on thinking, and failing, teaching, and moving on

I am thinking about Lyn Hejinian. I used to do this a lot. I was optimistic and had time to think about the relationship between theory and practice in writing. I have more often since spent time jumping around from one quick thing to another, focused on teaching any variety of introductory topics in writing, in composition, jumping around trying to send things out to be rejected by publishers. But right now I am thinking about *rejecting closure* and I am going back to the text. And the text means more to me now, or means differently, 12 or so years after initially encountering the essay and finishing  my MFA, two years after finishing a Ph.D., a process which has/had its own effect on thinking about form and the open text. I am reopening to rejecting closure, or opening differently. Hejinian writes:

"The implication (correct) is that the words, and the ideas (thoughts,      
perceptions, etc.--the  materials) continue beyond the work. One has simply 
stopped because one has run out of units of minutes, and not because a 
conclusion has been reached nor "everything" said."

I often have drawn analogies between (open) writing and real life. Teaching what Bernstein calls "difficult" poetry, teaching innovative or experimental work, one has to think about how to articulate ideas about form. Form is at times like life: it is messy; we don't think in linear, coherent narrative ways; we rarely reach conclusions but rather spend much more time in the process; the thinking or the work exceeds the parameters of the work...etc. Hejinian writes, "Form is not a fixture but an activity."

It would serve well to keep this in mind in other ways. The process, the activity is what is important. As writers, we are supposed to enjoy the process, love the activity of writing, feel vocationally drawn to the work. The point is not to focus on worldly success and publication popularity. But it is, or it has become. Ultimately it doesn't matter what I teach my students or how I spend my writing time and practice if I don't have the more important things to put on my CV: publications in nationally recognized presses, fellowships, and brand-name awards. And this is confirmed constantly. I am looking for places to send my poetry manuscripts. I look up the judge of a current contest. She has studied with important(ly recognized) poets. On her blog, she write:

 ..."Every time I checked it[Facebook], there were ecstatic statuses like “My book just got picked up!” “My children’s book just won a big award!” “I just got a giant grant!” etc. And I was really happy for everyone. Really happy. Happy. Really. Until, as the night wore on and I wore out, all of the success started feeling like constant tiny pinpricks. And, to make it worse, if it wasn’t good news about writing or publishing it was pictures of their super stylish, cozy fireplaces. And suddenly I didn’t feel like writing anymore, I felt like feeling sorry for myself. I felt like I should get a full time job being the Director of Feeling Sorry for Myself." (go here: http://adalimon.blogspot.com/)

I spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. But lately I have been thinking, maybe I am just tired, exhausted, cynical, out of energy for the kinds of things I am supposed to be doing to be a successful person. I cannot do the writing and revising and submitting of all of the different projects which make me an attractive candidate for jobs. I cannot do the lengthy applications and get reference letters for distinguished residencies and fellowships. I don't want to apply for things that will take me out of the country for extended periods of time because I would miss my dog too much, and where would she go while I was gone? I have to teach a lot of classes to pay the bills and so I hardly have time to think about the kinds of projects I want to do. Or, rather, the projects I want to do (new essay writing projects, writing small poems for fun, thinking about how to write a novel of my own...) are completely distorted by the lists of writing and publishing I should be doing for professionalizing purposes. And this makes me feel schizophrenic, and exhausted. I was reading an article recently, which I may or not have marked to go back and find later, written by a woman who for years wrote on a *successful* blog about I can't remember what in relation to her academic field of interest. The blog had many readers, received positive feedback and comments regularly, was a personally fulfilling endeavor for the writer. And she decided to give it up, in order to economize I guess, to focus more time on other (more professionally recognizable) kinds of publishing in her academic realm. (Oh wait, I did save it, here it is: What's the Point of Academic Publishing?)  And interestingly, she is a fiction writer. I say interesting, because one would think there would be more room in the academic creative writing world for more freedom of writing and publishing (than say in the academic literature world, which can be oppressive in terms of publications and resume building), which is in fact, becoming less and less true. 

