A few lines from "Essay on the Sublimation of Dying" really caught my attention, mainly the Maxim of Synthesis V. "Never believe a text that threatens you with extinction, or that attempts to convince you that you are already dead." At first, it made me think of the film The Truman Show, but after some thought i realized how much of literature hinges on a threat of extinction. Any book (or film) with an alien threat, or a bad guy trying to take over the world, is threatening the reader with extinction. It may seem fine in a fictional setting, where we know that the fiction is just that, fiction. But if literature is our window to the world, should we be looking out the windows where we see death and destruction? It's my bet that these threats of extinction are whats causing a decline in society. People are surrounded by threats of death and destruction, people will act like the end times are nigh. It's no wonder "YOLO" became a popular word.
   Tying into that, the bit from "Total Eclipse" about the crab nebula showed how things don't change much on a cosmic scale. Sure, people come and go, but over the course of 1000 years, the explosion of the crab nebula has barely changed. Something we can change is our literature, and if we don't bring some literature into our society that has a good outlook on the world, society may just pay for it.

Kearny Vs Bryant, and a Short story

Kearny Vs Bryant, and a Short story

Reading through both the Kearny and the Bryant readings, The Black Automaton and Unexplained Presence, I noticed that Kearny's writing, while very deep and layered with meaning that brings attention to social changes in the 1970's, is still very poetic. I don't mean in word choice, but in design. The writing has stanzas and multiple parts, each part being a poem. Conversely, Bryant's writing is story-oriented, it's written like a book, with paragraphs. This mode of writing always feels like the best way to send a message to the readers, rather than writing poems (though the poems may have some cool design ideas, like some of Kearny's words that he connects with arrows).

I wrote my short story about a place I know quite well, the defunct Northville Psychiatric Hospital.

cited: Fox News

A Night at NPH (Not Neil Patrick Harris)

     Nestled in the woods, not to far from the road is no mere defunct commune. It's central building was once a hotel for the sick, traumatized, and lost children developed by our "perfect" society. Now it served as a blemish just over the tree lines of the new subdivisions developed around the commune, I was fairly sure my mother was living in one of those subdivisions now, being forced to look at the reminder of servitude poking it's head from above the trees. The building's windows stared out across the urban sprawl, gazing as blankly as it's patients twenty years ago. From the topmost floor, one could gaze out through the busted out eyes and look across southern Michigan. One could see the bright lots of dealerships on Michigan Avenue, and on the clearest nights, you could see the flashing lights of the Ambassador Bridge that connected Windsor to Detroit poking it's arches above the horizon. An avenue and a bridge, both roads could be seen from the isolated tower.

     Looking down from the perch eight stories up, I saw the other buildings in the commune sprawled across the unkempt grounds. Debris littered the waist high grass growing in the fields where tenets used to enjoy their outdoors hours of freedom. Flower patches, soccer pitches, paths that connected the buildings, all covered in grass and lost to time. Arterial roads clogged by the cholesterol of nature. On the ground, there was no escape from the putrid smell wafting up from the tunnels beneath the grounds, veins connecting each organ of the once living commune. Twenty years of collecting rainwater and medical waste, as well as serving as housing for rodents, had allowed mold, asbestos, remains to stew into the most nauseous smell that could enter your nostrils.
     The smell of death didn't mean that the land had been claimed by the past. One organ, the easternmost one, still puffed smoke out of it's smokestacks, occasionally roaring with the sound of generators. Though the other organs had been shut down, the city had decided to transplant the power plant and keep it a functioning part of the city. The westernmost organ lay beaten and battered, as if it had taken a fatal punch to the cranium. More than half the building had caved in under the weight of countless winters of heavy Michigan snowfall without grounds keepers to sweep heavy snows off roofs. Classrooms had collapsed in on themselves like our economy, though a new beauty was literally growing through the destruction and rubble. Weeds had grown between the fallen support beams, between the shattered blackboards that lay shattered on the ground, and between the floor boards of the gym, who's ceiling was still intact. Here, on the sides of the thirty foot tall cranium, where the thoughtless could exchange thoughts and fun, was the graffiti of visitors painted on every wall of the organ. Some were humorous sayings, others were testaments between lovers, and some were memorials for dead friends.
     A loud crash on the other side of the double doors of the gym sent me scurrying like a cockroach through the gym's attached locker rooms, out into the opposite hallway, across the broken and lifted linoleum floor tiles, past the bowling alley where squatters had been staying, and through a set of double doors of the auditorium. I froze in the last rays of sunlight pouring through the open doors of the projector booth, which extended right down to the stage, illuminating the stage's final set in an orange light. The facade of a school house, a makeshift well, and a short flagpole, all bright orange under the sun's final breath. Frozen amongst the musty smell of ancient theater seats, the kind that fold when ever you stand, I realized that this moment may never come again. I felt like Indiana Jones, watching some ancient planetary alignment taking place. Shout from the hallway ceased my imagination and sent me barreling full speed at the stage. I climbed the stage just as a flashlight poured into the auditorium, just as the sun faded. I ran, heart pounding, veins throbbing, lungs wheezing, out the backstage loading dock, where i slid into a bush, waiting for the red and blue lights to drive off, waiting for them to drive past the demolition equipment. Waiting for my chance to make a difference.
     

