Three Small Stories from the Big Writing Conference

The writing conference, it was big.


I.
Saturday Night: Dance Party. Third Floor Ballroom.
The music was terrible. And my friends danced anyway, and I tried, though the contemporary radio r&b that the dj mostly stuck to has no influence whatsoever on my hips. Which sucked, because I wanted to dance. I wanted, specifically, to dance. Even goofily. We all did. We had walked many blocks from a perfectly warm, comfortable bar, through falling snow to get here. This is a lot to say of people who make their homes in the South. This is a lot to say—believe me—of this group of friends.

The dancefloor was full of awkward, gyrating writers who were mostly Caucasian and mostly several sheets to the wind. It looked exactly like a cruise ship. I imagine. (Full disclosure: I have never been on a cruise ship.) When I dance, I myself am an awkward, gyrating writer. I could get with this. With a few tweaks.

We went up to the DJ, requested: OutKast? No. Missy Elliott? No. Even, maybe, Michael Jackson? Guy said he could download something for us, but he wouldn’t have it till the next day. Note: It’s 2009. We’d have happily given him the dollar. We walked back. The DJ launched into “Get On Up.” Surrounded by better songs, this old standby would have been fine. Only it wasn't, so it was somehow more disappointing.
“This," said one friend, "is, like, your cousin’s wedding. And you don’t even like your cousin.” Next up: Madonna. But not “Get into the Groove” Madonna. “Like a Prayer” Madonna. Bon Jovi. (?) At this point, I gave up, left the dance floor and moved to safety—before the opening bars of “Shout.” As in Kick your heels up and. Throw your head back and. It was worse than a cruise ship, or a lame wedding. Another friend nailed it. “I have been to 745 bar mitzvahs,” he said. “This is your 746th bar mitzvah,” I told him.

II.
Sunday Afternoon: O’Hare.
In the long security line, a fortyish woman and a sixtyish man were just ahead of me, carrying official conference tote bags. As we serpentined our way back and forth and back again, they spoke in tones that were a bit loud, looking around with that weird sort of niche-famous pride between sentences. “I think it was a successful panel,” she announced. “Famous Poet A and Famous Poet C should definitely collaborate on that project. And your essay—fabulous! Now you just need to publish!”
“Yes, yes,” he nodded, all corduroy-patched sagacity. “It’s all right.” Back and forth they went about this essay. As we alternately stood and walked, I was reading from my school’s literary magazine—this, itself, admittedly, perhaps, my own version of flaunting the conference tote. The man kept saying, “But where to publish it?” And the woman kept saying, “Oh, there must be a place,” and both of them kept making eye contact with me—or maybe, I think now, I was just staring. I might have that problem. But instead of continuing on silently with the shoe and the coat doffing, I had to say something. Like a six-year-old who imagines maybe all teachers in the world know her mommy, I held up my literary journal and said to the academic poets, “What about this one?” They asked what the journal was, I told them: We took essays, short stories, poems. The sagacious man knit his eyebrows in offense. The woman smiled benignly, seemed to sigh a little. “His essay’s on critical poetic topics in Oobolean form,” she explained as he turned his back and harrumphed on. Damn kids. “Have you heard of Oobolean form?” I shook my head. She practically patted my hand. “He’s the former editor of Poets International,” she said. “He’s no slouch.”

I nodded and apologized as I bagged my slouchy lit mag and prepared to send everything I carried through the x-rays for real inspection.


III.
Hopelessly Middlebrow.*
(aka: petty thoughts following the “No slouch” incident.)
The I-Pod is quickly dropping to lowbrow status. Maybe it’s there already. Real intellectuals do not sit on the subway nor at the airport gate, filling their ears with distracting chatter or catchy hooks. Their ears remain free of tacky white plastic knobs and the cheap, trendy status they imply, (These knobs, now, sort of the anti-tote: NPR or conference), their future, free of the absolute promise of tinnitus. Their advanced thoughts are allowed to soar, independent, unprogrammed, and unimpeded, to novel heights.
I tap my foot. This listening has absolutely nothing to do with anything but the sound.

*“Hopelessly middlebrow,” the term my old friend’s sister was tagged with by a snotty ex-classmate at a reunion, after making some ‘70s television reference. As in, “Sarah,” sigh, “you are hopelessly middlebrow.”

