The clock on the dash read 6:31 when I started the car after loading the last cleaning supplies and the vacuum cleaner. Interim HQ (aka The Apartment) is not as clean as I could make it, but it is as clean as my store of energy made possible. Whether or not it is clean enough for dreaded assistant apartment manager Leslie will be determined when she gets around to her walkthrough. I know that when I dismantled the interior of the refrigerator to scour the corners I found bits of glass that I never broke. Similarly, a rag on a stick shoved between the oven and the counter pulled forth food remains originating in the early Pleistocene—which (believe it or not) predates my time in residence—including fully fossilized ramen noodles. My effort was an honest one. On the other hand, someone possibly vaguely resembling a face I have seen in mirrors did spill coffee on the carpet by the kitchenette. Maybe more than twice. Maybe that does not constitute “excessive staining” for which dreaded Leslie will look. As for the discoloration by the front door, well, damn it, I had to stand somewhere while taking off my shoes.

The clock on the dash read 6:50 when I pulled the mighty Scion into the garage of the new facility housing Stikmantic Intergalactic HQ (aka The Townhouse). Between now and then I have managed unloading the car, a cold supper and this. Plus dozing seated on a folded chair. The evening ahead promises a few minutes noodling on my bouzouki as prelude to a hot shower. Anything more than that will be frosting. Tomorrow brings with it a start on the task of unpacking and arranging my cult objects and cargo. Tomorrow, the several personalities will confer about tactical occupation of this space. Likely there will be much weighing of delight in open space against surrender to acquisition of convenient furniture and other forms of predatory domestic matter. Tonight, I wish I knew in which of the twenty-seven boxes of books I packed Tristram Shandy, because suddenly I want very much to reread it.

Complete character set of Dvarsh Bold, a font for the Dvarsh writing system created by Robert Stikmanz.
Copyright 2013 by Robert Stikmanz.

I have completed the character set of Dvarsh Bold, the first font for the Dvarsh writing system. The character set is presented here (in red), including six mathematical symbols that will not be part of the initial release. Click the image for a larger view. What remains to be done? Much. Each of these glyphs must be imported individually into a font-making application and assigned a place on the keyboard, and a keyboard layout must be produced to guide use. Once I reach that point, I’ll be looking for beta-testers, folks to type up some Dvarsh in order to provide a working sense of how the characters set in combinations, and what tweaks may be necessary before final release.

One notable departure from the original calligraphic form of Dvarsh writing is that Dvarsh Bold is designed in reference to a single baseline. The original glyphs reference three. The design also indicates a looser set, or placement, in combination than the original glyphs.

Once Dvarsh Bold has been squared away, the regular text weight, Dvarsh Book, has still to be created. Since there are no capitals in Dvarsh, I’m weighing an eventual release that assigns Dvarsh Book to the lower case and Dvarsh Bold to uppercase in a single font. I’d love to hear comment on this idea from prospective users. Also, it is not too early to express interest in joining the team as a tester.

Now that character design has been (98%) accomplished, my hope is the technical steps between here and tapping keys to make Dvarsh text appear will go quickly. I hope this not least because I need to use the tool. Across these silences, I am working to bring a new edition of Nod’s Way into being, and this version of the oracle demands greater Dvarsh presence within its pages. More news on that development in the future. As I study this group of characters, I begin to see how Dvarsh Book hides within them. Excuse me, please, while I return to my previously interrupted sketchbook already in progress.

P.S. My plan for Dvarsh Bold, and any other font I create for the Dvarsh language, to produce a release free for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license. This is a tool for all of you who have responded with such enthusiasm to this project.

A trove of expression went public on the Confabule website this past Thursday, as Amanda Kimmerly revealed the fruits of her mighty labors of recent months. Amanda is directly responsible for the 3000 Weeks showcase, as she has kept a multitude of shifting parts moving in synchronization since we began this project.  Without Amanda, there simply would be nothing with the scope and beauty she has assembled.