Burroway shows plenty of good examples on short stories. One of the first she describes is a short narrative about standing in a room. The paragraphs about standing in the room reflect the way the room feels, narrow, long, and with rows and rows of ham (or words, ya know, same thing), while still guiding the reader through all 5 senses. This finally lets all that stuff we learned in poetry click properly. Poetry makes no sense to me, but short stories are my proverbial language. Another thing Burroway brings up is how some opinions and prejudices won't make sense to the reader if they don't share the opinions, and worse, could even deter the reader from reading further if they don't agree with the opinion. In Everything That Rises Must Converge,O'Connor touches on the matter of opinions that don't match, and I could understand if someone put down this story if they were particularly sensitive.
I also loved the way a series of short stories was used to explain different parts of writing. One is called Polaroids, comparing writing first drafts to film developing. The next, Character, is a story about how to develop characters. Plot continues in theme and describes plots through story, explaining that plots grow out of characters, not viceversa. Dialogue shows, through story, how to set up decent conversations that seem real enough to the reader.  I found this set of stories not only interesting, but also a very helpful way of laying ground rules for story writing through example.
Goldberg focuses mainly on detail. Detail is what truly makes a story and sets it above other works of fiction. Use actual details from real life to help bring the story to life in the readers mind. Goldberg does a fine example of showing how important detail is when baking a cake. "you can't just mix ingredients in bowl" about sums up what she is trying to convey by using explicit details.

Word Play (3)

Sensation

That choking sensation, distilled from all others,

leaves the others to fade, while anxiety swells

Each moment fossilizes the fear,

trapping words in the lyrnx like a metal coffin.

Each word eroding me closer to martyrdom,

as if each word were a coursing river torrent.

My elegy, the clusters of imminent precipitation on my forehead.

As my powdered confidence flows away.

As my corpse intersticely flows away.

Through the murk, on to Saint Lazare.

Martydom

Martyrdom,
powdered, distilled, faded,

in the bright sun of St. Lazare,

where imminent murk fossilizes

on the bank of where the river courses.

Soaked, sedimented, swollen

like waterlogged, wet corpses.

As erosion batters the metal coffins,

clustered like bacteria,

elegy still unwritten,

Interstice precipitation.

Soaked

St. Lazare is a metal coffin,

the precipitation is imminent, often.

Interstice sediments leave you coughing,

distilled from fossils of powdered martyrdom

murk eroded from clustered corpses

elegies caught in swollen lyrnxes

faded, murky, coursing, corpses.

Soaked

Sonnets (2-3)

Grand Theft Auto
Some meth-heads go to fairs
some business men go skydiving.
But if a cop really cares,
He'll stop you while you're driving.
Customizing cars,

with pot-smokin' gangtas,
Drinking at strip Bars,

And beating senoritas.

Cue

When everything else fails

there's but one thing to do,

tip the weights and scales

so that they might favor you!

Just keep on going,

and do what you do,

just keep it all flowing...

Just keep waiting for your cue.

When you hear the call,

keep your mind focused

and don't drop the ball,

your mind is not a swarm of locust.
Really though just keep your cool,

THAT is the undeniable rule.

20 Instructions

20 Instructions for the Crazies

Silently spinning buzzing saws tell me what to do,

the Apple Jacks are screaming to me, how about you?

Can you hear the vibrancy?
Can you see the sour?
Can you taste the grit?

Can you feel the fragrance?
Can you smell the screams?

John Adams knows about carpentry,
John Adams knows the White House,

and that Apple Jacks are quiet,

yea.................they're quiet.

But the prisoners oh the prisoners!
Caught like water in a bong,

frequencies in a song,

held, for far too long.

Hey “dawg” the good queen of law,

your face is young and weary,

And I really must be crazy, Really.

Thats what they want me to think,

I just want to be free.

But the sluggish years won't change a thing,

Wait, seriously, am I sane?

Can't you gather from my mouth words?

Till I get an answer,

I bid you Aufeidersehn,

as does the Apple Jacks,

And so does Mr. Adams,

from his seat on the White House throne.

Blog Post For Creative Writing Class on 9/25

Our assignment was to read City Eclogue by Ed Robertson, a book completely filled with poetry. Personally, I had great disdain for the book by the time I was half way through. As great as poetry is as a means of communication, I feel that a book written completely in poetry is too overwhelming. By the time I was half way through the book, I could barely even figure out what it was about. I'm sure the book was good, but I'm under the firm belief that poetry is best heard to allow audiences to fully grasp nuances behind the poetry.
We were also required to follow twenty instructions on writing poetic lines, and then use them to create a few poems. I decided it would be better to to call the poem "Rantings of a Madman," and tweak the lines so that they flow, even though the instructions seemed unrelated. My favorite line(s) I wrote was
"Can you hear the vibrant,
can you see the sour?
Can you taste the grit?
Can you feel the fragrance,
can you smell the screams?"

I thought it would be interesting to make each sense perceive something that the sense usually doesn't perceive, which worked well with the line where we had to refer to ourselves in third person.

Cameron Baker

Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is Cameron Baker, but you can call me Cam.

This is going to be my blog for our creative writing class, and being that I love writing, I look forward to posting my works here. My favorite stories to write are science fiction stories, and that's not to be confused with Hollywood "Sci-fi" jam packed with aliens, lasers and spaceships. I prefer the stories where one scientific fact is changed, and creating a story in that setting. For instance, what if as a society we never developed the car and instead used mass, cross country, public transportation? How would something like that affect an average Joe's travel to work? The possibilities are endless, and in science fiction, an ominous ending leaves the reader thinking.

When I don't write, I work as a cashier at a drug store, I enjoy playing music off my turntables, and I more than enjoy video games.

I look forward to writing with all of you during this creative writing course!