My Suicide Note

Hi. Sorry I put you through this. I just couldn't deal anymore. I needed more than I got, wanted more than I would receive. My life wasn't bad exactly, but I made it bad for some reason. Not sure why. Maybe I thought I wasn't worth it. I definitely gave up hope that it would ever be good.

I would have done this a long time ago, saving you all a lot of grief, but I just was too afraid of pain, terrified of trying and failing, as I did with so many other things. I can't connect with you. Even when I do I find ways to make that go away. Invent reasons to invalidate and erase any and all good.

I guess I just really don't want to live, don't want to be happy. I guess I don't know how. I hate myself in such a deep, twisted way that I feel I will never climb out of that hole. No ray of sunshine, no hope, no tender words will ever get me to come back from the ledge. So, what's the point?

I'll just look to any and all of you for validation, then invalidate any and all responses until I get the answer I'm looking for. You've got to just do it, Kurt. Just kill yourself and be done with it. Even this note you're writing is just some sad, pathetic excuse to elicit an emotional response from someone. Anyone.

But it doesn't matter. Nothing will get better. You'll never get help. That's all.

I'm going to walk around until I finish this pack of cigarettes and then find some way to end my life. I've contacted those I felt who would help sway my decision. Probably did it after midnight on a Wed night just so no one would contact me. Fuck it.

I'm out. I love you, those I loved. I hate you, those I hated. None of it matters anymore as life will continue on without me. Don't bother shedding a tear, this is what I wanted. It was only a matter of time.

I guess that's it. I texted those that mattered with whatever I had left to say. Not much, really. Now, it's just a matter of going through with it and not waking up tomorrow to do this all again. It's been real people.

Be nicer to each other.

Love,

K

The New World: Order (Day 1)

Today is the first day of my life. A life without co-dependent behavior, without passive aggressive abuse, without anxiety and indecision. I am moving forward and this will be my daily writing that chronicles my rise to power.

I slept on the floor of my new sublet up in Harlem. It hurt. I have bruises on my hips but slept decent. Didn't hurt that I was exhausted and passed out around 6am after hanging out at McGarry's on 9th & 33rd with co-workers last night. A quick, gorgeous taxi ride up the west side highway at dawn was a great way to kick it off.

So I woke up and tweeted a shopping list of essentials. I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond, swallowed my anxiety (both of shopping and crowds) and bought an inflatable mattress, dark blue sheets, a pillow, and a dark blue towel. Later I'll grab some soap, toothpaste and toilet paper from Duane Reade. And most likely a fan from Rite Aid asap.

Right now I'm back at McGarry's to have a beer and a chicken sandwich before work. I figured now was a good time to kick this thing off. Take stock of my life as it is, and where it needs to go. There is so much to get done and I've already wasted too much time getting my act together.

It's a day past July 4th, Independence Day, and I am no longer living with an ex that made my life miserable. We tried endlessly to make it work but every time I'd fall apart, somehow lose control of my emotional capabilities and freak the fuck out. She's leaving for her parents' house in Pennsylvania today with the help of her new boyfriend.

My worldly possessions (VHS tapes, bootleg Asian movies, and a ton of comic books) are now in storage outside the Brooklyn Navy Yards. Boston Scott, my true hetero-soulmate and writing partner, has given up his life of danger as a Florida policeman to be a park ranger back up in Massachusetts.

The plan is to live in this sublet until mid-August when we celebrate Reilly Brown's birthday down on the Jersey Shore, then I head back up to Mass with Boston to spend a week there relaxing and scoping out the area. I'm not 100% ready to give up living here but I am entertaining the notion.

Then hopefully I'll have somewhere to live by September 1st, or at least some places to crash. By then I should be stripped down enough to truly live mobile. In the meantime I really need to focus on what needs to happen self-improvement-wise. But I'll get to that.

As for today, I've gotten the basics done, I'll head to work and hit up the gym afterwards, then go back uptown and sleep in my first (pseudo) real bed that I've ever bought for myself.

Today's Song: You & me, and all of the people...

Today's Project: Finish Tower of Brahma Chapter 63 pt.II

Today's Picture: I have no idea but there were a lot of bees around it, on 22nd by 7th.

K

Day 2. Project Rebirth.

The comics are all moved into the living room, books are assembled into piles, clothes stacked on my chair. Not bad for just a few hours. I got a good nights sleep, and feel pretty motivated, eager to start my new life.

The next two days, I will organize more, empty out that room, have all the boxes stacked by the door ready to be carried out. I'll go and meet my friends Doug & Stacey for breakfast tomorrow, then come back and do some work, then meet Jeff to pay him for the sublet.

Tonight I will re-write the article on the tourist lanes, work on the Write Club! logo, do up another Write Club Funnies, and when I get home watch Futurama and write up a review to post tomorrow night. I'll prep reviews for Unknown Soldier and Greendale, and get back to Improv Fiction.

Also, I need to finish the Tower of Brahma chapter 63 post, but it will need some time to sit down and wrap up the second half of my entire life. Maybe I should post it as is. I am also going to plan a party, my first Facebook invite, for July 9th to celebrate the completion of my book and the start of my new life.

Start a new blog for Suburban Loser. Ready posts to go up atuomatically every Monday starting July 5th. Start Liquid Fury blog. Ready a page a day starting July 9th. Start posts for the blog. Get back to TenTon. Start talking to Reilly about promoting Power Play. Design a logo.

Begin work on Mustang Frankenstein. Finish Pryzmalite Massacre. Outline Deadbeat, Union Squared, Time & Space, and Working Title. Research something once a week. Fiction book once a week. Grab a stack of comics and scan them in and try and sell them.

Figure out what days off would be best. Talk to Christian about when I can come up and visit. Find out Boston's deal, Brothers Price's deal with Wburg, and look into Wendy's house in Bronx. Get a new tattoo.

Get guitar from dad, learn it, rock out, start a band.

Summer Solstice. 2010. Rebirth. Day 1.

Today is the first day. I will begin this day as the first step on that journey of a thousand miles. My mind will stay sharp, clear, and on task. I will not deviate from this set plan until I see "Boston" Scott Morrill in Massachusetts, Christian Laura in New Paltz, Michael D'Amato & Gary Foster on Long Island.

