I am not even close to being free of this terrible crimp on my ability to accomplish something in writing, mere affinity a twist. How many times can I write the same name, list the same specialties, subspecialties, pimp the foundation of American enterprise?

Soul sucking SEO, a way of running not forward or backward, but papering over the new, original thinkers, in the name of search results. SEO, an enlisted soul, I have met the enemy and it is click.

Wake up world, look at what is happening. Look at how every movie in the cinema is the same. How every shopping mall has the same stores. How every BPM creation is more Wizard of Oz than the next. 

Take back the humanity. Do your own stunts. Go Chaplin! 

SEO Alert - Damon "A Dog's Life" Shulenberger, esteemed Honorary Knight of the Order Bandito. EnduranceWriter con quezo. 

The small room, the mike's not quite fitting 
the human instinct to create, not bound by 
defining attitude

sound more a whim, maybe need,
what would follow each night––

The instrument like a snake came alive, 
tentative at first, unloved, 
then wrapping its fevered fangs 
into my soul, some kind of 
​hypnosis

Okay now following the trail of noise, 
crumbs, instinct formed, destroyed.*

Written on discovering that my snake-centric 4Hflute has an antecedent in Patti Smith's three H's: hand, heart, and head. The fourth H is han m' eggs. I'm heartened to learn that this poet I avoided for many years (based on rep alone) did not do the drugs she seems to proselytize for on the first Lou Reed-penned track. "The only thing I am really nostalgic for is childhood. I would want to be 10 years old in the forest with my dog again. It was a pure time.” 

* Or deconstructed? ––that very '70s word.

Sometimes distance is useful. Case in point: through working with Nils on correcting some of Arisugawa Park's narrative/character development flaws*, I have come to conclusions not so removed from the latest senior NY editor who declined to take up the manuscript.

"Thank you for sending ARISUGAWA PARK for me to consider. I took a look at this over the weekend, and unfortunately think it’s not for me. The sense of Japan is interwoven into the action of the novel very well and the main characters do feel multi-faceted as you suggested, but on the writing level it read as a bit wordy and not as smooth as I think is necessary for this to work as a real page-turner. This type of detective/crime novel is not as much in my wheelhouse as say, psychological suspense, so I’m not confident that I’m the best editor to work out the kinks in this story. So I’m going to pass, in favor of an editor who can really dive deep into the book and pull off the work that I think still needs to be done.

My agent Kimberley persists with Arisugawa Park, somehow. I am thinking of how a lot of editors have trouble digesting it––the common denominator seems to be that, because of the intricacy of the plot and its classic literary style (read wordiness) it would take a relatively Herculean effort (no simple surgery) on their part to bring it to the revenue potential of much simpler, "contemporary reader" friendly books. The kind of books I skip because I can tell, after reading a couple pages, that the book is pandering to a certain audience.

I pander to an audience of one.

Add to that the fact that Ari Park falls squarely in the "detective/crime" genre in editors'  minds, without the cachet of  literary fiction (which I believe it to be). We live in a genre-bound era, where generalist sympathies have been lost in a rush to meet narrowing demographics.* 

There is also the fact that my style is firmly in the "depths beneath the still surface" category. I do not explicitly explore the psychological, I find more interest in what is left unsaid. What can the perceptive reader intuit, without being led to any firm conclusion?

What did I myself intuit through the process of creation, in moments of spontaneity/self-revelation left purposefully exposed? The revision process is (yet again) afoot.

* As Nils puts it, the framework of a great novel is there, it is those lulls and glossing of certain characters that prevent the book from truly functioning as a piece of page-turning art. 

** An interesting article on this specialization phenomenon, in the philosophical sphere. 

The blog seems to be getting traffic, particularly on days when I don't post anything. 707 views yesterday, with nary a new word in sight. Must be doing something right. Or doing something....

Maybe it is as simple as generating a smile? The Sarah Palin stumping for the planet conceit still gives me a lift.

The particular metrics of popularity do not interest me. With virality a gamed commodity, I am content to simply put thought into every word I write. Or not.

