Thursday, January 28, 2010

"It means what it says"


(quote: Samuel Beckett , Video: Trailer for Vice's Travel Guide to Liberia)



Traveling more for work these days. Long pre-dawn drives. And it's almost worth it to see the sun come up over flat southern Idaho while you race toward it at 92 mph and ambient electronica is beamed into your gleaming rental car from space. And it's almost worth it to stand out in the ice and listen to semis go farting by and fumble with numb fingers for tools or buttons on the keyboard. And it's almost worth it to drive around weird old railroad towns bumping Jay Electronica and looking for a place to smoke. And it's almost worth it to be the strange man alone in a booth that you would have pondered endlessly as a child. Worth it to overhear a conversation at the bar and note that the overweight middle-aged women with real estate agent poise and her broken-English boyfriend are talking about the same things that you've uttered in recent weeks: "Oaxaca is a fun word to say","It seems like everyone has read Three Cups of Tea but me",and "after the winter solstice, it only gets better." Worth it when you hear a woman say she's from Michigan and it takes a few moments before you realize that matters--not that I forget.
Spending tonight in Pocatello, Idaho where the prettiest girl in town walks into bars with the only guy that tried. And the railroad could have never imagined what the freeway would do for business. And men who own tire stores are famous. And others with weeding rings foist themselves upon hotel-bar-comedy nights and try to find the humor in losing their job. Rolling in at dusk you can watch the sun set orange on the rock factory's plume.





The book is really close. Behind schedule, but for mostly good reasons. April? Somewheres around then after the 'other-than-actual-writing' dust settles.
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Saturday, January 16, 2010

"But maybe the scorpion, not wanting to be saved, had stung itself to death


(quote: Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano , video: Aesop Rock and magOwl Bazooka Beard)



It's a chicken and egg scenario. Do I do these things because I am a writer, or do I write because I do these things? Despite the lack of updates on this blog, 2009 was my most productive and critical period of writing thus far. I moved to Idaho with the express intent that I would learn how to write, only this summer has that decision begun to bear fruit. But the chicken and egg: I watch people. I pay a lot of attention to the people passing me by. I study them when I'm sitting in bars and restaurants, waiting in line, grocery shopping, pumping gas, filing onto airplanes, pedaling by on the Green Belt. There was a time when I liked to craft intricate back-stories about these people that I paid attention to. And then eventually, now, I try to summarize them the best I can and presume one hidden thing about them. If that man is divorced, how does it affect the way he glances at his watch. If her baby's father left her, what does it feel like to check the stroller in as luggage. If he went to prison, how does it feel to drink that beer, or pay for it, or talk to the pretty girl next to him. And the snippets of conversation you hear are the best. "Don't touch my records or my cowboy boots" , "forty hours no sleep, but that's how SEALs train so whatever. You know this new guy doesn't know jackshit about the siding business" , or in a silent room: 'Did you say something about smoking a cigarette?' But do I do this because I write, or do I write because I do this?

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I'm basically done applying to graduate school. An arduous, exacting task. Any assumption about my chances engenders some notion of objectivity to the process. All I know is that I came within a hairsbreadth last year (four waitlists, one Faustian offer), and my work this year is better in virtually all respects. Previously, I submitted a clunky story about a cult surrounding conjoined twins with blue skin, and a bleak piece about a girl mercy-killing her junky boyfriend. I love these stories, but when you break it down like that it's hard to see them getting noticed at all. The stories this time around are clearer, the language more potent, the ideas imaginative and well-handled. They are not perfect or great, but they're an order of magnitude beyond what I submitted in January of 2009. Twelve applications out there right now, learn-ed eyes about to read this shit and give a thumbs up or down. It's like a protracted slow-motion version of those almost forgotten days of football. Mentally steeling yourself to plunge your vulnerability into hostile territory. Succeeding on the sharpness of your instincts, your ability to adapt, and a desire that births an obnoxious willingness.


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Sometimes you can't trust good days because they undermine the promises you made early Monday morning when you were caffeine-less and misanthropic and things didn't go according to plan. At least on those stressed afternoons there's a certain pure negativity that you can almost hold in your hands. In those moments you know so clearly what you ought to do and start thinking about how much money you have in the bank and what the going rate is on eBay for all of life's trappings. Some poor soul must want these things I have.
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