Designing the Demons

Designing the Demons

By D Matthew Phibbs

“And… and what if the reality is precisely that nothing has existed?! Maybe nothing happened to me? I can understand only what happens to me, but only what I understand happens… what do I know about the rest? The rest hasn’t existed. Maybe nothing has existed! Maybe I have merely undergone a great, slow disintegration.”

-Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

If I tell you this story, I run the risk of frightening and losing you, but if I don’t, I’ll lose myself and in losing myself lose you anyhow. I still think it happened the way I remember and even if what my roommate told me is really true, it doesn’t matter that much to the story. My roommate told me one night when we were both quite drunk and discussing the specifics of the following story, which I’d never confessed to him before, he says to me , “If you’re on a boat, and you’ve never been on a boat before, and you don’t know that there’s fish in the water, you probably won’t notice the fish in the water. But, if someone points the fish out to you, then you’ll begin to notice them everywhere.” I think this makes sense. Whether or not this is profound or is an adequate description of second guessing what I think I saw, I leave this question up to you. Yes you, the audience.
This all took place in a suburb of southern California, which can be just as weird a place as any. Anyone who says it couldn’t have happened here, obviously doesn’t know how strange it can get out there in the desert with nothing to do but fuck, drink, smoke, and go to the movies.
A lot of people, educated people, logical people, people with degrees in rational fields like biology or psychology or chemistry or law or ordination (round the sheep up for the slaughter), if you were to ask any of these folks if they believed in the existence of extra-terrestrials or not and furthermore, whether they believed that aliens kidnap people in the middle of the night, these people will often respond in the negative. The argument of course goes something like, “the sheer amount of energy it would take to travel from even the nearest star system to Earth is incomprehensible, not to speak of the likelihood of life being allowed to evolve on another plan – “. Blah, blah, blah. Regardless of how far-fetched you, the reader, think Star Trek or The X-files are, I can assure you… no, wait, I can’t assure you, but I will do my best to convince you that I am not just another psychotic with delusions of granjure; my fears are based in realities that I have to cope with nightly.
Now, you, the reader, may or may not be asking the question right now, “How can you prove it?” or maybe even be muttering under your breath right now, “Great. Another UFO nut with a hard on for writing his hallucinations down on paper. So what?” That’s ok. I’m not going to get anywhere if I let remarks like that deter me from telling my story. It’s difficult to distinguish the many forms of the paranormal, much less to truly convey what it is or why it is to be sensitive to things I can only cryptically call “energies” or “ghosts” or “demons” or “aliens”. I think, in order to more fully understand why I have become convinced that I am regularly visited by aliens that I should first start with the demons.
I guess I should probably tell you now, even if it destroys my credibility or trust as an author, I use to smoke a lot of weed in high school. When I say a lot, I mean like pretty much every day from the time I turned thirteen until I graduated at seventeen. Regardless of what you think you know about pot, maryjane, yesca, weed, etc… I will agree with one thing that has been said of it, marijuana is a gateway drug. I will, however edit what this means in the usual sense, to what this means to me. Weed, in my opinion, literally flings opens doorways to the infinite corners of the universe and beyond; passages in the users mind where any one of a billion pleasant or malevolent ‘things’ may pass in to, pass through, or take up residence and remain.
Some people, strangers, who I’ve made mistake of sharing these stories with have been emotionally or psychologically incapable of accepting the possibility that what I have been through, what I’m convinced I’ve been through, may indeed have been true. This is, of course, fine with me. It’s obviously disappointing sometimes because it loses me friends and quickly ends conversations when I see the look flash across the listener’s face that reads “this motherfucker is crazy”. But, back to the weed, what it did to me or what I did to myself.
