Malinov had recently held a literary orgy at his castle, on an island in the North Sea.  People wrote stories of the things that had happened at the story and I arranged it into a web journey of endless decadence.  So we were all writing stories about each other.

In Katie's story, I meet her and a friend near my castle.  We have sex in a most lurid fashion.  The girls reveal that they are underage and proceed to take control with threats of exposure and more sex.

Whoa.  I back away from the computer slowly.  I think this conversation is at an end.

Eventually, I learned that Katie is a (well-beyond the age of consent) lipstick lesbian living in a small border town.  She writes computer books for money and returns to the hospital every six months for a psychotic episode.  These terrible stories are just her kind of story, no offense intended.

A few years later, discussing writing exercises, I invented a game we called "write club."  Don't talk about it, please.  Two writers exchange a few seed words and have a few hours to write a story.  A judge decides the winner, just to make it exciting, I guess.

Katie insists that we try the game together.  I wrote a marvelous story called "Wizardry" about a guy trying to summon a ghostly lover.  Katie wrote a really not very good story about a dead lover.  However, it was the first romantic story she'd ever written and she like writing it.  Her fans went wild.  I won the game but she abandoned shock writing for love stories.

Not too long after, she was back in the hospital.  I haven't heard anything since.

I don't even know how much of the persona was true.  I hope Katie is all right.  She did have some kind of passion.

M

posted by: Malinov at 17:05 | link | comments (4) |
words, tales of passing time

exposed

I have been able to dazzle my daughter lately with an unexpected expertise on things theatrical.  My first desire, as a writer, was to write a play.  I have always been enchanted with the idea of writing a character and then seeing that character brought to life.  I also realized that writing a play would require learning to understand the medium of the theater.  I have been doing my homework.  I have patiently waited all my life for opportunities to share such things. 

All my interests revolve around my love of a good story. 

I'm coercing the boys to take on Perfect General, a wonderfully simple tactical game.  In its simplicity, it becomes easy to recognize that a battle is a mind game, tricks fought with trickery.  The game itself dissolves as feints, thrusts and parries reflect the neural patterns of our individuality.

Tess railed against angry man rock, lambasting untalented screams and ugly ferocity.  She proposed finding some of these bands and explaining the terribleness of their song.

"I didn't make him for you," I countered.

"What?" she said, smiling, knowing I was quoting something but not sure what.

"What do you think, Janet? - I don't like men with too many muscles - I didn't make him for you."

I told her the story of my first encounter with the Rocky Horror, kidnapped from my grandparents, dragged  to downtown KC, witnessing the most theatrical event I had ever seen.  In 1979, the midnight show included a full cast in the aisles, waterpistols, toast and the most incredible audience participation humor ever witnessed.

Over the years, after thirty-some shows in a variety of places, the audience deteriorated to a very drunk frat guy screaming "where's your fucking neck?" through the entire film.  All things must pass.  So it goes.

Tim Curry did the voice of evil in an animated film with fairies, a rainforest and a shrunken dude.  Anyone?

There is a scene in MST3K where Mike is talking to the robots who have found a collection of production still from Mike's career as an actor.  Given a picture of him in a sailor suit, he says, "here I am in South Pacific as the loveable Stewpot."  Of course, he's wearing a sailor suit in all the photos, including Hamlet.  They're comfortable.

"Here I am in Oh, Calcutta!"

"Wow, you're naked aside from the sailor suit."

Enjoy,

M

posted by: Malinov at 14:33 | link | comments (3) |
words, petting the cat, tales of passing time

on pizza

http://www.asstr.org/files/Collections/Alt.Sex.Stories.Moderated/Year2003/45598

November 26, 2003 - just as the divorce began to crash down around my head

I met the pizza girl some three years ago.  I've known her name for the last two, but our conversation has been limited to twenty-second sound bytes.  In asking her sister about her, I placed Cynthia in a position where she could speak to me with the advantage of an ally.  The walls come tumbling down.

The story is very personal, the stream of imagination as I pick up a pizza.  I wrote it about her but not for her, so there are things in the story that are direct - on the other hand, I've known her for so long that I suspect we understand each other in these matters.  We shall find out.  Life is so fascinating.

M

posted by: Malinov at 13:03 | link | comments |
words, tales of passing time

playtime

Standing in the corner
the music raging loud
bumped in chaotic presses
words fading on the tongue
close together, heated
each breath a sensuous stroke
suddenly she descended
sat on her naked haunches
fumbled with my trousers
worked john thomas out
crowded close into her kiss
sparks within the darkness

M

posted by: Malinov at 13:00 | link | comments (1) |
words

Temple of the Goddess

Life's affirmation
Arises

A feeling of isolation
tempting frustration
inviting separation
denunciation
accusation
invigorating the sensations of isolation

The concept of letting go is inviting but the threads of the past weave my present and while a thread may be ignored, the fabric holds them tightly bound.

