Doesn't help I still don't feel good. Not as bad as it was, but still not top of the hill. Fucking nose.
Nor is having Dair's Window remaining chaotic around me assisting in stabilizing my instability. I even ate a fucking salad, and all that did was make my tummy join the madness in me.
I feel like something is about to break free and illuminate what next is to be done...or not. I dunno.
I think I need to get drunk.
I knew Michael's well enough not to think I could find these things on my own. I asked people who worked there...and got sent to the wrong place three times.
"Aisle 87 for gift boxes." But from where I'm standing, there is no Aisle 87 visible. Just Aisles 86 and 88, visible just beyond piles of center aisle islands of Christmas decorations and frames on sale, 2 for 1.
And I did buy 2 frames...and only had to pay for one. I felt the need.
Ink pad? Also on Aisle 87. Which it was. I just didn't notice them when I was looking for the gift boxes. Which weren't there. But tissue was.
I found gift ribbon by accident and got the last two red wired ones...and continued to get caught up in all the tiny items available that I would never have need for but were fascinating.
Buttons. Appliques. Brushes. Styrofoam shapes. Art pads. Plastic Christmas trees for your desk or table. Five areas of paint and pencils. The options were endless.
And my focus minimal. There was too much stuff in a sort of semi-controlled chaos. Like the thoughts in my head, sometimes.
I used to paint and sketch and loved it, but I haven't done any art in over a year. There's been too much else going on that wasn't really important yet was and I had no focus. Now I just have questions.
Why don't I paint, anymore? What would I paint? Can I still paint? Or sketch? Or become involved enough with my work to make it meaningful? Who am I? Do I even exist outside of a place like Michael's?
I started getting dizzy and felt the need to pee, so bought what I'd found and came home instead of going to the PO. I needed to touch base with myself, again. I'll do the PO on Monday. My usual manner of dealing with confusion...put it off...
In the meantime, how do I declutter my life so it's no longer like a Michael's?
I tried to make myself focus Dair's Window, was swallowed up in Adam's pornographic past and how it escalated into bondage and faux rape. I tried to shift focus to cleaning up my apartment, Ibut stood still in the middle of the room wondering what to do first, and how to do it...and half an hour later, I was still wondering.
I went online and saw the filth being pushed around in social media, excusing all of the MAGAt Cult's evil and cruelty while claiming to be the best of the best, and the blacks intensified around me. Blood pressure went up and hopelessness nudged at my being.
But.,...and this is a big but...I finally could not help but accept that Adam has taken over the story. It's called Dair's Window, not Adam's. And even if it is him telling the story...it's Dair's life as the basis. What happened to Adam prior to meeting Dair is not the focus...while it was becoming so. No wonder I was having issues.
Adam uses people, not because he wants to but because it's the only way he knows how to survive. For him to be able to do that, he needs to present an enticing appearance. Beautiful man. Someone you want to know. Have sex with. It's only as you get to know him that you come to see how calculating he is...
Until...thanks to Dair's love and understanding he breaks out of his artificial control and becomes human. Becomes happy. In my head...the dance would be like two shadows circling each other, melding as they grow more and more as one.
Meaning a page one rewrite...
I did get laundry done, yesterday, but only because I was out of underwear. Four loads. For a 10-day trip. Brother.
Today I had to go out to meet people for lunch and get groceries. I was going to do some other errands but instead came home, all cranky and everything.
Dair's Window is giving me problems. Nothing unusual about that when I'm writing. I want to do one thing with it, the characters want something different, and the story is also just plain unwilling to deal with any of us. The only thing nice about this is how Dair just sits back and says, Whatever.
I think I know what the book will be about...unconditional love...but then think it's about redemption and also wonder if it's just about how fleeting happiness can be so cherish it. All of which sound slightly ridiculous for me to deal with.
Mingled in are the difficulties of being gay in a world that thinks you're sick or perverted and has no problem attacking you for who you are. That's really all-encompassing...and maybe I'm being too ambitious with it. I don't know.
What a pain in the ass I can be with me...
This trip was one of those trips where I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was doing, half the time. Getting there went okay. Smooth entry and grabbed a taxi from the Airport Express terminal in downtown, since I arrived so late.
But then no matter what plan of action I decided to take, where I chose to go, when I wanted to go there, how, anything...it went wrong, in some way...and grew very frustrating.
