Writing poems for Demons, the Devil wants his Doobie

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 61 - Inferno (edit)

4/12/10

This stands as one of my favorite chapters ever, one of my favorite things I've ever written. My vision for this chapter, Charles' day to day in post-Raptured Earth, came out perfectly. It riffs on some ideas I had, my version of a summoning ritual, and just how only I could befriend the devil, if only for a short while.

The writing poetry on the back of photo postcards was something I entertained often while poor and hanging out in the park. But I couldn't do it, make the leap and sell my words in such a hipsteriffic way to boot. This was written almost a year after the previous chapters. It was a dark year, my worst in my adult life. I had no money, just barely getting a job at the Daily News, overnight shift on the photo desk, cutting photos of celebrities that would die, which happened quite often the Summer of 2009.

Then the Fall and the relationship just turning darker and darker as the Winter came, which I worked through, alone in her apt that we couldn't pay rent for, and after the new year, MLK Day 2010 I checked myself into the psych ward and spent a week at St. Vincent's. It was a comforting Hell, and made me realize that I was not insane in the slightest, I was only exposing myself to that and living disjointed and disconnected from the world. After that we moved to Brooklyn, and broke up, and I was working but more alone than ever, sleeping on laundry bags in a room packed with my comic books and desk, while she slept next door in her massive bed. It wasn't easy, I felt lost.

Hell hides behind the virtual veil

The Tower of Brahma. Sexty.5 (edit)

6/2/09

The end of the SEXTY series, which I think wraps up quite nicely with a more detailed experience of the virtual reality future that lies before us all, and leaving with a fire and brimstone ending. I was never sure who the other male character here is. A friend, but left vague and open, as it wasn't actually based on anyone, as some of the characters in this book tend to be versions of all of them. 

Charles came up with an idea to cheat the devil. When he was sixty, and infinitely wealthy, he created a way to bring his younger self to the end of time in order to fulfill his part of the bargain. Theoretically he is now free in 2036 with decades of his life to go, knowing that his younger self must survive the task in order for him to have created a means to transport his younger self there in the first place. 

Could the Devil be tricked via Space Time Paradox? It was a gamble, but one he would take, if it meant reclaiming his soul. And reality, well, as young Charles is about to find out, humanity is moments from extinction, the world now desolate and destroyed.

Holodeck Tangibility

The Tower of Brahma. Sexty. D. (edit)

6/1/09

I wanted to play with perception and really see if I could sell a false reality materializing from nothingness, a true holographic virtual reality that you could tangibly interact with, based on the idea of hard light and 3D printing.

Also, the older version of me, last seen in chapter 47, where the me from 2023 brings me forward to glimpse what the future will look like. Now the me from 2036 has fully brought me as physically as possible into what will be the final outcome for not just our soul, but the endgame for all of humanity.

Sixty year old me has everything but there is nothing left. Nothing but to do what was done to him when he was my age, 32 at the time this chapter was written, and fulfill the contract that was signed so long ago.

This is what science fiction feels like to me.

The Tower of Brahma. Sexty. See. (edit)

5/30/09

This a good chapter. I love when I just riff and skip along words, making more poetic than rational sense, though the narrative is there all along if you pay attention. The dementia of depression and obsession with multi-dimensional existences is intense, zen meditation alone while working the graveyard shift, or in this case, I was unemployed and looking at the trash of my life having just moved in with a girlfriend on Thompson & Bleeker, one of the worst corners on late nights, the only time I was nearly mugged was on that stretch. Le Paisson Rouge just opened as well, so it was a shit show.

I was unemployed and worthless. Nothing to my name but debt and my imagination lingering and tapping away in the newly reonvated Washington Square Park. But I wanted some manner of forward momentum. I wanted to know what I was supposed to do, now that I was starting over, without my best friend roommate, my only real connection to a social life, and then moving in with a sociopath, well, I had to write myself out of that mess.

So the SEXTY chapters are really just where I wanted to be when I was sixty years old, ultimate wish-fulfillment while casting myself the pawn in the older version's endgame, playing it out like a sci-fi flick with demonic hordes. The future will be a weird place and here's what I imagine it'd feel like to travel there, and what it would be like to experience something so familiar and yet evolved to a rapidly advance state as to be beyond our expectations.

This is your future, deal with it

The Tower of Brahma. Sexty (b) [edit]

5/13/09

Just a small addendum to the previous chapter, riffing on words and ideas for where the future would lead us technology-wise. I can see all the breadcrumbs leading up to where the Tower of Brahma ultimately leads. Here I'm describing the virtual reality that all people will eventually live within after the End of Days comes and Hell scours the Earth.