And so I am ruining what little is left of my academic career by writing this nonsense here. But then I also read this, from the poet quoted above:

"I tried to remember my old meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, at the Tibet House in New York City—where I first learned how to be more myself—and what she said about “sympathetic joy.” She writes: “The term is unusual; sympathy is commonly used in the sense of feeling bad for others. Learning to share their joy revolutionizes our thinking about where we can find happiness. Usually we rejoice in what we get, not in what others have. But sympathetic joy is a practice of generosity." 

"It’s one of the four brahmavihāras (Buddhist virtues). And apparently, I’m bad at it. Something that happens to me when I am faced with a barrage of other people’s good news is, I make a list of all my failures. Here's where I take a deep breath and admit this: The novel that I've been working on for three years--that has so much life in it, so many great characters, small powerful moments, well-crafted rants--doesn't work. And I guess I’m finally ready to say that out loud. It’s hard to admit that something you’ve focused on for 3 years is a failure. But it’s true and I’m better at other things—like poetry, like walking the dog."
I do that, I list my failures. Though I have also been practicing, making a more concerted effort at being more happy for other people. And I am also a failure, or I have been failing at many of the things I have been working on, not for three years, but for almost 15 years. I have an MFA, a Ph.D., and no real books that count in the academic creative world, or in the regular world for that matter. Even part-time instructors get hired now, because they have publications and are known as writers, into jobs that shouldn't require such kinds of CV glamorizing. Instead of spending extra time in my Ph.D. program (it took seven years as it was) to publish papers before finishing the dissertation, I finished the dissertation and graduated, which would seem like an accomplishment. But really, the people getting the academic jobs publish first, graduate second, and then get jobs while they are still fresh(ly indoctrinated), before they have time to learn about the violence of academia from an outsider perspective.

And yet, I have come back to Hejinian, because instead of reading her as a student, I am now teaching her essay. Even though no one else can see the kinds of successes that happen in my classroom except me (and students realize success in different ways during or after any particular semester of a class), I have learned, continually, so much from teaching. I have learned about myself. I have learned how to have faith in people. I always learn new ideas and new ways of thinking about material that we read and discuss together, whether I have read it a hundred times before or never encountered it at all previously. And although teaching is exhausting, and one cranky student can wipe me out completely, the fulfillment that happens when one student shares a feeling of accomplishment, or a realization, or says thank you, or grows in a way that is so amazing to me to watch is an irreplaceable feeling of fulfillment. I have had amazing students, and I hope I help some of them to be the people they are in the world. Some of them I know are better and stronger and more confident writers when they leave the class at the end of the semester. And some of them may be more thoughtful people when they leave too.

But none of that goes on my CV, not really. Instead my long list of teaching experience, my narratives about teaching in my application letters, highlight the fact that I spend much more time teaching and thinking about teaching than writing and publishing. This isn't actually true though either. I spend so much time thinking about writing and publishing, and I spend a lot of time sending out submissions for possible publishing, and I get a lot of rejections. I am failing at that all around. And I would prefer to have more time for writing and publishing, because I know that part of the problem is not having enough time to go deeper, in terms of writing and revising, and being thoughtful and doing better research for publishing. But I also know I need to focus on the kinds of writing projects that are important to me, and not to some other fuzzy world entity that I imagine is judging me.

And I don't have any answers, but I love this section from Hejinian's essay:

"Because we have language we find ourselves in a special and peculiar relationship to the objects, events, and situations which contitute what we imagine of the world. Language generates its own characteristics in the human psychological and spiritual conditions. Indeed, it nearly is our psychological condition.

"This psychology is generated by the struggle between language and that which it claims to depict or express, by our overwhelming experience of the vastness and uncertainty of the world, and by what often seems to be the inadequacy of the imagination that longs to know it--and, furthermore, for the poet, the even greater inadequacy of the language that appears to describe, discuss, or disclose it. This psychology situates desire in the poems itself, or,  more specifically, in poetic language, to which then we may attribute the motive for the poem.