It was junior year, 2001, it was fall semester and it was homecoming night. I had gone to the homecoming dance with my white trash barbie girlfriend, but she didn’t know how to dance. Pissed off, cause I wanted to dance because that’s what people were supposed to do at dances, I left early with my “friends” jon, matt, danny, and michael. All four of these dudes dealt me drugs at some time. We went to Jon’s apartment on Jason Street. He lived with his mom, or that is to say, his mom lived with him. Jon’s dad had died when his was about ten years old and his mom was a pushover who let him do whatever he wanted. She even let him smoke weed with his friends in their apartment. I always thought this was pretty weird, but took advantage of the situation whenever I could because it was a “safe” place to smoke. His mom was pretty weird too. She would hide in her bedroom upstairs and I rarely, if ever, saw her in the kitchen or the living room.
We were using Matt’s new bong that night. Between the five of us, we smoked a quarter of an ounce of weed, which, if you know anything about weed, you’ll know how much weed that is to consume between five people in a single night.
I remember sitting on the couch watching Jon and Matt play some new BMX game on his Playstation 2 and listening to Hieroglyphics, and then I melted into the cushions and held my breath for what seemed like forver.
When I opened my eyelids, I was what can only be described as upside down and inside out. I could see my body from another POV, but where exactly that POV originated I couldn’t tell you. It was my spirit that I could feel and see was upside down and inside out, like it had been fileted and torn open, then crucified hanging upside down. Something told me to breathe again, and I realized that I’d been holding my breath the entire time, however long that was. Then I noticed the source, the voice which had told me to breathe crouching on it’s haunches six inches in front of me was the fuzzy shadow man.
Now, I’d seen the fuzzy shadow people melt out of the trees by my window at the old house at the top of the hill before, but I’d never seen one close before. I gasped, inhaling for the first time in god knows how long –
And the shadow plunged it’s fist into my solar plexus.
Snapped back into “reality” and puked all over Jon’s carpet in front of the television. All four guys jumping up, afraid of the projectile puke being sprayed as I ran into the nearby bathroom and continued vomiting. Hearing the front door to the apartment slamming, meaning the guys had run outside to get away from the puke. Hugging the toilet, dry-heaving after there was nothing left. Eventually got up and washed my mouth out in the dingey sink. Opening the bathroom door, hearing a crash like a gunblast or a thunderclap. Then the dull thumping of stoners in skater-shoes running up the steps of the stairwell. All of them coming in huffing and puffing, out of breath and shouting. Me standing there asking what fuck is happening. Then Matt saying that a huge blue ball crawling with lightning had appeared in the courtyard where they were smoking cigarettes. It had approached them, this blue thing, slowly and they ran for it. Then it began chasing them and then exploded just outside the entrance to the stairwell, which explained the gun blast.
I don’t remember much else, other than these fragments as I was high, sick to my stomach, and had just been stabbed in the chest by a shadow demon.
Many years later, after telling my friend Matthew this whole story he would tell me, “Once you’ve been introduced to the form, you will see it in everything.” This incident would inform the next four years of my life as I strolled through atmospheres of anxiety, bits of blood trickling out the paranoid wound in the pit of my chest
Now, you might just say, “This kid has watched too many science fiction films” or, “This guys mind has been colored by too many Carlos Castaneda books”, but, in my own defense, how can you say that this isn’t what happened to me? How can I, for that matter, solidly say that my explanation of what happened is the way it really happened? I know that the possibility exists that it was all in my head just like I accept the possibility that I may go to hell one day even though I don’t believe in satan. It is a neither/nor situation, not an either/or and it may also be a both/and situation as well. True and false at the same time. Writing this all down, I have to wonder, did it ever heal? Can I just explain it all away as paranoia?

