Banana nut. That's a good muffin.

You never know when banana bread is going to be part of your life.  It's out there, waiting for you to leave your bananas out too long, then you notice there's a little too much black on the peel.  A few more days they'll be completely unappetizing but a few degrees shy of disgusting, and it'll be banana bread time.  

I'd forgotten that the perfect banana bread recipe requires three bananas rather than the two I had.  We have more bananas for smoothies but they're entirely too yellow.  Because you can't will a banana to rot (what an awesome super-power - ripening), I immediately switched gears into muffin land.

I don't want to think about how much seeing the video above played into this decision.  Do I make my own decisions, or do I just react to stimuli?  Let's just admit that Adaptation is one of the most brilliant movies of all time and move on.  

This is a rare real-time post.  I can smell the muffins as I type.  I woke up at five am, thought about my writing-work-dinner-wedding prep  agenda for the day, and looked at the bananas in their now-or-never ripeness.  My upbringing won over my longing to write.  Wasting minutes I could've spent writing is intangible; throwing two perfectly usable bananas into the trash is real waste.


My posts have thinned out lately, and I expect them to get thinner.  If you look over the proceeding, you can imagine why.  I'm a bookseller.  Unless you're Cory, there's not a lot of drama in the day-to-day.  Well, maybe for those of us in the business.  But Indie vs. A-Word, paper vs. ebook, dying industry vs. renaissance of the story - those posts can only go so far.  I want to write about anything and everything.

The downside is that I sometimes end up writing about nothing.

I flatter myself that my thoughts on books, movies, parenting, relationships, food, and life are worth sharing.  Still, I like to polish these thoughts up a bit before I share them.  More importantly, especially for things I've started to write for reasons I'm not aware of, I want these posts to have some meaning.  This sometimes means opening the same file dozens of times, revising, rearranging, looking for a point.  Since Sweet with Fall and Fish doesn't have a unifying theme (apart from being the Official Blog of Aaron John Curtis), it's important to me that the individual posts try to have a point.

I have thoughts about Borders closing, and Amy Winehouse dying, and mass killings in Norway, but by the time I decide how I really feel and the best way to express it, those feelings are years out of date.  Witness the post I've been working on about The Dark Knight and Tropic Thunder, movies which came out in 2008.  Not because I just got them on Netflix, but because I wasn't sure how to express my feelings about Heath Ledger's death.  After all that microscopic consideration, the challenge becomes making someone care.  But I suppose that's always the challenge.

Did you know I saw Patti Smith at the Miami Book Fair International days after Just Kids won the National Book Award?  As part of letting the standing room only crowd know about the upcoming (at the time) OMiami! poetry festival, I was one of dozens who helped P. Scott Cunningham perform Arthur Rimbuad's Vowels, a random act of culture about which Smith said, "I've never seen anything like that."

I've mentioned Hilldawg from time to time?  That's her holding the sign.

Did you know Patti Smith performed three songs during the reading, and that the last one became a sing-along?  Did you know I loved Just Kids?  Did you know I met Patti Smith?  Of course you didn't.  I worried too much about capturing the magic on the page, I procrastinated starting, then so many months had passed that it seemed silly to try and remember how I'd felt at all.  There have been many nights like this I've passed over, but I offer this as an extreme example.

There's a lot of pressure in my life right now.

I'm getting married in 32 days.  The marriage doesn't stress me at all, but there's a lot of prep involved in the event which marks the beginning, especially since this is DIY wedding.

Also, I know in this economy I should be pleased to have a job, but the work load I'm saddled with lately is ridiculous.  Our week's run Thursday to Wednesday, and I'm over 32 hours for the week.  These thoughts occurred while I was baking and I wanted to share, so I'm pushing back biking in to get this posted.  I'll probably take Wednesday off to be with Dylan - Becky and I are taking turns watching him this summer since we can't afford camp or daycare - but I can't be sure.  I could live in my office and work there every waking minute and it would take half a year to get on top of things, and even then I probably wouldn't be on top of things because they'd find even more for me to do.  Grawr.

Finally, I've had a setback in my writing life.  The mighty Carl Lennertz has left Harper Collins to become CEO of the North American branch of World Book Night.  This is excellent news for the world of books which is semi-devestating to me personally.

As I've written my stories and taken time polishing my novels, it's always been in the back of my mind that my first published essay was a given (I've had pieces published online and in print, so I guess I mean published by the Big 6).  I know I acted like it wasn't, but I was fooling myself.  I'm glad I chose not to shout State by State from the roof tops, but I no longer have that foot in the door, that significant set of eyes which has looked at my work and deemed it worthy and which invites prospective agents and magazine editors to do the same.  I'm back to square one.

