Friday, December 10, 2010

"I'm becoming less defined as days go by
Fading away
And well you might say
I'm losing focus
Kinda drifting into the abstract in terms of how I see myself

Sometimes I think I can see right through myself"

In and Out

Such, such, such
vast
and varied
empty, rising skyscrapers
inside my mind,
just
these somber burning vigils,
of a time gone by
and whispers on the wind
carried to the depths
of whatever lays
at the bottom of my soul.

I feel torn apart on the inside,
pulled and drawn
in every direction,
every manner
and every means
all at once,
faster and faster.

Spiraling baby,
just out of control
another day
another job
what more can I say?

Falling under the title
of just a bit of self destruct,
I suppose it's normal
but then again
what is?

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Hmm...some sort of story idea...a book actually called "Chapter One" in which the story never actually progresses beyond the first chapter...the entire book is the struggle to get beyond the first chapter itself...and yet there is consistent failure to do so.

I know there is no way that is actually an original idea...I just need to figure out who already did that so I can shake my fist angrily at them.
All things considered...I suppose life really isn't so bad.
Quite wonderful actually.
Even with a headache at 3AM.

Wooo.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Bah.
I hate being an indecisive jerk.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

The sad thing is I cannot even begin to trust my intentions.

I look in the mirror and see the person no one else does...I'm damned to live with the dark side of me which can never be exposed...small shards and fragments appear...but the real me...

It just cannot be known.

Bah, I feel like I am just waking in circles...and to a large degree I am...because I am not sure how to even begin to make sense of so much of this life.

Emotions, feelings, memories...so much, so little, so late to be shared and shown...

At least if I bite my tongue and reveal nothing...at least some pain can be prevented...and that is what it seems my job has become...prevention.

Ironic, isn't it?

Saturday, December 4, 2010

All doubts and existential quandaries aside...home is home...
Some measure of normality for once is a God send.
More ways than one really...
Sometimes I feel like such a stranger...

So tired and so freaking nauseated...hopefully it'll pass soon.

Goodnight, goodnight and goodnight...
Meh.

I guess I did feel a little left out...but what is the point of such silly emotions?

Instead...sleep, tomorrow I must drive and think.

So many paths, so many roads...where do they all lead?

What's in a Novel?

I seriously cannot believe November is already over.

Considering all of the school work, health issues, school obligations, having three people join (and another four people express interest) in the classic Deadlands game I've been running and writing the first draft of my fourth novel...all of it just flew by ever so quickly.

More than once I have had people question my sanity over not just the task of writing a fifty thousand word first draft in just a month but writing a novel at all, much less the fact this was my fourth time to take part in Nanowrimo.

I have four rough novels on my hard drive, something that adds up to being somewhere between 220,000 and 250,000 words of fiction.

That I, Matt Pike, wrote.

I feel some context, some explanation for all this madness is in order:


I. My first venture into the NANOWRIMO madness was back in 2007 and I wrote an incredibly awkward fantasy novel set in modern America about a group of hapless fools who had the misfortune of being chosen to save the world. I plagiarized the personalities of several close friends at the time, the narration style of Douglas Adams and the plot of most every console RPG to be released in the past decade.

The basic story followed a group of teenagers/early twenty somethings who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and had a Guardian (think angelic warrior type wielding a katana) who was commissioned to find the chosen ones and lead them on a quest to prevent an ancient evil from being unleashed onto the world.

Being unfortunate to have me as the writer means their quest was for nougat because they all were screwed over in the end by the leader of the organization who was supposed to be stopping this madness. Their quest lead them to bringing a relic to a holy site that ripped a hole open in the fabric and time and space, causing a spiritual barrier to be removed and in a literal sense all of Hell broke loose upon the world and the heroes were caught in the vortex.

Considering my incredibly lack of skills of narration and writing it is at least a somewhat redeemable work.



II. My second novel during the 2008 novel season was written as a direct sequel to the first book (neither of which have names yet) and continued the groups misadventures as they had been trapped on an alien world and were trying to return hope to stop everything they loved from being wiped out.