Emergency blobs, large egg shaped water snake salvos for us all to just sit in womb-like as devils and demons stalk the world. Inside the air bag safety is all the virtual reality you can have for the rest of your life. This is the invention of Charles Crown, part of his rise to power, but what use could he have for the 32 year old version of himself?

I won't spoil the surprise but it's my favorite part of the book coming up. Something fantastical and almost a book unto itself, and with only four chapter remaining! I think it's landmark chapters like this that really get me jazzed about this book. For years I never imagined that the masses would want to read this, but as I get closer to finishing, I couldn't be more proud of it.

Science Fiction Secret Origin

The Tower of Brahma. Chapter 60. Sexty. (edit)

5/13/09

This chapter is definitely one of my favorites. Trying to bridge the gap between science fiction and the more ethereal poetic writing I so enjoy. It's also bringing in the main bad guy, of a sorts, myself at age 60. Using technology from the year 2036 my sixty year old self pulls me out of the past, much as my forty seven year old version did in chapter 47, but this time it's a bit more sinister.

This also really cements the idea that I can't connect with most people because I'm half wild-canine spirit and half artificial intelligence, that I died when I was younger by choking on that hot dog (as seen in chapter 42) and that this government program helped me develop a personality by making a science experiment of me. It's really the coolest secret origin I could imagine, tying in my wild boy Wolverine daydreams, and my problem solving puzzle brain.

Next up we'll get a sense of the future and what the final act is really all about. It took my 60 chapters to work through pain, pleasure, and everything in-between just to figure out who I am and what I wanted to do with this book, with my life. This is my final test, nothing lies ahead but the conquering of the self.

Hope Lies Eternal

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 59.3 - Overpowering Dreams (edit)

5/10/09

This is another example of the poetic prose that I love writing in. If I could this is all that I would write. It just makes me really feel fulfilled as a writer, though often it was chapters like this that would make me doubt if anyone would really want to read this, if it would make sense to anyone else but my own ragged brain.

I was always hopeful. I wrote out the bad, but I kept at it because I knew there was good underneath. I think maybe something did happen to me years ago when I first started writing this book. Some manner of enlightenment that meant the world to me, though it will take me the rest of my life to understand it.

I just love playing with words, with expectations of anticipated turns of phrases, spinning the reader around and making them question their fiction. To read, have read, and yet know that blood is red when the reed strikes the head, that is why I do what I do. I make it all make so much sense in what seems utter nonsense, patterns and discovery lying in the wake.

I used to let relationships dictate who I was

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 59.2 - Powerless Before Her (edit)

5/7/09

Man, I was depressed. I felt so stuck inside myself. I can't believe it was ever so hard. That I lingered in that dark for so long. When I look back I see that I was never any of things I thought myself to be, I just believed in the lies presented to me by subconsciously self-destructive people I had surrounded myself with. Every day they would remind me of exaggerated flaws that I had, or sarcastically tear me down when I felt good, keep me in check by dumping their issues and insecurities onto me, then scolding me for reacting.

Being emotionally stifled is my own personal Hell. I have feelings and they must be expressed. If anything, this entire novel is just an emotional purging from years of keeping my real feelings inside, repressing my entire self until I imagined myself mad. But I was sane, surrounded by people off their medications, or self-medicating with booze, or living in denial. I may have done the same but I actively tried to challenge and better myself, always able to see other's point of view.

I did try to kill myself just a short few months after this. I swallowed a handful of Tylenol PMs only to have "Agent Strange" make me spit them out, throw them up. I never wanted to die, I just never imagined that life would be any different, that it couldn't and wouldn't get any better. It's still just as hard these days, but it's also getting a hell of a lot better every day.

The Dark Church, Rodent Divination, Dreams

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 59.1 - Dreaming With Power Pt. 2 (edit)

5/5/09

A short bit from a dream I had while sleeping besides "Agent Strange". I very rarely dream anything beyond the mundane reality of future events. Just people talking, walking, saying hi. But every now and then my brain produces, and recalls upon waking, an intensely vivid dream that I can not shake. This is one of them.

I clearly remember the odd turning around while walking about 23rd & 6th that shifted everything to red, and knowing well that I was no longer sure of where I was. The huge church spires rose into the air as if I was standing at the foot of an ancient and arcane temple in some gothic fantasy. If I truly believed in magick, I would say this was an initiation into what would come next, for as I wrote at the end, I did truly erase all that came before.

