We're All Mad Here

11-09-10

Madness in the Air

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” ~ Helen Keller

If you were in the Beaver Library last night, you probably saw a girl who looked relatively frazzled. She was aimlessly wondering the stacks pulling books, flipping through the table of contents, re-shelving with meticulous OCD, moving to the next book. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. She collapses in front of the vintage Dear Abby and Anne Landers books, gets up looking white as a ghost as she looks for a connection between the archaic advice columns and web 2.0. She moves back to the business books. On to the self help books. The children’s books. Rushing frantically around looking for a lost notepad and proposal on the shelves somewhere. Fidgeting at a table, staring blankly ahead at the gorgeous river surround by hills of fall foliage struggling against the winter breeze. Looking for answers amongst the shelves has always been a favorite past time of mine.

I wasn’t looking for myself this time. I found her. You just have to get really, really lost to find some really neat things. I was looking for patterns and inspiration. I was looking for structure. The shelves became the new host to my inspiration raid. It was delicious. Harrowing and delicious. Stick around the Madness for some interesting news in the future. More travels, more trouble. Just how I like it.

11-02-10

So Much for Silence

Dear Madness,

So much for the silence. I’ve been writing in you for just a few weeks and I am already getting ready to exceed the readership I had to begin with. Why are you all here? Is it really that interesting? Who are you? Why do you stalk me? Fine. C’est la vive. I’m not sure I want to be silent anymore. Fine, fuck it, I’ll tell you what you are all here to hear.

So here it goes:

I remember working at the subsidy publisher out of college and looking at my boss like he was insane when he said his goal one day was to write a book. Why the hell would anyone want to write a book after rolling around in the trenches of subsidy day after day?

The girl who has helped published 700 of the worst books on the planet hangs her head in shame. Here I am, 7 years later: Hello, my name is Shell and I’m writing a book.

I’m writing a relationship self help book since that is what most of you come to me with questions on in the first place, not marketing, not branding: dating. But the irony is, most of the answers to your questions come from what I’ve learned in marketing anyway. So I’m writing it all down: every last delectable secret except for how many “friends” I am actually up to at this point. (I’ll never tell). I’m just tired of you guys telling me I should.

All I can envision in my head is my query letter winding up on SlushPile Hell. What if I end up inducing the kind of nightmares I had while working at the publishing house on someone else? I shudder remembering the mental day I took where I spent the whole day hallucinating in a fever on my sofa to visions of potential “best sellers” that might have hit my desk in the near future. I think one of them was How to Touch a Dead Body. I can still see the cover in my mind. <*cringe*>

To fend off the spins of “what if” induced nausea, I keep repeating “Best Seller. Best Seller. Best Seller” to myself in some sort of neurotic OCD Tao exercise. I can do this, if only because I never have.

Luv, Shell

10-14-10

Paper Rose

Digging through a box of old papers I found a poem written for me by a random boy on a train one day on my way back to college in 2001/2002. I was bringing a flower back to college with me. I think he handed it to me as I was getting off the train and I don’t remember ever thanking him. Of course he signed it with the most common name in the world (Michael Rogers) and a hotmail address, so tracking him down would be almost impossible. So Mr. Rogers, thanks for the smile.

Paper Rose

A page from a book, mine
Is like a page from my life
Fitting between the others
Each line worth the time it took

My day of pale expression
There was a bookmark placed
When a flower, a rose
Returned to me my breath

An exchange worth more
Than this paper can afford
But you already have a rose

On a day of blind direction
I was offered a sign, so discreet
From a traveling soul, an Angel
On this journey, I was to meet.

-Michael Rogers (michal2121_at_hotmail)

02-06-09

Isabella Street:

Sitting in the graveyard, I’ve caught the interest of a large, tawny doe. She walks towards me until she is no less than eight yards away from me

02-06-09

Isabella Street: Metaphorically Metaphorical

Warm breezes trick the mind into believing its late spring. Young October and the sun was hot. The lighting in the city gave everything a fake quality, moving images captured on a thin layer of celluloid that allowed everything to continue with an air of suped up contrast. The world was a banal photograph, a study of Urban Life in mid-afternoon. The world moved together as though it fell from the gallery wall and forgot to stop once it hit the floor, defying the laws of inertia.