I will not give into self-pity, depression, or mania. I will remain cool headed, detached, and driven in my goal. Everything that has come before was to set this stage. I know need to walk out front and center, and deliver my lines. This is everything I have ever worked for in my life, all I ever wanted.

I will clean out this room, place all my belongings in the living room, prepare them to be moved by next week the latest. Find the best storage unit. Less up front and more expensive is okay. 5x7 minimum. Pack essentials into a backpack. Make sure computer bag is set to be fully mobile.

Call credit card companies. Find out the essentials. Ask about loan or debt consolidation. Worry about IRS in the Fall. Count on paying rent by October. Push for November. Find best way to sell comic books. Talk to WildPig convention organizer.

Work on screenplays by July 5th. Start posting Suburban Loser first Monday. Begin researching Amateur. Edit one chapter of Tower of Brahma a week, remove it from online. Start Liquid Fury tumblr. Tie blogspot into it, new twitter name. Script Power Play #2. Start music/animation project.

Read one book a week, weekly visit to storage, switch book, get batch of comics to scan & sell. Gym three times a week. One night of research. One movie night. Find cheap food to buy weekly. Write something every day that is personal and non-fiction.

Plan ridiculous trip for bday. Leave NY by NYCC.

Do more magic and meditation. Prepare rituals of your own design. Burn all that you longer need.

Redefine yourself as you truly are.

Love,

K

Daily Dosage - 6/18/10 8:02am

I'm kind of annoyed with people today, so trying not to feel lonely and desperate for communication. Maybe I'll just go see A-Team instead.

I started doing a daily improv writing exercise, where two random suggestions from FaceBook peeps are weaved together into a story. It's been really helpful so far, and I feel like I'm reaching more of an audience and creating a backlog of offbeat material.

I gotta touch base with Ben to find out about the design aspect of the 'zine. Finish the new Write Club! logo. Re-write the article on Jeff Greenspan. Prep for the second to last Tower of Brahma entry. Find reference for new grindhouse style hotrod road webcomic.

Ugh, whatever humanity. Leave me alone to write. Now if I only had a wi-fi connection.

K

Daily Affirmations 6/16/10 1:32am

This uncontrollable loneliness strikes me each night as I look at Facebook, AIM, Gchat, Tumblr, for someone to talk to. The night shift is not my friend, and any other friends I may still have are on the opposite schedule.

So I will take to writing a blog entry when these moods strike. Amazing how hard it is to sit down and write when this lethargy takes hold, midway through my shift, my energy all but gone. I know I'll be awake in four hours when I get home, and asleep as everyone wakes up.

It's now nearly 8am and I've read some Green Lantern Corp comics, looked at porn, and read my latest chapter in the Tower of Brahma. It is nearly perfect in its structure and execution. This chapter (61.i) represents me really accomplishing what I set out to do.

I wanted to take the seven deadly sins and deconstruct them, first in the abstract (superego) sense where we can refer to the masses, then I (rushed) threw some of my own personal "sins" or self-pitying guilt trips in at the end. The more personal side of my writing, the individual, needs to be better integrated into the narrative.

I also used the major chakras running down our torsos, as a way of triggering the final release of the sins of man from my body. Tossed together with a vague backdrop of a collapsing curtain of reality and the unicorn third eye spike protruding from my forehead. I went with instinct on color/animal associations and I think it paired up nicely.

The backstory for this chapter is that of the entire plot of Tower of Brahma, which is what I was writing toward. What is the point? What is the meaning of life? Why shouldn't I just kill myself right now? I wanted to know the true answer and while writing (all of this book was written stream-of-conciousness with loose outlines in my head) I decoded whatever it was that I needed to know.

Charles Crown writes a book while undergoing some sort of existential crisis. From rest stops in Jersey to Suburbia, Long Island to NYC, Colombia, LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Florida, Massachusetts, Philly, and Pittsburgh. To the brink of insanity, a psych ward, medication and alcoholism. To Freemasons and killing his father...he experiences an adventure.

To help process the information, he creates two fictional secret agents, Fenris & Spider, who are out to destroy the Universe. Spider is the mentor, the killer, the silent dark rogue ninja with a bad attitude. Fenris is the sad, sensitive, oblivious, stark raving madman novice. What is their mission? Can a coherent plot be developed by a writer who is losing his mind?

What is the Tower of Brahma? A mythic Hindu legend. 64 discs of gold atop one of three tiers. Move a tower to another tier one disc at a time, with never a larger one atop a smaller. This repititious puzzle forever occupying the hands of a monk, shuffling discs as his mind wanders.

It is a mathematical concept called recursive, developed by a 19th century mathematician who no doubt wrapped the Hindu legend around it to make it sexy. It stuck and becomes the basis for computer programming, developing the ever expanding nature of computer data processing, setting free the mind into the furthest reaches of abstract math.

What did ending the world mean? A quote from Matt Groening on the end of times is paraphrased as such: "When I die, that's the end of the world for me." No more participation in the mass hallucination that passes for reality means that reality is done. Meaning that each perspective of reality is unique and a unvierse upon itself.

There's part of Faust, De La Guarda, Beat Poetry, bad action movies, experimental films, drunken insanity, altered states of conciousness, paranoid schizophrenia, therapy, hospital visits, broken hearts, lost friendships, despair, loneliness, depression, manic behavior, ranting, raving, depraved debauchery, and on and on.

This book is the past 6+ years of my life. And in two weeks it is over and done with forever. I will get my answer.

Sugar on the LES

I've come and gotten a chicken noodle soup and a buger at my favorite all night diner in the LES 'Sugar'. I used to order the burger from here and take it home to my East Village apt all the time. I used to even order it delivery. It was that good.

Now I'm fairly drunk, and I could have gone over to the Regent Diner over on Suffolk & Houston and gotten some gravy fries as I've done several time over. But I wanted a Sugar burger, as they are unrivaled at most places I've been.

Sitting at Sugar I see at least one girl that should be stolen away from her douchebag boyfriend who's got a generic set of tattoos down his arm and a tag still on his Yankee cap. I want to punch his face until he's under the pavement. I wish to destroy him.

That applies to most guys in the area, if not all of NYC. They think they're hard, and maybe I do too, but if I'm not then this guy certainly isn't. And there's no way he should be running his hands along the thigh of a hot, young short-skirted chick. But he is.