The rat thing, well I have no idea. But that's what I remember. I have no ill will towards rodents, but perhaps the mouse problem in her apartment had something to do with it. This is part two as part one was my dealing with my former gamemaster, and the man who dubbed me Fenris. I always meant to do a follow up dream, and even know don't really know the connection I made here.

Friends til the End

The Tower of Brahma - 58 - the Twelve: First Five (edit)

4/7/09

It was dark times kiddies. Everything was beginning to change again. I was so close to the end, and nearly at the end of my rope. I reached out at this point to see who was there, what friends did I have, and were they able to help me make sense of what my life was becoming. The crazy thing is that I'm not friends with these people anymore, though two I remain close acquaintances of when I see them.

I find my life filled with people I know and am friendly with, but I can't say we're friends. There's something to a friendship that speaks of consistency, of being there for one another, of going out and enjoying each other's company, all things that I rarely have outside of an intimate relationship. But even just a few months in I knew that this relationship I had just begun (with "Agent Strange") was headed down a dark path, and I suppose this was my testing the waters to see if there was anything left of my life.

Not to name names, but John, someone I thought a true friend, all but betrayed me in the last few months. Beth was a girl I met with my friend Reilly, but her drama and mine didn't mix in the end, and Reilly, well I've always felt too damaged to truly be his friend, though most likely my own insecurity in being a weird, mess of a human being. Then Jared, my roommate and hetero-lifemate for many years, and his friend John, who I always felt pangs of jealousy towards because eventually he filled the role I played for so long. Or at least all the good parts, while I still had the lackey status.

This is my thirteen year old self's favorite chapter.

(click title to read chapter)

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 57.3 - HotShot ShotDown (edit)

4/20/09

(commentary)

Damn, I really like these three parts of chapter 57, which is really such a sexy number, right? So, Codename Hotshot. That was my daydream superspy handle. I had a red Ferrari that could launch a motorcycle from the trunk, I would then eject myself out of the car onto it in mid-air...while on road trips with my parents. Lots of leaping, flipping, Judo throws, handheld surveillance devices (uhh, like an iPhone! From writing this on a Sidekick in 2004 to GPS trackable Big Brother 2013).

I get a bit exposition-y, but I try and do it with flair, finally seeing where I was going with the other two chapters, as if it was slowly being put together in his mind simultaneously across the duration of his relationship with Jazz. And ends with a hopeful tone, as I always have had throughout my life. Strip me down, knock me down, tear me down, I just get up smiling. Because no matter what, our interactions meant something, and more often then not I lay myself as willing lamb for people to reveal unto themselves exactly what they're capable of doing to someone who offers them only unconditional love, patience, and understanding. That is how I do relationships. If I care about you, then we're friends, and if we become lovers, truly open and connected people, then I cherish that. I strive to maintain strength in all my friendships.

I feel too much, that much is certain, so I guess I do hide away a lot. More than I thought I did. But that's who I am mostly. I try and force socializing down my throat in an effort not to be a hermit and have fun, but having fun just means me sitting around awkwardly alone at events Instagramming and writing chapters. I don't talk to anyone, though I want to. I have begun to realize just how paralyzed I become in public, unless I'm walking with someone I know, and then it's totally fine and I'm me again.

Zen grimace of frustration.

(click title to read chapter)

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 57.2 - You New All Along (edit)

4/16/09

(commentary)

A continuation of the Agents Fenris/Strange first meeting, mixed with memories of their childhood, a vital piece of Charles' past is revealed while sleeping beside Jazz. There's so many elements here that I love, and once I really refine it, this is the style of writing I truly love, why I write at all, because no one writes like this. They come close, but often drama is drama, pulp is pulp, and epic poetry usually is left alone altogether. But here, I blend it like a frappe!

So we have part secret agent scene, the rival agents battling atop the mattress. The telepathic dream-sense, and the overall kid/AI programming toss in a hand grenade of sci-fi. But really it's about sleeping besides someone you don't even know and yet you love them. It's about how other females betrayed me in the past, and somehow found myself in a pattern of finding emotionally, and occasionally physically, abusive, or soon to be, females in which to fall madly in love with.

I really had hit a three month mark with this girl and I should have pulled the trigger on the relationship. I hadn't moved in with her yet, a decision from desperation. I gave this girl a million chances, and I smiled through every moment she made impossible. I tried harder to be better, less jealous, whatever she wanted me to be, but it wasn't what she wanted as she went out of my way to exacerbate everything, until I would just sit in silence next to her before she left for work.