Two other people who have contributed hugely to the successful realization of this dream are Paul Elard Cooley and Thomas Fang. Confabule’s entire web presence exists in a stable form because Paul Cooley put in hours making sure it would exist and that it would be stable. He twice traveled to Austin from his home in The Woodlands to provide hands on intervention when that was needed to move us forward. Even last night, as people gathered in Kick Butt Coffee Music & Booze for our live event, Paul went under the hood of my computer to make it possible to show planned videos.

Like Paul, Thomas Fang has risen to help whenever I have called upon him, and it has been often. As a sounding board and a source of wise advice, he has contributed from the earliest moments of the project, when all I could articulate was “a party with weird electronic music, telepathic poets and lots of guacamole.” Thomas was the patient videographer for our fundraising appeal, and the center around whom our schedule of performers came together. During our event last night, he smoothed out unanticipated wrinkles capably and quietly.

The debt of gratitude I owe Amanda, Paul and Thomas is incalculable. From the moment Amanda’s showcase appeared on Confabule, I have been having a blast. I wanted a mechanism for letting the influences of my life know that they matter to me, that they matter hugely and that when they create, I am paying attention. 3000 Weeks is doing that, and it is able to do that because of Amanda and Paul and Thomas.

Other people also gave of themselves to make sure this peculiar ornithopterian contraption would fly. Elizabeth Renee Smythe has aided and abetted and kept enthusiasm high, and done so daily. Alycia Christine Sears swooped into town to staff Confabule’s sales table last night. Kevin Harrison provided legal services and advice. Every one of our participating authors and artists contributed a treasure of the imagination. Everyone who came out to Kick Butt Coffee Music & Booze last night contributed to the festive ambiance.

One intention behind 3000 Weeks is to establish points of contact between  creators that I encounter in different spheres. In this I am ready to declare a measure of success. Enormously gratifying last night was to witness the enthusiasm several writer friends had for the performances we heard. Maybe now when I assert that performers like Thomas Fang and Jill Kieschnick, Martin McCreadie, Henna Chou and Gregory Elliott are brilliant and wonderful, I’ll be believed.

3000 Weeks continues. I spent a chunk of the day today mounting the original of my 3000 Weeks illustration, and preparing to cut a mat tomorrow so that I can deliver it to its new owner. Amanda and I have a few weeks to get the e-book catalog and anthology of the project assembled and released. I have personalized e-books of my novels still to send to each of our financial supporters. And, I think we’re going to continue this as a living project, adding video and who knows what else over the ninety days of its planned exposure. It is certainly worthy of continuing upgrade. As my good friend and 3000 Weeks contributor Karen Pittman said to me last night, “You know some pretty awesome people.”

At some point, I’ll have to do something about the missing guacamole.

Today, Thursday, January 24, 2013, marks the first day of the 3000th week of my life. It’s a good, substantial number, exactly the right number that brings me to this point of moment and place. I thank life, chance and the shifting dance that is being for this opportunity to observe it. And to celebrate it! Celebrate I am, for over on Confabule, the 3000 Weeks project is open to the public. Guided by Confabule’s editorial director, Amanda Kimmerly, the project is a showcase for dozens of the creative people who have inspired and befriended me at all periods of my life.

Proud as I am of the number of authors and artists who responded to my invitation to participate, there are many individuals I wish were represented who, for a variety of reasons, are not. A few are among my honored dead, deceased friends for whom I had not time or resource to track down heirs for necessary permissions. The late Diane Bertram, Albert Huffstickler, Brett Palomar and Bill Narum are especially yawning absences. Of Rhandon Hurst and Ricardo Sañchez, unfortunately, I could scrape together only traces.

The 3000 Weeks project went public today, but the project is not complete. There will be tweaks and enhancements, and we’re hosting a live event Saturday night here in Austin. This evening, I sit down to sign contracts and write out checks. This, too, is 3000 Weeks. It is not the creative part, but it is a chore undertaken with the satisfaction that it is part of what creates.