She gets up and changes spots beyond my vision, but he's still there, along with the others who really need to be destroyed. Young, expense account assholes, who have nothing but to feel like they need to be part of the counter-culture movement. But instead they're just propagating the status quo of hipsterism over functionality.

I just want food, sustenance, something that'll taste good that I can go home back to Brooklyn with that'll carry me over til tomorrow. And it finally arrives. The chicken noodle soup was amazing actually, best I've had in awhile, but now my burger is here.

I go to the bathroom and when I come out my table has been cleared. I go by the register and no one is there. The door is open. I run for it, making my way to the nearby deli to get a ginger ale, then cut the corner to the F line at Delancey.

It's the first time I run on the tab, and I don't feel that bad, figuring the richie fucks will cover my balance, but either way I don't expect to be in the LES to eat again, especially after I've moved out of the East Village where my asshole ex-roommate lives. One last quality place wiped off the map of where I can eat.

Hopefully it won't be the last.

June 11, 2010 - Daily Check-In

Lying on mounds of dirty t-shirts from my youth, all bound up in a green laundry bag, serving as a lumpy mattress. A puffy winter coat is my pillow. Wifebeater and boxer briefs in the stale smokey air in my tiny room.

I'm planning out the exact day I move things into storage. Right now it seems the bulk of the move is probably Wednesday, June 23. After that I shall be mobile, a vagabond, a drifter. For at least two months until I get back on top of my debt and hopefully be able to swing going to San Diego.

I'm pseudo prepping for my first article I will pitch to the Daily News. I'll be interviewing an artist as he performs/is photographed, detailing out his tourist lane "street art". It'll likely be at 8am so god help me. I may just have to stay awake til then.

I have an idea for Monday's Tower of Brahma. The Seven Deadly Sins as judged upon myself. Exposing my seven sins in my life, where I strayed from the path of righteousness. I mean, the main character is in Hell, at the very last moment of humanity. May as well acknowledge and dismiss that whole sIn concept.

Waiting on notes for the screenplay. Should be able to bang it out quick once we break down the scenes. Prob have to meet with the guys in person to get the jokes and the dialogue to sound authentic. Remember to email about that meeting.

Trying to work up a new Write Club! logo and I think I have an idea. We shall see. Have to schedule out an article a week for the next few. Check into San Diego. Start writing reviews again.

I should prep a Sub*Text Saturday just for fun.

Time to shower.

K

June 9, 2010 - Assessment of Self

Hello. My name is Kurt Christenson. I am 33 years old, I grew up on Long Island, and now reside in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. I am a writer.

This blog will be the future site of the alt.lit 'zine I am working on putting together. Right now we have the stories together and are working on the design and more artsy aspects of it. Sub*Text will be a literary magazine that puts forth the type of material that I enjoy, mostly new stuff that's influenced from Beat Poets, Surrealists, 70's Sci-Fi Satire, the DADA Movement, comic books, fantasy...rather than anything that is considered "Literature".

I also would like it to feature different artists, but local or independent artists that are doing it for the love of it, because they are compelled to create, instead of trying to market themselves. Leave the marketing to me guys, I won't steer you wrong. The artists I would first like to promote are Stu Horvath & Andrea Sparacino, a photographer and an illustrator respectively.

If you are a writer or artist, of any shape, form or medium, please let me know. I am always looking for someone else to help promote their work. To that end, I am the designer and co-creator/host of WRITE CLUB! the podcast/blog that showcases a lot of independent creators, from comic books to filmmakers, as well as provide you with interviews and insider tips to the comic book industry.

The site will be expanding in the next few months, when we roll out a new show format and slick new website. In the meantime, we'll keep on posting up interviews and articles that provides a fresh new look at art/writing/comics/movies/theatre/fashion and beyond. We are always looking for contributors as well, so if you you want to geek out on something just let us know.

I'm also in the process of re-imagining our webcomic section, so if there's any suggestions or comments, let me know what would be cool, what you want to read or check out. Right now it should be a good sampling of comic strip, photography, short stories, and sketches.

To help promote the WRITE CLUB! name, and to keep a daily log of the important links that I come across for our audience, I have created the WRITE CLUB! Tumblr. Anything I see that focuses on comic news, superhero movies, tips and tricks for writers, open submissions/contests, Art show gallery information, author interviews, etc. I will post it up on here. There's a lot of information floating around the internet, and this will be a good lightning rod for practical and entertaining goodies.

I also have my own personal Tumblr, AgentFenris, which will be the main outside link to this blog. Any contributor to this site going forward will need their own Tumblr account as well as Twitter. This way Sub*Text will a multi-tiered creator contact site. You can read the print 'zine, go to this blog to read more/current articles, then go to a creator's individual Tumblr where they can get to know them more personally.

In this way I will create a celebrity based hierarchy which is necessary in any self-sustaining system. From this I will form a scene for this new "vibe" we are providing to the stale art/lit world that currently exists. It's us, doing what we want, how we want, having others appreciate it. The masses must be told that this is quality, and we have to learn how to say that to ourselves first. And the only thing that does that is doing something with it.

Success. Each little bit will feed our egos. We will want more.

I three weeks from finishing my first novel, the Tower of Brahma. I started this book (based off a screenplay from college) when I was 26 years old, living as a suburban loser in North Massapequa, Long Island, down the block from my Junior High School. I had no friends, minimal contact with my family, and stuck in a six year relationship that was a strained roommate situation more than anything else.

Over the next seven years of writing it, I moved to NYC, went to Colombia, got a tattoo, climbed a mountain, got blackout drunk, cried, ran amuck, and fell in love with the city streets. I was unemployed, a vagabond, living out of my car, staying with friends, from vegetarian to chain smoker. I had epic romantic one night stands and heart wrenching relationships. I was manic, laughing through the streets of the East Village, bleeding and dragging myself along in Soho.

I spent a week in the psych ward at St. Vincent's, just a few months before they shut down the hospital. I moved to Brooklyn. I ended an engagement. A pop singer's DJ defiled my ex-future wife. I pick up and move on, again. Prepping the books and videos for storage, gearing up to become mobile, San Diego Comicon looming on the horizon, my graveyard shift at Daily News my only stability.