Agents Fenris & Strange aka Charles Crown and Jazz Jones, Superspy Teens

(click title to read chapter)

The Tower of Brahma Chapter 57.1 - Choose Your Delusion (edit)

4/1/09

(commentary)

At this point I was looking back over the past 56 chapters and really began to tie it all together into one cohesive continuity, a fable carved from my subconscious, a mythology that was tailored to fit perfectly. So take one part secret agent (my obsessive childhood fantasy), color it with Norse Mythology ala Fenrir, the Wolf of Ragnarok (my dog-like nature/childhood trauma dog bite mixed with feeling guilty for existing, always feeling like I ruined my father's life by being born), and create a female character, half adversary, half companion (to deal with my failed relationships and idealization of females).

The female was Jasmine 'Jazz' Jones, aka Agent Strange. A composite of many female figures ranging from Scarlet in GI Joe, La Femme Nikita, an ex many years gone, to the girl I had just begun dating, who I proposed to way too quickly (after I lost my job). We met on Match.com, things had just gone really south with me and my dad that past Christmas, I went to Europe and came back in debt and jobless, and she was insane. At first, in the best way possible. Then it got old fast, but for some reason I loved her. We had a friendship there that I just can't remember now.

I really begin fleshing out the core idea of who I am, at least what problem I have with existence, as far as I know it to be: Feral instincts in a blank slate of a young child, removed from humanity by temporary brain death vs. Artificial Intelligence inserted and programmed to help develop a personality. I've always been emotional, yet felt so removed from what actual emotions were, constantly questioning what was genuine, and yet naively believing every word I was told. How was a brain supposed to function under those conditions?

Last of the Amsterdam/Paris Trip, Philly was fucked

(click title to read chapter)

Tower of Brahma 56 Fuck Philly Fight NYC (edit)

1/29/09

(commentary)

Written in Philly's airport, totally jet-lagged and sleepy, having watched most of Pushing Daises on the flight across the Atlantic. The thing is everything in the normal world is like an adventure to me. I have such crazy anxiety that one of the easiest ways of trying to cope with the influx of information is to fictionalize a portion of it, let it play out in my mind as the scene itself takes place, but in neither am I as active a participant as I would like to be.

I just have a thing for secret agents. Superspy enlightenment wrapped in poetic prose pulp fiction paperback adventures. That's what this book is, as well as a social crutch I used for years, a form of therapy, a reminder of what I was trying to do. The problem came, and still comes, from my blending reality & fantasy into a cohesive world, as now it's blurred the lines between what I'm writing and what's being written, either by me or a divine being though I prefer to see it as tapping into the wavelengths of what is being processed by the Universe. 

The girl I had been dating and I broke up just after Halloween of the year before, and now, three months later she was institutionalized for cutting herself. I never did find out if they knew the full extent of her self-destructive behavior, but by the time I was calling 911 because she called me and start cutting, I knew full well just how dark things had gotten. It was comforting in a way, I knew it wasn't me. I don't know they're crazy when I meet them, but they certainly do like to take it out on me. 

Just keep writing

(click title to read chapter)

Tower of Brahma 56 Amsterdam Decompression London Debriefing (edit)

1/22/09

(commentary)

There is this crazy hotel just outside the airport in Amsterdam, like a giant black monolith building, and tricked out to be the most fully automated hotel experience possible. In-house credits and seriously, ridiculously sci-fi designs to the rooms. It was awesome.

What an insane way to end this adventure, Ben separated and flown off to have his own adventure in Berlin, and here I could rest for a day, shave off my impressive travel beard, and lie naked watching TV in a wall to wall bed. I have two pictures from that day that I feel like best show who I am, me at my happiest, and clean shaven, which usually just looks weird to me. But it's all about the hair.

So yeah, the last night in Amsterdam I got into this headspace that really felt like I was pulling the lights and behind the scenes elements down upon me, and there was this spotlight and I was center stage. It was surreal, and effected me so that there was my life before that, and then ever after. It was a validation that I was a writer, being dragged across the surface of the present moment, shooting off sparks of short fictional recounting to hold those responsible accountable.

Deconstructing Paris

(click title to read chapter)

Tower of Brahma 56 Paris Cafe Existentialism (edit)

1/20/09

(commentary)

Can I just get paid to travel write poetic prose? Because that would be my ideal job. Here I deconstruct Paris, see it as it is, just a city, a place that once had as rich a history as possible, but it is now no more than anywhere else. Bricks, pavement, architecture. It was insane to be standing before structures that were older than my country. To imagine my great-grandfather travelling there and thinking it was old and impressive and over it all. 

