Tuesday 2/4/25
I'm catching a lot of friendly fire lately and am dealing in betrayals.
I trust no one. With reason.
I know exactly what I want to do tomorrow with my writing. My motivation is strong. And I'm pissed. The good kind of anger--that is, the do something about it, do something about everything, the right way, anger.
I know what to do with this journal and accountability.
I read some pieces in Bloodvine and I think that's the best outlet for film writing presently. I'll pay attention, check things out as a result.
I tend not to go to things--the few things I might go to--because I'm treated a certain way. A way others are not. That's always been the case, because I have always stood apart in what I am. As I've grown more, and become more, this has been more the case.
Take something as daft as Facebook. Back when I was on it. I would, for instance, hit the like button for family members and extended family members, with their trivial whatevers (which I always treat as if they're of the largest significance). Their things that are indistinguishable from everyone else's things.
No one would do this with me. With very different things. If my work ran somewhere, or a book came out, when I went another year without drinking. They all did this with each other, even with people they didn't like. But each of them acted the same way towards me, because it was me.
I am a kind person. I help people. I seek to help people. I'd done nothing to any of these people. But this is a reality of my life. Then, if I went to any kind of gathering, I always regretted doing so. Because it was one person after another saying things to me like, "Are you still doing that writing thing?" Why on earth would I wish to put myself through that with, frankly, very simple people? It's one thing to be around very simple people if you are the opposite of that, and it's another when you're being made to feel like this by those simple people.
I've learned this week that my immediate family has made a point of not letting anyone know what it is I've been going through, hiding the truth for years. I am presented as the writer of all of these things, blah blah blah, happy happy joy joy.
That's so screwed up. I am trying to make people aware of the situation here, the situation with a system, an evil system. I am fighting for my life and more than my life. And as far as this world goes, beyond the immediate system of publishing, I believe the stakes for humans are enormous with where we are gotten to, how unwell we are. I am fighting for humanness. I don't see very much standing between the end of humanness--and the forces representing as such--and humans. There isn't much resistance. So to learn that people who ostensibly love me are sugarcoating my very existence and misrepresenting it is gutting. It's a huge betrayal. It also means no support. With what I am dealing with. And going through. And fighting for. Even from people in my life or the lives of the few people I know. And it also means people thinking--because this is how people think--that I'm just some writer out there, nothing to see here, nothing different, because otherwise they'd know all about me on their own. That's what people think. They have no idea that a system like this one here could exist.
What happens when people do see me, is they think, "Oh, here's this brilliant, good lucking guy, he's in an upbeat mood all the time, he's so healthy, so disciplined, not drinking his alcohol and running his stairs." They think I must have this great life, and I'm out all of the time, and there are lots of women and all of that, and I must be so happy because how else could I do the things I do if I wasn't? I'd just sit there and be depressed and drink and get fat and be on all of these meds, etc. I wouldn't be running stairs at five in the morning and ripping into every new day with life and energy.
That's not what is happening on the inside. I'm not being false; that's how I come across. It's how I look. It's how I sound. The way my voice comes out of my mouth. But I always say the truth when asked or when that's what's on the table in a situation. If it's that kind of situation and not passing through the line at Dunkin' Donuts, and that's what many of our gatherings--not that I'm a part of many in my own life--are tantamount to.
And I realized that if things work for me, people who know me--or know my family--are going to be shocked that I was living the life I was living, going through what I was going through, doing what I did, against all odds, all alone, and contending with so much hatred and blackballing and discrimination. Because they have no clue. They've been led to believe otherwise.
That's like working against me.
Also, people would then read things and clap me on the back and say they knew me, when these are people--even people like the Admiral and the Captain--who wouldn't do that now, who will actually show me a book that was written by someone they know, self-published, given to them, and displayed in their home, but none of my books. And that's messed up, and I care about these people. Obviously I care about them.
So where would that leave me? These people will then read and praise things, many of which had existed for a long time? "Fitty" is from 2019. It's the best thing ever written. Take away anything else I've ever done, okay, so we're not doing the tied for the top spot thing, and say I only wrote that, and it's the best thing a human has ever authored. It is. It just sits here with me. I can send it to people I know. If they look at it--and most wouldn't--they sure as hell wouldn't say anything to me.
I sent "Thank You, Human--a Bedtime Story"--which, incidentally, is as good as "Fitty" to like fifteen people at Christmas, and presented it as a Christmas present. Something I'd made for them. It's more than that, of course. How many of those people do you think responded at all, or even said thank you?
One of them is a woman in New York. She's fond of me. If I sent her my work, she'll say nothing. That is, if I include her on something like this. If I go on Instagram, and I put up two photos, each of them a screenshot of an op-ed I have in a newspaper that day--so two different op-eds in two major newspapers--she won't hit that like button. Again, because it's me.
But: If I put up a cover of a book she's never heard of--like a volume of ghost stories by Oliver Onions, or a novel by Jerome K. Jerome--she'll hit the like button for that.
Yes, this is a trivial thing, but only because it's the like button; in reality, this anecdote--anecdote string--encapsulates a massive, massive, issue in life for me, perhaps the biggest. The truth is, people hate and fear greatness.
So, anyway, having already been made to deal with things of this nature today, a close family brings up my ex-wife, and says that I don't go to family functions since she did what she did. Now, that's not only uncalled for, but a huge misrepresentation.
I don't go to these events because I am treated as I am. I'm very factual, for all of my creative inventing in my work. Empirical. I know what has happened. I see it. Again, you could screenshot a lot of it. And then there are the insulting remarks. It's hard enough for me as it is to awake each morning,a and remain alive such that I go to bed at night to try and do it again the next day.
Now, I do not act out when someone says such a thing to me. But I will never trust people who do these things. It's always there for me. I don't forget. It doesn't wane as time passes.
I was sitting there with the Admiral one night. And he's talking to me like he has no clue who I am. Like I'm just some guy living a regular life and not in the situation I'm in and he's telling me about 1950s science fiction films like I'm a guy who's never so much as heard of things like that. And he's saying things about genre. This man who has never read my work. Has no clue what I do. Whom I've known, in a sense almost all of my life. And part of this was because this false version of my life has been presented to him. And he never looked into anything. I mentioned that I sent him--and them--this story at Christmas. They were included in that email. And he didn't say anything at all. And that hurt me. He shrugged. He actually shrugged.
Again, someone who cares about me. Whom I care about. I don't know if part of this is because he--and others--think I'm so much smarter than everyone that anything I write must be super-smart person stuff that goes over the heads of others, but nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who reads "Thank You, Human"--read it fairly, without agenda--will enjoy reading it more than they have ever enjoyed reading anything by anyone else and/or more than they had any clue they could ever enjoy reading anything. It's that good. It's that special. It's that inclusive. It's a fucking wonder, man, that story. It's fucking unbelievable.
And I said--and I don't normally do this--that I was going to be in a bad position if things ever changed, I got my level playing field--or banged this misshapen pitch into one--because then what? I'm good now? That thing you're reading from 2017 is good now? Whereas it wasn't all along when it wasn't worth looking at? Come on.
What kind of relationship do you have then? How do have one at all? How do you have one when you're as staunchly as moral as I am? As un-fake? As real?
Anyway. I'll get after it in the earliest hours. This just lights a fire under my ass.
More work today on "Hero of Mine." I guess one could say that it's a story like "The Bird" that is not like "The Bird" actually in terms of rhythm or design, the specs of the prose itself at the level of that language. But something of the same universal scope and readerly utility and relevance regardless of age.
Tomorrow will be intense. I will regather now.
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