In some ways, it's good.  It gives my morning writing time more focus.  With the help of my writers group, I am polishing four or five of my best stories until they will knock a magazine editor on her ass, so that she'll share the story with her readers, and I'll have a nugget of something to put in my cover letter to an agent, something more substantial than hopes and dreams.  I need a credit.  As Laura Munson writes in This is Not the Story You Think it Is, "You can't put good rejection letters on a resume."

What this doesn't bode well for is Sweet.

Of course this comes as my gradually-increasing readership reached its zenith in July.  I should be writing more to keep you guys coming back, but something's got to give.  I'll try to take a day to myself (if I can find it) and automatically schedule a bunch of stuff I've been tinkering with so it looks like I'm active while I take a break (or maybe it will be like today's post: write it, look for glaring errors and hope I didn't miss any, then publish post).  Just because I don't see the point doesn't mean you won't, right?  Reading is a relationship, and finding a piece's moral and sharpening it to a point is just me trying to bully your reaction.  Of course, you might just get nothing but this for a while.  We'll see.

Meanwhile, WLRN's Under the Sun released a CD of the last Lip Service event.

"What's this?  A CD of a live Lip Service event recorded for broadcast by Under the Sun?"

"And who is that at #5?  Why, it's me.  Remember when I freaked out over the edits...
Wait, I never blogged about this, either?  Fuck me."

As I sat in Books & Books cafe, reeling from the realization that Carl Lennertz left Harper Collins before he could publish me, a favorite customer approached and told me he enjoyed hearing me on NPR.  Co-workers told me they'd heard and enjoyed me on the way in to work.  It's the only thing that kept me from a meltdown that day.

Since then, strangers have come to the bookstore looking for me.  One asked, "Which one of you is Aaron?" while I happened to be there.  She didn't shop, but just stopped off on her drive home to tell me how much she enjoyed the piece (thankfully, I wasn't in the buying office at the time).  Customers have congratulated Becky on her upcoming nuptials (which I mentioned in the Q&A after the reading).  Apparently, I also "sound cute" on the radio.  I feel like my writing career is foundering, but more people are aware of me than ever.  It's fairly surreal.

So take heart.  Even if you don't see much of me here in the coming weeks as I prepare for my nuptials, you may hear me on the radio.


And the muffins?  They smelled better than they taste, but they are solid, moist, and they put two rotten bananas to good use.  Here's to a morning well spent.

Rejection

The bookseller’s version of State by State has two issues now, the Pacific Northwest Reader and The Great Lakes Reader.  I’m assured my Florida essay will be in the Southeast version.  I haven’t announced it from the rooftops because I want to be dead-solid certain, like, book in hand, before I say anything.

Do you know what a promise of seeing my words in print from a publishing titan did to my writing habits?  Nothing.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I sent out half a dozen stories to various magazines in the fall of 1998.  The rejection letters I received shut me down.  Even the positive one, with the handwritten note and the first page returned with corrections, didn’t keep me going.  I stopped writing.  I don’t remember what I did instead.  Work, I believe.  Cooking.  Handyman projects.    

It was February of 2006 before I started writing again.  Nearly eight years.

On Friday, I got a rejection email from Blood Orange Review for my first cold submission in twelve years.  Do you know what that did to my writing habits?  Nothing.

Well, my first submission in twelve years if you don’t count the Writer’s Digest 2007 competition, where I got three rejections (two short stories and one script) and one Honorable Mention in the Film / Script category.  But first cold submission in twelve years has impact, which is necessary for the repetition of do you know what that did…nothing to work.  I can’t count the Writer’s Digest competition.  I was so excited to get the Honorable Mention letter than I didn’t even notice the rejections.  

I saved the email from Blood Orange Review, as I’ve heard some writers have done with their rejections.  I was disappointed, but it also felt good.  It didn’t rock my world.  It didn’t ruin my day.  It didn’t change that I’d written that morning, and would write again the next morning.  

I’ve been saying that I’ve written past the point where rejection matters since 2008 or so.  

I finally believe it. 

Reality Bites

A few days back, I decried being mired in non-fiction. Well, guess what? It continues. As I promised myself I’d do when I finally finished moving in, I sat down with Stephen King's Under the Dome and a cup of strong, black coffee. I’d pictured a weekend day, easing into this five pound chunk of fiction with a nice, post-breakfast caffeine buzz. Because it was Tuesday after work, I brewed Starbucks Decaf House Blend (I’ve secretly been craving the light body and clean, acidic finish of the South American coffees lately; don’t tell nobody). I lounged in the window as the sun went down.

