What makes a story delicious to read? Any answer to this question would produce a boring story.
I have struggled the past couple of days with cohering the nags in my mind together. This nag, that nag.
I was so angry two days ago that I quietly raged in my mind and then for the rest of that day I just felt depressed. My emotional state has returned to normal but I’m left with an increasing blooming sense that I allowed sin to conquer my affections and raise a flag atop my noggin, to plunge my angel nature into the water like a girl forced to bob for apples.
So I’m left with nags. A nag like I want to find the right things to destroy. And character to attach my mental images to for a story. You cannot ride clarity forever and flow states perish. I feel like I’ve been shattered and I’m standing above the various shards trying to figure out where to start.
Have you ever felt this way? It happens most often at work for you when you have a lot to do but you don’t want to do any of it. Where to pull the thread? So you end up doing nothing and like a crazy person pick up a shard, look at it, and think hm I can’t start here, maybe over there, hm beginning here would not be as valuable or efficient…
The pornographic mind. We all have one. I have long felt the greatest evil in our time is Noise and the greatest good is Flow. Culturally, mind you, though we affirm there is always a Spirit of the Age and it comes with its attendant bedmistresses. The Spirit of the Age is a nameless god powered by sin, but it hates God and will plunge us all if it could. Its handmaiden is Noise, a concept I’ve defined before I won’t define here.
The pornographic mind desires above all else something delicious. Isn’t the question of what makes a story delicious to read somewhat pornographic?
Candy, not that plain rice biz. America runs on humpin’
Nicotine is pornographic, alcohol is pornographic, television is pornographic, eating out is pornographic, a job you like is pornographic, news articles are pornographic, career goals are pornographic, feeling affection for your loved ones is pornographic, acquiring knowledge is pornographic, going on road trips, hosting a party, jumping in a hot tub, buying new clothes, getting a raise—all pornographic.
I read a review of Sadly, Porn yesterday that has spared me from reading the book. Newsflash! It’s not about porn.
The main nougat I’ve been chewing on. I’ll put my summary as a block quote so you can also think about whether it is true or false:
We have no desires. We desire things as a defense against not acknowledging what our desires are.
All the above things I listed are not real desires, but defenses against how we fail to desire.
We don’t desire the attendant physiological feelings of nicotine and alcohol, we desire to defend ourselves against how little we feel without them.
We don’t desire to eat out, we desire to defend against the feeling that we hate cooking and are lazy. Or perhaps we desire to show people that we are higher status than they are.
We don’t desire a raise, we desire to defend against our feeling that we aren’t going anywhere in life and are stuck.
Etc.
I didn’t start a store because I like this particular type of store. The desire for it was strong because it was a defense against my lack of direction. Without it where would I be? I did this for many external reasons—to provide for my family, to strengthen a community, to increase my potential takehome (lol), to not have to be an employee—but focusing on these allows me to deflect from the real reason.
A Christian especially would be tempted to baptize his worldly pursuits with some greater goal. Take space! Occupy for Christ! Commercial space for the kingdom!
Status, plain and simple. I did it for status.
I also did it for the same reason that when I was four years old and we went through a drive-thru as a family, I demanded to have my 'own-own’ fries. I am Sinead O’Connor shouting fire on babylon.
I was once told by someone that he’s never known someone so motivated by ownership.
Nobody gets a gold star for this. You just don’t like sharing.
Curiously, the only thing being a shopkeep does to you is require you to stand in the same 4 sq ft zone on earth for 40 hours a week.
I am Odysseus lashed to the sails with the wax plucked from my ears and the harpies shriek at me of what could be other than this if only I unlashed myself. I love the harpies of twitter and the political catcalls of change.
It is hour 3 or 8 today. I spent the first two hours reading substack articles and feverishly triple checking my email. This is pornographic, because what I want is to fill my brain with new information that is suggestive and promises a sense of connection to out there.
I googled “Donald Trump” three times within one hour to see if he has made any further bold moves I can feel ambivalent about. I have had three nicotine pouches to help me focus on reading these articles:
My Houseguests, Ranked, by Hostess Gift.
Messy personal essays, Hoka speed loafers, religious novels.
Here is a screenshot of a couple minutes of my brain. My nicotine helped me focus!:
My interests are pedestrian and plain. The Great Wall of China, lost relics! I have an especially soft spot for sunken treasures, perfectly preserved shipwrecks, and the like. I am the Demon Cat from Adventure Time:
I started a chat with my best friend on my work email. I felt he needed to know about fried maple leaves:
Your brain is fried just like mine. You are sitting on a giant pile of shards. You spent at least thirty minutes today on twitter. Well, not twitter! Facebook!
