The Angel Demon Human Dichotomy

11 December 2011

Transgressive Fiction:

“A literary genre that graphically explores such topics as incest and other aberrant sexual practices, mutilation, the sprouting of sexual organs in various places on the human body, urban violence and violence against women, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships, and that is based on the premise that knowledge is to be found at the edge of experience and that the body is the site for gaining knowledge.”

—Rene Chun

Transgressions Page on Facebook

The most thought provoking and literary violations of the norm.

Dear Porcelain Utopia Blog & Website Readers,

From 11 December 2011 through 16 February, I will be interweaving some of my darker writing, especially that from when I had a psychotic break with reality in 2005 and 2006. The Series “Porcelain Utopia” is just as much a part of me as my inspirational and hopeful messages. To brief you on what to expect in the coming weeks, I’ve defined this genre, which I often find therapeutic, below:

Transgressive Fiction is a genre of literature that focuses on characters that feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways. Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society, protagonists of transgressional fiction may seem mentally ill, anti-social or nihilistic. The genre deals extensively with taboo subject matters such as drugs, sex, violence, incest, and crime.

“A literary genre that graphically explores such topics as incest and other aberrant sexual practices, mutilation, the sprouting of sexual organs in various places on the human body, urban violence and violence against women, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships, and that is based on the premise that knowledge is to be found at the edge of experience and that the body is the site for gaining knowledge.”

-Rene Chun

The New York Times

If you’ve read Henry Miller, Kathy Acker, Charles Bukowski, Anthony Burgess, Chuck Palahniuk, or William S. Burroughs, you’ll be familiar with this genre.

Also I'll be including some chapters and excepts from my memoirs Light Under the Shade from around 2009-2010. And of course the usual inspiring quotations, and day to day blogging. I'm choosing to express myself creatively right here on this website without separating the angel-demon-human, the black and white, the dark and the light--we all have these sides to us--skeletons in our closets, so-to-speak.

Jonathan Harnisch

The Porcelain Utopia Series

Dear Readers,

The Transgressive Fiction Novel "Porcelain Utopia" will begin posting, bits at a time, on 11 December 2011 and the series of these blog posts will end on 012.

This project is my way, my [perhaps not best] decision of switching up the gears a bit--more like, a lot.

The series includes some very explicit material I have written while living through and coping with a severe psychotic break, from 2005 to 2006. It is fiction. Thoughts. My way out of the psychosis.

For similar literature, some less explicit, and some even more 'transgressional,' see the Pages on the Main Menu for Living Colorful Beauty and Lover in the Nobody (my personal favorite).

I will be posting more inspirational memoirs and other positive-minded works, but a warning that beginning tomorrow, I will be opening up a rather "old" door into my darker writing. I have some fear of this change, but rest assured, I do know that my more helpful blogs and work, have and had been working for me, and for us. I might be, in a way, impatiently self-sabotaging by exposing this fictional art; I feel alone with it. So love me, hate me, or ignore the posts ahead. I am an artist at heart. I need to express all sides of the angel-demon-human dichotomy of Jonathan Harnisch.

I'm running with this, regardless of any negative feedback and whatever reader response I do or do not receive.

While the detail is fictional, my art is true.

True art. Real art.

It is art, and while writing, especially art that is so explicitly raw and transgressive--about sex, incest, rape... things like that, if you have any PTSD or similar illness, what will follow through the 16th of Feb. could cause some negative feelings/memories to surface.

As I present this all to the public, I warn: it is much different than my usual material, though it's been published on the Net for the last year or so, just not directly here on these blog posts for Porcelain Utopia--Let me tell you, it's 'way the fuck out there.'

All of it is inherently a part of me--only a part--and as an artist, I simply need to share, though perhaps not within the best choice, using this particular venue.

ANGEL - DEMON - HUMAN 

The Literature Page and other pages on this site, and on Scribd-- even Google--my work has been circulating--both my civic minded material [angel] to the darkest of transgressions [demon]. I feel it's time to publish right here. One has to take chances in Life, and with all the fear of judgement and criticism, I need to give this a shot [human].

Thank you for understanding...