The first few chapters were everything I’d hoped. Mysterious, tantalizing, violent, and ominous, filled with the archetypal and offbeat characters we’ve come to love. When I got in bed to read before dropping off, I switched to Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Memoir is speaking to me the way fiction once did. For now, I’ll accept that. Mostly because it can’t be helped.

Continuing the theme of garnering attention for my non-fiction over my fiction, I received an email from Harper Collins’ mighty Carl Lennertz. He loved the Florida essay I wrote for the bookseller’s version of State by State. A couple days later, I received a package in the mail with a finished copy of The Great Lakes Reader and my five-pages covered with Carl’s chicken scratches. It’s the first time someone like Lennertz has taken that much time with my words. It’s flattering, to say the least.

All profits from the books’ sales will benefit the ABFFE.

The video of my Lip Service performance is up on their website. I was able to watch the entire thing, which tells me I’m more comfortable with myself. It’s better than I thought it would be.

My non-fiction efforts have given me enough attention to know I haven’t been wasting time at my laptop. But I have stories to tell unlimited by anything as dull as What Actually Happenened (or even, This Could Actually Happen).

So today’s question is whether I’d rather write a hit song I secretly hate, or a beautiful song no one ever hears?

One Last Deleted Scene: Sea Turtles

This was a magical moment, and the cut hurt:

Jim took us out into Biscayne Bay, calmer and shallower than the ocean but still endless blue for three horizons. He and Andi coaxed me through the panic of hitting the water for the first time. Every time I hit the water, really. Under their patient tutelage, my fear diminished with each trip.

A lanky six-foot-five, with paddle-like feet and spatulate hands, Jim glides like a dolphin beneath the water. Some of us need help swimming like that, so he bought a diving board we use to drag behind the boat. You angle the board down to dive and angle up when you run out of air. You can’t boat over the reefs without damaging them, so there’s not much to see except sand and grass beds. It feels like flying, though.

It’s our second year swimming in the bay. Andi and I are using the dive board, seeing nothing much beyond the occasional barrel sponge and rusty piece of metal. We're shocked as a Green Sea Turtle approaches, dwarfing any turtle we've shared the water with before. Its shell must near four feet long, its front flippers easily span five feet. Sun reflects off the cream-colored lines covering its mottled skin, making it appear filled with light. Our lungs burn but we’re too excited to care. We watch the turtle glide through the water until it becomes a speck of wishful thinking in the distance.

We break the surface. Our excited waving and screaming make Jim cut the engine. We calm down and describe the turtle, stupid grins slapped across our faces. Jealousy colors Jim’s happiness for us. He’s been swimming these waters his entire life and has never seen a sea turtle larger than a dinner plate. We speculate on the turtle’s age. We bless our luck at seeing something few divers get to see here.

Andi says my presence in the water must have attracted the magnificent creature (to clarify, Akwesasne Mohawks have three clans, Wolf, Bear, and Turtle; I’m Turtle Clan). We bask in the aftermath of our encounter, knowing we’ll probably never see a turtle that large again. Jim starts the boat, and we replace our snorkels.

Within minutes of diving, we’re joined by a Loggerhead Turtle. The Green Turtle was enormous and beautiful, but the breadth of this four-hundred pound dusky sepia behemouth would stagger us if we weren’t floating. Its head is the size of a soft volleyball. One of us could easily curl up on its shell. Its proximity is humbling, awe-inspiring, like seeing the history of the sea embodied.

This time, Jim knows why we’re waving so frantically. Having all three of us in the water when the boat isn’t anchored isn’t the safest maneuver, but Jim’s not about to miss out a second time. He cuts the engine, puts his mask and fins on, and dives in. After fifty years in these waters, he’s due this sight.

By the time he joins us, the Loggerhead is gone. Jim handles his disappointment as gracefully as he can. We dub the Loggerhead the Granddaddy of the Sea.

Andi may be right. Bobbing in warm waters of pale cyan, squinting up at the sun, it feels like I’m being welcomed home.

Deleted Scenes 6: Cafe Risque

The signs begin fifty miles out, teased-hair and heavy eye makeup above the slogan, “We Dare, We Bare . . . All!” Each Spring and Mid-Semester break at Syracuse University is a reason to climb into the car and take the twenty-hour non-stop drive to Miami, so my girlfriend and I have seen these signs dozens of times and never felt the urge to stop. Blame boredom, seven hours of flat pavement, the same scrub of tree, the same field beyond, the same strip-mall towns. Blame curiosity; my wife has dated a stripper, but we’ve never been in a strip club. Blame Colleen, our six-foot, bisexual, Puerto Rican friend who doesn’t care one way or the other, but whose presence pressures us to entertain.