But darling, there's a gun in the garland.
David Berman is calling it quits with the Silver Jews.

The story ("the son of a demon come to make good the damage") is fascinating and beyond fascinating, whether or not you are a big old devotee of this band. I don't know quite what to say about all this music has meant to me. I mean, this website's been riddled with it for years (see above). The lyrics are often the autopilot, archetypal answers-in-the-brain to any weird, new situation. And although I think DB is saddling himself too much with a sense of overwrought responsibility, I also get it, and it makes my heart soar in sympathy.

Oh, I've written too much. Just read the link, and the link's link.

"When I go downtown
I always wear a corduroy suit
cause it's made of a hundred gutters
that the rain can run right through"

Requiescat in pace.

If you were never so much a watcher of Sex and the City, and you’re around a clique of women who are, and they start in with that, “Which character are you? Which character am I?” game, they will always, always tell you you’re Miranda.

Oh, you organic gardener/librarian/tax consultant/drummer, you. You’re practically just like her.

A Game Not Invented By Me

Plum-looniness time in MFALand, Henshaw. Thesis deadlines loom, and people are going starkers. Meanwhile, the weather is doing that cold-then-hot thing, and the late afternoon sun knows how to aim right for your eyes.

I mean, like "crazy;" not like naked.
Although I’m not up on the gossip. Who knows.


So, a friend writes with a new game. Actually, to be fair, some guy I’ve never met, who first wrote someone else, started it off. Unimportant. What is important is that said friend writes me with the guy's first move:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in My Pants
The Color Purple in My Pants
Little Women in My Pants

I wrote back:
The Road in My Pants.
Also: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City in My Pants. I think we've all been there.

And she replied, with a spark of hope:
The Sun Also Rises in My Pants
The Secret History in My Pants

And Marshall came up with this one:
A Good Man is Hard to Find in My Pants.

Her:
Pyres in My Pants

Me:
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit in My Pants.

Her:
Honored Guest in My Pants

Me:
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been in My Pants?

And she tells me:
Running With Scissors in My Pants

Me:
Q: What is the What in My Pants?
A: All the Pretty Horses in My Pants.

(With thanks to Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Louisa May Alcott, Cormac McCarthy, Nick Flynn, Hemmingway, Donna Tartt, Flannery O’Conner, Derek Nikitas, Jeannette Winterson, Joy Williams, Joyce Carol Oates, Augusten Burroughs, Dave Eggers and Cormac McCarthy again.)

I Good things.
1. This webcomic called xkcd, which Marshall alerted me to.
2. This weekend's upcoming visit from Marshall.

Just because you're paranoid.
I was nervous about typing that, up there. No: fearful. This book I'm writing, about well, death, has fed into an previously-held superstition with regards to speaking excitedly about the future. I'm constantly concerned that my loved ones will have fiery accidents on the way to birthday parties, family holidays and bar gatherings. These accidents will be, secretly, my fault. I caused both the plane's engines to fail because I expressed a naive excitement about reunion at the upcoming happy event.

I talked with a friend recently and discovered she harbors the same fear. Before her s.o. leaves the house each day, she must tell him, "Wear your seatbelt! And be careful on the Interstate!" We do the same thing, she and I: Search our minds for potential disasters and then name them aloud out of some superstitious belief that doing so puts us one up on Evil Fate. Or, if not one up, then at least we've voiced aloud a healthy respect for its power. And maybe we just can't be surprised if the worst does occur. (Laughable, of course.)

I don't know about my friend, but for me, it's like I'm bracing myself. I feel real stabs of fear at those moments when I warn people against walking on the side of the road without the sidewalk on the way to my house, although I keep my voice light and casual when I do it. I don't want them to think I'm crazy or that I think they have no sense. But really, it has nothing to do with their actions; crazy things happen every day beyond anyone's control. What I'm doing is between me and fate, alone. It's an incantation, a spell. "Watch out for crazy drivers" means now those drunken lane swervers will steer clear of you, and "Pack a lunch for your trip," means I've now evaporated potential disguntled fastfood employees armed with uzis into the ether. At least for you. At least for you, my dear, my friend.