 

MY FIRST RESPONSE: THANK YOU

I mentioned the inevitable upcoming shift to my wife, to first let her know I'm wanting to return to my transgressive literature 'things,' and perhaps in schizophrenic haste, I posted just random chapters and sections of material that is "un-publishable" otherwise. All publishers and people want to see, if not inspirational memoirs, are fucking vampires and murder mysteries. [Junk, in my opinion.] I wanted to warn her, in advance, that my shifting-to-my-roots idea/decision, has nothing to do with her--Nothing that she might have done to cause me to "lose the inspiration"--to not take any of it personally. She didn't. In fact this is what she wrote back with permission for me to re-post:

Honey, I don't think - and wouldn't have thought - that it had anything to do with me, but thank you for letting me know this in advance. Yes, you're right SZ sucks. The only thing I'd suggest, and it's only a suggestion and what you do is up to you, is keep some of the more truly transgressive posts - the ones that get really scatological private for a few days, and then, if you still feel like posting them, then do it, but hold back for a few days, if you can. If you can't, that's okay. It's just once you've put it out there, it's pretty much out there. That's all I'm suggesting. What you just posted just seems honest to me. Life can suck, and SZ certainly makes it suck worse. And if you want, you can repost this message on your blog.

I love you. I personally think you can pull through this and get to another, more positive side, and if you don't, I will still love you.

Love,
Maureen

--

THANK YOU HONEY BABYDUDE!!!

With your mood-fluctuations brought on sometimes due to your physical auto-immune disorder, and due to the shit medications and even vitamins these fucked up doctors give you (and me) :) I just didn't want you to feel like you have failed. You didn't. I believe that I will be better apt to keep whatever random posts I've scheduled through mid-January--I don't even remember what they were, just stuff I pulled from some old dried up file of a book that went to 100 publishers who either responded not at all, or wrote me that my subject matter wouldn't sell in the U.S., maybe the U.K., or Germany: "All we want are Vampire Stories--that's all." So fuck it. I say "fuck" with pride--because I think it's worth a try at writing without any censor.  I might even be able to inspire, perhaps, NOT by writing about how positive things CAN BE (and personally, I WILL be continuing my spiritual quest, meditations, and all of that! That part of me is still there for sure--I'm a fucking Indigo Child! LOL!) But I might "inspire" better by opening the doors to the idea that actually in the moment, things will get better, but for me to shy away from all the G-rated words and this whole Dr. Wayne Dyer, et. al. "I'm a Pioneer in the Positivity Project" (or whatever the fuck it is) --I'll still read them, but I need to remove the censor. My censor. Censor sucks. Censor is like an infomercial: they look great, but the product is a piece of crap.

I know this all kind of came on suddenly and perhaps I'll post in-between the scheduled posts (likely I will, though I cannot for the fuck of me figure out some of this extra website crap, like the goddamn 'Share This' option.) But the idea is for me to forget about the hits, the fans, the followers, the image, the bullshit, and just fucking write as I do in private--not breaking boundaries, nor being way the hell too inappropriate--just to be who the fuck I am, at whatever moment--without making believe it's schizophrenia portrayed in a Disney film, though maybe sometimes--more like the heroin in Trainspotting. I had been not as truthful in the 'sickness of thought' (think Freud!) :) that Sz brings to the table. If something reminds me of scat, I'd like to say that and to say the word "fuck" and just be a little more real, than a 'wanna-be' who will never really ever cure himself or anyone else of schizophrenia. Nor the idea that if something sucks, it's not ONLY about 'Think Positive' (oh, and Jonathan, [sarcastically] don't forget to spell and grammar check, and be all that bull crap editing out the verbal tics on The Real Me podcasts...") Screw that.

I feel the need to still be genuine and real and even positive, but just a bit less censor, no matter the outcome--Nobody shares via 'Share This...' Who the hell cares. Nobody "re-tweets"--then I'm sorry but don't. That's up to whomever is tuned to MY channel, THIS channel. You know? I love you all, but I worry too much, and that's something I've got to let go.

When Life sucks, it sucks. Sure one can think of something they're grateful for to distract, but I don't want to distract from the subject: Life Sucks. And when it's good, it's good!

Just some random excerpts in between now and January. And less of this Disney shit, and more like we need to be 18+ to hear the word "shit." I mean, I was fooling myself.

I am who I am.

You are who you are (I mean to my general audience). Take it or leave it (this site). At least for the moment, I don't give a flying hoot if people unsubscribe from my feed or unfollow me on Twitter, for any reason.