To be fair, the one thing that did go without a problem was the delivery and pickup at the book fair. And I got to see people I hadn’t seen in years. Indulge in a bit of gossip.
Met an Oliver who seems really sweet and is not bad looking...and got him confused with an Oliver I know who is not at all like him. And talking with with some of the dealers was an adventure in catching up on the direction of the book fairs' futures. It's over. It's changing. No one new is coming in...well, except for a few young people. It's too expensive. It's too hard. Don't like the venues used...except Hong Kong. All of which I've heard before.
But everything else? Took a tram to Happy Valley Racecourse and got off one stop too early so walked all the way around the building...to find it’s closed. The museum wasn’t even open.
The Peak is shabby and charges double to just go up to the roof for the view. On a hazy day. And getting to the tram up to it is ridiculously difficult. Despite my research, I wound up needing help from a laborer to figure out the right bus to catch. Then he told me how to tell the driver when to let me off.
Turned out, I was two stops from where I needed to get off, and I'd been planning to go in the opposite direction
Coming down from the Peak I hopped off to grab the 6 bus to Stanley, which I’ve done several times during previous visits...but I wound up at Stanley Prison, not Stanley Plaza or Market. And the only way I could figure out how to get out of it (since Google Maps was just confusing) was to take the bus back to Central.
Next day, I got the same number bus and got right to the market...which is half of what it used to be but still workable. However, the remaining pubs just felt skanky so didn't get my fish and chips.
Going to Kowloon on the ferry was okay, but the Jade Market was depressing. I remember it being more open and spacious. Of course, that was over 10 years ago.
I used the same hotel I'd stayed at, previously, because they had a shuttle service to the airport train...but don’t now. “Take a taxi or walk.” Said with a straight face. Hard mattress. Small shower stall. No bottled water in the room. At least a 7/11 was nearby so got some there...and Watson Water does not disappoint.
Everywhere I went, either an escalator or elevator was not working and stairs were the only option. And each time I took a taxi from Central Ferry to the hotel, it was a different price. Got some nasty leg cramps from walking and climbing so much. Feet hurt.
Was sold a full-fare Octopus card when they offer one for seniors, giving them a 50% discount on transportation. So I got one. But to top it up, you need to provide cash in HK dollars, nothing else.
Had a cable car actually refuse to let me board. Ngong Ping was depressing. And when I was leaving to come home, I wound up walking to the Sheung Wan station...and almost got turned around, there, thanks to poor signage.
Not all that impressed with Korean Airlines, either. The seats were barely cushioned and I got leg cramps, going and returning. The food is edible, at best, and some was just too Korean for me. Some of it I simply could not eat, like boiled beef and fish. As for the entertainment they offer...nothing on it appealed to me. I even went through a weird time slip en route home where it went amazingly slowly...like how it seemed two hours has passed when only one had.
I did do some work on DW...but got lost. I feel like I’ll be better off doing a page one rewrite to suit Adam. So I did no further work on it while in HKG or returning home. My mind was not at its best. All out of sorts.
If I do Hong Kong next year, I’m going Cathay and staying at a different hotel. I don’t like changing planes in Seoul; Incheon is a cold airport in so many ways.
Granted, it’s been 7-8 years since I’ve done this trip, and I am getting old...but I don’t recall having this massive sense of ennui that took hold of me. Maybe it’s affected by the bullshit with Felon47 and his scum.
Can’t escape that, can you?
Trip up was easy. Got dropped off at the Hilton in Niagara Falls, Canada, and it took just over an hour for the Niagara Air Bus to make it up. Pearson's your usual confusing airport where nothing makes sense, so you just roll with it.
I was smart enough to bring a package of Nissin Chow Mein with me, because this hotel doesn't have a snack shop. Just vending with chips and sodas and candy.
So I've been able to go through part of Dair's Window, in the hotel, and broke Chapter Eight in half, so now have a Chapter Nine to work on...which will need a lot of work. As will Eight. I tell too much instead of show, and don't have it develop organically. But the end of Nine has Adam en route to Vancouver, since eastern Canada holds nothing for him, anymore.
Going into blackout, after this, till the 9th. But I have DW on a memory stick so can still work on it.
I'm not crazy about changing planes in Seoul, except maybe I'll have time for a shower to freshen up. And I'm getting into HKG just after 11pm, so will need to get through customs, get my Octopus card and make the last train by 1am...or take a taxi. Which I'm leaning towards just to make it easier.
It's been 6 years since I've done this fair, so I'm wobbly on everything. But hopefully it will be all right.
My plan is to go back through everything I've updated on Dair's Window while on the flight to Seoul, since it's really a daytime flight for me, and we'll be landing about the time I normally get ready for bed. In business class I get a power connection and more space, so that will be nice. And I hope to be able to nap on the flight between Seoul and Hong Kong.
Being paranoid, I saved everything on my laptop to an external hard drive and will dump a lot of it before departing. I've also eaten all the food that can go bad while I'm away. Got my mail on hold. And everything I've done on DW is on its own little thumb drive.
So all I need to do now is wait to find out where I fucked up...since I usually do, somewhere.
But being away from the fucking insanity of the current administration's actions will be like a vacation.
Also, if the style is simple enough, I can handle it. I like Adrian McKinty's mysteries, and my favorite modern writer is Jay McInerney, especially his short stories. Even Bright Lights, Big City's second person formatting didn't bother me.
But I did a bit of shopping today and went by Talking Leaves Book Shop in the Elmwood Village part of Buffalo, and they had a copy of A Little Life, so I read a bit of it. And I knew I could never read it through. Mainly because of one paragraph. Something like this...
"It's been years since I was kissed," he said. "I don't know what it means, anymore," he said.
In one paragraph, both spoken by the same person, jammed together like that. And my thought is, That second he said is either a typo or poor grammar because it's brutally redundant.
It was the latter. I saw it happen, again, and the narrative went from third person omniscient to first person. I don't really have a problem with that, but to have it happen within one paragraph was disconcerting.
I should add, the only novel of Faulker's I like is The Sound and the Fury, because it's one story told from four different perspectives, including that of a boy who, if I remember right, had Down's Syndrome. And I love the clean, crisp, almost minimal prose of Hemingway while Isaac Asimov's writing style is basic but acceptable, in the Foundation series.
But as I mentioned in a much earlier post, Trust drove me insane with its omniscient third-person telling me everything that's happening instead of showing me.
So I sort of fell into a funk, wondering how best to deal with DW, which was added to when I heard my youngest brother in San Antonio had a severe health emergency and is back to being dependent on people to keep him going. Even though he doesn't want to admit it.
It just reminded me of how I'm getting older and squirrelier...and really resent that.
One good thing about this trip to Hong Kong is, China don't like it when you do political things online. So I'll be doing a blackout from December 1 to December 9. My first reaction is basically to go fuck it, but I've made a commitment and can't let that be interfered with.
Of course, they might not even let me into the country. That's a concern that's been raised by some in the office, considering my FB page, Xitter account, and Instagram...not to mention the liberals and progressives I support in various emails. That would be funny; get all the way there and have to come right back. Maybe I should have a contingency plan, just in case.
It's Friday, about noon in Hong Kong. I have contacts there. If I am refused entry, maybe I could work it out to where I can hand my paperwork off to them. Not a great way to deal with it, but it's the best I can come up with.
I'm also updating my info, everywhere. Cheat sheet for my passcodes. Print out everything I can for the move-in and move-out. And at the same time dealing with serious concerns about Adam's early life in sex work being in DW...
At least, I was until I heard about a book called A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. One of its characters has a lot of horrible things happen to him, including sexual assault as a child and forced prostitution...so I cheated and read the outline in Wikipedia. Even that was rough, but nothing at all like DW.
What's even better? It was up for a Booker Award and won a Kirkus, and it's put out by Doubleday Publishing, one of the biggies.
I think this was Adam's way of letting me know I'm being too much of a worry-wart.
If it ever does get done. I saved the opening chapter to a PDF to send to Emily, to help with future promotion...and I noticed I hadn't attributed the poem that Adam uses near the end of it, to its author. Nor did I have the title. So I went looking for it.
I was pretty sure it was written by Ranier Maria Rilke, but apparently not. It's thought of as being similar in style but not actually his. And now I'm worried I can't use it. His work is mostly in public domain, including translations from the French and German, because he wrote mainly around the beginning of the 20th Century.
But if this is a reimagining of his work in French, or an homage, that could still be under copyright and I'd need permission to use it. When I now have no idea who actually wrote it. Does anyone else?
Aucun angeIt's just, I really like the poem and feel it fits Adam's story, perfectly. I could offer a poor English translation, if you think that would help figure out the author...