VI

On a quiet night long ago

I sat with you on the couch with the lights low.

Content, life’s problems slip away,

As my hand caresses under your shirt to play.

Your body responds to my touch,

I make slow circular motions and such,

Just to hear you pant and breathe,

Soon our bodies tangle and weave.

I sense every beat your heart skips,

Studying every groove in your skin and lips.

Your body always moving with mine

Our senses become one, our hearts align.

I lay you down gently to rest,

Your eyes close as your head snuggles against my chest.

I kiss your forehead while my fingertips run through your silken hair one last stroke,

As I know the past will be dead and you will be forever gone when I awoke.

Week 14 Assignments

Writing Assignment

Everyone does this:
Final Portfolio Due December 10, 2009! Remember to bring an SASE if you'd like me to mail you your portfolio over the break.
Optional:
You may turn in ONE make-up writing exercise on the last day of class next week. I will not accept make-up assignments by mail, email, or after next class!


Blog (Optional)
1. If you like, post work that you would like the class to read and respond to.

2. Post comments on at least three other entries. Identify something from the piece that strikes or interests you, ask a neutral question about the work, or suggest ways the author could deepen or expand it.


Bring Food and Drink
If you can, bring something to share at our final class reading and party!

revision

there are two main issues i have with revision, as well as writing, but revision only seems to amplify these problems. the first problem is procrastination. procrastinating on revising a work seems easier than procrastinating on a work itself. part of me, though scared to admit it, doesn't want to face my characters again. meeting them for the first time was fun, exciting, playful, but meeting them a second time around can only be awkward, foolish, feeling inconvenienced by their presence, questioning their personality, their standards, the color of their hair. i want them to fix the errors in my story themselves, while i'm asleep in bed. i'm exhausted by even the thought of moving around words, places, saying a sentence a hundred times in my head until i think it sounds best. these are the things that drive a person insane.

the second part is simply doubt, at a very immature and childish level, yet it is the self-doubt that is usually crippling to adults. it is the very sickly, sharp part inside of me that does not know if my writing is any good. how should i know? how can i know? is revision even worth it? if i can't write then maybe i should just toss the cards in now and walk away.

Revising made difficult.

I think the hardest thing about revision, for me at least, is the constructive criticism people give me. Now, I know that its the whole point of the revision process, but i really can't take it. I get offended and take things personally. Luckily, this has gotten easier in the last couple years, but its still hard on me. Therefore, I feel horrible dishing it out. I like to look at the positive aspects of peoples work, exclusively, and not really deal with the criticism. Does anyone else have the same problem?

Revision

In all honesty, I think my greatest challenge with revision is knowing when to stop.

That magical level of subtlety that inspires readers to approach a piece with both eyes open can easily be lost with too much muddling. I second guess myself into doom and clarify my metaphors and themes to the point where there is no space for interaction with the work. No chance for different readers to have different reactions.

I understand this to be a two part problem: First, I often begin with a message that interests me and build the story around it (this is a decidedly backwards approach that I am constantly trying to outgrow) and second, I can't seem to get a fix on my audience's comprehension level.

Since the first problem is with my process, I'll focus on the second, which seems more appropriate to a discussion of revision.

I'm just not sure how to arrive at a better understanding of my audience. I have serious issues with approaching my writing from an objective perspective. Reading out loud and distributing my drafts to as many people as possible both help, but I just can't internalize an audience.

My workshop group helped me with this problem somewhat, whether they know it or not. I've begun to realize that readers aren't enticed to approach a story analytically by the clarity of the story's messages, but by the potency of its images. I'm definitely excited to see the change this observation makes in my writing.

revision

When I am feeling blocked with a certain piece or in need of another perspective, I like to use a techinque I learned in another creative writing class. It's very simple. I just rewrite what I've written exactly the same, but from another POV. For example, if I wrote it in the first person, I'll rewrite it in the second or third. Sometimes just changing the perspective can make the character seem different and new. Sometimes it illuminates characterisitcs that can then be elaborated on. Or perhaps show some phrases to be unnecessary.

REVISION....

Writing dialogue is a challenge for me. So when it comes time to revise my work, I often find myself frustrated because I can’t pin down the character’s “voice”. A method of revision that I am currently attempting is one a substitute instructor (in one of my other classes) suggested. Basically, I am writing down my rants (opinions, thoughts, etc), then assigning the dialogue to each character. After, I’m butchering my sentences so that they’re not so neat. I just started editing a few days ago, so I really can’t verify how effective it is, but hopefully it continues to help me tackle dialogue. In the project I’m working on, it has been working well.