For a long time, hearing Channel Eleven Holiday Greeting proclaim its innocuous, "Have a Safe and Happy Fourth," or "Have a Safe and Happy Groundhog's Day" or whatever, drove me nuts. How false a well-wish is that? It says, "I wish for you on this celebrated day the bare-minimum of no permanent injury or scarring." Besides, it's condescending. Your viewers: this uniform group of eight-year olds about to shut off their TVs to run out into the streets, scissors in one hand and lit bottle-rockets in the other.

And the acceptance of the "Have a safe" whatever, or the infinitely more cloying "Be safe," only grew. Now it was an acceptable send-off from the office on Fridays. Now it was an acceptable send-off before your trip to Vegas, a place where a certain kind of lack of safety is supposed to be the entire point.

It was wildly unacceptable to me. First: the condescension, and second, the implication that you could control anything that happened to you, that you could make yourself "Be safe;" it made anything unsafe that befell the greet-ee his or her own fault. From inside your own head: "Yooou weren't saaafe!" chided the now finger-wagging receptionist from your afternoon's dental appointment, after your mugging later that night. And thirdly: This wasn't fun. This was freaking paranoid. As a college student, I didn't want to have a "safe" Halloween. Granted, the life-transforming sort of sophisticated debauchery I envisioned, always to the tune of some woozy old Bowie song, never quite materialized; but still. Likewise, for this and other occasions that are Supposed to be Fun, who wants to be told that someone's fearing for your life? Talk about a downer, man.

But, holy shit. I realize now that I've joined the ranks of the legion of warners. What I want to know is whether there are still more people whom actual fear prompts to say such things to people. Are you out there? Where do you stand, Henshaw, on the eve of this Labor Day Weekend, which will be safe for some and unsafe for others and who knows on which side of that line any of us stands on this Friday afternoon?

This food was supposed to be a party.
Tostitos brand chunky salsa makes me sad. And I’ll avoid coy condescension by making no bones here about what I mean by “sad.” To be clear, I mean: its lame, predictable chunky yet canned and bland tomato-y-ness of flavor makes me feel wistful for what could have been, there, atop my tortilla chip. Especially considering this brand's ubiquity at parties and in the refrigerator doors of friends from whom we are mooching snacks. As a whole, can’t we do better, America?

Thank you.

I left the river out, and I don't know why.
So it turns out that a lot of people still have AAA. Mea culpa, Henshaw, for my ignorance a few days ago.

Please accept, as a token of my apology, these simple sentiments from Mr. Joe Cocker.

Snotty remarks about a smart film.
Saw The Counterfeiters tonight. I recommend it. It was one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. Really good. Well-done.

My one thing is this: In period movies that take place at any point pre-1960? In scenes at like, parties? You can just see the wardrobe people having damn orgasms over getting to dress their beautiful, uniformly well-fed and leggy bit actors. In this one, it was all early(!) 1930s(!) Berlin(!!) party.(!) And these people; god, they looked good.
And I’m sure people did look good at such underground soirees, but I’m also sure that not everyone looked so uniformly good: so spotless and stunning and nattily dressed. It’s like movies where there are Halloween parties. Everyone’s always gone all out. (Like they had access to, oh, a costume closet somewhere.) There’s no whole cadre of non-dressed up people, and there’s no ten women all dressed up like Goth Sexy Whatever, to varying degrees of success. (Goth sexy carrot! Goth sexy dresser drawer!)

Okay, but the beautiful people party scenes in The Counterfeiters are like, a sixth of the film. They do dazzle. They made me feel all melty and yearn-y over the gorgeous shoes and red lipstick and yawning creamy expanses of silks and skin. And maybe the whole point was contrast, since the other, dead-serious five-sixths of it takes place in, um, concentration camps. So fine, but fine.


The little-by-little.
It’s midnight now, after day #1 of summer vacation. The last summer vacation. A first day of frantically working on el thesis and trying to make myself relax about working on it. Trying to make an honest effort and convince myself with no feedback from anyone else, that this was fine, this (very) little-by-little.
I do love a schedule, Henshaw. It’s why I came back to school in the first place.
So, summer vacation is good practice for what’s peeking out from ‘round that corner over there: That life post-MFA. Shh!

At any rate, it went fine.