Doesn’t matter. You were looking for Noise. Noise is your Mother Mary.
I send myself emails as reminders. I have (124) “ideas” I never review in my inbox. They involve business, grooming suggestions (always prefer a solid buzzcut but part of me believes this is nearsighted), and media to consume in the future:
Okay so but all of this is very secular-minded. How to baptize this essay with troo-troo?
The psychoanalysts and the Luddites all have a point which is that we are not what we should be.
We want to turn all this into potential. Forget should, what about what we could be if only we harnessed our time! If we eliminated the Noise and entered Flow, we could as yet become gods. We do not write so we may know, we write so we may become. Augustine offers the proof of value for crap-posting.
Confessional literature is delicious (and pornographic) because with it we can compare ourselves and get immediate status hits. True or false? You think, I would never google if the great wall of China worked.
Okay.
I’ve been thinking a lot about should vs. could. It is the core theme I’m working out in my novel about insect people who don’t realize they aren’t something they weren’t aware existed (creatures with agency beyond instinct). Here are my notes for the next part of the chapter I avoided working on this morning by reading about fried maple leaves:
- - - - - - -
-They put him in a cage
-Describe the other animals in the menagerie, basically just creatures you see for sale at a fish market, but with human characteristics. And then humans, but with seafood characteristics. And then odder things, like living furniture, lamps, etc.
-and then bring out the two cages of Arial and Amathos. “Did they talk to you guys, too?”
-Yuppp. We ain’t human. By their standards.
-Arial is praying, amathos is literally dying.
-Adder overhears the humans freaking out about the crustaceans in the other tower
- The weight of should, whether or not a creature feels a moral sense independent from its pack, is what the humans use to determine if they have a soul. Any creature with a soul will know what is right or wrong without societal context.
“Just because you don’t perceive right from wrong does not mean right and wrong do not exist.”
“You either got it or ya don’t.”
“And you don’t got it.”
- The other aspect to the weight of should is the soul’s ability to not do what it’s supposed to do, you know you have a soul if you know what to do but do not do it, if you can say no to the pack, or the authority.
- Adder recalls the parasite he saw in the steams. Eventually, he will have to choose if he wants to be human or not and suffer from a moral sense. He will, finally, learn why he wants what he wants. To want evil, or to want good. And evil and good is determined by an even more mysterious being, Sella, the great one who invented souls, who provided humans specifically the Will, not instinct. Instinct governs animals for them to do as they should for Sella. But Will is the faculty provided to humans to carry out the will of Sella. In order to carry out the will of Sella in a governmental and creative way, it must be different from instinct.
- Aster offers Adder two choices. Either he can eat the honey from the hive and become human and gain Will or continue to be a mere creature of instinct
- Aster says more or less, With so few alive who have will, I have been tasked directly by Sella to determine which creatures proceed either to instinct leading to death or will leading to life. Since the flood, all previous forms have been scrambled.
-He believes the Director is motivated by little more than instinct at this point, but it began with a will to create new forms bent to his own will.
-Aster meanwhile was the one who had all the knowledge about the waters, which do not work immediately but require love and loss.
- - - - - -
- They ask him what he plans to do next and he replies, “I really don’t know.” They all look at each other.
They put him in a cage along with the other creatures.
“We were unable to determine if you are sentient enough to allow independent action. What we mean is, based on our conversation with you, we don’t know if you have a soul. If you had a soul, we would respect you. But you and your friends, from our three independent conversations with all of you, appear to be unable to act out their own will.
“But I have before. I’ve felt trapped and escaped from my troppus.
-Adder admits he was quite like that when he was inside Amamma, never speaking much of his intention but a head full of plans.
-The humans want to keep the squall they brought with them. Adder says that in exchange for the squall, they may keep Arial and Amathos. The human think this is funny, but he says if it’s knowledge they’re after then they can get plenty from those two.
-They rebutt saying we will keep them in exchange for the squall if you agree to go into the north tower over there and let the remaining squalls out from the hole in the bottom of the tower, as the crustaceans are only attracted to the smell of humans.
-Adder renegotiates and says I cannot be delayed in my pursuit of Aster. I am drawn towards him, he is my remaining recourse.