- K. De Melo

My Take on Revision

Reading through all these posts on revision, I am struck by how similar we creative writers seem to be at heart. We despise revision; we need it; we yearn for it; we avoid it; we bite the bullet and go through with it; we think it's bullshit; we see it gets results; we see that revision is the key to all of our future dreams of excellence; we still despise it, despite it.

With all of these collective mixed feelings about revision, I had to look deep into my own heart and face the truth of revision for myself: it's really only something I practice on school assignments for class. Because something is due. At this point in my life, the sad truth is, I just don't have the time or energy to go through each and every one of my millions of Word files saved on hard drives, floppy discs, CD-ROMs, or even email messages. I don't have the heart to revise.

Revision is much like declaring war on an enemy in a political sense, except that the enemy is actually your own writing, and you are supposed to love your writing. This is hard because, in a war, you are supposed to hate your enemy. And often, your own writing feels so much like an enemy, trying to sabotage you, trying to take all of your resources. To revise is to commit yourself utterly to the drab and depressing fate of searching endlessly for the perfect comma, the perfect word, the perfect sentence structure. To seek that right line in the right spot in the right paragraph is difficult at best; to find that perfect word for the sentence is even harder. To go back in time and memory to try and remember just what your thought process was when you wrote a garbled paragraph is a nauseating affair; we have all been there, trying to fix a continuity mistake and realizing, there is no way to fix this without having to tear it all out and start back from scratch.

Perhaps I speak only for my own self, but revision is a scary process that is best handled with a vice of some sort: caffeine, cigarettes, alcohol, chocolate... whatever floats your boat. Anything to help pass those hours in front of a computer screen, trying to make the puzzle pieces of your literary genius fit together.

Revision Challenge

The challenge I find with revision is the approach. Where do you begin? The piece can hang in front of you, mocking, hissing, and beating its unfinished or unrefined chest bleating at me. I take deep breaths and think that it's probably better to begin something new, just move on bud there's nothing here for you. But I think about a Tom Waits interview where he says that he treats each song like it's its own entity; one's a fireman, the other is a doctor, another is a school teacher. I think that my story has a life to it (dead as it may seem) or my poem has a pulse and that they have SOMETHING of ME in them. So I breathe again and attempt something like the following:

I think one of the best, and one of my most favorite ways of revising (or even preparing) is to sit down before I begin (or begin again) a piece and starting to draw out a scene or characters. This is literal. Take out a blank piece of paper and start to draw a character you are working on or an image from the piece. One of the methods I also use is to start a film (hopefully something with with interesting imagery or characters), at any point in the story and pause on a scene or character you enjoy and start to draw them or it in great detail. Drawing is meditative and clearing, it also can get your imagination working in new ways.

Revisions

It's tricky.

The typical instruction one would hear in the case of revisions would be how you need to be entirely objective about your work in order for you to really see what it is whether it be a piece of shit or something that requires a few sentences to be arranged differently to make it sound better. Objectivity is definitely something to strive for, but it's nothing you can achieve after a day or two from finishing your work. As time heals all wounds, it can also heal your work. With what the class is doing in terms of revisions, it's a good idea that we've had a good length of time between what we need to do and the amount of time we're given to look at our work. If we were to revise our works a day after writing them, there wouldn't be that many revisions, and you'll likely find yourself in a position of sucking your own cock on the accomplishments you did with your writing. Wait a longer time, you'll realize what may or may not be the wreckage you managed to type out on your computer.

Your ego is the target in doing all this since it's that very thing that can easily ruin you. Remember that we are what we think. If you were to step outside ourselves and see how hard you're getting at reading your our own work, then you'll notice what you really are, you ego-maniac.