"Language is one of the principal forms our curiosity takes. It makes us restless." Yes it does. And I wouldn't give this up, even if sometimes I let it make me crazy. 

And this, in part, is why I write, why I am interested in the kinds of writing that I read (like Hejinian), and why I teach.

 

the form of content

how detroit is half full, of color, graffiti lines etched
on a postcard, coral against blue, outline of a skyscraper

a skyscraper, against a forest, can you hear it, in color
like graffiti that is art, publicly, on a wall, that is a city

a quixotic illusion of space, on a horse or in a dream
a city is a heart full of water, pumping, like life in the veins of an ocean

an ocean of coral colored art, on posters that surround the city
of water, against a building of glass and dreams, or excursions

from one story into another, adventure etched in lines
on a wall, against a city, as large as Quixote, as real as the fantastical

postcard, layered in blues, pumping like veins half full
of illusion and scenery, a windmill falling, a knight striving

a striving etched in opposite pages, of space, layered in colored graffiti
like an ocean, told on walls, in grooves, at the very tip of the tallest building

you have to use words...

on Frank O'Hara's long poem Second Avenue:


"Second Avenue is a poem of brilliant excess and breakneck inventiveness, beginning: "Quips and players, seeming to vend astringency off-hours, / celebrate diced excesses and sardonics, mixing pleasures, / as if proximity were staring at the margin of the plea. . . ." This is language in love with itself. The poem is dedicated to Mayakovsky, one of O'Hara's great heroes (though an early draft is inscribed to de Kooning), and certainly the images throughout are as wide-ranging and as startling as Mayakovsky's, but they arrive more rapidly and with less continuity, jostling for attention, a bewildering mixture. Moreover, they do not have Mayakovsky's large, carrying, unifying voice. O'Hara himself explained: "where Mayakovsky and de Kooning come in, is that they both have done works as big as cities where the life in the work is autonomous (not about actual city life) and yet similar." Here the result is a highly mosaic-like, patterned surface. "The verbal elements," by the poet's own insistence, "are extended consciously to keep the surface of the poem high and dry, not wet, reflective and self-conscious." But it is perhaps the most difficult of all accomplishments in art, the texture of surface appearance. "Perhaps," O'Hara continues, "the obscurity comes in here, in the relationship between the surface and the meaning, but I like it that way since the one is the other (you have to use words) and I hope the poem to be the subject, not just about it." At this point O'Hara began adapting the processes of surrealism to the conception of poetic form founded on the idea that the poem is an enactment of the actuality of perception and the realization of thinking. The achievement of a form, then, which was also the imperative of Abstract Expressionism, brought O'Hara into the creative ambience of the painters.""

more: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/frank-ohara

John Keene's Blog: http://jstheater.blogspot.com/



Letters from a Seducer by Hilda Hilst, translated by John Keene, with an introduction by Bruno Carvalho

under glass

i painted you

against a wall

in a gallery

seen over
these words

under glass
 
silence of words
misplaced

on canvas

out of the world

like fog

under glass

words covered

in paint

against a wall

Poems in Split Lip

See new poems from a collaborative project with Laura Wetherington and Hannah Ensor in Split Lip: http://www.splitlipmagazine.com/

if you could, the dishwasher. and then some, the snow. in any case, some cheese. on another hand, sitting stationary. in this case, hunger. I'll tell you what, scraping by. somehow soon, the dog. if you please, my finger. and then some, more blankets. if one might suggest, ham with the cheese.if you could, there is still light lingering above. if you will, the sharing of the laundry. I might add, I have been reading the poems. in this case, a degree of language. and then some, metaphor. if one might be so inclined, the continuous warming. in this case, a continuous freezing. one might suggest, more cleaning. one might suggest, fewer accidents. one might consider, an improved condition. in any case, a layering of cold. in every case, the accumulation. if you could, the litany of requests. if you might, the perseverance. I might add, the scales of the fish, shimmering, just before. one might suggest, cooking thoroughly. if you are inclined, the tender caress of buttons. if you please, domestic bliss. if you please, a consideration of geography. one might imagine, the topography of emotion. one might imagine, texture. one might encounter, exactly this moment.