This book contains all of this and more. It's a look inside what was really going on with me when I was daydreaming, sleeping, walking by myself. My real struggle, life lived, is in these words. Reality becomes broken down to symbols and metaphors. I overcome obstacles, which when reduced to words, are easily dismissed. There is a fictional thread, a storyline upon which my daily drama is hung upon.

Charles Crown wrote a book. It was insane, gibberish. It focused on Agent Fenris and Agent Spider, a pupil and master, who were sent to destroy the world utilizing the Tower of Brahma. The tower is comprised of three towers, one with sixty four disks stacked on it, that must be moved one at a time, never a bigger on a smaller one. When this is completed the world comes to an end.

Besides the obvious nod to the 'Nine Billion Names of God' short story that I loved as a kid, the 'Tower of Brahma' is a simple computer program/puzzle that is meant to teach recursive, or ever expanding information, the basis for computer programming. The actual origin was supposed to be based on a Hindu legend, but is really just a fancy story wrapped around a mathematical formula created/discovered by a 19th century mathematician.

What is the Tower?

It is math. It is the Tower of Babel, an antennae to God, a monument to Mankind's power, civilization's apex. It is the process of stacking disks, swapping them around, the repetitive motion. Where does your mind go when you do something over and over, to the point of automatic reflex, what are you thinking about? A daydream of suicide and newfound religion is what I thought of. A hero's journey into the self, calling out all the symbolic stand-ins for what they really are. My father. My self. My humanity.

Agent Fenris is a kid superspy. He dies when he is younger, and is then resurrected sixty four seconds later. In that time his mind became a blank slate. His only memory from his brief five years alive was a deep seeded connection to dogs, a brush with canine savagery embedded into his instincts. His parents were young, and needed the money, his genetic history and unique mental condition made him perfect. They bonded an early AI chip inside him, allowing him to relearn at an enhanced rate.

He became a kid spy, infiltrating a lair, a villains' scheme, only to be betrayed by his childhood crush, a class rival, Agent Strange. He was decommissioned and made to forget by a chemical concoction made of spiders' venom, Fenris was now Charles Crown again. A simple kid, distanced from all those who knew him, kept at an arm's length. He grew up alone and as an outsider in his own body. Disconnected from reality, half a computer program, half a wounded wolf.

Then he went insane, or rather he began to awaken, when a dormant part of his personality stepped forward through the novel he began to write. Agent Spider was everything he wasn't, the anti-matter ass-kicking reflection of himself. Through the words he wrote, he saw the pattern and knew when it was his time to step forward. He had a purpose. A destiny to end everything that ever was. After all he wasn't emotionally invested. Hadn't they all spurned him?

I hope it reads as part memoir, part pulp, part essay, all told through poetic prose. It has a lot of ideas and plays on words in it. If something doesn't make sense or needs explanation, please let me know. I will begin the process of editing the book a chapter a week after its completion, removing one a week from this site. Where you'll have to buy a final print version from me to ever read again.

I love the idea of removing a free text from the internet, deleting its entire electronic existence, only to have it liberated into paper and ink form. Almost everyone I've ever met in the last seven years is in those pages, and here's your last chance to be involved in the production of my first novel. I hope to print it up with various covers and to stain the pages with tea in order to make it appear to be an old pulp paperback. But after those sixty four copies that I will make, I won't make any more.

On January 1st, 2011 I begin work on the sequel NEW WORLD: ORDER, which I will post up online one chapter a week as I write them. This will show Charles Crown's rise to power, that is if he doesn't die at the end of Tower of Brahma. After all, the ending is not yet written. That will have 100 chapters and I aim to finish it upon the Winter Solstice of 2012. As the Mayan calendar ends, a critical juncture is reached in the history of mankind, I will be there writing about it through these characters.

When that books becomes a smash hit and I get recognition from various writing establishments, I will enter the arena of fiction warriors, other writers all vying for the top spot. This will be the final book in the Agent Fenris trilogy, VALHALLA. Who knows how long that one will be and when I ever finish it. I hope to finally release it by the time I am age sixty, as the sixty year old version of me appears in this book.

The Tower of Brahma is me teaching myself to write. It's about lifting myself out of the abyss with my talent. Hopefully it reaches someone and they can see me for who I really am. I can not connect fully with anyone else, as half my consciousness resides in this story. I find myself having to type such blatant truths such as this in order to show people what I am about. It's a cry for help and a declaration of independence. This is my story.

As for my other work, I will be starting up the LEGEND OF LIQUID FURY blog in the next few weeks, which will show off the final phase of development for my graphic novel that I co-created with Chris Chua. Right now it's been exactly 9 years since we first started it, and it's been a long wild journey. By the ten year mark you will have this book in your hands. In the meantime you can enjoy the sci-fi/fantasy kung fu revenge story of Wulong for yourselves weekly as I post more pages and behind the scenes/influences of the book.

By the fall I will have a new site set up to promote the digital comic POWER PLAY that I am currently working on with Reilly Brown. Can't talk about this too much but this will be awesome. It's New York City/Brooklyn centric and so you'll see the characters interact with the city as it is, as we see it right here, right now. This one will be big. Hollywood Movie, video game tie-in, Saturday Morning Cartoon style. We're both trying to think about why Lee/Kirby's Spider-Man is more relevant to us than the current books and trying to incorporate that into these characters.

Otherwise, I've just begun my screenplay work in earnest. Outlining one script for possible high profile person, as I begin to work on finishing the slasher flick I have half written. Structuring out the three or four other film projects that could be easy to film once my demented sidekick Boston Scott frees himself from the Sunshine State and policework in order to come up here and dominate the film world with me.

A few other ideas are being kicked around, and nothing is being written off. I will try every format and medium, create in them all. If the plan goes correctly I will even be rocking out in a band by mid-summer. With this post I hope to be consistently blogging so as to make a name for myself out here in the Wild West Frontier that folks call the internets.

So stayed tuned for all of that. It's time I started making it happen.

Love.

