Sundog Rising!
Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog
I left this world and came back again, in 2005.
No, you haven’t wandered into my UFO blog by mistake. On March 8th, 2005, I had emergency open heart surgery to remove a tumor the size of a ping pong ball from my left atrium.
I got better.
But in the process I experienced a prolonged severe deterioration of health, four days lying in the hallway of a hospital emergency ward dying, restricted blood flow to my brain, a four hour operation, an experience I still believe to be a short period of actual brain death, other complications, six days in the Intensive Care Unit resulting in a doozy of a case of ICU Dementia, further complications that put me back in the hospital a second time, and a general complete disruption of life as I thought I knew it.
In the mysterious months leading up to my eventual diagnosis I had next to no physical energy, and in terms of my literary life could only manage to write poetry. Strange, visionary pieces of a passionate love-hate relationship I imagined myself having with a mythically empowered female. Of course, after I got through the operation and all, I realized I was writing about Death, having an aggressive flirtation with my spirit. We have a much more civilized relationship today. Although she does like to remind me she’s still out there every once in a dramatic while.
After the hospital time ended, and true recovery began, I felt myself to be a different person, but with some continuity with a fellow who left his ghost lying in a dark room in the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre somewhere. It took awhile to be able to write again. I thought about life, well ... Differently.
The only author I could read for a couple of months was William Burroughs. His was the only voice that made sense to me, as I tried to refamiliarize myself with a surprising, ongoing reality about me.
Eventually, I did sit down to write once more. All part of the process of conditioning myself to existence again. What came out was a wildly experimental, almost unreadable piece called “52 Pick Up and A Joker”. Too short to be a novella really, too long with too many chapters to be a short story. And too disjointed to read comprehensibly.
But there was something there ...
When I left paid employment almost three years ago to take up the writing life full time, I made translating “52 Pick Up” into a comprehensible piece of literature my first project. How reader friendly it is today may still be up for argument. But now the revised piece is called Nosferatunes, and it still marks my transition back to life and writing in many ways after a severe disruption to my system and perceived reality.
It’s also the source of a remarkable number of characters who went on to compete in the two Reality Fiction series. The first Lou Moon, Benny Dredful, Luna Damsel, Knuckle Biter the Brain Drainer, boB the Poet, the Goth Moth, the entire Ptolemy Ptrio including Gully Bechet, Phoebe Hush, the Evil Sneed and Davis Jade, even Agent Only ...
But better than that, I think it’s an appropriate Halloween piece. Best read in October. So over the next five weeks, ending on Halloween itself, I will serialize Nosferatunes in this blog for the world to render judgment.
See if you can figure out what was going on in my mind. Installment One appears tomorrow, Thursday, October 3rd, and will continue through Thursdays in October until the 31st. Trick and Treat, I hope.
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REALITY FICTION UPDATE!
And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?
Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.
But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...
What’s happening now? Episode Ten, Werewolves, has just ended -- devastatingly for one Contestant. What’s lurking on the horizon? Episode Eleven ... (oh no) ... WILLIAM BURROUGHS!
Starts Friday at: realficone.blogspot.ca
REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE
EPISODE TEN: WEREWOLVES: “The Silver Solution”
EPISODE NINE: WRESTLING: “Suckerslam XIV”
EPISODE EIGHT: JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE: “The Proud and the Senseless”
EPISODE SEVEN: THE JAZZ AGE: “The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”
EPISODE SIX: SUBMISSION: “Re-Org”
EPISODE FIVE: MASQUERADE: “The Eyes Behind the Mask”
EPISODE FOUR: SELF HELP: “Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:
Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”
EPISODE THREE: NUDIST: “If You Have To Ask ...”
EPISODE TWO: FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE: “Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”
EPISODE ONE: STEAMPUNK: “The Chase of the Purple Squid!”
A J.H.B. Original!
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