Prologue:

The best thing about this blog is that no one reads it. I am simply one of those pathetic individuals – there are no writers who are not deeply pathetic – who writes because he can. I do not enjoy writing. In fact, I loathe it. There are demented people who do it because they have to do it, which is why addiction and compulsion are neurological in nature, affecting the left part of the brain frequently called the dominate hemisphere. Language only is. It’s fraternal twin, the right side of the brain is involved with visual information, and spatial processing. Speech and motor speech control are often conflicted. No two brains are exactly alike.

Writers who do it every day (you know who you are) can and often do live in intransigent states of denial. Their brains are addicted to the rush.

Writing within the abstractions of poetic language breaks many of the rules we learn at the infantile level of junior high school.

I am talking about people who love libraries.

Sitting in the dust and the decay of old books gets them off. They will deny this.

Ask them if they take books to bed.

Hmmm.

They love the texture and the smell of books. Smell is a powerful rush to their demented brains.

Even if they are making money, take a look at how much time they spend with it. On average, it will amount to twelve cents an hour. Bartenders make lots more. I have known legions of New York editors. I have never met one who is not a committed alcoholic. They ALWYS tell themselves that inebriation leads them into doing their best writing.

Which is why they are editors. Not writers.

Don’t contact me aout the piece I am going to paste below this prologue. Restrain your fucking selves. Rest assured if I hear from you, I will not read it, and I will delete it.

I already KNOW what the New York Times will do with it.

And not for the reasons you think.

The garbage I write mainly gets published. Comments have no real value. They’re for entertainment and the narcissistic illusion that what you think matters. Yes, writers are inevitably narcissistic. It’a performance designed to validate people who believe they actually have very little of it.

It reinforces what they think is dialogue and transparency. It also gives them a stage to act out on in ways that tell the rest of us: Oh, look at me, I’m always right therefore I am the biggest smarty pants in the library smelling books. I’m an addict. It’s not my fault.

Nothing is usually their fault.

Is it Amarosa.  

This arrogant assumption is a dog and pony show. I have been paid for writing for the New York Times. They pay extremely well. But rest assured, the only writing they value is the writing they put money behind. What I value is the time gig. They literally pay you a day after you write it. I don’t care how they do it. They just do it.

Do NOT ask me questions, it’s beyond annoying. I will not answer your invasive curiosity. Fuck off.

People who write to me anyway have no respect for me whatsoever. I told you not to write to me. The people who do that to anyone are the people who enjoy hurting you.

Sadomasochism is not limited to a whip shoved up your ass.

I already KNOW that anything I write (not limited to the New York Times) gets short shrift with the space I am allowed to occupy.

Crazy writers do not understand that a thousand page book, constituting any manuscript, will not get read, and will not be published. It’s way too long. Been there. Done that. It’s defeating.

Do NOT write to me about the joys and thrills of publishing yourself.

There are limits to even masturbation which is as neurologically involved with the brain as intuition.

The sad truth (I did not invent this, and I do not like it, which does not mean it does not exist) publishing yourself is either self-gratification, or self-defeating. It does not imply much of an audience.

Poetic chap books are cute.

Do NOT write to me.

Writing to me is far more cruel than writing for yourself.

I already KNOW (I am not twelve) that writing is often about what you don’t say as opposed to what you do say. But there is only so much space. Even in a box that you will make no impact on getting out of. Thinking is not writing. It’s thinking.

Writers are a dime a dozen. So are manuscripts.

Go get a real job.

Writing is a slow suicide. I do not tell the whole story.

1.) It is not allowed. I put my name (it was an literally an accident) at the top of the digital manuscript pasted here and this is frowned upon in a BIG way at the New York Times. I hit send, it’s gone, goodbye. On the SAT, you only put what they tell you to put.

2.) John Updike played by the rules assiduously. They did not make him a better writer. Either did your junior high school English teacher. The one who sent you to the library. You’re either addicted or you’re not. You’re either a writer or you’re not. You buy romanticism or you don’t.

3.) I don’t tell the whole story – EVER – because I do not fucking want to. Own it. Publishers do not ban us. We ban ourselves. Do not insult my intelligence.

4.) Writers have little dicks. Or no dicks. This is the first rule of writing.

5.) I might tell you a part of a story. To be required to tell the whole thing makes me want to vomit. I don’t have time. I do not drag people by the hair into it if they object to being dragged anywhere. Many writers might do this. But I am not required to respect them.

6.) Get over it. I am not going to tell you the whole story because I do not want you to know it. You don’t know everything because you do not have the right to know everything.

7.) You are not Wikipedia which is often just plain wrong. I no longer CARE.

8.) I wrote this because I can.

9.) Do not write to me. This is for an audience of one and he is the idiot who wrote it.

10.) Short and brief is always better. Why do you think I employ one word paragraphs.

11.) Oh, poor me. It’s a genre. Writers love to box things. Not invent new things. New things scare the shit out of them. John Updike did not invent the super computer. No cigar. The first sentence is bait and click, at least as far as Twitter is concerned, but the heading is an accident in a landscape where there are no accidents. What the heading tells me is that I did not really want to publish this. It’s on ME. It is not on THEM. Writers hate hearing that. I exaggerate because I exaggerate. And I intentionally leave out a lot of bullshit. Life is mainly bullshit and so is writing about it.

12.) Fuck me.

Tim Barrus: The New York Times

I have been trying to kill myself since I was sixteen. I pray to die in my sleep.

Pills. A shotgun. Hospitalizations where everything I ever dreaded was perpetrated against me. Scars are not limited to the psychological. Life is not scared.

Just. Because.

I am not depressed. I am rational. I just hate the pain.

Medical science is a satire. No one believes that as a child I was repeatedly raped. No one wants to hear it. It has been like existing in a vacuum where no one hears anyone.

It has been a life of complete failure. Forget relationships. My anger about being forced to be here means no relationships. Safety net? No social security because I have never been able to hold a job.

Deep poverty is deeper than you think. Homelessness is deeper than you think. Rape is deeper than you think. Avascular necrosis is deeper than you think. All my bones have been broken. When I break brittle bones, I seek no medical assistance. How to pay? The pain is breath-taking. Yet I keep waking up and waking up. Alive.

There is no god. There is only hell.

No one can grasp that being here – to me – is in and of itself a convulsion of torment every waking moment. You either want to be here in this horrid life, or you are cast out.

I know what people think. You have no tools to reach me. Nothing changes. While homeless, I try to crawl into spaces where I am not kicked, robbed, urinated on, frozen, or clubbed by the police.

I just don’t want to be here.

Let me go.

Do not write to me. I delete most email anyway.