There's something to the idea of creating something new that is impossible. Craft a concept into a workable model, show the variations of it's functions, explain how it will benefit mankind, but don't take into account anything that's ever come before. Don't rely on a previous model or media or material and create something NEW, something we haven't seen yet that's going to make it all click into place and say that it was THIS that we were trying, hoping desperately, to achieve before all things. 

Is that possible? Can we escape the patterns of the past, draw outside the genetic bloodlines collective unconscious, subconscious desires? Is there room for error, or is every error accounted for,  in the name of the chaotic rhythms of what is essential human, the un-quantifiable conundrum, the paradox of Free Will/Fate? 

The best we can do is tear away the reverence for the past and slap it onto the present. Worship the moment, bend to its will at all times, ride the wave of impulses and watch the signs pass you by. But then when it's time to act, it's time to act. 

I was writing a book, my book, on my phone while zipping along the EuroRail to Paris!

(click title to read chapter)

Tower of Brahma 56 Paris Street Affair (edit)

1/19/09

(commentary)

It was 2009 and I was depressed. I needed to do something drastic, so Ben and I decided to go to Amsterdam in the new year. I had just met Lauren via Match.com, the girl who would destroy my life but in the most, it all doesn't matter sort of way, thusly freeing me but also driving me into the ground emotionally. BUT, before we get there, I was in Paris!

Ben and I had gone to Amsterdam and just smoked ourselves silly, but the weather was so sobering that it was immediately gone. So we trekked about, hit up a ton of shops that were essential, and there was an environment for any manner of stoner aesthetic. From minimalist decor with International hip-hop tracks blasting to dusty den with bad TV playing, dust mites dancing in the setting sun's unborn galaxy of an afternoon.

Paris was rude, though to be honest, the two of us and our appalling French, three days of freezing, smoking and drinking in Amsterdam on our faces, obviously American. So I bought a mis-printed, degenerate cheap t-shirt memento, lips and a tongue licking cherries, PARIS written in some manner of candy can striped balloon letters. It's a personal favorite.

Some juke jazz jive talking beat poet madness

(click title to read chapter)

The Tower of Brahma 55 Revelations (edit)

12/30/08

(commentary)

This one is meant to be read out loud. So many twists and turns, playing with language, visual puns, and general tomfoolery with the beat and sounds of syllables and synonyms. It's hard and becomes infectious, and really, it's the root of my writing. This mad, beat poetry is what I truly enjoy writing. Spur of the moment, stream-of-consciousness celebration of the written word and all the magic it can invoke.

I lost a chapter here. I remember writing about my dad, really addressing some dark issues I had with him. There was also a lot I wrote about my grandmother, but it was so filled with truths that somehow, by accident or grand design, I deleted it in an accident that would plague me for a long time. Still to this day, four and a half years later, it still stings. But it's gone, and letting go is also a major theme in this book.

I try and tap into this type of writing more and more as it's the kind that makes me the most happy. Nine chapters left, though I drag it out a bit longer than that by breaking them into subsections. Here I did the same, but condensed it into one chapter as it was all part of one writing session.

Dark Times Ahead, All Up in My Head

The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 54 - nine times the remainder (edit)

12/15/08

Like I said, dark times as I hit four years in NYC. I still struggle with suicidal impulses. My aunt killed herself, and I can't help but think that there's something genetic, but in reality, the escape from all responsibility, the giving up the struggle that somehow it'll all be worth it, that's really what it's all about.

See, every day of my life is filled with a nearly unbearable sadness, and at the time, an overwhelming sense of guilt that consumed me every moment of every day. Toss on top of that a continual sense of anxiety, and well, if life didn't suck, my physiology/brain certainly made sure it did. I've overcome a lot of hurdles but I also feel like this still to this day. Nowadays it's now and then, and much more related to actual pain and tragedy, but it's still there.

Chapters like this are why I wrote this book in the first place. They helped saved me, thus far. It's also why I assume no one would want to read it, because if I didn't even want to feel it, why the hell would anyone want to read about me suffering through it? I'm hoping the answer to that is because people can relate, and seeing me struggle and overcome it somehow makes it easier for them to conquer their own demons, to want to go out and create to save their own soul.