The sounds of life wafted through the air, tumbling along in the breeze, the soft down of dandelion. In the distance I could hear Jazz music, sweet and intoxicating. Immediately my soul lifted into euphoric trance. I ventured down the street, the sound increasing with every step. The sheer volume of it, the immensity of it’s soul carried me closer. I had no worries, no thoughts on my mind a side from the desire for more. Crazy smile on my face, crazy smile from my eyes. Needed more, needed to feel more.

I came across it here, at this point. Strawberry Way, a small alleyway cutting across a few streets in town, no bigger wide than to fit a car. Strawberry Way was a one way alley connecting The Boulevard with Fifth Avenue, but today in casual warmth, this Friday it was blocked from both ends by flower vendors, balloons, tables filled with people.

In the middle of all this sat the essence of soul itself, the life blood of this afternoon. A band of four black men played the most glorious jazz one could ever hear. The pure sound itself was enough to either bring you to your knees or elevate you into the air in frenzied, ecstatic dance.

But the sight, the sight set it all in stone. The players were pure electricity: pure spirit, shapeless, formless, transcending the flesh that held them captive on this earth. The muses themselves played through them, Dionysus fueled the moment and the gods watched. The came down from their untouchable heights and stood right in the middle of those mortals and watched. These men, in their impromptu festival, were playing for the gods.

Notes: oh gag. I was so young and naive and briming over with utterly banal metaphor.

02-06-09

Isabella Street: Train Ride Exercise 1

The lights flicker off and on and off again. He sits beside me telling me stories of Portugal. He takes out his wallet, shows me three dried rose petals pressed between the plastic of a picture sleeve. The lights flicker again as he describes the wedding where he came across the roses. I wath the man infront of me practicing lines from a worn script, two middle aged men infront of him carry on a conversation in some language or another, the sound of the train drowns out any distinguishable syllables.

02-06-09

Isabella Street: Dear Matt

Dear Matt,
I don’t know what to say to you. I sit here, in the cafe’ of the bookstore down the road from my office. I’m exhausted and starving. I’ve survived the last week on a nauseous mixture of coffee and honey. I’ve barely slept. I’ve cried to you over the phone about becoming one of those people driven to great lengths to escape their thoughts, my mind hasn’t shut down for weeks. The alcohol leaves me wasted and nothing more. Their endless comments have yet to cease, not so much an energy I don’t have control of, but more of an addiction I can’t come off of. You are entirely too innocent and even though you are here I am still entirely too alone. And yet they won’t leave me alone.

Notes: I know some of these entries were not meant for anyone else to see, so it’s really hard to sit here and type them. This one seems especially…I don’t know, full of hyperbole? I was working on The Whore around then, so I am sure my muse was especially active during this time. I’m pretty sure it was also during this time that I was learning if she wanted something created, it had to be immediately or she would haunt you until it was finished. I dragged The Whore on, as I do with some of my more cherished works, miserably for six months.

Matt was the leprechaun, as he is known in retrospect, it was through dating him that I lost interest in high heels. He was short, into 3-d animation, screaming hybrids of hard rock and Christian music (as in singing…or screaming, not listening) and cannonball adderley, of which I still have a CD he burnt for me.He was full of Christianity and anger at his ex-girlfriend which ultimately made everything, complicated.

The office was in a triangular building at Liberty Avenue and Smithfield, the cafe was in the Barnes and Nobles up the way. Funny thing, I still have days where I live off of tea and honey. I’m cutting back in my old age.

This page is followed by another figure study for “The Red Coat” aka “The Whore”

02-05-09

Isabella Street: Approaching Wood Street

The Whore by ~myshelleyg on deviant ART

Bus Stop.

It’s 11:10 at night, willing away the 2.5 glasses of chard and 1.5 shots of whiskey that didn’t ease away the pain. Cold night chills the sun. Could doubt chills my soul, brings tears to the eyes. Waiting patiently for the fucking train. Never comes.