I was going through a rather dark phase so the black humor aspect was played up quite a bit and although I broke the 50k mark there really was no real ending and I was at a lost to what I should write.



III. Then came my third novel which became a stereotypical high fantasy novel with a stereotypical unpronounceable name, "The Twilight of Sin'ai" and I took a lot of influence from both "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Dark Tower Series".

In my mind "Sin'ai" takes places in the same universe as the first two novels but was a prequel of sorts showing a grand spiritual battle taking among the stars and that the Earth was insulated from the horrors of it all.

A race of fallen beings called The Dark (original, I know) are these beings who have been stripped of all emotion and rational thought, they are like a virus that simply consumes and steals the bodies of people and creatures and take their form but are merely a twisted and perverse caricature of what once was.

The main group of heroes are fighting a loosing war to protect their realm and have to chase a mysterious man in dark and crimson colored robes who has stolen an artifact which if used can open a portal and allow the Dark free reign to consume this doomed world.

It is quite possible that I was going through a really dark time of my life because without intending to there is a lot of fatalism and nihilistic themes, more so than this years novel which was the intended focus.



IV.This brings us to this year, 2010 and my novel which was lovingly dubbed "The Downward Spiral". A lot of my essays on spirituality draw their names from song titles so it made sense to me that this book would be named after one of the albums I listened to most during the writing process.

The original goal for this novel was to construct a storyline and plot which could be both a stand alone story as well as provide the content for a campaign for the "Call of Cthulhu Campaign". I drew from several sources, most notably H.P. Lovecraft, Steven King, Franz Kafka and Flannery O'Connor.

I wanted to take some unfortunate every day people and throw them into these horrible and impossible situations where the best they could hope is to last just a few minutes longer as the barrier of what is possible/impossible gets ripped down and they feel their sanity being ripped from their being. A lot of the essences was that they were shown the edge of the world and looked over to see this overwhelmingly impossible void that they looked into and saw something coming for them out of the darkness.

I consciously made the choice to pick a genre I have avoided, that of supernatural horror. I also tried to let the content flow as organically as it could and so there is a good amount of dark content so that I would label the books as being PG-13 if not R rated. I did not set out to try and offend people by having characters that swore, had sexual thoughts or were in danger of dying but in order to be true to the story I had to tell what I was saying.

To a degree I still do not know what the ending of this book is, I had a few scenes in my head and did the best I could to connect all of them into some sort of coherent order and considering how little experience I have in this genre...I think it came out well.

There were several points where I considered just scrapping the project and try to stick to something familiar but then I came across this utterly amazing quote:


"The writer who emphasizes spiritual values is very likely to take the darkest view of all of what he sees in this country today. For him, the fact that we are the most powerful and wealthiest nation in the world doesn't mean a thing in any positive sense. The sharper the light of faith, the more glaring are apt to be the distortions the writer sees in the life around him... My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable... The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural."
-Flannery O'Connor


This quote sort of smacked me in the face with not just inspiration but this obligation, this need to avoid the intellectual and creative ghetto that exists within the American Christian bubble.

I do not read much Christian fiction because I find both genres to be hopelessly dull, contrived, predictable and full of more Deus ex Machina's than you could hit with a dead Greek playwright.

There are good intentions in trying to shelter people from themes and ideas that might be too much for them, however it should be pointed out that if the entire Bible was adapted it would be rated X because in Genesis alone you have sexy, murder, incest, extortion, lying, drunk people stumbling around, God killing the majority of the population and nuking a couple of cities.

To say that one can read about these things in the Bible and that they are topics in faction that are taboo is a double standard that helps no one.

I have no illusion of ever having any of my books in Lifeway or the other chain Christian bookstores because I have little interest or desire to write feel good, mushy, lovey-dovey let's all hold hands and sing songs while pretending that only "sinners" and "bad" people experience bad things in life.

I suppose me saying that is a wee bit pretentious but I am okay with that.

At the end of the day the best any of us can do is pray, hope and trust that we can follow the convictions and desires God has placed in our hearts.