-The humans argue about this, but relent and say fine but you need to go tell your friends that we mean them no harm and will allow them to be honored at Sea Station upon the arrival, but they also tell him that he must send a message to Aster saying he is remembered and to return to Sea Station.
-I have a question I need to ask him. The question is why he would trick Adder, knowing it would be the death of him.
-Aster just straight up asks for forgiveness. He is a slightly desperate man.
-Aster wants, ultimately, to be left alone and die but if he could have a choice it would be to put have Amamma also die in peace as she herself is not evil. Relationship is like David and Saul. Aster had plenty of opportunities to kill Papa, but he chose not to. But now Papa is after him and will not rest until he gets his way.
-Aster is upset because he wanted Amathos to bring back the waters for his plants.
And here is what I’ve already written:
“So now,” Play said to Adder, “will you seek your Star?”
The fire crackled in the pit. He looked around at all the kind faces.
“What should I do?”
Frolic grimaced. “Should. Should. Have you ever felt like you knew what you should do?”
Adder thought of all the times he felt the weight of should. It was what he felt in perpetuity inside Amamma whenever he did anything, but he didn’t always bend himself to the weight. Whether he followed through with the weight of should or not, he still felt it. There was no way to remove the weight with Papa.
These sweet people let him think, and they all sat there as he reflected. Evidently it was an important question to them. Adder tried to remember just how he felt around the chimneys of snow. It felt so long ago now, but it was the moment everything inside him had changed.
He had not felt the weight of should since that moment, being as it was tied up only in service to Papa. What had been motivating him since then felt so much more obscure, a faint whisper, an instinct. The instinct did not present details or plans or ambitions, but it did drive him to pursue some vague future fact. The future fact that led him to go on, as though it had already been completed and he only had to live his life now in light of it, was that everything was going to be alright. Hope was like a spider looking for a new home hidden in shadow.
Or a parasite inside the hive of his heart.
“I always knew what I should do,” Adder began, “when I lived inside the mother. But without her, I don’t know what to do.”
Play asked, “But you want to do things, right?” She smiled.
Adder thought about this. “Yes, I think so. But not really specific things. I feel things, anyway.”
“You feel! Do you feel fear?”
“Not as much as I used to.”
“What do you feel? Mostly?”
Dance interrupted this interrogation. She threw her hands out at Adder and said boldly, “Play, come on. You’re leading him on. It’s clear enough.”
Play sighed and looked at her hands in her lap. The fire crackled. Some growling noises came from behind the cubicles.
“Let’s show it,” Dance said.
All the people sighed it seemed and rose from their desk chairs which spun and rolled away.
Frolic put his hand on Adder’s shoulder and winked.
“It’ll be okay.”
They walked down a clean pathway between two rows of cubicles. The cubicles on the left had been turned into aquariums from panes of glass where aquatic creatures had seemingly been categorized into their types. All of them shared in common the presence of gills and, in most cases, fins.
“It’s not a hard science,” Dance said, “but I take pride in my work. You see that one?” She put her hand on Adder’s shoulder and turned him. He saw
When I’m done writing for a session, I leave the sentence unfinished so it’s easier to begin. It’s a Hemingway trick, I think?
And it would work if I just had a typewriter in front of me.
Which I’ve tried. Too Noisy.
What I really wanted to write today was some ole grease for the wheels. It was going to be called “The Shopkeep.” A graphic novel idea, because I just finished reading Watchmen.
The setup would be a very snowy day. The wife shakes her husband awake. An alert she received on her phone: cars will not start today, everywhere in the region. It’s too cold outside.
Problem. He has to commute!
He decides to walk to work. He has no choice but to be there, never taken a sick day, the man standing in the breach. Never. Close.
It takes seventeen hours, epic saga where he reflects on how he chose this servitude but nevertheless his peers moan and whine about their lack of mission, tangible occupations, and are just desk slaves without a real sense of ownership or purpose about their labor.
I’m living the mission, he thinks. The mission is slavery.
He arrives at the shop with frozen fingers, stiff limbs, covered in snow. All the windows are broken and it’s 3AM. He turns the lights on and the music. The show must go on.
The entire store, every surface, is covered in fine powderdust snow. The employee comes in to begin sweeping up all the snow, which does not melt, but then says they must go home because they think they are going to vomit. It is 3:45AM.
A homeless long-haired man comes into the store around 4AM and demands of the shopkeep, who is busily sweeping broken glass and unmelting snow, accept a return of goods. Problem! He didn’t buy any of that stuff there.
The homeless guy then says, “I know who you are, you grifter.”