Lightning Bolt Tattoo, Punching the Fourth Wall, Psychotherapy Internal Dialogue

Tower of Brahma 53: ideal identity ignorance (edit)

11/24/08

I was not doing well as 2008 was coming to an end. I was dating someone I had previously hurt a year earlier, and in the end the same reasons reared their head, and I proved once again that I couldn't really be with anyone, still heartbroken from the last girlfriend. She's here again as the psychotherapist, which I don't think I was seeing anyone quite yet, but eventually did go to a therapist, and psychiatrist the next year. Most likely these chapters I wrote in an effort to convince myself that it would indeed be okay if I did.

I break the fourth wall, in a sense, here in the middle, where I start talking about the break-up, and the hole I punched in the wall was literally in my bedroom wall when I woke up after Halloween. I'd never been one to punch things in frustration, but I just couldn't get out from under this overwhelming self-loathing. Also, the jagged lightning bolt scar here is the tattoo I got on the outside of my forearm. The rest of the chapter is a fictional account of being in an institution, but there is a deep, dark truth here.

I can't connect to anyone. I desperately want to connect to anybody. I try so hard with realtionships as that's what makes sense to me. Friends and family were always burdens to a certain degree, people you associated with because you had to, on some level. It's not that I like that, but maybe I am much more of a solitary person than I imagined myself to be. A writer must be I suppose, but also I have always felt so awkward, so hyper-aware of every nuance of personal interaction, drowning in each moment of anxiety that I am somehow not smart, not cool, not being however it is they want me to be.

A poker player with too many tells

Tower of Brahma 52 - House of Cards (first draft) [edit]

7/16/08

I'm not much of a Poker player, but I knew chapter fifty two had to be about cards. It all seemed to fit when Scott (Sean) started flipping cards, and Jose (Juan) began writing a novel. I never did play cards with them all, but the idea of being competing writers was starting to rise up in my head. I was comparing myself to all them, measuring my successes and failures by what I imagined theirs to be. I had to kill them, metaphorically speaking, in order to move forward and start feeling confident in my own ability.

If anything that's what this book is all about. Killing off all these other versions of people in my life, ending this fictional world's existence, and therefore somehow purging myself of the impulse, leaving room for a redefinition of everyone and everything. It's still a work in progress, but it helped significantly over the years. At this point, I was about to head to my last San Diego Comicon, and ending my time at the New School due to a misfiled FAFSA, not to mention finally ending things with the girl who destroyed me utterly.

From here I begun to steadily decline, for in six months my life would just start to hit the lowest point, finding myself hopeless in the face of trying to improve my life by going back to school and finding friends. Whatever I needed to do going forward I would have to do it alone, though I tried desperately to make that not so, an act that I'm sure fed right into that self-fulfilling prophecy.

Write Club, support group salvation

Tower of Brahma - 51 - stop me if you've heard this one before (edit)

2/16/08

With my second semester at the New School in full swing, I tried to write a chapter for this new writing class I was taking. This was the result of talking with a few writer friends, trying to assemble a support group of the kind I imagine would help me make sense of why I even wanted to write in the first place and what I hoped to get out of it. Scott, Jose, Ben, and Tim are the closest writer friends I have, and this chapter is my version of all of them.

Also, my distant girlfriend is also featured here as a robotic collector of information for the New World: Order and Mike Gallows, as introduced last chapter. At the time she was cheating on me and I knew, but I didn't know. I knew it wouldn't work between us, though I couldn't really accept that. I didn't know why I was trying to write, trying to take it serious, when my heart was broken and quite literally was being driven to drink myself into unconsciousness (long story, tell you in person) and my teeth were killing me as I tried to process academia.

The chapter was fairly well received, but the class was a joke. The teacher was a burn out who pretty much discouraged us all as much as possible without actually saying anything. His demeanor as a failed writer was apparent and blatant, preferring to spend his days at the college talking about Bob Dylan. I thought pulling together this writer's group, my Write Club finally coming to fruition, if only a fictional version in my head.

NOVUS ORDO COLLIGO, initiation into the folds of reality, we just let them think they're running the show.

Tower of Brahma - 50 - We're Building the New World: Order {edit}

1/14/08

Officially kicking off the third act, we are introduced to Mike Gallows, a character that was in the originally screenplay as the main opposing adversary to Agents Fenris & Spider. In the height of the second act in the script he had played Russian Roulette with Fenris, and on the first bullet shot himself in the head, because let's face it, it's never the first shot in movies. Here I've repurposed him as a figure representing the Conspiracy behind the creation of the Tower of Brahma, an authority figure that wrangled up a collective of creative individuals.

If anything he's a bit of a menacing Morpheus from the Matrix, realigning myself with the part of me that I had transferred into the other side of reality, just beyond the mirrors. The scientist in this, much like the previous chapter, was a version of my girlfriend at the time, a cold and logical force that made me face all the issues in my life by denying me affection and attention as I was often used to. Also, she had emotionally been distant as she was spending half her time with her ex-boyfriend.