A Telephone that Rings, but Who's to Answer?
So it’s late, now. It’s tonight, now. And I go for the most knee-jerk source of comfort to reward all my solitary Grown Up Lady effort. Oh yes: Headphones plus Stephen Stills. Who’s up for a little “Southern Cross”? Oh, me. Just me. And “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More” with those Brothers Allman, and, as you know, Abba, “The Eagle.” Terrible, wonderful, awful music of childhood, I shall crawl inside of you; I shall shut my eyes.

It’s funny. Most of these songs remind me of my ex-hippie uncle; all of them remind me of being a small child in some hazily-lit nighttime summer where everything was green and the grownups and older cousins and siblings were all relaxed and happy and I was flitting about playing, probably annoying everybody and spending long moments watching them all, so much younger I was than all of them. The specifics themselves aren’t clear. I’m thinking…croquet game? Maybe cashew nuts in a dish on some low coffeetable that I gorged myself on?

(Though too: CSNY and leads to Billie and Art Tatum and Ella; grandmother music. Don’t think and for a second you hear her singing along in her rusty voice, her pink glasses catching those fluorescent kitchen lights as she turns her head upwards, mouth open.)

Trying, trying, trying to assign specifics here, to re-incarnate.

I can give you no real concrete detail, Henshaw. I’m a poor writer about this. It’s so weird how these details fade to us, and yet the feeling—that capital-H happiness—still hangs there, still hazy and warm like a summer night, like the very words, “long ago summer night,” wrapped inside some sound.

Tonight, I ate some killer soup. Today, I had an all-right workshop. Taught two classes that went fairly well.
But I didn't feel nearly this good.

Love ‘n Euskara for dummies.
Just saw Lars and the Real Girl. It was so sweet it made me choke right up, and feel all wistful and wishfullike inside the way these movies do—and I’d definitely recommend it to you, Henshaw. Because it was well done and believable. And because, when it is well done, I love the idea that social-misfit weirdos can find true love.
I love-! It-! And you know. Um, it’s springtime.

Still, it makes me consider again this tv/film phenomenon of the socially unsalvageable lad whom some perfectly adjusted gal rescues for no clear reason. You know: 40 Year Old Virgin did it, and Knocked Up—and it’s not just Judd Apatow. Consider, too: Garden State, Everybody Loves Raymond and on and on. And sure, we all heard, like, TV Guide, jibber-jabbering away about the “fat guy/hot wife” sitcom phenomenon (“ho, ho, ho”) a while back as though it were some sort of isolated outcropping, the Basque language of that second’s pop culture.

But, please. What’s with the “2005”-labelled shrink-wrap on this phenom? This weirdo, supremely unhealthy notion that the best men are special cases who need to be nurtured back to emotional health and ushered gently into the world by their women is really nothing new. Girlfriend as mother, all that; not new. I mean, gah, consider the entire decade we call the '70s. Nor has it died now that we’ve tired of talking about it temporarily. And, it doesn’t, it does not help men or women in the real world.

So then, what’s with the movie rec, if that’s how I feel? Well, because: competing synapses. Because nurture, too, and not just nature, works on all of us. What if they’d made Sir Main Character Guy really physically unattractive? How much then would I still be rooting for him and how much would I have been forced to confront my own little urge to jump his bones and then make him casserole?

Maybe I’m just disturbed by that. And, by how much that scene of Lars and that girl on the date at the bowling alley? The one where he’s just sighing a lot and rolling his eyes heavenward just trying to think of a good response to her innocuous conversational volley? While she sits there with a damn expectant grin plastered to her face? Reminded me exactly of someone I once dated.


Meanwhile, big, big changes sharp and bright going on, it seems, with friends far and wide. Time for upheaval, Miraclegrow, all that. Carmelita and Ginger are planting all sorts of new things out on the veranda, so this might really be the year I overcome some of my infamous black-thumbage. Also trying to get some friends to start playing the rock together; currently = all I can think about. Ah, spring fever.
Anyway, take care, ya’ll. Get out there in the sunshine.
(now playing: “Imperial” – Unrest, though, in general, lots of “Ceremony” by New Order. I blame those NPR music buttons between news stories for this.)