SPECIAL EVENT Teach in for Education in Michigan

INVITATION FOR STUDENTS, FACULTY & COMMUNITY
TEACH-IN:

On The Education Achievement Authority
December 3, 2013

Informational Picketing at 9:00 am Outside Welch Hall
Teach-In to Follow: 10-12:00 at Halle Library Auditorium
Hosted by: Professors Steven Camron & Rebecca Martusewicz

THEMES:
* How the EAA threatens democratic principles – a community speaksout,
corporate reform run amuck
* The relationship between the EAA and EMU – tarnishing our
University’s reputation & enrollment
* Destructive Pedagogy – how the EAA’s instructional practices run
counter to research and best practices, and may harm children
Invited Guests/Presenters: (In addition to select EMU faculty)
* Dr. Tom Pedroni, Professor, Wayne State University
* Rep. Ellen Lipton, State Representative, Harper Woods
* Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, State Senator, Taylor
* Ms. Brooke Harris, former Teacher, EAA School
* Mr. Christopher Turkaly, former Teacher, EAA School
* Mr. Delbert Glaze. Former Teacher, EAA School
* Ms. Elena Herrada, Board member, Detroit Public Schools
* Ms. Michelle Fecteau, Member, Michigan State Board of Education

Please come and learn more and become an active champion for public

education!
More information contact: Steven Camron, scamron@emich.edu or Rebecca
Martusewicz, rmartusew@emich.edu

Petition:

"We, the faculty members of the College of Education, respectfully request that the university's participation in the inter-local agreement that created the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) be severed immediately." 

Will you sign the petition too? Click here to add your name: 

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/eastern-michigan-university?source=s.fwd&r_by=6268646 

Background:
The EAA is a statewide school district designated to take over failing schools.  Currently all schools in its jurisdiction are in Detroit, but the state superintendent wants to add more schools.  There are many problems with this model for failing schools including the mishandling of special needs students and the lack of accountability. Teachers at these schools loose their seniority, retirement benefits and contractual representation. 
The leadership of Eastern Michigan University (EMU) entered into this inter-local agreement that created the Education Achievement Authority (EAA). There were assumtions that members of the education faculty at Eastern would be actively engaged in the EAA -- misleading the citizens of the state; the professional educators of the state; AND the students of the University. The fact is EMU faculty were not invited to give input into such an arrangement or asked for their expertise as researchers and professionals in the complex and varied aspects of education (school administration, teacher development, and student achievement) as the EAA was established. To date, the faculty have been excluded from any direct participation in the creation or implementation of its policies, operating procedures, professional development, curricula or pedagogical practices, many of which the faculty find questionable at best. 

Furthermore, the faculty find the undermining of democratic processes represented in the creation of a district outside the purview of public decision-making and oversight to be in direct conflict with this university's mission and legacy as a champion of public education. This violation of our principles is now beginning to affect our historically strong relationship with local schools. Many local districts are boycotting the placement of our student teachers in their schools in protest of the EAA. 

Poem

for Nicki

I don’t hate it when the sun shines

but when you

(or Billy Collins for that matter)