To me those convictions are:

1.No comprising or censoring of the works I write.
2.That I need to be as painfully honest and open about my struggles because too many Christians hide their scars and pretend everything is perfect when this world is broken. Any fool can see that and I refuse to put my head in the sand just to make people feel good about their complacency.
3.I was given this ability to write and until the day I die I am going to keep writing, keep revising and tell the stories I most want to hear because there are those who need to hear them just as badly as I do.
4.Temet nosce, the unexamined life is not worth living and to write I have to live, fail, learn and grow.
5.Bake more brownies and give out more hugs.

Friday, December 3, 2010

"Your eyes
Are always there
Your eyes
Are what I came for

Your eyes
Drive away my fear
Your eyes
I could just stand there and adore

Stop just right there
Everything has to stop to steal time
For whom I want to be near
Yes I do care and I love the love we share

And I know You're alive
I'll give my heart to survive
This world has nothing to offer a human soul
Reaching for the sky
So Father of light
Keep this human spirit alive"
I feel a bit like curling up into a ball because of the pain.

Ick.
Ack.
Bleh.

In a way it would be nice to go out and do something...but I just feel too tired, too dizzy and really just too sick to put forth the effort it would take to accomplish that.

Oh well.
In other news:

Wheee...
A bit silly how such small things can act as a relief.

Yes.

Silly indeed.
I find it infinitely amazing how in attempting to do the right thing I sabotage myself and end up preventing things I would have rather liked.

Lousy morals and such.

*sigh*

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Furthermore, I would at least like to think I have a high tolerance and would help anyone...but I am just getting to the point where I am too tired to deal with certain people.

It is amazing how certain people lack tact.
Or compassion for that matter.
Is it really so hard for people to have manners?
Will it be the skin off your bloody teeth if you close your mouth while eating?
Blargh.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

If I didn't know better I would think that certain people are going out of their way to try and to my ever growing pile of pure confusion.
I have to wonder how much is too much.
What will cause me to loose and become lost in all this contradictory nonsense.

Hope lives.
Burns and struggles.
Gasps for breath.
But lives.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Quote of the Day:

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
-T.S. Eliot
When you were here before
Couldn't look you in the eye
You're just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You're so fucking special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here

I don't care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice when I'm not around
You're so fucking special
I wish I was special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell I'm doing here?
I don't belong here

She's running out the door
She's running out
She runs runs runs

Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You're so fucking special
I wish I was special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here
I don't belong here

Pain and the Frail Gifts from a Forked Tongue

If feelings can be ripped, torn and destroyed
then why do they persist to nag my heart?
Such lies, such pain, such frailty of conviction
and I morn this loss?

A fool and bastard I am,
of every sense
cut off and rejected,
thrown back to the pile of filth
and hate that courses through my veins.

Do you see this blood,
the sins of my past
passing and moving in shadows
crying out to I,
a cry that I should cut
and let blood pour
staining this grass
that has been my bed
in these stages of delirium.

Do you know hast?
Do you know hate?
Frailty that reeks
of a stench of rottenness
that all I ever was told
were mere lies,
pleasing to the speaker
and knives which rake upon my heart,
such a dark and deprave coal
that is no thing more than I.

Do you see this tripe,
this disgusting
verbose vomit?

I am but a creep
such a lowly insect
with a festering wound
just out of my reach.

Can I blame a nymph
for her sins
of being as she is?

Tis unbecoming of a man
to blame problems on others
when the problem was me
and all I can say is I will stand
and might die with dignity,
dignity that left the house of my father
and here I am.

Blood that is mud in my veins
and horror upon horror,
I know not the story
nor can I handle it.

I wish to be more, be more than I am
but it is nothing you will see
for my heart is closed.
This demon seed has been planted
and it crystallizes
and become a diamond.

Rough, hard, unbreakable
for your tendrils have grown deep
and all that I pull
makes the pain worse
and soon you will have a marker
if you care to dance upon
the tomb that will hold
these rotting bones.