Revision

I don't know that I have a method for revision per se, but I do constantly make revisions to my work. I think the best way to revise your work is not to trust your instincts, and not to stay in your comfort zone, and not to trap yourself into ideas just because they're awesome or neat or whatever. I think it is good to know what works; I think it is bad to do what you know works already. If you aren't trying to do something new, you're pretty much just jerking yourself off. Revision is tricky and hard, and you have to step carefully, but you also have to know when to jump, kind of like Indiana Jones. One nice thing about revision is that for some small part of it, there are rules (sometimes): I refer to spelling, grammar, and the like. Of course, you could be writing in dialect, in which case that all goes out the window, but I think those things have their own set of rules - otherwise there's no way anyone could recognize or understand them.

Basically my idea about revision is not to expect anything fantastic to jump out at you, but to search for ways to make every little part better, and after you do that for a while, eventually there will start being synchronous circumstances between parts just because the same person wrote both of them, and that's when you know shit is really coming together.

revision-honestly, i suck at it.

i hate revision, mainly because i suck at it. honestly, i often wait to the last minute to do just about anything. for some reason i can't get things done until i am under pressure. this means some of my ideas may not be fully developed. and perhaps that's why it all just sucks. but my mind may also be a culprit, since i swear its all over the place, i might have a.d.d. i also believe that my revision skills suck because to be completely honest here i am not confident in anything i write, yes sad. still, these are no excuse to skip the step of revision. so what i often do is, re-read it, first to myself, then out loud. i find that reading anything out loud helps and it is even more helpful if you are reading it to someone so they can point out any parts that may need a re-work. i also like to send it out to some of my friends so they can read it and suggests things. lastly, i've found just setting the piece aside completely whether it is "done" or not. i usually come back to it, eventually, and when i do it can turn into something completely different. one last thing, that just came to mind, i often take individual feelings and emotions in my writing and try to describe it in a way that no one can actually pin point the thing im actually talking about. doing this helps me to revise my writing too, it gives me more than one perspective.

First Thought - On Second Thought.

I hate revision... that is until I actually start doing it. I'm very of the mind "first thought, best thought", but that doesn't always get you there and you and me both know it. I don't really have a "method" for revising my work, other than the fact that I always start with the grammatical errors and misspellings. I find that if I get these out of the way then I can see what's wrong with the story itself, the holes in continuity, the details that I missed or couldn't see the first time through. My biggest challenge with revision is the actually starting it part. I have so many poems and ideas for short stories in my documents folder that I haven't even touched since I first wrote them. I always find that when I actually do look them over, sometimes I'm surprised at how much I actually got down, and sometimes I'm surprised at how fucking horrible they are. Ugh! Regardless, there's always something to do once I get in there. My only "advice", if you can call it that, is just do it. Even if that story or poem or play is a piece of shit now, there might be a diamond hiding in there somewhere that just needs some care and attention.

Ahhh...Revision.

I am terrible at revising my works. I generally spend an immense amount of time researching for the piece, and by the time it's over, the thought of changing it is dreadful. However, it is necessary!

What I like to do is to take the original pieces and delete everything but a sentence. Then rewrite the story using the surviving sentence, creating a fresh perspective. Then repeat the process. Ultimately, I combine the working elements from each specific rewrite.

Taking days to recharge, between each revision, helps bring in new perspectives as well.

Thoughts on Revision

Revision, for me, is on par with beginning a piece as the most daunting aspect of the writing process. This may be a product of vanity, but I often think that laboring over punctuation or finding the perfect word is exhausting and in opposition to the whole creative ideal that I strive for. I recognize that most drafts are "shitty first drafts," I understand that fine tuning is essential, but for the most part I detest attempting to polish something that I've written. What I do enjoy about the process is going over what I've written previously and finding what strikes me, what compels me to write more. It could be one sentence out of a whole piece, but if that sentence actually moves me, it becomes less of a chore and more an exercise in crafting something new around the part that I love. Reading out loud to myself has proven to be a very effective means of determining whether something is worthy, or whether it is two pages of bullshit with one viable sentence. I would love to imagine myself as one of the gifted few who write brilliant drafts without the need for any tinkering, but this is a fantasy that wouldn't be doing me any favors. Spending that extra time with something that I've written leaves me with much more invested, and an appreciation for the prose that I may not have had if I just wrote it and left it alone. I ultimately have to remind myself on a regular basis to seek out the joy I feel for writing in the process of revision, because the end result is a more critical eye and a strengthened piece.