K

Letters

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully comprehend, to fully piece together what happened to my friend, Parabola Finch, on that awful Fall night. I was woken up by a call from the Nassau County police, an oddity in and of itself because I generally keep my cell phone on silent when it’s in the bedroom. It was about 3 in the morning; the voice on the other end apologized for waking me, but wanted some information concerning my friend, Finch. I didn’t understand why I was being called, and I said as much but the officer on the other end only repeated that mine was the only contact number they had. Finch was dead. I didn’t know how to understand that just then. Information like that—the death of a young man—a friend, there’s just no way to prepare for that. Minutes of silence passed before the officer suggested that I come down to view his personal effects myself, and to see if I could find contact information for anyone else they would need to call.

Was there anyone else? What did I really know about Finch? How did he die? At the time I assumed suicide, but when I intimated that to the officer he negated my assumption. I didn’t even want to suggest murder, and before I could the cop said that they weren’t quite sure how he died. Some kind of freak electrocution it seemed like.

Finch was going through some rough times. He’d just split from his wife—not divorce, just estrangement. They’d grown apart, he said. He’d moved out of the apartment they shared out on Long Island and had taken a garret room in an old boarding house near Lloyd Harbor. He had taken on an obsessive need to write, and blamed the demise of his personal relationships on this. He seemed almost to care more about filling up notebooks—which he did readily and with speed—than about people as of late. The people in his life, his family (what little he had left) and friends became sources of synthesis for him. Objects he could release into his stories, always able to control the outcome of any conversation or encounter. After I got off the phone with the police, I couldn’t get to sleep, so I started sifting through some letters and emails Finch and I had sent to one another. We had communicated in some fashion at least every day, and we’d developed almost a shorthand language between the two of us. Most of it silly wordplay, nonsense; but it kept us creative. I empathized with Finch and his desire to write, and we would often talk about taking a road trip and renting a cabin up in the woods to just write in solitude. I guess Finch did his own version of this, moved out of his co-op and into that garret room. He stopped sending me emails then, and only sent handwritten letters. A scrawl of black ink on lined paper. Harsh slashes and curves. He was writing again.

“Tim! I know that no one understands why I had to leave. Why I needed to get away from everything. Why I needed to dedicate myself to writing and writing alone. For now at least. I think that you understand, and I know that you’re not going to judge me. At least I hope you won’t. The pull was just too strong. I didn’t bring much with me. Pens, paper, my books, my notebooks, a portable typewriter. As soon as I moved in, and put my stuff down I had the urge to write. The instantaneousness of it, the creative urge blasted out from solitude. This can’t last forever.”

I wasn’t quite sure what he thought wouldn’t last forever. His estrangement from life? His urge to write? I just don’t know, and not wanting to make him feel bad about himself I never asked. I wrote him back, told him that I was excited that he was making the move to write full time, but expressed how wary I was about how his personal relationships would suffer. I also asked him to describe his new place to me.

“It’s off. It’s clean and neat, of course, but it’s an attic. There’s a separate entrance on the East side of the house; a rickety zig-zag of stairs that were added to the outside a while back (so the owners told me). The room is basically a large rectangle. The ceiling is a sloped peak—so much so that you can only really stand at full height when walking down the center of the room, and a couple of feet to each side of the center. It’s really pretty nice and roomy. There’s a tiny bathroom to the East; just a toilet, sink and shower (the bathroom ceiling slopes too!), and a small kitchen area just opposite the bathroom. There’s a little nook that doesn’t slope, an open area on the North side, this is where I’ve put my writing desk. There’s a window on that wall, but it’s been boarded up. I’ll have to check that out soon.”

We went back and forth a few more times. Short letters, story ideas and plot summaries mostly. We had wanted to collaborate on something, but our collaborations very rarely made it past the outline stage. It wasn’t long after he moved that he had his first short story published in the Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy. It was a strange and terrible story about a man who commits a crime in the present, but is sentenced for his transgressions in the future—an alternate future. The man’s punishment is to live imprisoned within the mind of the man he intended to murder. It was brutal, and screamed of loneliness and uncertainty. Throughout the course of the story, the main character, the murderer, decides to kill an innocent man based on a cascade of paranoid and almost wholly made-up list of perceived wrongs. There’s one scene where it seems as if the main character is being guided by some unknown force, as if he’s being controlled. I wrote to him as soon as I‘d read it, to congratulate him on his success.

“Thanks, TIM! I didn’t mention submitting to F&SF because I knew you subscribed and that you’d see the story if it got published. I just found out which issue it was going to be in a week ago! What a surprise. People seem to really like it. It’s weird because, and this will sound strange, but I don’t really remember writing it. Not all of it anyway. I definitely outlined it, and I found some of my older drafts, but I must have gone into one of those writing trances—like we used to talk about, that place of pure creation…in the “zone.” Ha ha ha. I’m still giddy at seeing my name in print. Have a great idea for the next one.”

His next letter didn’t come for another three weeks. I’d tried sending him a few emails but they all bounced back. His next few letters were alarming, and strange. I was shocked upon reading them again after receiving that phone call from the police. I didn’t really remember reading them previously, bits and pieces stood out in my memory, flashing to life as a re-read the words, but on the whole it was as if I were reading them for the first time.

‘TIM! I submitted another story to F&SF. I probably won’t hear back from them for a while, I just wanted to let you know beforehand this time. This one is about a writer who is able to transform his world through his writing. First just in little ways, then in profound reality warping ways. After a while he becomes unsure about which world he’s living in; the real world, or the world of his own fictions. He even begins to doubt that he’s the actual author of either world. I have a good feeling about this one too. Oh! Also, I pulled those boards away from the wall—there’s a window behind it! The glass is filthy and covered with tar, or black paint. I’m going to scrape it clean one day this week. Since it faces North I might have a good view of the park from here. I’ll let you know if the story gets accepted.”

Attached to this letter was another, dated the same day, but sent separately—I must have paper clipped the two together when I received them.

“Tim! It’s weird, I just re-read the story I was just writing to you about, and it’s really good—but there were whole passages that are unfamiliar! I think we’ve both probably been in the “zone” while we were writing. Where it feels as if something else, our higher consciousness or whatever is guiding our writing. This feels different, though. I mean, most of it is clearly me, but the parts where Austin Zenn (the protagonist) is writing his book-in-a-book are just weird. Odd staccato sentences. I don’t know, it’s good though. I’ll send it to you!”