Off-the-cuff greatness is something I admire––those Dylan/Hendrix/Parker/Miles/Lizard King moments when, apparently effortlessly, new ideas are excavated, the truth of the moment imparted.*

For me this happens most often with poetry and music, though when it occurs with prose it seems a more enduring accomplishment.

SEO alert - Damon D. Dawson, EnduranceWriter - author of "Between the Smile Lines: Mona Lisa and the Instinct to Submerge." 

* I want to encourage readers to give New Year's @ Lokal Bar a listen. The closest I have come to an adlib, ensemble soundscape that creates the distinct mood I am after. Every time I listen I get chills, of the kind the only occur with offbeat, covertly recorded bootlegs. The current drop-in music gigs span Bar 1510 on Adriatico in Malate (with Talabhiv) and Bamboo Grande on Tomas Morato in Quezon City. Yesterday with Japhoy and Choy was astounding.  Tuesday I will pop in at Fryar's in QC, Wednesday at Flight. Shit, I just announced it... let's make the font real small.

With the assistance of my German (by way of Quezon City) friend Nils Sens, I am back in editing and revising mode on Arisugawa Park. Enough time has passed since the last barrage of edits that I am able to see the stylistic weaknesses. The work still stands out to me as a complex, worthwhile. Nils' coaching is invaluable in pulling me from a stupor of textual overfamiliarity, toward considering the actual mechanics of what is going down. ​​

I am thinking that, when Ari Park is completed to my satisfaction, I may forego the agent thing and digitally self publish. If (and when) the book develops a reputation, I can always enlist Kimberley's help in selling rights and negotiating that chilling Netflix series. 

In the meantime, why not go for broke? Nobody seems to care much and that is another way of saying I am free.

Which is not to say it is an easy task. Here is my reworking of the first few paragraphs, bold face where the significant surgery has occurred (compare that to the existing version, up for the moment on the book website).

"Eve had the distinct sensation that her head was separate from her body. A taste of whiskey lingered and at first she thought it was the result of another late night drinking. Yet there was a profound sense of dislocation that a hangover could not explain––it was as if she had left the earth and was hovering somewhere without signpost or recollection. She felt a sandpaper itch across her throat as she tried to swallow, a dry rasp to her breathing as the room went in and out of focus.

In the pitch darkness, Eve came to sudden awareness of blockage, a weight pressing deeply into thighs in pulse after truncated pulse. She tried to move her legs and got only the faintest response. Feeling to a place below her hips where the numbness began, her fingers brushed up against something heavy and unmovable. Panicked, she twisted unreponsive legs, straining to roll out from whatever was pinning her to the bed. The weight finally gave, sliding an inch before lurching off in a tremble of mass and gravity. There was a finality to the reverberation on sound-dampened carpet that contradicted the sense of corporeal give. Human and yet––there was no semi-coherent groan, no drunken half-awareness of hitting rock bottom––no movement or life. 
Relieved to be free, still Eve’s panic did not subside. Calm yourself, she thought, reaching back to a submerged recollection of last night. Ken. The love hotel.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, nerves exploding in a sharply painful reawakening as they hit the floor. Waiting for the jagged edges to subside, she peered out, working to bring focus to the pale shape on the floor. Leaning nearer, she felt her knees flatten and buckle and dropped against the carpet. The texture of the fibers was synthetic and springy on her cheek, with a perfumed, antiseptic quality. She grasped for the bed frame behind her and, finding a hard edge, brought herself achingly into a seated position."

SEO Alert - Damon Shulenberger (aka Endurancewriter) is a writer of few accomplishments and some repute. 

A transcript of the speech Sarah Palin would give if she stumped for the best interests of the planet, instead of for arch-developer Donald Trump. An EnduranceWriter comedic original (Original Palin speech here). 

Thank you so much. It’s so great to be here on Earth. We’re here just thawing out, on a planetary level. Smokey and I and a couple of our friends here from Alaska at the front lines of Global Warming, and endangered polar bear habitat, lending our support to the great Mother Earth.