Robert Stikmanz takes a break from ceasing to practice two songs.

It looks like I’ll attempt to perform three songs in Dvarsh at the 3000 Weeks live event on January 26th. This is the celebration and performance hosted by Confabule at Kick Butt Coffee Music & Booze scheduled for that night as the live, in-person aspect of the 3000 Weeks project. I have been trying to work up five songs to contribute, which is the total of all songs extant in the unspoken Dvarsh tongue as of this moment. These things change from hour to hour. I’ve been yodeling to the most recent tune I’ve teased from strings, but a sudden burst of lyric writing could draw that air into the Dvarsh canon. If that happens, however, the chance remains imperceptibly small that I’ll add the new song to my January 26th set, largely because of the lack of time between now and then to grind out the worst imperfections. I am unlikely to attempt to work up a late addition in no small part because, of the songs I have been practicing for the 26th, a sober look with critical eye reveals unmistakeably that two of them are not yet ready to send into the world. They have still to gel into stable, performable pieces. As a result, practice has contracted to the three songs that work best as songs, first and foremost—assuming I do not fool myself about the merits of these untutored efforts.

Amanda Kimmerly and I were recently on KOOP community radio, talking about 3000 Weeks and other subjects on the weekly interview show, Writing on the Air, with host François Pointeau and fellow guest Michael Casares. If you missed the program and would like to hear the conversation, a link to the podcast can be found on this page.

Maybe two. Maybe I should play only two songs, and let the program get on with more substantial talents. There is still time enough to abandon another, or not.

3000 Weeks meets funding goal!

3000 Weeks reached its funding goal on December 31, 2012! I am incredibly grateful to each and every contributor to this achievement, and even more so to Amanda Kimmerly, who worked hard and long to make our fundraising effort a success. Despite the onerous workload that is her part in preparing the grand unveiling on the Confabule website on January 24th, Amanda managed to pop her head above the surface long enough to give proper thanks to our supporters. Although I have not been idle, I have not done so well at acknowledging the generosity from which we benefit. Permit me to pause now and say to each and every contributor, thank you, to each and every participating artist, thank you, and to all our many well-wishers, thank you.

We roll onward. Ms. Kimmerly busily carves contributor pages from electronic wilderness. I’m beginning to organize my associations with each artist and trying to learn my set for our January 26th live event. Recently, I collected video of poets Michael Gilmore and Francois Pointeau reading their poetry, and this, too, will transform into artifacts for this celebration of mind, imagination and influences. I have gotten permission from Teresa Sánchez to reprint a poem by her late husband and my late good friend, Ricardo Sánchez. High school pal David Hargraves was in town just this past weekend, during which he confirmed his enthusiasm for the project and belatedly supplied recordings of a couple of his songs. The project continues to evolve even as we labor to bring it to its public. There are moments when the whole enterprise feels crazy, but that is okay, because every minute it feels like a dedicatory act to the storied troika of beauty, truth and art.

To say that I am not a regular blogger may qualify as understatement of epic proportions. Most days, it never enters my mind to stop what I am doing in order to describe what I am doing. And then one afternoon, or morning, or late night, a small light shines into the keep of the magic tower and I realize that the steady effort and cool activities that fill my hours are completely invisible. Hey, world, guess what? I have been chugging along with infrastructure and production for 3000 Weeks while all eyes have been elsewhere. Just today, I spent morning, afternoon and into the evening typing a previously unpublished short story by my grandmother that will feature in the project. Then I worked on a short set of songs in Dvarsh, some version of which I expect to perform at the 3000 Weeks live event at Kick Butt Coffee Music & Booze, Saturday, January 26, 2013. Then I worked on a couple of drawings, neither of which relates directly to the 3000 Weeks project, but in my world all creativity is one, so it advanced the cause in some fashion. I came to my computer to create a new version of the official poster, this one to promote the live event on the 26th, when the unchanging face of the home page on this site mournfully pleaded for me to tell the world what occupies the staging area of Stikmantic mind. This first; poster next.

In bringing 3000 Weeks to fruition, tons remain to be done. Tons have been accomplished. Look for a new version on video of an old poem by me—maybe even with early release—as well as more art and modest wit. All told, we have contributions from fifty creators to feature in our showcase, and we are planning short features on about a dozen others who absolutely must be represented but who were prevented by circumstances from submitting work. It’s a fine aggregation of diverse, beautiful, excellent work we are preparing.

Our fundraiser has entered the nailbiting zone. With one week to go before our deadline, and despite heroic effort by Amanda Kimmerly,  we are still short $750. I’m crossing my fingers and holding my breath. If you have not yet given support to 3000 Weeks, please visit confabule.com and think about doing so. For art, truth & beauty!

With its entire emphasis on creativity and interconnection, the 3000 Weeks project seemed perfect for Kickstarter. At least, so I thought. Kickstarter thought otherwise, and declined the fundraiser that Amanda Kimmerly designed around my concept. It is the concept of the 3000 Weeks project that Kickstarter has declined; Amanda’s fundraiser is well constructed. As a matter of fact, it is solid enough that we are launching it as an independent initiative. ¡La lucha continúa! From December 1, 2012, to January 1, 2013, we are appealing for your support as we raise $3000 to make the 3000 Weeks project possible. Please visit confabule.com for information on how to back our showcase of the arts.

Early in Peter Medak’s 1972 film, The Ruling Class, is a scene for which I have always felt kinship. When the insane British peer, Jack Gurney (Peter O’Toole), declares his love to Grace (Carolyn Seymour), the woman being maneuvered to become his wife, the madman reveals his feelings in the only way that makes sense to him. Lanky limbs spiking and strutting, he breaks into a courtship dance that would be the pride of any puffed-up wood grouse in The Isles. The display is so patently inappropriate that it would collapse into the ridiculous were it not for the unselfconsciousness, passion, and sweet sincerity of O’Toole’s performance. It’s a fairy tale moment in the film O’Toole himself described as “a comedy with moments of tragic relief.”

Choosing to love—rising to the counterpoint of passionate engagement with another—is ever a fraught proposition. It can bring a harvest of satisfaction, sometimes joy, if one is nimble enough or lucky enough to avoid stumbling at the outset, or the harvest can fail, and the aspirant reap disappointment. There are no guarantees, first because there is absolutely nothing that compels an object of affection to reciprocate the feeling, and second because even the best matches launch in perilous waters. Experience teaches that—absent the charm of a Peter O’Toole—passionate, sweet sincerity will produce at least one featherweight Cyrano for every fortunate Darcy.

Hope may come without guarantee, but disappointment comes with a suite of regrets. That’s the risk that makes choosing to love an act of courage.* By definition, a choice to love involves allocating a portion of one’s emotional life to engagement with another, and not just any portion, but that emotion for which humans hunger. It does not matter why the stake is frustrated; if it is frustrated, regret follows.

Of course, all frustrations are not created equal. Consequences when disappointed after one has loved well and been present and honest are different (we assume) than those in the wake of loving badly, with distraction and deceit. A given case also modulates depending upon eventual assessment of the desirability of the disappointed match. “That fool done me wrong” spawns a different set of poignancies than “I flew too near the sun.” And then there are the discoveries of introspection, when a good, clear look into one’s heart exposes the lacks fatal to hope, and no one to blame but oneself. It takes footwork to avoid bitterness if it becomes clear that, though the object of one’s affection may be eminently worthy, one’s attention, in fact, is unworthy of its object. That’s a sobering moment. In the best case, quite actually sobering.

Sobering, as a process, has been much on my mind recently. It’s a process I started twenty years ago when I renounced alcohol and tobacco, vowing to get healthy and strong. It’s a process I continue as I learn to pay better attention to the cues of my body. In response to those prompts, I have eliminated dairy products and wheat from my diet, and reduced my consumption of animal flesh, with results comparable to (and in my mind consistent with) sobering. I also struggle against innate laziness to cultivate a modest physical practice centered around sequences of yoga, nei kung and tai chi. Adoption of these physical forms is another part of sobriety.

Two things I have resisted giving up despite clear body signals that doing so would produce benefit, are coffee and cannabis. I have constructed an argument that, since immoderation glares at the world as a huge flaw in my character, continuing to enjoy these substances in a deliberately moderate way produces a benefit in self-control that outweighs the negative physical effects of either. Until now, the argument has seemed like a good one. I have successfully limited consumption to a fraction of former levels for both java and weed, and occasionally I have gone for extended periods without sampling one or the other. The reduction of habitual toxins has had a salutary effect on my system, plus I’ve given myself a big pat on the back for being moderate. Now, however, revisiting the issue with a freshly critical eye, I do not think I have done myself any favors with this cleverly constructed rationalization.

For longer than the decades of my progressive sobering, I have elaborated Nod’s Way, or Hidden Dragon, my poem in the form of an oracle, my tool for self-transformation in the form of a toy, my toy in the form of a tool for transformation, but most of all a memorandum to myself about how to relate as a creature of spirit to society and world. The dragon referenced is of an east Asian character in that it is not a thundering, lumbering, fire-breathing wyrm, but the animating force or aspect of an element of being. In this conception, there is a dragon of earth, a dragon of air, another of water, and so on. The “Hidden Dragon” of Nod’s Way is that of personhood, the dragon that lives through each of us. Hidden Dragon expresses the ideal of our individual potentials. Think of it as the most perfect possible you—the wisest, most humane, most authentic embodiment of who you can be—drawing into existence by continually seeking to emerge through the material, apparent you. The kernel at the heart of Nod’s Way is that a fully realized individual will express this dragon in every aspect of life, but that the dragon will remain hidden in plain sight by modesty. Put another way, the dragon will be known only by the fact of its expression in the world, not by deliberately calling attention to itself. Simple in plan, I struggle to meet the standard in practice.

One might ask what sobriety and Nod’s Way have to do with each other, or either one with choosing to love, and the question would not surprise. I mulled these topics as three separate issues for a few weeks before it occurred to me that they bind together. Achieving full realization as a spirit creature is difficult if one’s spirit is damped by psychotropes or euphorics of whatever variety. Instead of being hidden by modesty, the dragon is veiled by haze. Such damping reduces the signal or volume or mass of one’s potential for expression of authentic self, of Hidden Dragon, within the landscape of one’s personhood.

Unfortunately, personhood does not contract to embrace the degree of authenticity that remains within the haze, because the construct of personhood is not that rapidly responsive. The most completely aware, thoroughly conscious individuals on the planet still incorporate social mythologies and misconceptions into their architectures of self, and such inclusions are as likely reinforced as undermined by psychotropes. The rest of us, with greater degrees of external defaults grafted wholesale onto our identities, are even less reliably adaptable. When one expresses Hidden Dragon—when you channel the most perfect possible you—the myths and wrong-headedness are more or less mitigated by heightened awareness of one’s ideals. The dragon expands to animate the mask. Damping the dragon, as with coffee or weed, inserts a filter into experience that dilutes both information coming in and expression going out. The dragon retreats or is prevented from manifesting fully.

Personhood, like nature, abhores a vacuum, and where the dragon retreats, yearning and fatuity rush to fill every corner of self-construct from which authenticity has withdrawn. In the worst case, the dragon jewel at one’s core is completely eclipsed by fatuous need, and the sum of what one presents to the world is hunger and trivia. Imagine sporting that fashion on the day you meet your prospective beloved. Try imagining the reaction of someone who sees that face.

I do not intend to suggest that coffee and cannabis are the only possible culprits behind such a lapse. Pathways to inauthenticity are as numerous as the mental gymnastics we perform to justify falling short of ideals. I also do not intend to suggest that use of these two substances explains the burden of inauthenticity I have yet to shed. I, and no other, hold responsibility for expressing or failing to express Hidden Dragon in my life. Without retreating from that position, I may, however, observe that cannabis and coffee are emblematic of an ongoing permission I have given myself to be less than I might. A critical step in erasing that permission requires elimination of attitudes and practices that derive from it.

Choosing to love at a moment when ill-equipped to do so has highlighted that as a creature of spirit I stand at a threshold. To pass through will be to embrace the struggle for authenticity. It will be reaffirming a commitment to Hidden Dragon. That affirmation, I am now convinced, requires discard of the props with which I have fended off the burning serpent of a difficult ideal. Coffee and cannabis are key, both as symbols and as actual contaminants. Typical of my approach to changes of this kind, I am separating from habits long held with a coda of use. Each day, I have a coffee, and I smoke a little cannabis, but now in valediction. As the clock ticks, I step and bow in my last dance with the death wish. The hour of my last coffee and toke approaches, which will be the same hour that I again shoulder the challenge of coming fully into myself. A fruit of that labor, should lightning ever again strike, will be a person whose attention is ever worthy.

_______________________
*The only way to eliminate the risk is by loving selflessly, without hope of return, which is beautiful and perfect and the ultimate requirement of ideality, but that must wait for another meditation. Right now, laboring under a prodigious if metaphorical nose, I ponder love and regret and ways in which the latter may flow from the former.

AUTOGRAPHED E-BOOK!

AVAILABLE NOW!

Thanks to MyWrite, I now offer personalized, autographed e-book versions of Prelude to a Change of Mind and Entranscing, the first two books of The Hidden Lands of Nod. For the same $2.99 price available from Smashwords or Amazon, you can get the most recent authorized edition of either novel—inscribed to you and signed by me!—from this very website. When you purchase an e-book using one of the convenient links accompanying this post, a great boot kicks out from the aether to goad me into action. I enter the MyWrite application, select the purchased title, and inscribe a personalization and autograph. MyWrite inserts these into the purchased title and either e-mails the now unique copy to you or, if the file is large, provides a download link. You receive your purchase in both epub (for most e-book readers) and mobi (for Kindle) formats, so you’re able to feed all your devices. MyWrite is the brainchild of my good friend, Paul Elard Cooley. Besides creating cool applications like MyWrite, Paul is an amazing writer breaking new ground in the realm of horror and dark fantasy, in both print and through the medium of podcasts. Look forward in January to Paul’s very special contribution to the 3000 Weeks project.

A note on 3000 Weeks: It gives me great pleasure to report that contributions and commitments to the project are arriving from amazing people. Besides Paul, we look forward to sharing work from good friends like filmmaker Kat Candler, musician Freddie Steady Krc, actor Gary Warner Kent, artists Alain Viesca, Sasha Pyle, Rocky Kelley and Ashen Gray, poet and translator James Rossignol, photographer and poet Ed Buffaloe, graphic storytellers Bram Meehan and Monica Meehan, novelists M. S. Lewis and Oris Bracken, mosaicist and acupuncturist Mary C. Saunders, conceptualist and sound artist Thomas Fang, musician/artist/videographer Tom Wheeler, songwriter Colin Kennedy Jr., anthropologist/comic book creator/author/artist/etc. Mel White, and many more. Confabule’s editorial director, Amanda Kimmerly, is preparing her own contribution, as well as beginning to select from submissions those that will feature in the e-book album of the project. Even I have begun to scratch my head and wonder what new mischief I might throw into the works. Stay tuned!