I put the letter aside and sifted through the box of Finch stuff I’d collected, which was mostly handwritten letter, but included a few email print outs. I put the bulk of his letters aside and lifted the stained and dog-eared manuscript he’d sent me. I read most of it, mainly because I wanted to wait to read it in print, but he was right, there were parts that were unlike anything he’d ever written before. I’d simply chalked it up to the progression of his artistic talents. I picked up his next letter.

“I finally got around to cleaning off that window. It’s pretty amazing what I’ve found; a great view of Caumsett state park—which I didn’t even think I’d be able to see from here; A broad expanse of tree-tops spreading out into the distance, and rising up above the trees something that shouldn’t have been there. At first I thought it was a church steeple, or some kind of weird water tower but it was much too thick, much too tall. You’ll never believe this, but it was an obelisk. A large stone, brown and pitted as if it’d sat amongst those trees for more ages than mankind has walked upright. I just sat there on the floor in front of the window looking at it. Watching as the trees undulated like an ocean below it. Like an ocean or a great grey-green organism with strained breath, wounded by that thick stone spike sticking out of it. I’d never heard of anything like this existing on Long Island. I’ll need to do some research, maybe even walk to the park and see if I can find it.”

Truth be told, I didn’t really believe him. He was very interested in themes of false realities and loved to explore what was it that made us human—often he would send me stories that mixed fantasy and reality, so I’d thought that this was just another one of those. I was intrigued however, and sent him a letter asking him more about the oddity in the park. His next letter came a few days later.

“Got my acceptance letter from F&SF for the newest story today. Feels really good. I had a strange dream last night. Dreamt that I was here in my room, but it was all blue shadows and black ink. I was sat at my desk, looking out the window at that monument. It rose above the tree line—which was purple, and still—and the sky was yellow and grey. The clouds were arrayed around the obelisk in disturbing striations, as if the sky were a giant muscle, relaxed now but ready to flex at any time. Or maybe it looked like scar tissue up against the vault of heaven, left there as a reminder of some long-forgotten transgression. A flock of monstrous birds wheeled their way out of the west and began circling the tip of the obelisk, lazy and sickly. As I watched they began to drop, silently and one by one, into the purple forest beneath them. I looked down at my paper, I guess I was writing, and it was dotted with blobs of black ink, black shapes scattered across a white page. The ink continued to spatter onto the page, and then I realized that it was coming from my face. Ink was running out of my eyes and nose, and as it dropped onto the page it formed words. I couldn’t read them though. But I tried. I stared and searched my mind trying to find the key to unlock this new language. The ink dropped faster onto the page and suddenly…SHOUTING…PROPHET…

I found it, and I breathed out sharply and a great gout of black liquid belched out of my mouth. I could see sinew and bone and, I think, my glasses vomiting forth in that black torrent.

SO weird! I wonder if I can work that into a story.”

I didn’t know what to think about this. I was getting worried about Finch, but I was also going through a few personal struggles, so I lapsed in my correspondence. But Finch didn’t…

TO BE CONTINUED

underunderground

1

don’t sit too close to the TV, you’ll burn your brains out. tie your shoelaces, close the door

look both ways before you cross. make sure to chew your beliefs before you swallow. lying in bed at night remember to check your heartbeat.

gasp for air–

feel it filling your lungs. feel the fear and emptiness as the room gets bigger

underunder the covers.

move on to adolescent indulgence, forever self-loathing and other masturbatory behaviors. invent the quote best years of your life. the way it all seemed so innocent like outta some fucking bruce Springsteen song. its all wasted

away in a cloud,

in blurred visions of birthday candles,

in spilled cups that were always half empty.

now when that telephone rings and you hold up to your ear and that voice being transformed into electronic data tells you “you’ve lost it kid.” leave in search of another message or lit neon bar sign. one drink for the childhood nightmares that kept you awake.

for the monsters have all become a reality of evil thoughts.

put another song on the jukebox and try to forgetforget

2

i burn every bridge i cross. i am a sick fuck of nowhere hells vicious cycle of bad luck– another spilled drink, a broken condom, an unemployment check

i’ve never had a whore

before, but now i’m drunk

so i walk by them stoned,

and go home and masturbate to the dirty cunts.

i am the dented bumpers and forgotten hubcaps of the highway. the gambling debts, unemployment lines, painkillers. the great impounded vehicle. i am rape and pillage. i am the mindless jobs, the blood filled black phlegm cough. i am being forced by my own ignorance to steal to lie. i am

to be sold into this life like property and made to be a capitalist slave of democracy and the dollar.

i am being broken down and left with nothing. being ignored, remembering all your falls, all your mistakes. i am continuing to dull the senses, the lack of hope. i am dark rooms, insomnia and withdrawals. i am why you keep your fists clenched and grind down your tobacco stained teeth. why your patience is getting shorter with every carton of cigarettes.

why you wish you could do it all over again

3

keep using balled up newspaper to wipe your ass. leave your mark on the walls you choose to piss on. get canned food from the local churches and drink in front of the sacred television waiting for something else to happen. when you feel the breaking point and your hands wont stop shaking and the walls are closing in and the world seems so heavy–collapsing overover you

there’ll be a knock at the door and you’ll wonder if its death

and you’ll be standing at the window there, and you’ll see that dark blue summer night sky flashing with fireflies. and you’ll answer the door and find the landlord left you an eviction notice. so you finish your bottle of whisky, light that last smoke, and grab your pistol. you’ll remember your father

lying in the hospital bed dying

saying you end up with what you started with

Broken Beer Bottles

where to begin is in the confusion of the mind…it starts when you’re completely alone, the ticking beating breathing (get on with the dying already.) take the bad news as a sign of the times, of crossed lines, of a bar coded existence, of failed dreams and the big lie…our haunted corroded eyes in the mourning sun from defeated bleeding sidewalks of Newark to empty heartland factories of Detroit, hurricane green seas of Mexico to the old world deserts of the Middle East, the genocide of Mother Africa. (it’s all so uplifting.) peril is in the air, taste it in the water, feel it in the ground beneath you, keep an ear out and hope for a new day when the ones screaming or with no voice at all find a new meaning, a new passion, a new dope…our modern illness is mental, the drones following one another with no lord or leader no prophet no mess sigh uhhh just two boards. look to your holy walls and floors, holy lighting fixtures, holy high definition. holy wars…the truth is in the liar like the bite of an apple is to original sin (and the genetic inevitability of tragedy hate greed.) my addiction is tired today, i think i’ll bring my burdens with me and carry them from my hole in the wall out to the city, a city divided by kolor kreed klass…the thoughts of a flooding end to wash away this mess we call the US, comfort in knowing my heavy heart is half-sold and my soul is the only collateral i’ve got and ever had…i stopped counting the minutes long ago (now the days just seem longer.)