Heads are spinning, wiser heads are spinning. This is going to be so much fun. In 2016, which might outdo 2014 and 2015 as being the hottest year in recorded history.

Are you ready to make Earth sustainable again? We all have a part in this. We all have a responsibility. Looking around at all of you, you forward-thinking planet-dwelling families. You farm families, and teachers. You rock 'n’ rollers. Tree huggers. And tundra huggers! All of you who work so hard. You full-time activists. You with the hands that shake the Capitalist boat. You all make the world go round, and now our cause is one. Let’s avoid an irreversible temperature change and Save the Earth.

When asked why I would jump into a primary — kind of stirring it up a little bit maybe — and choose one over some friends who are running, I was told left and right, "you are going to get so clobbered in the press. You are just going to get beat up, and chewed up, and spit out.”

You know, I’m thinking, "and?" You know, like you guys haven’t tried to do that every day since that night in ‘08, when I was on stage nominated for VP, and I got to say, "yeah, I’ll go, send me, you betcha. I’ll serve.”

And, like you all, I’m still standing. So those of us who’ve kind of gone through the wringer as Mother Earth has, makes me respect you even more. That you’re here, and you’re putting your efforts, and you’re putting reputations, you’re putting relationships on the line to do the right thing for this planet. Because you are ready to make Earth great again.

Well, I am here because like you I know that it is now or never. I’m in it to win it because we believe in the planet, and we love our ability to keep living. And if you love your life, thank Mother Earth. Thank Mother Earth, and know that the planet deserves a sustainer-in-chief who loves our planet passionately, and will never destroy this planet. A new sustainer-in-chief who will never leave sustainability values behind. A new sustainer-in-chief, one who will never lie to the families that could easily leave behind future generations shit-out-of-luck. 

I’m in it, because just last week we’re watching our marine life suffer and be humiliated on a world stage at the hands of countries that made up false catch data for decades or refused to report catches in violation of international law, because a weak-kneed, capitulator-in-chief has decided Mother Earth will lead from behind.

And he, who would negotiate, deals kind of with the skills of a community organizer maybe organizing a neighborhood fish fry, well, he deciding that, "No, Mother Earth would not lead by example as part of the deal," as the enemy sends a message to the rest of the world that they capture unsustainable levels of fish and we kowtow, and we apologize, and then, we bend over and say, "Thank you, enemy for destroying a primary source of life on Earth and food for humanity.”

We are ready for a change. We are ready and our marine life, and terrestrial life, deserves the best. A new sustainer-in-chief whose track record of success has proven he is the master at the art of the deal. He is one who would know to create sustainable environments.

Only one candidate’s record of success proves he is the master of the art of the deal. He is beholden to no one but we the inhabitants of a planet on the brink, how refreshing. He is perfectly positioned to let you make Mother Earth great again. Are you ready for that, Iowa?

No more pussy footin’ around! Our planet deserves the best, you deserve the best!

He is from the private sector — not a politician. Can I get a "Hallelujah!" Where, in the private sector, you actually have to balance budgets in order to prioritize, to keep the main thing, the main thing. And he knows the main thing: a president is to keep us safe environmentally. He knows the main thing, and he knows how to lead the charge.

So people on Earth, earthlings, hang in there, because help’s on the way because he, better than anyone, isn’t he known for being able to sustainably lead, fire! Are you ready for a sustainer-in-chief, you ready for a sustainer-in-chief who will let our scientists do their job and go kick polluters’ and developers’ ass?

Ready for someone who will secure our food security, to secure our natural areas, and to secure social justice? Ready to make the world great again. Are you ready to stump for Mother Earth? I’m here to support the next president of the United States and his platform of Gross National Happiness.

Now, eight years ago, I warned that Obama’s promised fundamental transformation of America. That it was going to take more from you, and leave America weaker on the world stage. And that we would soon be unrecognizable amidst unchecked growth and pollution.

Well, it’s the one promise that Obama kept. But he didn’t do it alone, and this is important to remember, especially those of you, like me, a member of a planetary community, this is what we have to remember, in this very contested, competitive, great primary race.