and on and on

like when the sun is shining

hits that old pumpkin, curving in on itself

a speck of tarnished rind

the porch step

and the sun, direct, post-Halloween intention

what we almost forgot

when you for example (or Billy or Billy) turn

when you turn that particular corner, and the light

of 8am hits the corner of your eye

when the sun at 8am, and you don’t expect

falling, like pumpkins, off the porch, like leaves 

(stop there before you

like yellow all over the ground, or snow

yellow under the snow before it melted, turned still

holding court this last moment, when the sun

blasting, a bright red chair

a moment, and you

a little hokey, but you

almost lost against the sun, 8am, a chair

falling like pumpkins, this little

instant, a slant of light

an exercise in detail

think of the qualities that you would like to include. write those qualities. name them. insert a person into those qualities. make the person come alive. enact embody those qualities. show how that person is this way or that way or how this person embodies the aspects of this thing or how that character behaves when such and such happens. consider the qualities that people have. write down these qualities. imagine that you are a person with qualities that are like the qualities that other people have. show yourself your qualities in a way that show many people acting and behaving and embroiled in situations. these are the qualities that make up groups crowds communities of people.imagine community. where is utopia exactly? what are the qualities of utopia? who has the qualities that fit with those of the people of utopia? think of the characteristics that you have that you would like to give away. think of the characteristics that you want to acquire. are these qualities like inherent or are these add and subtract sorts of practices? are you talking about your own or your character? imagine the character and quality of your invented persona. make these traits speak on the page. create an embodiment of a person. include behavior. include mannerism. imagine happenings. create space. think of every element and put those into action. include community. create solitude or construct crowds. where exactly is this embodied and embroiled imagining?

The Student Media Board (The Eastern Echo/Cellar Roots, etc.) is now accepting applications for Editor in Chief for 2013-2014 of the award winning literary and arts journal Cellar Roots.  The deadline for applying is Thursday, October 17 at noon. Applicants must be currently enrolled at EMU as a graduate or undergraduate student, must remain enrolled throughout their tenure as EIC and must be registered for at least four credit hours for graduate students or six credit hours for undergrads. 

If you know of any students interested in applying for this position, please direct them to email me at Kevin.Devine@emich.edu for more information and application instructions.  They might also be interested in reviewing past issues, available here in Student Media, 230 King Hall or online at www.CellarRoots.com prior to applying.

on Anzaldua's Borderlands

a moment of thoughtfulness on a linguistically dense text...

http://walnutshellwarrior.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/i-was-once-told-writing-never-needs-a-disclaimer/

EMU Creative Writing

The Blog seems to be up and running:

http://cw.emuenglish.org/

it is nighttime i am bothered i am sorry to bother you it is this hour at this hour it is nighttime and i am still, here, in this state. can you be bothered to rearrange or to dismantle or to create a new language entirely for this. i am sorry to put you to this test. this request. it is morning it is nighttime and i was dreaming of sloths in costa rica and pad plumbing or plumbers or the man who won't stop talking over my voice. so sorry to rearrange your world for this but can i bother you, the plumber, any amount of sewage or retaliatory life lesson. in the nighttime i am dreaming and there is another country and there are bombs and there is a movie. but we don't watch the movie we are the movie and you are rearranging the furniture the couch over here no the couch over here no i think the couch over here. in the morning i think i was dreaming but the couch is gone and the sewage is piled in corners and it smells like lavender excrement and forestalled love (i wrote you 1000 love letters). in the morning i think i was reading and imagined your fictional process. i was bothered and feared you were rearranged but your words are the same, on the page, though the sounds drift through my head and i remember when it was nighttime, in the mountains, and there was an optimism a language a lesson in indigenous flowers and local vegetation, the fresh night air, and morning.

can you hear me dance. like I haven't danced before. The ringing of incantation the music in my ears the sound of life going on about. It might be said that I have been singing along all this time. There is some optimism somewhere along the road and it is written on music paper. The sound of the text. The resonance of an alternative existence. I have no hope that we will survive the environmental apocalypse that we have already begun. But I do believe in the power of subversion. Other kinds of thinking and practice. Renegade lifestyles. Innovative outlets for creativity and thinking and existing in the world. While corporations and packaging engineers are causing the collapse of the world around us we sing and proliferate DIY entertainment. Music festivals in the woods. Handmade socks. Canned tomatoes. I just made some jam, wrote a non-narrative poem, painted my car chartreuse, took a low-pay job with flexible hours so I could spend more time making beautiful pictures. We are saving cities and riding bikes and creating communities. We are saving our butts and saving our lives. Driving off road staying off expressways moving out of cubicles. We don't have health insurance but we eat organic, set up free libraries in our yards, volunteer, listen to stories of abuse, fight institutional neglect and exploitation, maintain a work ethic in the face of apathy and ignorance, focus on the students and try to keep out the ramblings of institutional b.s., nevermind the lack of resources the lack of respect the lack of concern for quality and thoughtful pedagogy. We are making our way and creating new pathways, opening possibilities and giving hope, continuously thinking about other ways to go about this. If the sun is heating up and the rain is dying down, or the forests are becoming deserts and we are having hurricanes in the midwest at least we can say that we tried are trying want to try to be more human better human to make these moments count for more than counting profits.