Hold a mirror up
maybe hold it close
to see the bones under the makeup
and hollow the promises of a woman are made
such vain lies
I ate and dined on
for I believe the impossible
forgetting that fantasy
will never be reality.

Trust,
faith,
honor,
respect
such laughable terms
amounting to nothing more
than diarrhea of the mouth,
such a revolting pile of shit
that I only have myself to blame for.

I crushed and destroyed bridges
just for something that was a lie.

Bitter?
I?
Nay, just one whose virgin eyes
were ripped open
by the gaping hole in my soul
and for daring
to open my heart to such fables,
such indiscriminate lies.

Look closely,
count the vowels
and see the pain in every symbol
every frail postulate
as it may be my last.

These words must burn,
must face the fire of correction
for the only fool as me
in and out
in and out
and soon to say goodbye.

Do not blink
for you may miss my exit,
crashing and burning
and unable to cope
with how harsh reality is
and shall ever and forever be.

It is, it is.
Thank you for it,
thank you for the pain
because I feel grace
where I would not have.
You ripped me apart
calling my life sin
and demonstrating
every fault
and every sin
making me see
and feel why humanity
should be purged,
ripped from our place.

Why such games?
Such a Divine Madman
holds back
not destroying us
and yet here we are.

Goodnight, good bye
and fare well.
Do not let the door hit you
as you leave
and know there is no return
and never a second chance.

This heart is closed.
A diamond forged
from the pressures and pain.
See the caricature you created
but do not touch the strings,
they are nothing more
than rusted barb wire,
created in the tumble and fall from grace
and rusted from the bitter hot tears
I was told to never share.

Good riddance to a waste of space,
farewell to my ocuping this pain.
I do not want this
and refuse to carry it any more.

Shadow boxing
and fighting my own shadow
because I am who I am.

I can handle being single
because I have to.
I refuse to lead others on
and crush them and treat them
as play things
just to increase my self worth
and because I can stand the silence.

Having my dad and grandmother
ripped from me
by distance, disease and death
just made me darker
made me more silent
and forced me to abandon the lie
that the good people get rewarded.

We will stand, fight
and die horrible deaths.
Not for a stupid gold road
or mansions
but to be held and have our tears wiped away
by one bigger
so much more beautiful than you can know.

Pain is what opens the path to God,
sin costs blood
and I would bleed all of mine now
just to be closer
to feel the love I scarcley believe is true.

Maybe in several thousand years
of healing
of pergutory
and grace making me new
I can look in your eyes and not feel pain,
not see the rejection
and contempt for the bastard I am.

Goodnight,
farewell,
let the pain be as it will be
for I am who I am.

Broken, bloodied and dying
but more alive now
than I ever was.

Monday, November 29, 2010

I think I enjoy writing and playing villains because it allows me to tap into a really dark side of myself that I normally do everything I can to avoid showing or being a part of.

However...mad genius is at work here...

Quote of the Day:

"Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
—George Santayana

Sunday, November 28, 2010

"the farther I fall I'm beside you
as lost as I get I will find you
the deeper the wound I'm inside you
for ever and ever I'm a part of

you and me
we're in this together now
none of them can stop us now
we will make it through somehow
you and me
if the world should break in two
until the very end of me
until the very end of you

all that we were is gone we have to hold on
when all our hope is gone we have to hold on
all that we were is gone but we can hold on

you and me
we're in this together now
none of them can stop us now
we will make it through somehow
you and me
even after everything
you're the queen and I'm the king
nothing else means anything"
Yes.

I am that guy who will go do something or get something at 2am, 11pm of any other absurd when I already have a half million things to do.

I'll even do it without so much as a thanks.

Just because of love.

I want to learn how to love even those I do not know...those whom I hate with that passion...but even more so, the same passion God has for the lost sheep and the ones who have become wolves and preying on other sheep.

Even if it means taking a Shepard's staff and striking to protect the innocent and those being preyed upon.

I want to show love that is beyond my capacities and beyond my beliefs and is straight from the lips of Christ.