Garbage

Revision will be the death of me. It deflates my self confidence as a writer. I usually read through my work and when a part strikes me, I try to enhance it. There isn't much to my revision process. I change a word, add a paragraph delete a page. I get so frustrated after reading my piece of garbage several times and every word choice and sentence sounds juvenile and simple. After procrastinating and editing, I turn against my work and grow to despise it. There comes a point in the revision process when I want to set fire to my little darling and listen to its screams.

-sarah

Training a Winner

I have found that after examining my piece too extensively, I simply become bored and encouraged to start something new. I feel like the ultimate goal of revision is to polish a piece of writing--however, if I cannot see my piece from a fresh perspective every time I sit down to revise, I really don't see the point. Sometimes it just feels like I'm beating a dead horse, when ideally, it should feel like I'm racing a young stallion. I believe that if a horse isn't born to win a race, there is no point in training the shit out of it in an attempt to do so. Instead, buy a new horse--start over from square one. After all, no matter how incapable the first horse was, it is likely to have taught you a thing or two about how to train a winner. This tends to be how I approach the craft of writing: start strong and make it easier for yourself in the end.

Re(procrastination)vision

My biggest problem with revision is getting started. More often then not my writing comes in caffeine-fueled bursts at odd hours of the day (sometimes I like to get up at 7 a.m. and write or sometimes I like to stay up until 3 a.m. to get my writing done, I'm a morning person.). In short I sometimes find it difficult to write with purpose. This method (or anti-method?) has made me an expert in procrastination. I think part of this aversion to revision has something to do with fear; fear of what? Fear that instead of a story with a well-structured plot, interesting characters and superb dialogue I will open my laptop to find a big steaming piece of poop sitting innocently where my story should be (metaphorically speaking). After this realization that I in fact cannot write comes the stages of grief in rapid succession: Denial, what? who wrote this? not me! someone most have broken into my apartment and rewritten this, Guilt, oh God I'm going into debt to get a degree in creative writing what the hell was I thinking? someone out there deserves to be a creative writing major but not me...Anger/Barganing, OK Missy just revise a paragraph, one little paragraph isn't that bad, you're a goddamn creative writing major after all! then comes Depression, this is where I cut off all ties from the world telling friends and family alike "I have to revise" "No Grandma I can't come to your birthday party, I have to revise" "Sorry cute guy on the bus I can't go on a date with you, I have a lot of revision to do." Etc. And that's pretty much where the phases of grief stop in my procrastination trajectory (but wait that's only FOUR stages of grief, what about the other three? Well the last three stages of grief are: "The Upward Turn," "Reconstruction," and "Acceptance" which would lead to me revising and that would defeat the whole purpose of procrastination.). Being stuck in the 4th stage of grief often means I need some cheering up so obviously I have to look at pictures of baby animals or cats with funny stuff on them, I also have to google what the 7 stages of grief actually are. These mental gymnastics to get out of actually working and then going on to be a prolific writer and productive person in general can get pretty exhausting at which point I tell myself that maybe it's time to go to bed, but I can't becuase I've had like twenty cups of coffee in the hope that I would revise, so I can either clean my apartment or work on that craft project I've been putting off... speaking of which, there are some videos on Youtube I've been meaning to watch...

revision revision revision

One of the problems I've had with revision comes from the advice to leave a piece alone for a little while and come back with a fresh mindset, presumably take it on from a different angle and bring something new to it. I've done this; put something away (it was a story), and then, a month later come back to it, only to find I've lost any feeling for it. I came back and thought, "well this thing is hopeless," so there has to be some middle ground, like maybe I should have stopped writing the thing but kept thinking about it, or perhaps it actually was hopeless, and it was good of me to recognize that and move on. Either way, that method didn't work for me. It sounds reasonable, though...