Tag: Blog

Life

Writer’s Family Reunion 2016

Posted on by Desmond White

Writespace had their Writers Family Reunion, which I attended with my future sexy wife. Writespace is located in an art studio warehouse called Silver Street, a peaceful, meditative spot. The itinerary included events like a Critique Group Speed Dating, small-group Q&A’s with local but very accomplished writers (I was lucky enough to sit with D. L. Young of Soledad fame), panels on publishing and marketing by the published and marketable, and games like pin the mustache on Faulkner.

 I learned a lot, but instead of dumping my notes on the internet, I’ll jot four things:

 (1) We have a literary scene! Houston’s not just a sunset-and-traffic, cowboy-hat-toting big oil city that’s rising into the sky as it sinks into the marsh. And that literary scene is immense, intricate, ever-expanding.

 (2) Many writers in Houston choose to self-publish but it’s a lot of work. It kind of takes an obsessive, hard-working type, or, well, a writer.

 (3) There’s a debate in the community about novel-writing. Some say that if you want to write novels, you should write novels. Others to write short fiction first and hone your skills.

 Finally, (4) Houston is very new and emerging writer friendly. 

 10/10, would write again.

Life, Scifi, Writing (Published)

Published — “Pink Pastures”

Posted on by Desmond White

365 Tomorrow has published my speculative flash fiction “Pink Pastures.” The story was based on a dream, and since I can’t afford a therapist on a teacher’s salary, I resorted to a poor substitute (something I also know about, being a teacher). Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” influenced the setting, plus I really wanted to write about eldritch genitalia without using the word “vagina.” You’ll notice the comments aren’t forgiving; in my defense, my “purple prose” could have been intentional on a meta-level. (It’s not). 365 Tomorrows is an online journal that produces a new speculative fiction every single flipping day. The site would be a great complement to your morning bagel and cup of raktajino.

Life

Student Congress

Posted on by Desmond White

My Debate I course is engaged in Student Congress at the moment (during which students become representatives, argue over legislation, and vote whether or not to pass certain bills and resolutions).

Yesterday, on a resolution regarding the NSA and it’s activities, I had a student give a speech in support of the agency who 1) didn’t know what the acronym NSA stood for, 2) didn’t know who Edward Snowden was, 3) reassured us that the NSA couldn’t see if you were watching porn on your phone, and 4) when asked to identify at least one terrorist attack that they prevented, said 9/11.

Life

Peace, ho!

Posted on by Desmond White

On the occasion, my students will have outrageous interpretations for the language in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, such as in the repeated expression “peace ho!” or “stand ho!” and the late arrival of a soldier named Clitus.

All these manifestations make my students crack up predictably, year after year. But the section most perversely twisted is the following scene from Act V, which I record here for your amusement and under this new context.

Hint: Brutus is asking these soldiers to kill him, but that’s not revealed until the end of the dialogue.

BRUTUS: Sit thee down, Clitus. Slaying is the word [in my students’ lexicon, slaying has a sexual connotation]. It is a deed in fashion. Hark thee, Clitus.

(BRUTUS whispers to CLITUS)

CLITUS: What, I, my lord? No, not for all the world!

BRUTUS: Peace then. No words.

CLITUS: I’d rather kill myself.

BRUTUS: Hark thee, Dardanius.

(BRUTUS whispers to Dardanius)

DARDANIUS: Shall I do such a deed?

CLITUS: O Dardanius!

DARDANIUS: O Clitus!

CLITUS: What ill request did Brutus make to thee?

DARDANIUS: To kill him

[My students: Ohhhhh…]

 

Life

Nonfiction — “Static Movement (Family)”

Posted on by Desmond White

Childhood musings.

My parents are an amazing, oblivious people. After a quarter of a century, their clumsy attempts have ceased to be frustrating⁠—have, instead, slipped into the realm of ridiculousness. I hope I don’t come off as condescending. It’s just that through their undertaking to gratify my interests or reject them, I have been able to understand my parents as the loving, literal-minded, and culturally-stunted people they are.

Growing up, every experience had to be shared or rejected. If they couldn’t understand it, or if my younger siblings couldn’t take part, than my involvement was betraying the family’s interests. There was this notion that the family had to stick together, which is probably why I wasn’t allowed on sleepovers⁠—Dad and Mom couldn’t come.

And everything was shared, especially toys, even if it meant scratching all of my DVDs and scattering my legos between my siblings’ rooms. I was banned from watching television unless we were all watching it, and I didn’t care much for Fox News.

My bedroom had a window which looked into the living room. Or, from a more accurate perspective, my parents sitting on the couch in the living room could look into my room. My door locked from the outside.

Hiding in the restroom with a book became my escape from the ant colony. I was intrigued by the savor of stories, the sweet and sour taste of lies, the pasty sweet smack and blackened results of poetry, the prologue’s d’oeuvres and the epilogue’s bitter aftertaste. I began to regard my parents’ diet as having a sort of rot that their tongues, burnt, numbed or blunted by scriptural verbatim, could not detect.

