When I left California, I was leaving behind a lot relationships for the great unknown of Texas. My view of Texas was largely shaped by pop culture: tumbleweeds, cactus, and cowboys. But I went anyways with my eyes closed. It was time for a dramatic shift.
That first year was tough. I remember being sprawled out on my futon, unable to get up, in physical pain from depression. I didn’t have friends in Texas, I worked alone, and if I went out, I got too drunk to remember any meaningful anything from the night.
But after being alone for a long time and away from any of my normal social comforts, I finally had found my passion: pickling eggs. In California, pickled eggs at a bar were not common but they also weren’t uncommon. In Texas, at that time, I was hard-pressed to find a bar that offered pickled eggs. So I started to pickle them myself. I made them spicy as hell and my flatulence was a war crime.
I also started to write and read more. I looked outside my comfort zone and found that I was not alone at all. I have a mind of chaos. I bounce from thought to thought, I fidget, I get uncomfortable with one task and being alone in a new state really brought those things to the forefront. It was no longer something I had to dull with a job I hated or avoid by smoking weed and playing Call of Duty all day long. It was something to learn. Now, I am comfortable with myself and I am comfortable going down the rabbit holes I often find myself falling into. For me, I had to confront myself in order to embrace myself.
The group of friends I have made in Texas is incredible. Doing live shows and starting little zines here and there, publishing books, drawing slightly erotic versions of Sonic is endlessly fulfilling. Be alone, get lost, read books, go down rabbit holes. Who cares?
I have a family now. My hair is getting pretty white. My brain has been rearranged by having to canoe the chaos river that is having two toddlers but I am better equipped to handle chaos because of the abrupt change I brought onto myself by moving to Texas. I made the decision to move less than a month before I left California. Pretty much everyone was blindsided. I lost friends, grew distant, maintained some friendships and forgot about others (as I’m sure I am also forgotten). It’s the best thing I ever did. I’m in the Green Hill Zone now, baby.
HEY! SOME OF MY BOOKS ARE ON SALE.
Go to 5GkilledGod.com to get Death Thing, Bangface, and Inner Space. They’re on sale! It’s that time of year. Buy one for yourself. Buy one for a friend. I will doodle in it and you will cherish it for the rest of your life.
XCRMNTMNTN
My book, XCRMNTMNTN, is coming out via Ghoulish Books (
) early next year. I am very excited. It's a nightmare about creating art and I think it's pretty damn good. Go subscribe to The Ghoulish Times to keep your finger on the pulse of what's coming down the pipeline from them. PMMP published Invasion of the Weirdos by me and I couldn’t be more excited to work with people as great as Max and Lori. Honestly, they are publishing the best stuff in the business. I don’t care what anyone says.HOT DOGS ARE ILLEGAL NOW
I recorded my very short story earlier and it’s available on bandcamp. Check it out.
WHAT I’M READING, LISTENING TO, WATCHING
Currently reading Cody Goodfellow’s Perfect Union published by none other than Ghoulish Books. Cody Goodfellow is a literary hero of mine. Everything I’ve read by him is great. He has a sense of humor that is in its own class. The first chapter is a masterpiece “cold open.” More of a sticky open.
I am also reading Samurai by Shusaku Endo. His novel Silence was brooding and dark. If you’re looking for an uplifting work, skip silence. It is a devastating look at culture clashes and humanity. How far are we willing to go for our beliefs in the face of human suffering. It’s beautiful. It’s devastating. I’m not too far into Samurai but the slow pace is similar and I’m looking forward to being crushed again. It’s a kink, I guess.
I just finished Star by Yukio Mishima. You can read it in a single sitting. It’s more of a character study than anything. Futility, meaninglessness, fame, and private cruelty seem to be good descriptors, I think. When I say private cruelty, I am thinking of the ways we disparage people for no reason other than they’re not in the same room as we are and do not enjoy the same access or standing as we do. We’re all guilty. I’ve read The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea pretty recently by Mishima and it was absolutely one of my favorite reads this year. The stakes were a lot higher in that book but it was a novella with a little more room to expand into its themes. It was a dark coming of age story for a boy and fading into irrelevance for a man in his middle age. Yukio Mishima, if you look him up, woo-doggy. What a crackpot. Great writer though. I’d like to learn Japanese to the point that I can read these books side by side with their translations because I am sure that there is more to the craft of writing than can be conveyed via a translation but I see translation as an art unto itself. A literal translation, word for word, would mean nothing in English. One has to be aware of the intricacies and nuances of both languages to truly convey the meaning in translation. There’s an interesting article about the guy who translated the Japanese to English for Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation. He took a lot of liberties because too many idioms were simply untranslatable to English. It is probably the best “written” entry of the series. He got shit-canned once Hideo Kojima found out how far it strayed from what he had written. Kojima wanted a more faithful, word for word, translation and, if you’ve played any Metal Gear after it, you know that that doesn’t always go super well for readability. I am a Metal Gear fanboy, though and I will defend to the death the unabashed weirdness of the series. Translations be damned.
I also just finished Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura. It was engrossing and incredibly dark. Some of the scenes literally gave me nightmares. If you like death and sex and cults, well let me tell you… this book involves a sex-death-cult. On the long side, so buckle up. There were a lot of characters and it really exposed my own weakness of being able to separate characters because of their culturally unfamiliar names. Lots of doubling back to make sure I had whoever straight with whoever. Good read though. Dark. Probably should’ve picked better palette cleansers than Samurai and Perfect Union.
Currently on repeat for me is the local weird-punk band Big Bill. Recently, my wife and I went to a concert at the Scoot Inn to see Plains and it was a nice walk down memory lane of my time in Austin. We saw old friends and acquaintances. One fella, we talked to him for about fifteen minutes before the show, made the crazy assertion that he had given up on music. I knew this guy. We put shows on together for a literary magazine. He was Mr. Musician. It was his fucking life. But he said he had given up the dream of doing it professionally any longer (he’d been doing it for years before) and was comfortable being a teacher. We had done a show at the Scoot Inn over 8 years ago. Me and him. I introduced his band. It was probably weird for him to hear I was still writing to much less success than he ever had. That’ll show him to quit. Anyways, Big Bill was a band my wife and I had seen a few times around town probably 8 years ago, too. Friends were in the band. Friend is no longer in the band. But they were always very cool and very weird. They just played at the bar I work at and it was an incredible show. They’re better than ever. Austin truly is a great town. Here’s a video I like. And here’s a video my 3-year old daughter loves.
I’m watching White Lotus season 2 and finally getting caught up on Atlanta. Both great shows, but I’ve said enough.
I knew this would be good. Glad I signed up.