an unintended benefit of the great silence from the queried collaborative ether

in

While (one of) the current project(s) was originally intended as a graphic novella, dead air to all of my collaborative emails (this is nothing new: it’s been not the exception but the rule over the last 15 years of efforts to get a comics project off the ground which makes me either a fool or determined – a determined fool, perhaps) has led me to the holy state of "fuck it" and resolving to tell the intended collaboration as a pulpier quick-shot solo story pared down to its most basic, visceral elements: 99.98% that it's all the better for it. Best to get it out and make something than to try otherwise; I'll comfort myself in telling myself that this was the way that it was always meant to be – though the creative heartbreak of my comics hopes remains.

goals

in

For the next few months or few years however long it takes:

  • More concrete usage of notebook / journal as corporeal thinking brain with improved legibility or at least enough to get the notes into Obsidian at a few hours' remove for digital workspace / zettelkasten purposes.

  • Press(A) 02.

  • An acceptance that the morning is when my stores of willpower are at their peak and when I'm at my most creatively fertile and that efforts to expand that throughout the day are, at best, a way to avoid other realities of life that would be best served by being present for them.

  • Further incorporate randomness-by-choice into my day.

  • Decide on how to integrate social.parentheticalrecluse.com into this space and implement it. Would love to use it as comment system. Though I have no clue how to go about doing that. Anyone want to help?

  • A full embrace that being a writer is only part of my identity not all of it and that all of those other parts fuel and infuse one another though am I always thinking and seeing like a writer.

  • This this is the only this that there is right now.

More if and when I figure it / them out.

clear opacity / opaque clarity

in

For the first time in awhile, I've found myself genuinely enjoying the process of being lost and possessed of no idea of where to take The Work (this as opposed to hating myself for same).

Perhaps it's the clarity I brain-stumbled upon earlier today regarding the form of Press (A) 02: clarity, even a small bit (and in something totally removed from the main) I've found, begets pleasure, creatively - or at least an increased capacity to deal with the opacity inherent in any creative toil.

All this subject to change, tomorrow or in the next hour or minute, of course – but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

and i am not bleeding!

in

Behold, the new binding for PRESS (A) TO START: all future editions and issues – unless format dictates otherwise – will be bound in Japanese Stab Binding-style:

Or, rather, all future editions and issues - unless format dictates otherwise – will be bound in my iteration / improvisation of Japanese stab binding (meaning it involved three holes instead of four and a power drill in conjunction with the awl).

Either way, proud of this one, considering the last time I tried to thread a needle I was in a state of inebriation at 2AM and convinced I needed to sew a button back on my shirt. It took two hours to thread that needle. But that button held.

formless forms taking form maybe or maybe not

in

Think I somehow combined MARIO with POWERWASH SIMULATOR in this morning's attendance card. Oh, the things that happen in 3.5 minutes.

A single line written this morning (3.5 seconds?) led to a return to another short thing and unlocked the thing that was missing from it – but not enough to push it forward: returned to the other thing in W2. Not ready to follow through on yesterday's notions of connectivity and combination between the two seemingly dissimilar projects (a tonal shift from a projects began and developed before LAST CHRISTMAS and projects began after) but I'm not ready to discount the potential either.

Regardless, the form of PRESS (A) 02 has started to take shape and make sense, if only to me, which is all the sense it will ever / has to make.

Newsletter work this weekend; MacroParentheticals0090 arrives Sunday morning in subscribers' inboxes. You can sign up here, if so inclined.

(non)emergent rhythmic backburning

in

Current operational theory is that this feeling I've had for a few months - at least since the final days of PRESS (A) 01 – is that I'm moving on to a different rhythm – or, rather, a different representation of my voice – with PRESS (A) 01 being the final statement in that particular epoch (which began with DESCANSO in 2021) and what this this TBD is something new.

(Or perhaps PRESS (A) 01 was/is the start of this new rhythmic epoch?)

Either way: this new unknown rat-a-tat is most likely why the current FictionThing (part of AnotherFictionThing though I suppose now it's MainFictionThing as I've decided to move both MainFiction and ComicsThing(s) to the deep backburner - at least until some sort of new rhythmic permutation emerges, from somewhere) is so appealing – in spite of empty/nowhere: it's in such a nebulous state that I can fiddle with whatever this new/different voice/rhythm is; probably revisit other things only when I can devolve they're back to a similarly nebulous state and find a way for them to fit in with this new? Let things emerge in the writing, not the planning: this is what I'm telling myself.

In the meantime, all I can do is hunker down and stare and fiddle and make sure I don't cross the line into what my therapist once so perfectly likened to forcing myself to fall asleep.

fighting failing handwriting

in

As I'm back to getting nowhere in AnotherFictionThing (intended to be part of either PRESS (A) 02 or 03) , I've instituted a one-page handwritten goal for each workday: at least there will be that (and these) to show that it wasn't all for naught – even if naught is all that comes.

Hoping, though, that it turns out like METROID DREAD did last night: after facing the invisible scorpion beast for more than a few days of profanity and victory snatched, I allowed myself one final evening of fighting and failing, after which I would put the game away and revisit afresh at some point in the unknown future when I could give myself entirely to METROID’s particular needs of timing and ability – but, in what was to be my final endrun, everything clicked and I slayed that fucker and scored the Phantom Cloak. VICTORY.

Then, at least – but not this morning; still, one page is nearly written – and this is.