Tree Stump’s candidacy, it has exposed not just that tragic, the ramifications of that betrayal of the degradation of our planet, but too, he has exposed the complicity on both sides of the aisle that has enabled it, okay?

Well what he’s been able to do, which is really ticking people off, which I’m glad about, he’s going rogue left and right, man, that’s why he’s doing so well. He’s been able to tear the veil off this idea of the Capitalist system.

The way that the System really works, and please hear me on this, I want you guys to understand more and more how the system, the establishment, works, and has gotten us into the troubles that we are in as a planet.

The permanent political class has been doing the bidding of their developer-military complex donor class, and that's why you see that the forces of environmental destruction are kept open. For them, for their cheap goods that they want to come in.That’s why they’ve been bloating budgets. It’s for crony capitalists to be able to suck off of 'em. It’s why we see these lousy trade deals that gut our natural areas and sustainability goals worldwide for special interests here. Stephen Hawking is the latest scientist to place our chances of long term survival at about nil. 

We need someone new, who has the power, and is in the position to bust up that establishment to make Mother Earth great again. 

His candidacy, which is a movement, it’s a force, it’s a strategy. It proves — as long as the politicos, they get to keep their titles, and their perks, and their media ratings, they don’t really care whether the Earth survives. Believe me on this.

And the proof of this? Look what’s happening today. Our own Global Warming Machine, the establishment, they who would assemble the political landscape, they’re attacking their own planet. Now would the other animals on Earth ever, would the polar bears ever come after their children and their children’s children? No because they don’t eat their own, they don’t self-destruct.

But for the establishment to be coming after Tree Stump supporters even, with accusations that are so false. They are so busted, the way that this thing works. We, you, a diverse, dynamic, needed support base that they would attack.

And now, some of them even whispering, they’re ready to throw in for overdevelopment over Tree Stump because they can’t afford to see the status quo go. Otherwise, they won’t be able to be slurping off the gravy train that’s been feeding them all these years. They don’t want that to end.

"Well, and then, funny, ha ha, not funny, but now, what they’re doing is wailing, "well, Tree Stump and uh, uh, his Stumpeteers they’re not Earth conscious enough." Oh my goodness gracious. What the heck would the establishment know about earth consciousness?

Tell me, is this earth conscious? Global Warming majorities handing Obama a blank check to fund global corporate and trade ramp-ups and illegal human exploitation that hastens environmental destruction, and turns trees into wasteland in Borneo and around the world, generates runaway greenhouse effect, and all these new refugees that are going to be coming on over borders as we keep the borders open and bequeathing our children new levels of environmental and social misery as everything spirals out of control, and the system is held in place by interests that promote yet further destruction.

No! If they’re not willing to do that, then how are they to tell us that we’re not “environmental enough" in order to be able to make these changes in the Earth that we know need to be made. Now they’re concerned about this ideological purity? Give me a break! Who are they to say that?

Oh tell somebody like, Baby Seal Carcass, she is the environmental movement icon and hero and a Tree Stump supporter. Tell her she’s not environmental. How ‘bout the rest of us? Eco wingin’, tree clingin’, proud clingers of our trees, our marine life, and our shared interests as humans, and our Planet. Tell us that we’re not green enough? Yeah, coming from the establishment. Right.

Well, he being the only one who’s been willing, he’s got the guts to wear the issues that need to be spoken about and debate on his sleeve, where the rest of some of these establishment candidates, they just wanted to duck and hide. They didn’t want to talk about these issue til he brought ‘em up.

In fact, they’ve been wearing this political correctness kind of like a suicide vest. They want to blow up the earth, turn it into a sun. They have given up on the future of the planet.

And enough is enough. These issues that Tree Stump talks about had to be debated. And he brought them to the forefront. And that’s why we are where we are today with good discussion. A good, heated, and very competitive primary is where we are. Though not as quickly heating as our planet. And now, though, to be lectured that, "Well, you guys are all sounding kind of angry," is what we’re hearing from the establishment.