Born this Way

Lady Gaga won’t be wearing any meat this year to the music awards. No poultry. No Vegetables. This year, “We’re going more with textiles.” Let’s make our flaws famous. Wear a bra around town. Gain 25 pounds. Lose it. Wear safety pins. A wig. Another wig. A weave, extensions, short, long, two-tone. Paint your face. Show off your “curvy figure” your “curvy figure” your “curvy figure” their way of saying you are getting fat or is that just another outfit. It’s a style. You can wear a helmet of flowers around your whole head or you can be fat. Does anyone even know you’re fat if the captions dodn’t mention it under every picture? If you were thin before 25lbs isn’t fat. You don’t look fat. But curvy is code. Tall shoes short shoes black dress brown hair blonde bouffant spikey pink and streaked you are fat because fat is unusual. Let’s make our flaws famous. Take off the makeup get fat don’t brush your hair wear yellow underwear. You were born this way. Bullies were born this way too. Be kind. Be different. Be yourself. Wear what you want. Eat meat. Or don’t. Have a dog that looks like a baby bear. Dress like a man from the 1950s. Be a woman and be a man be both or neither or alternate between as your mood changes. Create a color scheme for each emotional moment. Use geometric design. Wear hats. Make your hat speak out loud. Encourage the youth. You are a spokesperson for people to go beyond or go over or go under. Be loud or quiet but do it in your own way. Wear pants. Or don’t. The trick is to learn to exist “halfway between fantasy and reality all of the time.” She completely turns the page on the last decade’s era of bimbodom, taking back the limelight from women who made their careers by admitting that they had nothing to say…She closes a strange era in female pop stardom…She’s riveting in any language, with lyrics that compose their own Esperanto…she’s effortlessly global. She wants to promote images of as many sexual combinations as are possible on this Earth…she’s a girl who likes boys who look like girls…she’s a girl who likes to look like a boy herself—a drag queen, a boy pretending to be a girl…little gives her more pleasure than the persistent rumor that she is a hermaphrodite…That’s not Madonna. Madonna wouldn’t pretend she has a penis. She is pop art, creative design color style experimentation. Creativity is stupid imaginary free space open to ideas and the outlandish which is only outlandish because it is unexpected, outside of some mainstream norm which comes from nowhere in particular or comes from resignation or an easy total lack of creativity. Splashes of color, swatches of fabric, complex engineering. She is an art project in process. The art student set free from the boundaries of the institution. Music color shape shadow nuance re-presentation, the abstract surreal realist avant-garde installation art in 3D walking through town shopping on stage talking with Ellen and the asshole Howard Stern. For Warhol, stardom was its own art form, empty imagistic vividness one of the most important forces. Become the performance. Art is life. Leave the love behind. Embody the artistic vision. Become androgyny. Become a drag queen. (Friends say that she has not been in love since, and the ritualistic killing of male lovers in her last three videos is related to this breakup.)…It’s an unlikely rise, and an unlikely name, and a totally unreal image. But what’s reality? Or maybe it’s a better version of reality or a more open one. This real is pushed to the margins, or it's homogenized, sanitized, softened making a center into which everyone aspires. Until they realize what they’ve lost and can’t get back. More real exists on the margins. More kids are bullied. More art students believe in creative possibilities…until they leave art school and are out in the world. Little kids write poems and paint pictures and play dress-up until they are adults conforming in khakis and conservatism. Women give up on dreams leave their intuition behind let go of imagination unless it is mainstream-sanctioned motherhood activities like arts and crafts at the kitchen table. Art is for non-professional non-adults who have no responsibilities and little ambition. Until someone wears a shiny red plastic dress and red glitter face paint to meet the Queen of England and the rest of us turn our un-hatted heads and consider there may be a different way of doing things. Just maybe the status is not in quo.