Gallows was also a bit of an amalgamation of the teachers I had at New School, having just started my second semester, taking philosophy and reading the classics, the Iliad, the Odyssey & the Aeneid. I've never really bonded with any mentor figure in my life, always remaining too distant to connect to anyone of the male persuasion. But putting my fictional self into the submissive position, letting him be taken care of, submitting to the process of clinical evaluation, that was so comforting at the time. Little did I know that almost exactly two years later I would check myself into the psych ward.

Also the title here is my reclaiming of the infamous NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM, the catchphrase for the grand American conspiracy. Here, and in the second book in this trilogy, NEW WORLD refers to America as a place of redefinition and potential, and ORDER is in reference to a group, a collective of Knights or Agents. This would be the Liberal Democrat version of the Conservative Republican conspiracy.

Chapters 40-49 are the turning point into The Final Arc

The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 49 - Boy Cries Wolf (edit)

12/3/07

Okay, so dark times, but also, very exaggerated for the sake of story. I was just finishing up my first real writing class in over a decade, and I was trying to write this story away from myself. I bottled up all the crazy I felt, and attached it to this other version of myself, Charles Crown. I had him institutionalized, replacing my real life cold, logical, heartbreaker of a girlfriend at the time, as this clinical psychologist, as she was the daughter of a scientist, and loved me like one.

So all the pain and frustration of writing, getting what I wanted, a published book but have it mean nothing, gain love but have it only feel like therapy, still being unable to feel like I could connect with other people, I shuffled this all off to this alternate reality I had created for myself. It was a petri dish that I could experiment in and watch as what I truly wanted and felt revealed itself to me one word at a time.

From here we enter the third act. Charles is now in the hands of the enemy, he's written what they've wanted, but he has no idea what he's written, what will happen to him, but he knows it's something bad and he doesn't want to live it. He begins to rebel against the overwhelming forces of control in his life, but also he's so weak that he can barely stand to fight. The climb within himself has left him spent.

Why create? How it feels to hold a Universe in your Skull.

Tower of Brahma 48 - Anthropology of Entertainment (edit)

10/18/07

So basically, there I was in the middle of the book, well, more or less as I had just finished the "lost chapters" 32-37, gone back to college, the New School, and started to get this book on track. But I was still questioning as to why create at all? I wanted to talk about what it felt like to sit with the weight of these entire universes, tales upon tales, endless stream of fiction that was spiraling about inside my brain. I needed to know it was worth it to continue. Was I a writer? Did I want to be? Could I finish something for once?

The chapters in the Tower of Brahma are set up to reflect my own personal numerology based around the number 64, which I was basing off the I-Ching. 8 elements times 8 elements in an ancient binary system made sense to me. It was mystic mathematics, which is the opposite of what the actual Tower of Brahma is, a mathematical principle gussied up as Eastern Apocalyptic myth.

It seemed like utter chaos, synchronicities mapped out in a madman's delirium, slapdash stream-of-consciousness with only the most mundane and fantastic action as the guiding forces. The equation came out to who I am, who I always was, what I'm meant to be. A personal puzzle where the ultimate reality is revealed, one piece at a time, forging this incredible whole that is the true Alchemical design. Transmutation of the Soul through the written word.

A jaunt into the future. 2007 meets 2023

Tower of Brahma: Chapter 47. the Meaning of Life (completed) [edit]

08/02/07

This was always one of my favorite chapters. Rather than introduce new characters, I'd just have my future self transport me into the future, just to show me that it all continues as it must. Life keeps on keeping on, no matter what we say and do. All we can influence is the flavor of our own existence. This was one of the many chapters I would write as I wandered the East Village alone. Other than my roommate Jared, and occasionally dating someone, I didn't have any friends and mostly just sat in the corner of bars, observed, and wrote until something made sense.

This also sets up a major plot point in the third act when the sixty year old version of myself drags me into the future and kicks off the final moments of the Tower of Brahma. Seeing as this version of myself is ten years older than I am now, I didn't go drastic enough I feel, though I was pretty spot on with what the future would look like, this chapter predating iPads, Kindles, Google Glass, and a lot of great science fiction films.

Also, I really need to start learning the trumpet.