Doggone right we’re angry! Justifiably so! Yes! The Earth is in deep doo doo! Our future!

You know, they stomp on our plants and our marine life, and then they tell us, "Just chill, okay, just, just relax." Well, look, um, we are mad, and we’ve been had. They need to get used to it.

This election is more than just your basic ABCs — anybody but Clinton. It’s more than that this go-around. When we’re talking about a world without borders, when we’re talking about moral bankruptcies in our system of sustainability, race to the bottom, tragedy of the commons, eco-debt that our children and our grandchildren, they’ll never be able to pay off.

When we’re talking about no more Reaganesque power that comes from strength. Sustainability through strength. Well, then, we’re talking about our very existence, so no, we’re not going to drill. In fact it’s time to chill, baby, take a chill pill for Mother Earth, and hold these drilling folks accountable.

And we need to stop the self-sabotage and elect new and independent, a candidate who represents that and represents the planet first, finally. Pro-Earth, common-sense solutions, that he brings to the table.

Yes, the status quo has got to go. Otherwise we’re just going to get more of the same, and with their failed agenda, the Earth can’t be salvaged. It must be savaged. And Tree Stump is the right one to do that.

Are you ready for new? And are you ready for the leader who will let you make the planet great again? It’s gonna take a whole team. It’s gonna take a whole team. Fighters, all of us, in the sustainability sector. Fighters in the Forests and the Oceans.

"Let me say something really positive about one of those individuals: Felled Old Growth. I’m going to tell you about that libertarian streak in him that is healthy, because he knows, you only go to war if you’re determined to Save the Planet!

And you quit footin’ the bill for these nations who are oil-dependent, we’re paying for some of their squirmishes that have been going on for centuries. Where they’re fightin’ the Earth and yellin’ “Go West Young Man" calling Jihad on the Earth for ever and ever. Like I’ve said before, let them duke it out on an island where they have only solar and wind power to rely on. And the water and resources from their local community. Let’s see what they are made of. 

We’ll fight for Earth interests, and as Tree Stump has said, other nations where we have been footin’ the bill, but we haven’t prioritized our own domestic bungling well enough to be able to afford what we’re creating overseas through short-sighted, profit-centered FDI. Things are gonna change under President Tree Stump.

So it can be an unbeatable team with fighters there in the Mountains and the Tundra. Yeah, our leader is a little bit different. He doesn’t believe that multi-billionaires should exist. And, it’s amazing, he lives lightly and is not elitist at all. He doesn’t believe that the .1 percent should control all the wealth.

Oh, I just hope you all get to know him more and more as a person, and a man living among other men on a single planet. What he’s been able to accomplish, with his um, it’s kind of this quiet generosity. Yeah, maybe his largess, kind of, I don’t know, some would say gets in the way of that quiet generosity, and, uh, his compassion, but if you know him as a person and you’ll get to know him more and more, you’ll have even more respect.

Not just for his record of success, and the good intentions for the planet, but who he is as a person. He’s not an elitist. And yes, as a leader against a system that creates multi-billionaires, we root him on, because he roots us on. He is deep rooted. And he has, he’s spent his life as a workin’ man. And he tells us Joe Six-Packs, he said, "You know, I’ve worked very, very hard. And I’ve succeeded. Yuuuugely I’ve succeeded," he says. And he says, "I want you to succeed too.”

And that is refreshing, because he, as he tears down things, he tears down big things, things that touch the sky, big infrastructure that displaces native people and traditional values. He has spent his life looking up and respecting the straw hats and the mud-caked boots and the sustainability ethic that you all have within you. He, being an optimist, passionate about equal opportunity to live on earth and earn a living wage, whatever country you are from. Fabric.

The self-made success of his, you know that he doesn’t get his power, his high, off of opium — Other People's Money — like a lot of dopes in Washington do. They’re addicted to OPM, where they take other people’s money, and then their high is getting to redistribute it, right? And then they get to be really popular people when they get to give out your hard-earned money.