Suburban Loser - Chapter 1 - Screaming at the Wind

The ding-ding-ding of the car door provided the backbeat as I reached to turn up the volume on the stereo. The band whined and wailed my pain, I squeeze the bridge of my nose, fighting off my headache. I stepped out of the car, fished around in my jacket pockets as I looked around the empty gas station.

Just the guy nodding off behind the counter. The wind whipped down the empty parkway and pressed itself against me. I pulled out my pack of smokes, flipped it open, and stared long and hard at the last one left sitting alone in the crumpled box. I pulled it out, popped it in my mouth, cupped my hands and lit it up with my zippo.

It's moments like this that I'm glad I smoke. Sometimes you just need a vice to fall back on when everything else is gone. I took a drag and leaned back on the hood. The engine was still warm, helping me fight off the chill. I released the smoke from my lungs and closed my eyes. Nicotine rush made my legs wobbly.

The music roared, pumping from out of the blown speakers, that slight vibrating tick of the soundwaves reverberating the broken pieces. I've never been much to pay attention to lyrics, but something about sadness, doomed relationships, emotional trauma, wrapped around me. It made me feel less alone.

Somewhere out in this godforsaken reality lies a promised land, an urban utopia, a metropolitan mecca to experience, where kids just like me are living it up and creating something, anything at all to express themselves, to have fun, to get laid and party.

But that's beyond me. My time had passed. I was stuck just beyond that impenetrable veil, despite the Long Island Railroad and a few bucks being able to get me there, that life was not to be mine. I was not made for New York City, it would chew me up and spit me out. No way would I survive out there, alone.

I finished my cigarette, flicked it towards the gas pumps, and stepped up onto my bumper. I walked up onto the hood, denting in the metal, not giving a shit, turned towards the red flashing stoplight and gazed angrily out upon the empty streets. I thought about how in an hour or two, the sun would rise, and cars would be rushing about as if these people's lives mattered.

I reached deep down inside, took a huge, gasping breath, arched my back and threw my body forward as I screamed for all I was worth. I screamed at my family, I screamed at my friends, I screamed at my girlfriend, I screamed at nothing at all.

The music died down as I sat on the hood, my arms wrapped around my knees, and I cried at what a pathetic loser I was. Trapped in suburbia.

Farmingdale

I moved in right quick having found a room that day. Small dormered with a story-book green dresser and a single bed smelling of stale cramped life like the inside of a draw. It was my second time living on a top floor if I include my stay with Grandma, the one I fled that very morning after having been up all night, and when I think of how I might explain why I left I can only say this for now, fright.

So one week in and already found work bussing tables at this Italian family style restaurant, it smelled too and how particular, fetid, damp and garlicky. Finally I thought here is my life. Having made the prodigal return from Queens back home or at least one town over, I thought, this is great, everything being the same but now here and now now.

I had plans to eaves-drop on my customers, study the living, mabey for a screen-play I'd tell others to impress knowing then what I've always known, that everything is a reward unto itself or none at all, and to know people, to live among them with the ears, with the heart open would always be enough.

I still dreamt big but it was a lie to impress myself, to subvert my egoistic conditioning, an attempt to live in between plans, and when those lie's wore thin I thought it was beer or pot I lived for and again another cover for living, for with all its meager winnings and great upset, not once has it been uninteresting.

Like this yule visit with crack toking friends at the end of the hall, a Christmas eve to remember, the unatural acrid smell, the way each would pick and scrape at there pipes at bits of foil in preparation for the next hit, immediate to the last, like insects with big blood filled human hearts and eyes which sought to drink the whole world with you in it, there was real love there.

When living the low life we find it trembling and jewel like there in cramped rooms, in the parking lots of seven-eleven, we hear it falling up the stairs with a head wound, or with pupils grown big enough to house the waking dreams of not one but two boxes of somanex, we clean up a months worth of it's piss in milk pint cartons, we talk with its failure it's deep sadness, how it scams the grocery store's for five towns over, we listen when it describe's the work of carting it's body around, of how it clinicaly died once and the nothing it had seen there, we let it sleep on our floor when it's man-friend is raging scared all the while, we talk with it sipping german dessert wines smoking nat shermans, its face large as life the eyes all a twinkle, blink, blink it says, it claims to be your soul-mate, it begs for sexual favor at three in the morning when your just trying to have a drink, there it stands in it's whities stumbling before a 19" color set clutching a half gallon of Georgi having just bleed its heart out for its boy, it's deceased father, it's failed marriage, it smokes something nameless and black while the last light fades behind the tree-line out of doors, there through the quarter windows, and it thinks, are we out of beer?

I Need Some (Time & Space) From You

He sat balled up by the front door, silk pajama pants clinging to his wet, sweaty thighs. He itched his hands, and let loose a facial twitch now and then, perhaps a chatter of the teeth as he lips attempted to speak, to ask for something, to plead, to reach out and connect. He was mad. He was pretending.

It all began so simply, a chance encounter left them both drunk and smiling, pitching themselves into the dark night with reckless abandon. A drizzle upon their heads, a chill upon their bones, goosebumps riding up their arms peaking just at the shoulders with a tingle of the neckhairs. He recalls looking at her, deeply, richly, but he can't remember what it was he saw. Lightyears of distance from each other, in love from rival dimensions.

The cosmos buckled and swooned simultaneously as they came together. It all mattered as energy collapsed upon itself, exhausted from a pantomime of creation, our naked bodies sprawled across the bed. He held her close, they sighed, and their souls slowly began to drift away from the ultimate union, whirled up within one another's electrons.

He held his hand out to her, sitting at the edge of the bed, head hung low. She looked at him, concern was there, but so was self-pity, self-absorption, self-righteousness. He wanted to stop pretending, to stop holding on to so much, to release the gravitational pull of the debris he carried in his wake. The swirling mass of science fiction novels, pop psychology books, and comics all begin to slip from their orbit.