I am haunted.  Tormented.

Meditate upon the question.  The answers can only be heard in the soul's silence.

A free-roaming vapor
depends on no one
motion defines
the form

I suffered a living coma
For forty-odd some years
emerging to discover
My life had been a delusion
Driven to insanity
By an all-too-crazy world

The saddest things, perhaps, came from mistaking foolishness for wisdom.

Ripe with tension
Aflame with anger
Precisely on target

Infuriated.

The music plays lightheartedly
I ease into the tune

Enjoy,

Malinov

posted by: Malinov at 11:44 | link | comments |
words

a rose by any other word

I've written under the pseudonym Malinov for eleven years.  Before the net became seriously international, a search would bring up my works and little else, but the name I made up is found in slavic lands, so now my stories are drowned in numerous accounts of non-fictional people.

Malinov began his career in 1850 as a Russian general, the rotund and rough husband of the beautiful Tasha.  She had been engaged in an affair with the heroic Christopher Trent.  One snowy night, she told him their liason must end, for the General had required her to bear his heir.  As Trent protested, Malinov burst into the room.  Despite his urge to kill the cowardly bully, Trent was unwilling to subject Tasha to scandal and left St. Petersburg.  The tragic anti-heroine Tasha would earn her freedom later in the romance.

Malinov was soon cast as a dark force of the night, the powerful benefactor of the musician-poet, Black Marx.  Hints of vampirism attached themselves to Malinov through the cycle of stories.  Finally, the novel "Wicked" raised Malinov to the rank of "Lord" and cast Malinov in the principal antagonist's role with his old nemesis Trent, engaged in an eternal, deadly and possessive love triangle with the beautiful Ligeia.

When I adopted Malinov as my nym, he became the protagonist in many autobiographical and semi-biographical erotic tales.  The very first erotic story featuring Malinov was a fantasy entitled "Diana's Sanction," a spanking story cast in a law firm.  It was quickly adopted by a spanking group for use as one of their principal advertisements.  They have posted the short story to the usenet almost daily since '94. 

When I was interviewed by a forensic psychologist for my divorce, Zapf asked if "Lord Malinov" was intended to establish me in a sadomasochistic-domination master's role.  "Malinov" had been an transparent attempt to create a slavic badman and gave a little twist to "Badinov" as in Boris Badinov. Tasha as a diminuitive of "Natashya" makes the relationship to Rocky & Bullwinkle a bit obvious.  I have long  referred to Cats as my evil companion, calling her my Natasha in our quest for moose and squirrel. 

The use of the title "Lord" is a nod to my love of the romantic poets, in particular Lord Byron.  The lovely figure skater Kristen wrote a fantasy for me, bestowing the first name Kasha on Malinov.  Formally, I am Kasha, Duke of Malinov.  In Wicked and later for the Winter Solstice Writing Orgy of '96, Castle Malinov was located on an island in the North Sea.  A cycle of seventy erotic stories were written and posted in a linked format so that the castle could be explored by wandering the linked stories, organized by their location in the castle.

At other times, I have written under the nyms of Faust and Byron.  I often refer to aspects of my personality by this triad of nyms.

Malinov

posted by: Malinov at 06:11 | link | comments (2) |
words

wordfully

For all the self-discovery I have achieved, I cannot begin to explain why the prospect of stringing letters like beads lifts me out of my bed joyfully.  The simple act of writing has the ability to fill me with happiness.  Not for rewards or fame, nor glory, not even love, but keypress by keypress, I feel myself shine.  I grow in expressions.  Life takes on meaning.

There have been times when I wrote for purposes of love - scads of letters, poems and stories to express my devotions.  I learned to play the soul like a musician, drawing her heart each word closer to mine.  In truth, however, writing has cost me more love than my words have won, as the truth I've exposed eventually runs counter to the illusions I've drawn.  Few loves can bear the heavy weight of literal expression.

Sometimes I'd envy the visual artists, exposing their meandering minds in splashes of color and form.  They don't endure, I imagine, the "what did you mean?" or "who is this supposed to be?" unless they represent their thoughts in too obvious ways.  I suppose I could pursue expression in greater abstraction, but incoherent language doesn't have the same impact as non-representative art.  So it seems to me, anyway.

It hasn't been that I've complained and criticized my lovers in stories or babbles.  Nor have I spent my words admiring some other new love.   Obvious infidelities would be only a symptom of an already breaking relationship, and I would be foolish to blame the demises on words.  Trust me, I have plenty of faults and am sufficiently wise to know that there are reasons enough for devotion to fall.

The craving to express and explore the feelings of a developing life becomes a harsh mistress.  The need to express wars with the forces of inhibition, the fierce light of self-consciousness.  Putting words together reflecting the currents of life in progress doesn't happen outside the flow.  As physics eventually discovered, the observer always affects the observed.  If my words are going to necessarily be part of what happens, I will limit my words, limit their exposure or damn the torpedoes.