In case of insomnia, go here.
Ubuweb is a wonderfully eclectic mix of sound and art and lost and foundness, one of the most eclectic sources you'll find for such things on the web. Actually, not really so much an anecdote for insomnia as much as something to make your addled hamster-brain feel like maybe it's in good company.

Today's featured article on Wikipedia, as pointed out to me by friend Marshall, spotlights Stede Bonnet, 18th century marauder of the seas, and possessor of one of the baddassiest names ever given to man. The article also features one of the greatest sentences ever constructed by man: "Because of marital problems, Bonnet turned to piracy in the summer of 1717."


(The version in the full-length article is perhaps even more edifying, if lacking the precise graceful punch of the above: "Because of marital problems, and despite his lack of sailing experience, Bonnet decided to turn to piracy in the summer of 1717." (Emphasis added.)

Things didn't go so well for Stede after that, either. Maybe he just shoulda done what Joe did...

Constant, Schmonstant.
For a Physics final back in high school, we had the option of writing a paper or putting together some sort of group "artistic option" illustrating 12 physics principles. Thus: the filming of the VHS classic, "Physics Project of Doom," in which two friends and I featured relevant snippets from Casablanca, Barbie surfing in the bathtub to the music of The Breeders and of course, 12 illustrations of basic physics principles, all completely riddled with flaws and incorrect calculations.

I think our poor, beleaguered teacher—a really, really young guy whom we caught one Saturday that year working a second job as a salesclerk at Sears—gave us a B. That B was a gift: our movie was lovingly crafted juvenile shlock, but it was crap in terms of an illustration of what we were actually supposed to have learned that year.

The latest on Found Magazine's beautiful website is in the same spirit, I think. Anonymous elephant illustrator, I salute you.

The Fact Men post their very funny Year in Review.
(Coincidentally, Wikipedia lists no such entry as "Very Little Known Facts".)

Loving Miranda July (even) More
Write a press release about an ordinary event! Take a flash photo under your bed! Draw Raymond Carver's Cathedral!
This is the best idea I've seen in a long time. If you've got any lazy days coming up this winter break--and even if you don't but just want to feel all warm and squishy inside for some slightly inexplicable reason having something to do with the allaying of the fear that all this goofy internet technology is alienating us from one another--I encourage you to check this project out.

Read it.

The Used World, by Haven Kimmel. The Used World, by Haven Kimmel. The Used World, by Haven Kimmel.

Goodness gracious, sakes alive.

Dirty deeds, done deep-fried.
Burger King would like for you to engage in a pact with the Evil One.

WWJD?
From the q&a section of the website of Krista Blondin, a Canadian Janis Joplin impersonator (my favorite words here are "a minor detail"):

"Q: Will Krista be swigging a bottle of Southern Comfort on stage and using coarse language at my event-like Janis did on stage?
Generally No, especially when we do concerts that are all age family events or corporate functions. Some of our concert goers and biggest fans have been as young as 8 years old, so we have a cleaner version of the show that includes no swearing or glorification/encouragement of the use of drugs or alcohol. Krista is completely able to capture the essence of Janis Joplin without this minor detail. Of course we have an authentic bottle handy, easily filled with ice tea if this is something you would really like to see in the show! At night clubs where people are over the age of 19 there may be the occasional swear word in the show for example: Rap during Ball & Chain."

Didn’t want that monkey anyway.
So in this crazy-fascinating article, the NY Times says it turns out that monkeys rationalize things, too. Like many of us, I think that I just assumed that that thing you do? When you’re choosing between two cars and kind of like the pretty/fancy one but then it turns out you can’t afford it? So you go with the practical, ugly one. And by the next day, the practical, ugly one is so much better, in your estimation. Someone even so much as mentions the words, “Rust-red Cooper Mini,” and you think: Oh, they’re just so expensive to fix. And so small.

Same thing with exes. Our brain points out all the ways they’re so unattractive. That thing with his jaw when he’s thinking. There was always something so showy about it. So it turns out that we are—and by “we are,” I mean, of course, “I am”—not crazy. Either that or all primates are equally crazy.

Hands down.
Possibly the best Craigslist ad, ever.


"Pine cones - $19
6" - 9" pine cones; you decorate for the holidays. Six cones, boxed and shipped. Shipping and handling included in price. Allow 5 days for check to clear before shipment."