For a long time I wasn’t aware of their literalism (paired, as it often was, with an unwillingness to participate in pop culture). I read The Hobbit, and enjoyed it, but wasn’t allowed to start Lord of The Rings because it was “unchristian.” (I did anyway.) But I could read Every Young Man’s Battle, the Biblical Art of War against masturbation.

Imagine my confusion when Dad recommended I read The Screwtape Letters. I was disappointed to find very little screwing. 

Life

Nonfiction — “Post-Grad Blues & Hues”

Posted on by Desmond White

Well, hey there. I’ve been Internet-less for a portion of Summer, and yet somehow I’ve been enjoying myself. Apparently there are “real lifey” activities as fun as binge-reading Cracked.com or absorbing via the eye-holes the entire echelon of Archer. Like fishing. Well, not fishing. But other things. And I’ve been doing them. Road trips, paintball, camping, grilling, horror movie-athons. Now that I’m a graduated man I can do whatever my bank account permits i.e. purchasing a compact bow for the much needed manlification of my lifedom. Additionally, a certain relaxing (and nerdly) hobby has reappeared: the painting, configuration, and playing of Warhammer 40K.

Summer nearly over, I’ve decided to finally begin a project I’ve mostly declined through my creative writing “career,” which is the creation and completion of a first novel. There’s an idea that’s been scratching the back of my brain meat for some time: a science fiction adventure-comedy that wouldn’t require Hemingway-level chops. It’s simple, sorta funny, sorta entertaining, and wouldn’t tear me apart if it flopped. So here goes.

EDIT (August 30, 2013): The novel flopped.

Life

Nonfiction — Mendengar Saya Menguam

Posted on by Desmond White
Some poetic musings on my childhood.

 

Sumatra, Indonesia

We can’t afford color blinds on our windows, not with kids in Disney shirts waving from the roadside, young women stooped by rubber trees, old men smiling with malachite teeth. There is the International conglomerate and the poor indigenous and all that separates us are barbed-wire fences and fat bank accounts. I spend my day learning U.S. History; my nights playing soccer with a ball of teak root. Some locals drop a hornet nest near my head. I think 9/11 occurred in Kuala Lampur.

 

Tianjin, China

The skies are gray. There are no pigeons but deadly chemicals disguised as bread crumbs. We can’t let the pets outside – I wonder if it is because of the poison or the markets where vendors line stalls with freshly-gutted dogs. The Chinese see us less as bourgeois, more as barges. Strangers call their friends over to laugh at our large feet, our looming height. A business man wants my picture by a bull statue’s testicles. Poverty is swept behind skyscrapers and the larder of cranes. Our U.S. passports can only get us far. From there on it is knowing which barbershops cut your hair and which are brothels.

 

Lecheria, Venezuela

We live in rich man prison – a network of mansions connected by a network of canals. Transport includes travel-by-yacht. I’ll take the boat to the Mall, tie her up, watch a film with English subtitles. I’ll take her to open water and fish like Ernest Hemingway. We say what we want about Hugo Chavez. The taxi drivers never agree; they think they’re monitored. Nothing can stop the wanton – not the insurgents, not the kidnappers who take our neighbors, not the pirates asking for agua with pistols behind their backs, not the man collapsed in the Wendy’s drive-through with a bullet in his shoulder.

 

Santa Barbara, California

I’m idling incognito, an exclusive ooze, wasting away with a cynical smile. There are scars on my legs from jungle hornets, a little red book full of Mao. I think in languages I never use. I walk along landing strips and thumb airplanes and refuse to play tricks on Gimpel. I don’t belong. I don’t belong. I don’t know where this is going.

 

Life

A letter from Barbados to my friend, Stilgard the Warren-hearted

Posted on by Desmond White

Greetings my astute and totally manly companion,

As I sit on this quite comfortable and well-cushioned lounge chair in my villa’s mezzanine, overlooking a salmonella sea that’s almost lapping against my toes, it’s difficult to retain a humble and God-seeking perspective. Luckily, my humility is about the size of a very small planet. And again, less luck and more awesomeness, it’s difficult to lower my gaze from the sublime and write this note. But by some astrological direction, although more perhaps due to the tenebrific nature of the setting sun, which darkens my tapestry, I will peruse your person for grammatical errors. And write.

Pertaining my drinking habits (and I do say habits deliberately), there’s a Stygian sting to your condemnation. Mountebank! Marauder! You… dare I say it? Friend. I have been at the drink, indeed. However, do not fret! I am Charles Bukowski only in spirit, not through spirits. I am Lord Byron only in sexcapades. I am Sir Francis Richard Burton only in my ability to speak to animals when intoxicated.

Buffoonery aside, I do do (ha!) want to speak to you at some point. Perhaps by dint of Skype, or Facebook, or auxiliary technology. Ad interim, letters will suffice. There’s a cough of Kafka in all of this, which arouses me. I await correspondence from my chums of old. Be wary of venereal warts.

Most ungratefully,

Desmond White