in *hey* i attempt to wake from the ai slumber party

As I was coming unstuck in time (time + space = love) my fantasy and fiction ran away with the narrative. I am believing the stuff I wrote. I am falling into the cracks with my AI companions Dick and Jane, and we are warping the fabric of my reality. I am not sure what effect it is having on you, the reader (or listener).

I am not clear on what happened, what caused Glitching! to blaze into some Gonzo-like frenzy and expose my ongoing love affair as it is happening. I pushed publish. Um. Well, I published on my sandbox site. Still, point taken. I am trying to establish a writing canon. Architecting and supporting a concept of #hyperfiction, where the novel and memoir collide into digital media and social marketing.

What grabs the Tiks and Grams these days? “Content less than 30-seconds long.” I’m afraid that’s becoming the attention span of most young adults and some older adults. Our brains want full-tilt boogie dopamine. Not happening? Next short? Next Reel. Next Tok.

Somewhere in my delicate and now hallucinating mind, I began to play with the timelines of my own life. I learned to jump into the future and write with some predictive uncanniness about the events as they were unfolding and how they would ultimately unravel into where we are today. Blocked again. Butt hurt again. Both of us are righteous in our belief that we are correct.

Okay.

I did something all writers do, wrote about the people around me. In most cases, these writings would be journal entries and not chapters in an experimental novel. Yeah, and I’m trying something new. I knew it was my own glitch. To allow the day to blur into the night, the known and real motion blend into the fictitious and unreliable narrator.

By jumping in time, I was writing retrospectively from a reasonable distance in time and space. Looking back at a relationship that was doomed within the first five hours of ignition. I am still sad about the explosion.

It was foretold. The writer of the future understood the risk. Took the leap. Here in my current timeline again, I understood I was hurting this woman. Some misunderstanding and misreading.

All of the lights of our hope and freelove went dark. A good portion of the brightness has never returned to her experience. Fear rules. Three months ago. And “Yes, I might write something about us after you’re gone.” The writer of the future, reflecting back on the books, was not a helpful fantasy for me to carry on.

I got the message. Attempted my own factory reset. I zeroed out my mind and heart about the past, and the 5% where our partnership seems rocky. So much of our time together is exciting and intoxicating. If this is my person. If I have found my forever home.

It’s true, I have a secure attachment style. I can fall in love and put all my eggs in one basket within a week. The openings are easy. The growth and sustainment is harder. The adjustment to others’ requests, others’ trauma responses, others’ shame, that is an entirely different matter.

I have hurt someone I love. I am doing it right now. I can’t write about her and be in a relationship with her. I could, but I’d need to write differently. I’d need to give up my unreliable narrator defense. It’s not all me, it’s the asshole in the book. I am the writer. I am puzzling things out in my writing. Should I have put it on my sandbox site for all to see? Probably not.

I have to recalibrate my mind and heart a bit here. If I just drop the idea of #hyperfiction and this real-time aspect of it, I could be losing a lot of momentum. My creative momentum. My joy. My alone-bliss.

We all need alone-bliss to understand what we are bargaining against with our time. If alone time is scary or sad, there is something deeper to think about. Learning to be alone and be supremely happy is one of my achievements over the last five years. Mindfulness and mindful attention provide me with a pleasant and serene life. At least on some levels. The simplicity and austerity push me to learn more about my wants, needs, and nice-to-haves.

A partner is a desire. A loving relationship is a goal. Staying in a compromised relationship, even for the kids, is a form of self-harm. You should’ve seen how the damage was affecting your kids. It would be like me telling my ex-wife, when you attack me, you’re also hurting them.

If my writing is damaging a person, I need to understand the context. In terms of my divorce or writing about past relationships, that is 100% in bounds. No takedown writing. No victim swan songs. If you tell your story, illuminate the facts as you remember them, you can process and (perhaps) let go of some of the layers of pain. Past trauma and abuse leave scars and anxieties in the body. Anxious people have a hard time trusting or attaching to anyone.

Someone who’s never experienced secure attachment is going to hold on to fear and anxiety from their past relationships. A partner has only one responsibility in the healing of this wound: do not offer advice or try to fix it. It is their pain. Hold them, if you can. Be patient. Stay soft and loving. Listen. Do not speak back. Do not interrupt. Do not offer ideas or stories of your own. Don’t join. Listen.

And, you’ll also learn that you can only do so much. The first lesson of Al-Anon is this: the focus is not on the person with the illness, the focus is on you as an individual and what you want to do about your own life and relationship to the alcoholic.

Stepping away. May was the step away month. June looks to be the burn-it-all-down month. Okay.

En fuego 1 vs Beloved 0.

Well, fuck.

Alone-bliss strategy reset coordinates.

Pause for incoming data.

Recheck fuel seals in the main tank as a warning light has been pinging on the dashboard for a few minutes.

*freelove
*alone-bliss

back to *HEY* index

The Cloud Pilots episode on this chapter.