I made my crazy on the page, Staying sane on the inside

The Tower of Brahma 46 Paranoia Paradise (edit)

01/31/07

At this point I wasn't sure where to take it next, except that I would have to bring in other characters, have to explore the Freemason conspiracy angle that was present in even the original screenplay from 1997, years before my father would become one. I had gone out for a beer with Tim, my original inspiration for Agent Spider, and mixed it with the idea that he was also my agent. As I absorbed Agent Spider into myself, a dark, violent side to the Christ-like Fenris, Tim would evolve into Tom Trainor, my handler as a kid secret agent.

Wow, that seems a bit convoluted. Much like the characters in the Wizard of Oz were actually the people in her life exaggerated into archetypal forms, so too was Tim, as he was one of the few consistent friends in my life, even if we had hardly seen one another through our twenties (and now thirties). Every time I saw him it was a bit of a reality check against who I used to be, and a good measure of just how far I'd come.

Originally I saw him as the coolest, aloof badass with a head full of arcane knowledge, and I was the rookie initiate stumbling into his destiny. As my needs morphed, my ideas about who my friends were, what roles they played in my life, so did their character. I was Charles Crown, Agent Fenris, and Agent Spider, all working to create a whole personality. The others were all enemies, ensnared as I was in paranoia. Though this was all in my head. I lived a pretty normal, if not depressed existence during these years, spilling my crazy on the page, keeping my head straight in the day to day.

Second Act, Acting Crazy, Paranoia Preparations

the tower of brahma - 45 - grinning beginning (edit)

09/08/06

Something I failed to mention in the last few chapter commentaries is the idea that I was being forced to write this book. At this point in my life I wanted to give up all creative endeavors, having gone back to the paparazzi photo agency for work, getting drunk on the weeknights off, losing myself on the dancefloors of random dive bars. I was happy there. Until I wasn't.

And I'd always have to come back to this story. Another unfinished masterpiece. A dead graphic novel in my wake, I was done with trying to do anything other than be happy and live my life. Having dreams and ambition consumes you in a way that I never could handle without some manner of payoff, and you only get that when you finish something.

So if I didn't write a chapter I would feel this self-destructive impulse rise up, and only in the writing and reading of the next chapter could I find solace. But I also didn't know the ending past that it was the ending of everything, the slaying of Odin-All-Father, the oncoming storm of Ragnarok. How could I write an ending to life when there was suddenly so much to live for? Even if it was empty, drunken nights in NYC.

With less than 20 chapters to go, I wasn't even close to a third act, I had just begun the second and it was about to get ridiculous beyond the pages of text I had put down for the previous three years before this one.

Oh, and this was a wish fulfillment chapter that I had to write as my upstairs neighbor was indeed building something all day long as I tried to sleep after the graveyeard shift at work, with an insane tootache, and my first real bout of insomnia.

Toothaches are a sonofabitch

The Tower of Brahma: 44 - splitting infinite (edit)

09/06/06

Five months after the last chapter was written here I suffer through a toothache I had during Fashion Week when I was working 12 hour days, just about to end two ongoing dating situations that were making me more than a bit insane (especially a month later when they teamed up on me when they found one another via Viacom's employee roster). I was in so much pain that I couldn't handle it. Now, obviously I don't have nor ever have had a gun, but as part of the chapter number, I was thinking of that cold, chunk of metal against my cheek and it made the pain not matter for a bit.

Movie Theater Throwdown, Secret Agency Darling

The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 43 - Everyone's a secret agent. (edit)

04/05/06

From the near death experience, tapping into the childhood secret agent fantasy that was the intial inspiration for Agent Fenris & Agent Spider, I know jump fully into my life as I know it to be ending right now. Seven years ago this was written, I had just moved in with Jared, who would be my substitute Agent Spider in this adventure into us seeing Tony Ja's The Protector (aka Tom Yoong Gong), and my meeting and dating a sweet, hot, talented young lady who I was overwhelmed by.

I always regretted how I blew her off, so afraid of diving into yet another relationship (single just barely six months at this point), I would hold her as this figure I would have to make things up to somehow. I saw her earlier this year for the first time since. It was weird. It was amazing. But I felt saddened, hollow because of it all. We were the same, but so much more gutted. Anyways, I'm sorry Agent Strange. You deserved better than that.

Mixing a poetic turn of phrase with action scenes is one of my favorite things, and this is one of the better examples of it. I never wanted to write a normal book. I wanted an epic poem of a memoir, a paperback pulp journal of boundless expression and gigantic ambition. Every chapter from here on out only gets more intense, dark, and intriguing into the overall mystery of what the Tower of Brahma actually is, and what it means to be the unlucky chosen one to close the book on the sham that was humanity.