Well, he doesn’t do that. His power, his passion, is the Fabric of Earth. And it’s woven by work ethic and dreams and drive and faith in our Natural Systems, what a combination.

Are you ready to share in that again, Iowa? Because that’s what’s going to let you make Mother Earth great again. He’s going to be able to empower you to look out for one another again instead of relying on a bankrupt world order to supposedly be looking out for you. No, and I think you’re ready for that.

Those things that are unifying values and there're time-tested truths involved. These are unifying values from big cities to tiny towns, from big mountain states and the Big Apple, to the big, beautiful heartland that’s in between.

Now, finally friends, I want you to try to picture this, it’s a nice thing to picture. Exactly one year from tomorrow, former President Barack Obama. He packs up the teleprompters and the selfie sticks, and the Greek columns, and all that hopey-changey stuff and he heads on back to Chicago, where I’m sure he can find some community there to organize again.

There, he can finally look up, President Obama will be able to look up, and there, over his head, he’ll be able to see that shining, towering, Tree Stump, taking root and growing new leaves. Yes, Barack, he is growing again, taking in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen, and that says a lot.

Iowa, you say a lot, being here tonight, supporting the right leader who will allow you to make Earth great again.

God bless you! God bless Mother Earth and our next president of the planet, Tree Stump!"

​Threadbare stomach, new notes 
And a world to project--
I half remember islands, 
Before the cloud and I will be there, 
detoxing the viral soul.

I forget why exactly we fight
In this lullaby world
Where loud music is the only currency,
are loud and clashing sounds
Engrained in your soul?

Something hit me once, 
A feeling that things were right.
I forget the exact sequence, 
Everything was right
I found my own sense of
time, away from the pressures of
mastery and preplanned disaster 

Which flies in the face of accepted wisdom,
which hungers for a life not one's own
which flies off the tracks
infinity/trainwreck.

SEO alert - Damon Shulenberger (aka EnduranceWriter)

As some readers may know, I am an adherent to the possibilities of improv. Throw off those shackles and find your inner mojo. The flute is now officially part of my mojo––I have no compunction about getting up in front of the mike for a choice freeform solo, whether at the B-Side Sunday reggae sessions in Makati, or with the house Latin band at Cafe Havana. People seem to dig these unannounced excursions, you can tell in this virally infected era by the quickness with which devices come out.*

This new Soundcloud recording (part of the Chasing the Sun series) is culled from nights at the Lokal in Boracay, where I slogged through standards in a quest for glimmers of the next. I am a big fan of bootlegs & demos––that is one reason why I trawl through artists of the 60s and 70s (as opposed to the synthesized generations). There is a lot more pulse in handcrafted trial and error, often recorded by self/audience members.  In the immortal words of Leonard Cohen, "I have tried in my low-fi way to be free." 

* Kind of ruins the mood, though it could eventually save me the trouble of recording shit.

1.
Something
Mel Mel - Guitar, Vocal
Damon - Flute, Bottle

2.
Would You Say (original WIP) 
Jeff - guitar
Damon - flute, vocal

3.
Knockin' On Heaven's Door/Found a Good Job 
Jefferson - guitar
Damon - flute, vocal

4.
Crazy (Leave Me Alone)
Jefferson - guitar
Damon - flute, vocal

5.
No Reply (Facebook ending)
Jefferson, Louie, Damon, and Pinas & Levantin Bulabog Co.

​6.
On the Bayou
Bon - guitar, vocal
Louie - guitar, melodica 
Many ppl on flute, noisemaker, etc.

There is an old Joe Jackson song I like a lot, Amateur Hour. It seems to me to be about the importance of maintaining amateur status in a world of hard-striving professionals (it could be about a lady of the night, ala Roxanne). At any rate.... 

I have been thinking a lot about the workhorse concept and how fiercely I've guarded my amateur status over the years. Before I became fully aware of entropy-related decline and of the financial instability inherent in such an approach, I stubbornly downplayed my abilities. One reason was defensive: I received (what seemed to me) intense notice for my writing gifts through high school and the act of setting pen to paper took on the dimensions of a burden.* I began thinking of art as a competition and I found myself measuring myself against other writers––not the best way of carving out an original path.