Anyway, honey, that's what I'm talking about. Just "whatever," you know? Thank you for understanding.

Love,

Jonathan

[caption id="attachment_2097" align="alignleft" width="64" caption="-Jonathan Harnisch"][/caption]

Transgressions to Come

10 December 2011

Re: Transgressions to Come

In this mad world only we the mad are sane.

Transgressions Page on Facebook: The most thought provoking and literary violations of the norm.

Dear Readers,

Today has been quite frustrating between my own illness and my wife being ill—it seems that everyone’s got things and people in their lives that/whom are ill, sick, not well, and as confused as this damn illness of schizophrenia makes me feel, that I cannot get much of anything done, I perhaps turned my thoughts, art, and work, into a catastrophe—a transgression.

The truth is, at least right now that Life does suck, and in celebration of that, as well as simply because I cannot seem to get myself to write anything all that positive, I have chosen to just post random transgressions, in a blog series called “Porcelain Utopia,” which will run from December 10^th 2011 through I believe January 8^th or 9^th of 2012, coming close to the day I turn 36 years old—the 17^th. The series will not consist of anything in the self-help or inspirational genre, but I seem to be losing some cognition, as my life, though I have my good days, it’s just not currently, truly in my heart these days—I cannot get my website running right, and just “fucked up mental psycho bullshit”—that’s how I am used to writing. I have been paid to write like that in the past—my trade, I am a published writer of erotica, and I’ve scheduled some posts along those lines though January.

The truth is this schizophrenia takes away everything the sufferer has, and I want to warn you in advance that I think I might be changing my style, and bring both this blog, and even The Real Me Podcast back to The Transgressive Literature of Jonathan Harnisch: the way it all began. It’s just like, fuck it!

—You know? Who are we kidding? Schizophrenia can go to hell. Switching gears, I might end up changing my mind about all this, and I’m sure I’ll start receiving more hate mail than the wonderful thank yous but—this fucking thing is eating me alive, and the holidays aren’t helping, believe me. I fucking hate the holidays. This site is at about 100,000 hits, and that frightens me, it’s not even been a year, and that’s quite a success. I’m not used to success. Success frightens me. I need a goddamn break—A fucking fix; a change with all of this.

Other than that—relate with me through the transgressions of Sz, or just never mind me. It’s just one of those days, where I feel like redefining this whole “stay real and positive” thing. It really only goes all so far; the shit always returns.

So there it is—boy do I hate posting this kind of material, in a way—I know it’s likely startling—and what’s about to come; just rubbish—Henry Miller/Kathy Acker kind of ‘junk.’ The inspiration is just no longer here.

Again this has nothing to do with anyone but myself. I simply feel like a failure, and I can’t seem to function right, as much as I try. So—there goes my positive public image—and to my wife, if you think it’s better for me to take this post and all the scheduled posts down, I can log you in, but I’ll need someone else to keep the inspiration going until I “return.” Basically I think I’m pretty much done with all of this—the site, the image, the damn holidays—the sickness. To hell with this schizophrenic psycho bullshit—how’s that for being real? Also for being the real dick that anyone who has known me [from my much darker past] to remember me by—I have not changed underneath the veil of being a ‘wanna-be.’ So, that’s where I am.

With Sincerity,

Jonathan Harnisch

On the Bus Trailer: Second Version

On the Bus Trailer: Second Version

[vimeo 33260758 w=601 h=338]

ON THE BUS: TRAILER [VERSION 2] from Jonathan Harnisch on Vimeo.

Where Love and Grief are Eternally Entwined

Jonathan Harnisch

On the Bus: Trailer 2

"ON THE BUS" TRAILER: SECOND VERSION

Distributed in 24 countries in 2013. Video clip no longer available.

[vimeo 33260758 w=601 h=338].

Where Love and Grief are Eternally Entwined

[caption id="attachment_8852" align="alignleft" width="125"] Porcelain Utopia[/caption]

 

Sz Magazine: A Terrific Resource

 

[caption id="attachment_2009" align="aligncenter" width="535" caption="Demystifying Mental Illness from the Perspective of a Survivor"][/caption]

A TERRIFIC RESOURCE:

Sz Magazine:

http://www.mentalwellnesstoday.com/

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2iZXbT5R9k?rel=0]



 

 

 

 

 

-JH