Holy Words

It is not even four in the morning. I have arisen from sleep to have bowl of cereal and work on the rough draft of a new novel, one that will not even see the light of my proofreading pen until sometime in the middle of the next year. As a writer for a very small press I am always wondering about where my writing goes, who should be reading it. I am convinced most modern writing now not only goes to the wrong places, but is written for the wrong people. As a writer who masquerades as a student and spends a fair amount of his time in academia I see that most of the writing, fictional and no fictional that sets itself up as serious is also bound to be incestuous. Professors of nothing writing to other professors, impressing each other with the strength of their weak words. Conferences as self-fulfilling and infertile as masturbation where men and women hammer together abstruse words into obtuse concepts.
What we need is alternate altars where to consecrate our words. What we need now are other sacred spaces to congregate and set down the words which change the world.
This week the High Holidays came to an end. The last day, Simhat Torah, was when the Torah is completed and then begun all over again, when the Torah is danced around the house and we reflect on the holy and magic power of the written word, and the word received. I put on the house altar, not only the Torah, but my own novels as well as books of mythology that had changed me, reading their ends and thier beginnings and processing them about the room. All of our lives are guided by holy words. All of our words should be Torah.

trouble

Life is trouble.
-- Zorba the Greek

Life is full of so much trouble and yet we go on with it. Not because we are afraid of death either. In the face of the troublesomeness of life, what do we find in it? From now on I think this is what Witch's Blood will examine if we haven't been examining it already.

SIT N' BITCH !

TODAY'S BITCH

Today's bitch comes from Bree Dunscombe of Indianapolis, IN.

Right now I hate my money situation, mostly because of credit card debt and student loans. The latter were worth it; but every time I think about the stupid shit I charged before, and how I'm paying for it now, I want to scream. Sometimes it feels like I'll never dig myself out of the grave I've thrown myself into.

Thanks for letting me vent!

THANKS FOR BITCHING !

Witch's Blood

In these dark days between the full moon of Yom Kippur and the new moon of All Hallows, I enter a different phase and start living in a different place. I don't mean this in a good way. I guess it isn't in a bad away either. The blissful joy I felt I no longer feel. I am discontent, even when I am not anxious. Whatever my body looks like my spirit has tentacles that reach out for other things, things I don't know... Something is telling me... "Go deeper."

Why we write here...

On the heels of that miserable passage I realize that I could have written the same thing down in my journal, and it would have lacked all power. Now I know why we blog here. If I'd written it down the words would have died and ended with me, still in my head. Here they are confessed. I write them down, but someone else will read them, hopefully a friend, sometimes a friend I didn't even know existed. The things leaves me the the Scpecoat at Yom Kippur. I think this is why I write, because the thing must leave me. My emotions cannot stay only my emotions, they have to go out and let people in. We have to share these things. This is the true power of confession.

Confession? That the friend I think I love is blathering on and on about how well he did on his exam while I am thinking about the sudden frustrations and troubles all cast upon in getting the exam back. I have written two novels, am putting one out for wide publication and keep my business to myself. He scores and ninety-five and won't stop talking. Suddenly I wonder what it would be like to dash his brains out on the pavement. My life has always been violent like this. I never feel ho hum about anything. I'm not even banal about my own banality.

I don't know what reading this does for you, but I know what writing it does for me. Whoever has left, I hope you come back. Whoever has been here all along (Frema, Helen, London) put your feet up and bitch.

Life

Yom Kippur

Is anyone out there? I wouldn't be surprised if no one was. The last time I was here was before school started, and I just looked at that last passage which was stupid but accurate. I've found myself in a new, great, strange place.

I'd been thinking about coming back to Witch's Blood for some time and I hope it's permanent. Today, during the fast I new something had to happen. I knew I would come back and leave a note here. My book is finally fit to be seen, so go see it: http://www.lulu.com/content/144803

The other day I got a first copy of the new novel, the one where I look over it and see all the mistakes and typos before the world does. I feel accomplished. Not impressed with myself, but rather like I had a duty to these stories, these first two in particular, and I have seen them to the point where they are in print, where the first one can be read. I have kept faith with them. So many changes have occured in this one year since last Yom Kippur.