The Coarse Grind: Part 25: Strange Days

by Jim Trainer

I say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I say. . .

We do this shit to get out of this shit.
Keefe D

He’s the one. The one that got away. You didn’t realize it when he was right in front of your face for 40 years.
Nikki Wonder

For ’tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard.
Hamlet act 3, scene 4

Well. Do I even need to say it? What you’re all thinking? Me thinks not. Your desperation and entitled boredom are all over the net. Social media for me these days is a resentment reel. I go down the pages, every day Good Reader, and I mean well writing this, as you do too I’m sure, but the fervor isn’t just echoing dumbly into the void. That would be bad enough. Repeated exasperation besides being fatalist and defeating can also prevent further action. Our burdens can take us out of the moment and we need a release—I get it. I’m a writer, believe me I get it. So we sound off but it’s the spectating that’s the worst part and reading: post after futile post, fear posited with alacrity, truth spun and spun out so wan and thin that despite your good intentions all I hear is pissy complaint after complaint that, stacked up on top of each other only bear down on my psyche and actually drive me further from the truth, render me destitute and abject of any course of action except turning OFF. Country simple the whole thing has relegated me to the big chair for marathons of VLAD TV and true crime podcasts, getting up to do what, for me, passes for shitting and drink water and anyway throw back some soup and bacon until the dishes pile up and the sink is clogged (again) and the stupid lazy weekend is over. OK, I read a novel. The weekend wasn’t a total loss.

But the socials are. And your complaints there are too. I would never hope to dissuade you of using your voice but really, I’d rather tell you nothing at all, man. The end of the world doesn’t mean anything to me. It ended a long time ago—for you, me and everyone in the free world and otherwise. What do you think James Hansen thinks about the Coronavirus? Roy Scranton? James Kelman or Friedrich Nietzsche? When your world has ended decades ago what’s left but the Work except maybe 7.7 billion Chicken Littles peeking at you yellow-eyed from empty grocery aisles and squawking all over the news and in your feed when you get home? Again, I would never ask you to silence yourself or consider your experience less than any of mine. Oligarchy and Heaven-seeking/demonising haven’t had good results, obviously. We’re in a state of shit because we thought we were different or other but mostly, and this is especially true for you and me Good Reader, we got pulled along and hemmed in, we’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and the machine is bleeding to death. OK, perhaps that’s the kind of entitled fatalism I sought to escape by making these points and writing this column to begin with. Unless you live in a country that’s been bombed I don’t suppose you can complain of being victimized—unless it’s by capitalism or classism, sexism or racism and a lack of healthcare or living wage and a murderous and militarized police force, which are the barbs and dangerous realities of the American experience. My point is even if we can separate who’s got the right to complain and who ain’t, what does that matter now that it’s all over?

Put your complaint into the Work. Popping off is the impulse and connection is the reason, but the network is theirs. Creative Nonfiction, blogging and the world wide web gave us street-level reporting and burned away the artifice and anyway torched cozy and familial ties of the Press to power. It was supposed to anyway but it came with an over-personalization of events that only led to branding. My point is the fourth wall came down but total access came with a price. My entire writing career was born of the Information Age. I’ve been posting for 10 years on the minutiae of my life and hoping that with a broader lens the personal could be the political. It worked for my heroes, though—as is the case with non-objective reporting, confessional poetry and gonzo journalism, imitation is just that. To live outside the law you must be honest. If I don’t turn the scalpel on me then all I’m doing is contributing to the pap furor and joining in a chorus of entitled complaint. I revise. I write drafts. But I don’t filter or hold back. It’s all in the mix and like you I feel powerful and heard when I do it. I’ve a framework and a deadline and then I just throw it at the wall. I kvetch for about 200 words or so, look back speciously and keep going. Word count is often the most important part of writing for me—well, getting it out is and word count is my way of doing just that. I’m not telling you to stop posting or complaining or admitting you’re scared. I’m urging you to go full-bore and whole hog into it—make the leap Good Reader, from Creative Nonfiction to Personal Journalism and hold yourself to a standard. Do 600, or 300, or even 200 words today and then repeat—do it tomorrow and the day after that.

I don’t think there is anyone who has a voice as beautifully distinct and profound as yours. So bring it out. Don’t just join in the chorus. Don’t tell me about your affliction. Bleed, into the work and all over the page. And don’t tell me about the end of the world. I know all about it. Mine ended years ago. I been living in a post end of the world-world, Good Reader. It’s gnarly and sad but it’s a truth I’m living in and get to by and through writing and devoting myself to a body of work, which, if you’ll excuse me is beckoning even now at 8:30 A.M. on a Monday morning, before heading into the Office and doing what they say as civilization uncoils and all my worries wind slowly and terminally down to dust and live out these last days of the Anthropocene.

JIM TRAINER IS CREATING POETRY.

Jim Trainer Author
Jim Trainer’s The Coarse Grind, a column on the creative life, has been published monthly at Into the Void. Jim was curator of Going For The Throat—a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence and romance—and publishes one collection of poetry, and sometimes prose, per year through Yellow Lark Press. “KEEP BLEEDING IN THE ANNO FINEM” is his 7th.
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4 Comments

  1. Oh damn. Thanks Andrew. That is high praise. Just telling Rob Kaniuk last night and the same goes for you–your comments and support are needed, appreciated and sticking with me. Means all the more when coming from writers I respect and admire such as yourself. Merwin is a wizard. Eat the rich.

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