I can watch what I say - take into account what my friends, family and lovers will think when they are exposed to my flights of madness.  Suitable for some kinds of writing, thinking about what everyone will think when writing from the heart has the unfortunate consequence of holding my literal tongue.  I am terribly empathetic and hate the idea of hurting anyone, so too often I will shy away from saying anything that might nip, bite or sting.  Sometimes my writing has become horribly obtuse for exactly this reason.  If I merely allude to my feelings and thoughts, without context or reference, without structure or form, words given new meaning, nonsense is written solely to push the madness out, looking like madness.  A workable solution in ways, the exercise becomes empty and hopeless.  Expression accomplished by remaining perfectly uncommunicative.

This neglects the interesting truth, that every expression is meaningful to someone who cares.  Everything we do, including everything we write, expresses the whole of our being, whether we know it or not.  We might imagine that no one else can speak the language of our soul, but that is a foolish delusion, more true of those unaware of the truth than those who can read volumes between every line.  Any word that you utter will tell me more about you than you realize you've shown. 

One of the key pieces of information in a word association test is not the word that you choose to respond with, but the time it takes you to respond.  Thought processes are revealed no matter how carefully we try to conceal.

Write about something mundane while angry with someone.  Anyone who cares enough to pay attention will know that you are feeling angry.  The more your reader knows about words and about you, the more easily they will be able to discover the source of your anger.  You aren't fooling anyone, you know. 

Hence, controlling your expression to protect yourself and others is complicated, unsatisfying and generally impossible.  Worst of all, it is inhibiting.  Given the choice between writing something with a potential for unwanted consequences and not writing at all, we may choose to not write.  This, to me, is the worst consequence of all.

If we aren't going to exercise self control, the other option for reducing the impact of expression is secrecy.  Years of struggle have taught me the pitfalls of this course of action.  For some aspects, for some expressions, there is no other approach.  We all deserve some measure of privacy, the ability to divide our lives into compartments.  It is no disprespect to my clients for me to keep them out of my personal life - quite the opposite.  What I do beyond my work for them is none of their business.  I can't worry about them when I'm making love and they deserve to be free of seeing me in that position.  The wall we erect between us is consensually maintained, a right and a good and a joyfull thing.

As a matter of respect, the walls take different forms and heights.  I have no desire to hide any aspect of myself from my friends and family, but there are things my parents don't want to know about me, things my children shouldn't yet know about me and certainly don't want to know, details even my best friends may find a bit too naked.  For most and in most cases, I don't really hide my expressions but I also don't parade them.  To my brother and sister, for example, there is nothing in particular that I feel it necessary to hide so I have let them know where to find me, but I don't push them to look.  I may not be hiding but I can certainly understand them not wanting to see. 

Closer to home, however, lies the biggest source of conflict.  As an emotional slut, I have always been a very personal writer.  I don't give a damn for discussing politics, social order, justice, religion or whatnot.   I like to explore feelings and we can't talk feelings for very long without getting into personal relationships, especially voluntary ones. 

There is no winning, speaking personally about our mates.  What did you mean?  Why did you say that?  Who do you love?  Why are you writing about me?  Why aren't you writing about me?  How dare you say such a thing?  Why didn't you say this?  Our relationship is an on-going organic connection and every word, every action, every thought, every moment affects that connection.  Even the reactions of complete strangers to our expressions can have cataclysmic affects - who is she?  why are you responding to her? 

For a young - by which I mean easily inhibited - writer, the slightest consequence of expression with regard to our mates can be silencing.  A young writer needs uncritical applause and little else, because the very act of expression is incredibly hard, creating vulnerabilities that are nearly impossible to bear.  Non-communicative expressions stand on different grounds than communications with regard to inquiry.  If I write you a letter, it is fair to point to a passage and ask "what did you mean by this?"  If I write a poem, when you ask "what did you mean by this?" the first message I receive is that my poem has failed.  A work of art must stand alone without explanations from the artist.  To inquire for more information from an artist is a terrible criticism.  Yet our lovers can hardly keep from digging deeper.

So we hide our works from those closest to us, to give ourselves enough breathing space to learn how to express ourselves freely.  A workable plan from one point of view, but secrecy forms a tiger trap for any but the best of relationships.  Someone who cares will always know, if not in details, they can feel the emotion.  I may never know what you're hiding but it is child's play to discern that you are hiding something.  Secrecy begets suspicion.  Unfortunately, suspicion is fed by fear.  If you are hiding something, it can only be because you are doing the very thing I fear most.  Houston, we have a problem.

Once trust begins to disintegrate, all the king's horses and all the king's men must work night and day to put it together again.  Inhibition is bound to follow.  How can we write honestly when every breath we take is weighed against us?

Twenty years ago, I adopted an open journal policy.  Read what thou wilt but enter at your own risk.  Noble in courage, I never escaped any of the problems that come from expression.  Without wanting to, I learned to control.