She came home to the apartment, the door unlocked, the desk upturned, the dresser smashed. Everything of his was tossed on the floor, set on fire, or obliterated completely, strewn across the wood floors. He was heaving, chest turned inwards, as he took in sharp, shallow breaths. His brow furrowed and fell over his eyes, his hair dropping into spikes, nostrils flared and snarling. Arms dragging, blood streaming from his hands.

He did it, he made her leave. He was the reason, he knew it, somehow it must be him. His outburst scared her. His intensity was appropriate for the world he knew he must belong in, a world that existed parallel to hers, one were he was right, where the rules of logic actually existed. Math was form was science was everything. There was a rhyme, there was a reason. To it all.

So above, so below. A sun, so far from our own that it's distance would be a number quite longer than even this sentence, so please forgive me if I leap through the dark matter of the Milky Way, and warp to this star not unlike our own, only perhaps smaller and brighter, as gravity gives into itself, atoms falling like dominoes, a drain circling within itself. Instantaneously everything is inverted, and stretched right out of space. All the energy within this sun as now burrowed itself away from reality as we know it. A black hole is formed and even starlight can not outrun it's gravity well.

A trillion miles away, yet we'll still see the light from that star for years to come, the particles still passing through the deep sea of space, piercing our atmosphere. Then suddenly one day, we'll all wake to find he's not there anymore. Where there was a twinkle, a peg of a constellation perhaps, if one was lucky, and now there is just darkness, a void. How many of us would look up the sky and ever even knew that a star shone there once upon a time?

His mind cracked, a splinter running through the crystalline consciousness he imagined himself within. Curled up fetal, rocking, pretending not to be sane by muttering gibberish, gasps, and twitching all the while. Eyes flicking about, a stroke of the beard absently as he searched for meaning frantically, knowing that everything was about to disappear.

Things went clear first, the color sucked from their bones like marrow. Then it all went soft, gooey, plastic, mush, decomposing into gel. A small egg-like circle around him, all blank and soft, his clothes fell off leaving him as if in the womb once more. Hair follicle by hair follicle fell from his skin, drifting away like snowflakes. The pain and aches faded away quite nicely, as his skeleton system and muscles no longer were a problem.

He could just lay back and enjoy as molecule by molecule fell in upon itself, his mind taking stock of every drop of information contained within every single cell. Before his facial expressions dissolved into the floor, a smile slid like a snake, a ripple through a stream. Eternity lingered beautifully, drifting along with the casual patience of a caretaker. A blink, consciousness plunges deeper, the light no longer able to draw the electrical impules up the neurons and synapses, it last forever and a day, until he opens his eyes one last time.

The door rips from the hinge as it is atomized in a flash, the floor tearing up and curling, everything not nailed down sucked into the nothingness where he once lay. Now a minature black hole, the swirl of the drain whiplashing itself ever wider, engulfing more and more material, matter to be masticated upon. The pages of his books all ripped from their binding, the data from his DVDs seeping off the disc, dissolving all the shattered remnants of who he once was.

His name was Kenneth. Kenny to family, Ken to girlfriends. She just called him K. Or maybe she called him Baby. She loved him once. She still does. He made her run, pushed her away, drove her away, some part of him flexing magnetic wavelengths in order to propel himself higher, to the peak of creation, Nirvana. She was the yin to his yang. Why did she bring out so much of himself? The eruption of their interactions, the crucible of aeons, pure fourth dimensional soup seeped from the space between them. Her name was Mary.

Marilyn. Not Mary-Lynne and certainly not Merilyn, good god no. She was funny and sexy at the same time, she knew how to laugh, enjoyed herself at every turn. She wasn't a bad person, she didn't hate him or try to hurt him. Why would he have said that. Not Mary. She, she made him laugh to himself, a mere breathy grin, perhaps a roll of the eyes, when he mentioned her name. Notoriously defiant, resistant to his charms, lightning in the wind.

The building broke itself down brick by brick, the roof swallowed whole, every apartment from the center outwards, was emptied of its contents, as was the owner and their contents. It all became nothing, just like he now was, one with everything. Bi-polar tornado devouring the block, negating the neighborhood, and eradicating the island of Manhattan. We all instantly hit the event horizon, where things slow down to eternity, and we slumber into forever along with Kenneth and his dreams.

Eventually she turns, and sees him standing in the center, the outline of his image appearing projected from inside. His energy field holds her back from the event horizon. She falls into his arms, safe, for a moment, before the slow crunch of the center of the black hole consumes them til the end of time. He lifts her head up, brushing his hand behind her hair, cradling her neck. Lifts her from melting into the middle of collapsing reality.

She meets his gaze and disapprovingly shakes her head, shoves him away, and they fall backwards, sent soaring into the center til her hands pressed against his chest, penetrate their way through the plasma wall into the dimension beyond.

"I missed you."

Sub*Text

Hello. Welcome to Sub*Text. An experiment in DIY publishing, a way for me to promote myself and others of considerable talent, a literary zine that pushes boundaries. I'm putting this work out there into the world and seeing what it becomes.

Start something. Anything. Whatever you want, however you'd like. Let me know what it is and I'll help you in any way I can. I'm trying to build connections between the solitary artists that I know and hopefully we'll create a new scene.

I've never belonged to anything larger than myself before. No literary journal really clicked with me. There's not one contemporary author that I truly admire. A void exists where I linger, the space I roam between mainstream and alternative. Part beat poet, part science hero.

I've been writing poetry & short stories since junior high, screenplays in college, and comic scripts through my 20's. I have a few shorts published in comic anthologies, a nearly completed fictional autobiography, and a massive graphic novel about to see print in the coming months.

I also co-host a writing/comic book podcast called Write Club. We try to promote the smaller creator, just beginning their ascent, on the verge of making a splash, just needing to find their audience. I would encourage the entire world to create more if I could, for I feel that's the best way to save ourselves.

And Sub*Text is my way of showcasing the work I wrote that helped save me from quite literally going mad. I know I'm not alone in that feeling, that desperate cry for attention while locking yourself in your own mind. And you're not alone either.

There's something going on beneath the surface of mankind, a fire burning, consuming us from within. Let me help spread the flames and we'll all burn together.

3/7/10 5am
L train to Brooklyn

K