Being amateur seemed to me to present several advantages: for one, I could observe more. I got off the literary hook if people pegged me in some non-ambitious category, such as airport limo driver, English teacher in Japan, SEO hack, International Relations graduate student, poker player, tribal flute mendicant. Maintaining a buffer between myself and the financial pressures professional writers experience, which warps what they set on paper, was a core tenet of what I did. Problem was, lacking external pressure, I didn't produce what others recognized as worthy art. I understand this in a way....

I subsequently travelled and experienced a lot of life, becoming aware that, beyond certain grammatical standards, there was no true measure of literary worth. At a certain level, different authors simply had different life experiences to convey. Believability and continuity was not the be-all-end-all that many publishing decision makers made it out to be. Behind every great editing job was a whiff of compromise.

I had discovered literary relativism.

I used that particular tool to defuse the burden of expectation. Not a new trick––I imagine Shakespeare was great, in some ways, because he did not try too hard. The best of his art** has the flow and immediacy of real time creation, is effortless in its multi-layered flow. Sure it has been extensively revised, but not past the ripening point––the essential objective was accomplished while the artist was in the flow, outside of the heavy weight of expectation. Shakespeare's art even has a whiff of the collaborative and that is a concept I am still digesting....***

Re: literary relativism:  there is a dividing line between great and inferior art, which vanishes among writers of a certain caliber. You can sense when something is off, not centered in its own specific gravity. But a well-crafted internal universe often goes unnoticed. It is complex, but the ties that bind are organic, not mandated. A sign of gravity done right : I do not rush through the words, I take in every sentence as part of a totality. Narrative developments surprise me and they also fit.****

SEO Alert - Damon Shulenberger (i.e. EnduranceWriter, aka 4HFlute)This is the first in a prospective series of blog posts that I hope will challenge even the half-baked Soylent series. 

* Far from bringing  joy, literary plaudits are linked in my mind to a sense of envy and separation. 

** Othello and Romeo & Juliet are the two works that put me in that zone, start to finish. 

***Some have posited that the Bard of Avon smoked pot in his garden in to get into the flow. Very possible, though far from conclusive.
 
 ****Okay Jonathan Franzen has the touch. I admit it.

For as long as I can remember, since my time living in the Japan exurbs at least, I have taken great pleasure in walks at the margins... where the urban reality intersects with remnant, often transitional pockets of nature. This is perhaps the root  bitter (sweetness) that informs much of my writing: an awareness of imminent loss.

The Fabric that I had just begun to appreciate in Boracay, the flux between paradise and party people, is at the moment being razed, permanently lost. A sense of appreciation of something that is most conspicuous in its absence and which many do not have the time, resources, or temperament to appreciate. I know I am an outlier in this churning world of minimally checked growth. How to quantify quality of life of the masses, when the luxury condo is so controlled, lifelike?

Above: A momentary opening of light.. an old building razed next to the Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Makati (Philippines banking and expat center) reveals a long hidden side of the church. A tribe of vagrant kids resides in the rubble. This momentary reveal will soon be subsumed by fresh girders for a taller building, relic hidden again. And the kids, they will move to the next site of demolition and imminent outsized growth.

Literary fans, I apologize. The clamor has been strong, the urge to know about Kyle, Dylan, Mustang, Sumuru. I have been trying to find a way forward, get to the parts of the story I have already mapped out. It is a bit like looking up a cliff face to a ledge and not quite knowing how to free climb there. I relish these moments when the writing slows in a way. Some call it writer's block, I call it long form meditation.... finding exactly how the story and characters relate through intuition, purposefully ignoring set pathways. That is the point in a way of Arisugawa Park.. layered depths, a sense of life that is not always neat. The struggle of getting up on some days. Hard to pull off in a serial novel, interesting to try. 

Here, a walk on the margins along a long-tamed, pungent trickle of water. Let this gallery guide you through one of the hidden places in Quezon City I most enjoy: