There are very few of us who are capable of actually seeing the possibilities and the options, and when you scream all night long, year after year, and no one can interpret either the meaning or the source of your rage, your rage will fester. When this festering turns into a kind of gangrenous spirit, all the cheapness and pettiness and dying in you will expand, eventually taking the place of love and kindness and ambition. I have decided not to let these things carry me further down a black hole. It has been three years since I started Monastrell Publishing, and I see its possibilities as clearly as I ever did. In fact, I see them tenfold. And the old way was clearly not working. The old way, which was tested and collapsed by others as much as it was nourished and sustained by me -and then conversely assailed by me and carried by others- had come to be more about support systems and concepts and theory and possibilities, and I have not been allowed to write with focus or clarity in nearly three years. This has enraged me. No matter who you are, and no matter what you have done for me, or Monastrell, or Sam: I will never love you as I love my own work, and as I love Sam. As THE PORTABLE GENE GREGORITS and FISHHOOK 2, books which I invested enormous amounts of time in, began to present themselves to me as commercial failures, and as DO YOU LOVE ME and BUGHOUSE SNATCH materialized in my mind as entertaining but essentially shallow books of exploitation and SELF-exploitation, when I am capable of such heights as a prose writer, if cared for, if supported, if given the TIME, I was forced to realize that due to the efforts of shallow, predatory, inept, and vindictive journalists, particularly locally here in Florida, but also beyond Florida, I would not be allowed to gain the level of exposure which would facilitate the composition of my epic narrative, Intra-Coastal: One Year On St. Pete Beach. My solution, in a fit of rage, was to rid myself of my own supporters, most of whom, in truth, have not supported me at all. Why get rid of those who have and WERE supporting me also? Thats difficult to answer, but I suppose in anger, I opted for a repugnant kind of machoism in which IO could demonstrate my base autonomy, because it is that which I cherish most about myself. Because it IS that autonomy with which I have resisted the efforts of envious people, and also of my own victims, to destroy me over the years. It IS that autonomy, that pain threshold, that genius, which has saved me, and my work, and my cats, from complete annihilation when the rats, the vipers, the vultures, were winning. I have now crippling arthritis in both of my hands, and my back is essentially ruined from too many years of heavy and untrained lifting. But with my return to work, and my distancing (and hopefully, eventual COMPLETE withdraw) from social media, I may be able to reverse much of the psychological and spiritual damage which I have done to myself over the course of so much exhibitionism, during the turning inside out of both my body and mind, all of this performed simply in the pursuit of an expansion of that beautiful and necessary catharsis which I brought to screaming life in the pages of my novels DOG DAYS VOLUME ONE and DOG DAYS VOLUME TWO. None of this has anything to do with you, and that is my contention: I will share it, if it is desired, but I will not continue to do so for free, nor will I put any more time, at the expense of my cat and myself and my writing, campaigning for projects which are ignored and criticized while every day I see the most infantile and grotesquely pointless and heartless work receiving tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of dollars. When I see the possibilities, even if it means a further scouring of my body and mind, I must do what it is right. I have asked you to stand beside me. You merely stand there silently, gawking at me through protective glass. I must go back to work. Thank you, all of you, who have tried to see where all of this is actually heading. Maybe in a year, when this book is finished, I will have some of you back. Maybe in a week, or a month, if these words are circulated, you will understand my behavior. Maybe you will also understand my achievement so far, in publishing, and in surviving countless efforts to defraud and silence me. I will take on as many dishwashing jobs as it takes to preserve my enterprise. I will tear myself limb from limb. Gene Gregorits
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 06:45:29 +0000
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