quotes and italics from random People Magazine web pages on Lady Gaga and from “Growing Up Gaga: The self-invented, manufactured, accidental, totally on-purpose New York creation of the world’s biggest pop star.”  New York Magazine. By Vanessa Grigoriadis, Published Mar 28, 2010

GZ: Superhero

It's like a movie. You get fed up. You blow something up. Or you fall down and cry. Or you shoot. Or you become paranoid. Or maybe paranoid happens over time. A slow boil. A rumbling toward a breaking point. Or many breaking points. Only eventually one break is one too many. What do you do in your spare time. I mean your other spare time. When you're not paranoid or obsessed with what's outside your window.  What are you looking at inside? Not inside yourself, that might make you a different person, less paranoid less rationalizing of the irrational. I mean inside your house. How many movies have you watched? How many movies with good guys and bad guys and action and explosions and shooting? How many movies with a scary bad guy sneaking around hiding in the shadows ducking out of the way until the good guy looks down for just a second? The bad guy comes out of nowhere. Hits the good guy in the face. "What you want? Why you watching me? I'm gonna kill you motherfucker." You know in the movies, when the bad guy circles the good guy's car staring menacingly in through the rolled up windows. The good guy notices the bad guy has a hand in his waistband hiding a gun or a knife. The bad guy disappears and the good guy gets out to follow (because otherwise the plot would stall the action would never move to the conflict and fight scene). The good guy follows but can't see the bad guy. The good guy has 911 on the phone but then says the bad guy is gone. Hangs up. Starts walking away. Feels nervous. Looks for his phone but this time he can't find it (which pocket? oh crap which pocket?). Caught unaware he is hit in the nose (because bad guys like evil nemeses can appear without sound in a flash and catch the bad guys off guard... that's why we cheer for the good guys, they come from behind to triumph win over evil) staggers gets knocked to the ground. Bad guy "you got a problem?" Good guy: "no." Bad guy: "you do now." And before he knows it the good guy is down head on cement bleeding can't get up. Bad guy holds him down. Good guy: "help!" Bad guy: "shut the fuck up." Bad guy slams good guy's head into cement. Bad guy: "you're gonna die tonight motherfucker." Bad guy reaches for good guy's gun holstered at good guy's waist. Good guy gets a surge of adrenaline. Suddenly pushes back. Grabs his gun first. Good guy puts the gun to bad guy's chest and pulls the trigger. Bad guy: "you got me." Bad guy sits up sways a little. Good guy pushes him off down to the ground face down gets on top of him spreads his arms out to the sides to keep him at bay. While the bad guy dies. This is the screenplay for GZ: Superhero. It's already half written. You wrote it. In your own words. GZ neighborhood protector. GZ local hero watching out for dangerous potholes and piles of trash. Calling 911 on kids playing in the street, kids playing basketball, dogs wandering aimlessly. GZ calling 911 on suspicious black men wearing tank tops, leather jackets, sweatshirts. GZ has studied the law. GZ wants to be a police officer. GZ can protect the people take down criminals has a gun goes on patrol wants to be a judge one day. GZ is ready to kill the bad guy. In the non-movie version the bad guy is a kid barely verging on adulthood. The bad guy is not a bad guy but a kid walking home from the store. The kid who is mistaken for a bad guy has candy in his pocket no criminal record no record of violence walks home in the rain talking to his friend on the phone. The kid  weighs 80lbs less than you GZ. In the silent version unwritten the kid tried to run away instead got caught on a movie set shot dead with not-fake blood.