Yukio Mishima: 1925-1970

This coming November marks the 40th anniversary of Yukio Mishima’s extraordinary death by his own hand. It’s impossible to know if the people of Japan are going to mark this solemn occasion in any way, but for certain the ones closest to Mishima will never forget what happened on November 25th 1970. I find it a shame that so much focus is put on Mishima’s death, and not on the incredible output of deeply insightful novels that he produced from his autobiographical Confessions of a Mask to his final four novels that comprise The Sea of Fertility. Having nearly finished Thirst for Love, I’ve read all that I can get my hands on of his work in English, and the words never cease to amaze me. After reading several biographical accounts, the consensus among some seem to be that Mishima was a disturbed individual, whose apocalyptic vision of contemporary society came from a deep seated need for self-destruction that grew with age. Of course, one can look at a person’s life and pick apart the  ” key events” that we believe leads someone to a certain endpoint, but in the end the art is what matters. And this is certainly true of Mishima, who despite once saying in his commentary on the Hagukure that “Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words will be corroded too”,  we see a keen and insightful mind at work, searching for meaning, even if that meaning is the Void itself.

Here in the West I’m not certain how much of his work has had an influence on a younger generation of writers, or if many have read him at all, but my own embracement of his works has lead me to an evaluation of my own purpose of a writer and indivdual. That is what great art is supposed to do. Make us take a look at reality from a different angle, even if that perception is uncomfortable or contradictory to what we believe. Only from confronting the antitheses in life do we come to a better understanding of what it means to be human, especially in a time where the very twilight of the idols we have held in the highest esteem come crashing down. There is a fine line between madness and genius, and one will certainly see both in the works of Yukio Mishima if they take the time to challenge themselves. More later…

(F)

“Tell me whom you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are.”  Andre Breton

From the Synchronicity Journal

A couple years ago I began recording synchronistic events in a journal in order to see if any patterns would emergefrom these supposedly random meaningful coincidences. Inevitably there were connections, and obvious connections at that, which appeared to manifest themselves more as the year progressed. I then took a year off and did not record any more in order to see if any of the same events or subjects presented themselves, which they did, though on a smaller scale. This is will be an ongoing series about my explorations into synchronicities and the like. One of my first significant series of connections involved David Lynch, the maverick director. I had recently watched his film “Mulholland Drive” again and “Inland Empire” and found that several things began to happen: the appearance of rabbits(which played a strange role in “Inland Empire”), quotes concerning dreams and labyrinths, and the Vedic Upanishads. At one of myfriend’s house, his wife had been reading a non-fiction book by Lynch called “Catching the Big Fish”, and due to his connection to Transcedental meditation he included a quote from the Upanishads…a book that I had recently been reading with interest.I had also been reading Kafka’s diaries at the time, an author that most people see as possessing a dream-like quality in his novels, and to my surprise I found out that Lynch was a great admirer of Kafka around this same time. What does this all mean exactly? More later…

“In front of him was either madness or suicide. In the twilight he walked the street alone, determined, patiently, to wait for his fate, for slowly approaching destruction. “  Akutagawa

“Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.” Primo Levi

This is a clue.

The Rooms

Since the millionth draft of my novel is nearly complete, I’ve begun a foray into some shorter more accesible works that will be accesible on this blog. One of these projects is “The Rooms”, a short story? idea that has been running around in my brain for a number of years and now is starting to come to fruition. Partly inspired by Beckett’s  short prose works such as “Texts for Nothing”, “Company”, and “How it is”, as well as a number of visual art pieces that I’ve seen recently. A visual element may be included but that has not been fully decided yet. I’m also working on a short pice entitled “memoir of fog” that should be completed in or around the same time as ”The Rooms”. These two works may be put out as a single work in a self-published format, but again that has not be decided yet. Now that Spring has sprung, the writing train is back on track…I also hope to actually be more attentive to this blog and keep people updated as to the aspects of my writing life, however secretive it may be. More later.

Forking Paths

http://www.borgesian.com

A tiny site dedicated to the work of Jorge Luis Borge.

One might even say that references such as these play a

part in the development of my own labyrinth.

writing in the dark.

The New year has begun and my writing has taken some sort of strange turn…

I blame the persistence of synchronicity…Not to mention my over-indulgence in literature over the previous 12 months that was full of puzzles, holes, enigmas and the like.

Writing feels like it did a decade ago before the madness and strange paranoia of 9/11 and all the subsequent actions that came from that event, real or otherwise.

As human consciousness becomes more and more uncertain, my writing becomes more and more uncertain. Fragmentation and illusion become bigger and bigger themes. Confusion in the face of fragmentation and illusion still plays a major role, even though I feel more at peace with the craziness of the world everyday. Or at least I tell myself that before my dreams give way to nightmares.

The future of literature is just as uncertain as the world we inhabit, if for no other reason literature has taken on a new face. One need only read the works of Roberto Bolano, David Mitchell,and Mark Danielewski to see that. The experiment and zeal of writers like Joyce and Borges have taken on new dimensions in the new millennium, which is refreshing as it is strange and beautiful at the same time.

The coming decade, which has already felt different, has given way to more and more thoughts that seem to transcent this realm; either that or I daydream too much. Being grounded in reality has no flavour to me, but like everyone else,I must tolerate the mundane and banal. I must learn to resist the temptation to escape my own mind.

More later…

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

23.

23

Trilogy…

There has been a lot of talk over the years of my trilogy being written. Some are probably thinking to themselves: ‘Will Ryan Madej ever finish the Marianas Trench, let alone another two novels?” The answer is: yes. The problem lies in time to write, edit, and compose everything in my head, which has taken over a decade already.Despite setbacks, numerous rewites(which continue, by the way), and 200 plus pages of the second part of this trilogy, I have managed to keep my wits about me. Rest assured when all the writing is said and done, I may never write again…who knows? But not likely…Orwell said something about writing novels: it’s like being afflicted with some sort of terrible disease that one must be cured of. Once I’m cured of this disease, there will certainly be more afflications to fight. My writing, I find, is becoming more cryptic…more pared down, less analytical. In other words, I’m finding my voice again…More later.

P.S. Something is closing in fast…very fast.

…Shadows and Fog

 The process is going smoothly, if for no other reason my brain has decided that there is no turning back now. I’ve made a great lunge at the heart of writing with my new project, the Maelstrom, hoping to twist the knife further and draw some blood. Of course, this could also turn into of the biggest literary disasters of the early 21st Century, but at this point I’m not paying much attention to that. As this year has worn on, and my appetite for Big Books grew, I finally felt confident that I could write something of a significant size and breadth. By the end of this writing process, I will have written something at least 4-5 times as long as the Marianas Trench. But length is not the obsession here: structure is. It’s difficult at this time to say what effect reading Pynchon’s “Against the Day”, Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”, and Roberto Bolano’s “2666″ have had on this current writing, but in essence I believe I’m really only expanding on some of the key ideas from my previous book that I hope to have available for mass consumption soon, whether it be through my website, self-publishing, or crazy publisher who likes weird little books.

In saying all this, the project is still at least a couple years from being complete…Even though as I write this I’m on the cusp of being half done the first draft. By the time I’m finished, the book, like everything else in this world, will be something different entirely. The transformative aspect of writing is what has me excited about this project, and what it will eventually turn into.  Strangeness is afoot….out there and in here. More later…