Interface

"It's all the same to me", "city dreams" and some news

2010-12-14T17:33:00.000-08:00

Hello! So I must admit there has been a decline in output of my writing recently. I've just started graduate school, so I am a little overwhelmed by the constant staccato rhythm of assignments, and I don't have too much time to write. I have managed to start another blog, which you can find at http://themolecularbasis.com/

It's more of a personal blog, filled with lots of idle recollections and philosophical nonsense that I churn out as I navigate through the beginnings of my life in science. I am almost sure to update that far more regularly than this blog, but expect to see stuff here eventually.

As for writing, I've been working on a couple of things. One is my story about the physicist that I constantly allude to, but never produce. The other is a new story about death and the nature of memory. I'll finish them someday, I hope! For now, I present two poems, the first is "It's all the same to me", which I wrote on my experiences in NYC thus far. The second is "city dreams", which is more or less about the intrusion of this place on my subconscious. I hope you enjoy them.

"It's all the same to me"

We wandered in the waning daylight world
Within the always warbling, gaslight sky
Before the sun finally stole away
And hid from us
And died

We entered recklessly the first of three
A bar in midtown, lit with sullen tones
With the most beautiful, perfect men
And all their girls
And I

Where the songs are fewer than just ten
And all the people dress like mannequins
They come fresh, clean, and lively from the store
And there I am
Alive at last

A panoply of colored lights and sounds
Reminds me of the place in east SoHo
Which was exactly like the little place downtown
Or was it not?
I’ve got no clue

And I am laden with the burden of
Three twenties and a core of rushing blood
Which curses me for what I do to it
To find a way
To be myself

And I will never get to know your name
A fact more hidden than the strangest, deadly truth
Of who built Stonehenge, who shot JFK
Because I hide
I am afraid

We leave again before I reach the point
Where anguish overcomes my need for love
The rumbling bass is nothing on the wind
A cloud of smoke
A pretty face

Then hours spent gliding within the night
In blackness, trapped, inside an empty car
Which with a certainty moves back and forth
And so do I
Never quite home

I close my eyes, still lonely, on my bed
With swirling worlds of alcoholic grief
Still screaming for the solemn touch of flesh
And there I am
Alive at last

"city dreams"

i take to bed ragged
and fall with haste to naught
to swim the oceans of my madness
in this cold forgetful place
where i am nothing among you
even less within myself
deep sleeping restlessness
will bring me to your space
to crowded listless cityscapes
and walks that touch my base
jumbled figures, empty streets
that glisten in the tired night
the path from here to nothing
or elsewhere in your embrace
burn out the thoughts of green
and turn them all to grey
solid iron and the smell of blood
heavy eyes when i awake

2010-09-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

notes on our inevitable doom

we
humans
are swimming
bodies floating underwater
our heads are sinking slowly
as the ocean drinks us up
we are made of plastic
that we made from
the oil and gas and stone and shale
that was made from
all the dead things
that sank and rotted
a million years ago
and we ate with glee
that which was not dead
and we built ourselves of it
as they built themselves of us
and what we threw away
now we are choking
on the poison we expel
merely as a result of our existence
we cannot avoid it
save by guilt or mercy
as the reaction proceeds
past the looming arrow on the chalk board
we hope for equilibrium
but we are doomed to expand
because that is what we do
when the sun burns
and we make ourselves of the plants
that make themselves of the sun
forgive us lord
we know not
what we
do

Megaupload and Autumn Ghosts

2010-08-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

I realized the other day that Megaupload might be completely impenetrable to the uninitiated, so I figured I would explain the process of downloading stuff from there. First, go to the URL I provide. Then, enter the captcha (the string of letters) in the box. Next, wait for the timer to run out, and then click free download. Once you've got the file, extract it. It should prompt you for a password, and it's safe to assume that the password will always be interface. Sorry about this rigamarole, but I don't have any hosting of my own.

With that tediousness out of the way, I'd like to comment a bit on Autumn Earth. Autumn Earth is essentially a personal narrative and a reflection on isolation and depression. For many years, I had a tremendous deal of difficulty envisioning myself as a human being, in human settings. I always felt somewhat estranged and out of place in many situations, and it caused me a fair amount of trouble. I used to feel like a ghost.

Eventually these feelings became so oppressive and intolerable that I decided to give voice to them through writing. A story about a lonely ghost is incredibly trite at this point, so I reversed the situation, and made my protagonist the only human in a city of ghosts. The inaccessible nature of his environment enforces feelings of isolation and loneliness, and most of the story is his coming to terms with those emotions.

But there is another side to this story that is played out in the protagonist's attempts to rejoin society. He uses art, in his case poetry and music, to reach out, not only to the ghosts, but also within himself. At the same time, this is the same goal of the author. Both are united in their desire to interface with society through their work, at the same time recognizing the flawed nature of that reasoning and the imperfect nature of their work. The ghosts are not redeemed, but the protagonist is satisfied because he at least attempted to communicated with them, and in doing so realized the power of artistic work to redeem the self. The title of this blog is a reference to that idea.

As for future stories, I'm working on another that I call Corona Radiata. It is the story of a heliophysicist that gains the ability to understand all of causality and his struggles with that knowledge. Hopefully it will be finished in a timely manner.

Thanks for reading, and be prepared for more here at the Interface.

Autumn Earth

2010-08-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

Envision an empty city, but one that thrums with activity. Envision a society of the dead, where the ghosts of this earth roam freely, accomplishing their petty tasks. Envision the hollowness of an August cold front, and the impending collapse of fall. Now imagine you are the only one left alive. This is the central aesthetic of Autumn Earth, the first short story I wrote when I began writing last year. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PGTS4VC5

You'll need an archiving program like WinRAR to open this file, and the password is "interface". Comments and criticisms are always appreciated.

Autumn Earth by Michael Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Vessel Commentary

2010-08-07T20:47:00.000-07:00

I'm about to post another story that I wrote almost a year and a half ago, but first, I'd like to comment on Vessel.

A few years ago, I was thinking a lot about romance, especially as it pertains to the young. I saw love as a rush to uncover as much about another person as possible--to dig into the strata of another human being in part out of curiosity, but also to fulfill perceived emptinesses within oneself. I wondered if such digging might uncover not the desired feeling of fullness, but might uncover a deeper emptiness.

Recently, I was mulling over those same thoughts, when I envisioned two people meeting each other on a crowded street. They are strangers, but within moments of seeing each other, they feel a deep connection. They rush through a crowd to meet one another, but, as they embrace, they recoil from one another, sensing something wrong. This is the central image of Vessel. When we fall in love, we not only expose or strengths to each other, but also our weaknesses. Perhaps beyond the inevitable posturing of being some two will find nothing.

But this is also a story about the flaws in our perceptions of others. It has been theorized that the human brain has a limited capacity to recognize other humans as people--that beyond a certain number of close friends and relatives, all others will be perceived as an indistinguishable rabble. This is an inevitable vanity of humanity, and it is one that has been often discussed in fiction (For an excellent treatment of the subject, read Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions). My intention in Vessel was to create a dichotomy between human and non-human, but also to betray that dichotomy in order to expose the foolishness of the whole thing. We are all human. To attempt to separate the sheep from the shepherds, the unaware from the awakened, is vanity. We all suffer.

Vessel

2010-08-04T19:31:00.000-07:00

I finally finished Vessel. I don't consider this a final draft, but it's as close to done as it is getting for the foreseeable future. That being said, here it is! Sorry about using megaupload, but I couldn't figure out a better way to do this this time around.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2J33BBNP

You'll need a rar extractor like WinRAR to download this, and the password on the file is "interface" sans quotation marks. Let me know what you think. Also, I've decided that this story and anything else I publish here will be under a Creative Commons license.

Vessel by Michael Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Flesh

2010-06-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

The surface of the Earth is marred with holes and scars
Of all its injuries it bears still bleeding marks
Which drip with blood in pace with time

The Earth has veins to carry forth
A viscous sludge that warms and cures
From inside all is boiling, all is wretched

The Earth is a ball of flesh
That festers with gangrenous life
And is hurled through a dark embrace
Which cares not for all the little signs of infestation

We are cast from the same dank matter
Each and all
And that which is the basis
For all our inconsequential reactivity
Is made of flesh as well

Unified we stand
An army of rot
Born aloft on our moldering vessel
We live, then die
Together

Vessel Forthcoming

2010-03-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

I managed to finish that short story I alluded to in an earlier post. I have titled it Vessel, and I will probably post it by the end of the week. I thought it was done, but a quick re-read the other night showed me some clumsy language and muddled ideas, so I will need to pare it down a little before I am willing to post it.

Muse is a short poem I wrote at T.F. Green airport while waiting for a plane. Some recent events in my life have changed my average mood for the better. Unfortunately, as a writer who wrote almost entirely to find a way to voice his own misery, this presents an interesting problem.

I may also post a short story titled Autumn Earth before long. This was the first short story I ever wrote, and the one I have received the most feedback on. I have submitted it to a literary journal at my University, but no word yet as to the likelihood of its publication. Stay tuned for exciting developments here at the Interface.

Muse

2010-03-14T20:17:00.001-07:00

You came to me in my domain
From somewhere still unknown
I, plagued by darkened thoughts
Haunted by soundless ghosts

All empty forests
And broken walls

And I, alone, scribbled furiously
Searching for a way
To purge my ancient suffering
And to expiate my sins

In lonely cities
Through endless rain

But you were subtle
And made my efforts pale
Took false, low, and made real
Brought furor to my ocean heart

Now I am quiet
No words to write

In a fugue and lonely place
Where I was taunted by death
And moved forward by suffering
You took away my muse
And freed me of my voice

And I do not care

Meditations

2009-12-27T22:24:00.001-08:00

It is in the rising of the sun and the falling of the stars. There is rain on fields, and graveyards, and hospital roofs. There is light glinting off rooftops, and subsumed electricity below neon lights.

I am standing alone on a deserted street. It is late at night. The air hums with its own chill and desperation. In the distance, sirens wail, and then are silent. It is the city. It is winter.

Three months later I am on that same city block. The sirens peak and wail again, no meaning to their shrill chorus. The air is warmer, and flowers bloom from the branches of trees that grow squeezed between the cracks in sidewalks. I am again alone.

It's not long before all is green, and a dense heat settles over the same city. I am gone from it, home with my family, surrounded by the insects, and their unending song, one that eclipses the nature of years and of all my petty concerns. It is again late, it is silent. No sirens screech in the distance. But still, the incessant hum of existence pulses in my eardrums. I can feel it. It is close to me, and I want to reach out to it. The sun sets, and then it rises again. The young grow older, have children, teach them, and then die, having left their mark only in the objects they touched, but never in themselves. Somewhere else, a log shifts from its position in a stream, the flow of water irrevocably changed.

It is summer. The hot air makes my flesh stick to the fabric of our sofa. The light from an ailing laptop, and the hymn of its whirring fan keep me awake. I am uneasy. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I am ignoring something.

School begins again, and then, I lose sight of everything.

But I can still feel it, everywhere, and at all times. It is a soundless hum, a beat and a rhythm, a pulse not dissimilar to my own heartbeat, which, all the while has been chanting its own song, with its own finite length.

When can I understand this feeling that transfixes me at two in the morning on abandoned streets, or keeps me awake at night, listening to the wind? What is this natural rhythm that evades the logic of my mind, and struggles with me for dominance?

It seems the more distant we become from it, the more confused our lives become. The proliferation of technology does not preclude us from the understanding of this Undercurrent. Yet, we find it easy to become distracted. We sit on subway trains with music in our ears, and eyes on newsfeeds and stock tickers. All the while, the trees are growing, sleeping, and bearing fruits of the next generation.

Where does happiness spring from? Is it in the following of the Undercurrent, or in coming to terms with it? I long to utterly surrender myself to it, to sit in the secluded copse of a forest, full on the fruits of my own labors, and cut off from the dizzying noise.

Somewhere, a beautiful film is being screened. Everyone is staring at the rain falling on tree leaves, and horses running in the woods. They think it is beautiful. They leave the theater, and go back home to sleep, ignoring the growth around them.

---
This is a short essay I wrote almost a year ago. It defines, vaguely, some elements of my personal philosophy in anxious, excited tones. The ideas at play in this piece eventually became central to the novel I started to write that summer, which I am tentatively calling "Rain". What I like about this essay is the use of imagery, and the appeal to the gut emotions of the reader.

More substantial posts are forthcoming. I need to finish a short story that I wrote for this blog. This semester was a whirlwind that left me with little time for writing. Stay tuned!

Confusion

2009-10-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

I'll start off with a piece written solely for this blog. I wrote this a few weeks ago, as part of my never-ending experimentation with poems, especially free form ones. I'm addicted to archaic and more structured forms like sonnets, and I love playing with rhyme and meter, but it can make the poem sound silly. I've tried to break my addiction to meter and rhyme here, and I the result has ended up being pretty good.

The poem itself describes an experience I had last winter. I was studying for exams, and I think I had been alone in the library for around twelve noiseless hours. It was 2 AM, and I was taking the long way home just to enjoy the scenic route. Where I live is full of old colonial buildings, and if I take the long way back from the library, I'm able to see some of the nicest ones. It was frigidly cold, and I was trying desperately to keep warm as I walked. I had my ipod on, and Synthesizer by Electric Six came on the shuffle. Now, in my city is an old electric power plant. It's a great, big building with these three huge smokestacks. I love the place. It reminds me of my city before all the industry dried up, and all the mills and factories were bulldozed to be replaced with vacant lots and urban sprawl. Now, in a city devoid of real industry, this huge power plant still belches smoke into a vacant sky. Each smokestack has two little red lights on it that blink on and off. As I walked, I was watching these lights, and the music in my ears was reaching a dizzy peak. These weird nonsensical thoughts kept popping into my head. I was then reminded that I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I'm not just talking about career choices, but rather, a more existential confusion. I had no idea what I was doing with the existence that was granted me, and I had no idea why things made so little sense. I kept begging the void to bring some sort of flow or logic into me. The thoughts rushed at me so fast, and I suddenly felt overwhelmed by a deep sadness.

I stood on the street near the president of my University's house, and stared at the smokestacks. Those blinking lights are irresistibly calming, and I must have stood there for ten minutes just watching. With my ipod off, all I could hear was the distant cries of sirens, and that ubiquitous hum of civilization. Then, a cop drove by and wanted to know if I was OK. I told him I was and went home. The feelings I had that night were utterly inexplicable, and I'm still not sure what possessed me to stand in the freezing cold and watch those damned lights. This poem represents my best interpretation of those emotions. Please post any criticisms you might have.

The sky was clear
And the wind was weak
When the six fold lights glazed off the beacon towers
And smoke poured into the sky
Tired from endless hours and endless lines of text
A traveler emerged from a sullen room and walked towards home

Far off sounds echoed
And scattered on the ground
The empty streets
Devoid of any other soul
Beckoned with their mystery
And the flashing of their signals

Entranced, and fatigued, the traveler marched onward
A strange confusion brewing in his brain
Why should he walk, or study still
The ancient books and lore
Why go on walking, ever towards home?
What purpose was there yet?

And as he walked, his footsteps echoed
Counting out all the lost moments
Keeping time with a deaf rhythm
That never quit its pounding
Just as the traveler walked, with mind aflutter
Towards the house on the hill

As he marched forward
With sure and focused desperation
A chorus, marked by chaos and dismay
Played in his ears, perhaps by choice
As he watched the flashing flares, he could not know
In what direction he headed, or why

Once there, he beheld, that mundane ecstasy
Of that which is so oft ignored, beauty
Of things that are not beauteous
Save in times of weakness, or in doubt
The brilliance of red, crossing the brilliance of white
In disorganized patterns, to disorganized places

The city howled ceaselessly
As a howling within the soul of the traveler
Forced him to stop, and watch
Frozen for so many long minutes
Weak in the face of such horrid grandeur
Weak under the heaviness of something far more desperate

As time passed it became clear
What hung in the air was a gaping question
That will never get an answer
And, ragged, still hangs bleeding in the sky
Who's very sight fixes the traveler in place
And taunts him with what he does not know

How long could he wait, here in isolation?
His eyes searching for the object
That would sum and answer all his fears
The freezing cold air weighed heavily
Crushing the traveler under an ocean of dread
That such things were not meant to be

Before long, a second traveler
From some other place, with some other destination
Found the first, and then inquired after him
Asking, "Friend, are you well?"
Stirred from his torpor, the first replied, "Of course."
And the moment was lost, like the smoke from the tower

The first wandered away from his perch
High on the hill, overlooking the burning pyre
Of the corpse-pile that powered the city
And, dazed, returned to his life
Weaker, ever weaker
In the face of such ambiguity

Welcome

2009-10-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Interface. Here, I intend to publish, and I use this term lightly, various pieces of my writing.

I am a senior at an American university. I study biology, but I also have some focus in Japanese language as well. I am 21 years old, and I began writing seriously a year ago. I write because, ultimately, I am trying to, as a friend once wrote, "exorcise" certain emotions and feelings from myself. Some of them are positive, and some negative. Far too often, however, I think, these feelings are filled with a kind of yearning or desperation. This yearning is not something I wish to carry by myself, and by writing, I hope to constrain these images and thoughts within the prison of text, so that they might stop haunting me.

My writing is about ghosts. Sometimes, this is a literal interpretation, but, generally, I am talking about the ghosts of ideas. I am talking about those haunting images half seen at twilight, or those aching feelings that pass in instants. I am talking about the deep, deep hollownesses of the winter, and the inexplicable ecstasies of the summer. I am talking about the sorrow of loss, and loss of things perhaps still present. I am talking about the ghosts of all our yesterdays that today still wander, perhaps with or without purpose.

In naming these specters, I hope to both dispel and preserve them. Their stark, unsettling negativity is something I don't believe anyone wants to keep around very long, and yet, those feelings are so very valuable to our understanding of ourselves. In writing, I want the ghosts to take shape and vanish from my sight, unburdening me, but leaving me an outlet to explore what messages they brought.

So, of course, I write for myself. But, I also write for a certain reader. That reader isn't really a specific person, or group, but rather anyone who thinks. I want my ideas to be consumed and processed by another. I want them to read what they write, and then tell me what they think about it. I love how others point out elements of your writing that you haven't even intended, and in many ways, their interpretations of events are far more astute than yours. I'm looking for any human who will read what I write and think about it. I'm also looking for criticism. If you think what I write sucks, please say so! I only want to improve. I also want to write for those people who may be struggling to do away with the same ghosts as I am. Not all of us are so lucky to be able to find words for these things, so maybe I can be of some assistance. Together, we may reach some conclusion about all this living nonsense.

The writing you can expect is mostly in a sort of sci-fi, fantasy vein. Think along the lines of Andrei Tarkovsky films, or Haruki Murakami novels. It will be strange, and overly sensitive, and a little bizarre at times, but I think what I write is worth reading. So, stick around!

I have chosen to write this blog because it gives me a release schedule, and allows this mouldering pile of writing on my hard drive to find an audience, no matter how small. With that said, let the publishing commence!