It’s the middle of the afternoon on a weekday when we pull into the gravel parking lot of Café Risqué. The signs assure me six bucks is a snip for naked flesh (a fact copious amounts of free internet porn have rendered debatable, but perhaps they’ve updated it to Live Naked Flesh since we visited), but I’m the only one who pays. Colleen and Andi’s vaginas get them in free.

Inside, all the men are truckers traveling solo. I’m the youngest by decades. Andi and Colleen are the only women not putting their skin on display. If this was a movie trailer, a *needle-scratch-across-a-record sound effect would kick in and everyone would turn and stare.

The front room looks like Johnny Rockets, if Johnny Rockets featured blue lights and ambient trance music and nearly nude waitresses and very nude dancers on the counter behind poles. They dance only by a generous stretch of the imagination. Mostly they sway back and forth, managing to look bored and worried at the same time.

It’s all too David Lynch, so we duck into the side lounge. We sit on plush velvet and order burgers and cokes. We act like we see ass cracks with our fries all the time.

The women of Café Risqué change places a lot. We notice they’re gravitating toward our table. We’re their age, Colleen and Andi are their sex, so we’re something of a novelty. Do they find us attractive, or are they simply trying to turn a dead Wednesday into a money-maker? Whatever the reason, this attention stops being flattering and begins feeling predatory.

We’re musical theater majors. Paying naked strangers to gyrate in our faces would require a complete personality change. Not to mention that those faces are covered in salt and grease.

We share a look, scarf our food, throw some cash down, and get the hell out.

* Vinyl is behind downloads, behind CDs, yet reality shows feature this sound-effect all the time after an awkward remark. How much longer will people even know what it means?

State by State Deleted Scenes 5: It Will Never Snow

This was a different swing into the ending. I miss the conversation with my mom and the Golden Hour factoid.

When I was twelve, I told my mother I would never own a car. “American Flyers” and Tom Hank’s bicycling violinist in “The Man with One Red Shoe” were big for me that year. I’d like to say I was a particularly naïve twelve-year-old and leave it at that, but it’s carried into adulthood. No matter what life does to me, a healthy dose of naïveté will always be part of my make up. On good days, I see this as childlike and endearing. On bad days, I want to slap myself.

“How will you get to work?” my mother asked.

“I’ll bike. I’ll have a red, five-hundred-dollar racing bike and I’ll bike everywhere.”

“What will you do in the snow?”

“Where I live, it will never snow.”

I don’t know why I didn’t just say I’d take the bus. All I knew was snow, sometimes eight months at a stretch. Year-round sunshine was a fairytale.
Now I live in a place without snow and I ride my bike everywhere, but it wasn’t entirely a conscious choice.

Watching the news, I used to hear the phrase airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center all the time. Gunshot victims are fairly rare, but the snarl of traffic in Dade and Broward ensures at least one good airlift a day. That helicopter ride is the Golden Hour, the sixty minutes after a trauma when most lives are won or lost. I never expected to take that ride myself.

Once I graduated from the walker to the cane to my own two feet, I decided never again to take a healthy body for granted. Instead of getting rides, I started biking. Replacing the totaled car never felt like a priority.

Deleted Scenes 4: Snippets

I felt like I was on my soapbox too much here, although it hurt that the research proved pointless:

Folks gather on barstools in towns like Everglades City to gripe about the Miccosukee, or in places like Belle Glade to gripe about the Seminoles. They rail about the money casinos rake in and the taxes the State of Florida will never see, which is a way of lamenting the money they will never see.

As a member of the Akwesasne Kaniahkehake nation, I’m here to tell you casino money doesn’t affect the average Indian. I’m not about to tell hard-drinking white farmers or migrant Spanish workers or the blacks of Clewiston’s Little Harlem that there’s no money train fueled by native blood, no tax-free ride, no scholarships, and no fistfuls of cash, but I will tell you. Just like off the rez, money is reserved for a few. The rest of us just work.

I missed the chance to use the cliché phrase “six-hundred-pound-Gorilla":

That’s Florida’s problem. Once you have a destination city, it becomes the six-hundred-pound gorilla speaking for the rest of the state. I’m from Syracuse, central New York, and I know how folks from New York City dismiss life outside the five boroughs. Miamians are the same, forgetting there’s a whole state attached their multicultural soup which is better classified as deep south than urban center.

Fun Fact:

Each year, Syracuse vies with Seattle for the highest number of cloudy days in the US. Appropriate that I moved to the Sunshine State.

Different approach to the opening:

When I was in grade school, dad took mom, my sister, and me along on one of his work conferences, the only way we could afford a vacation on South Beach. I haven't thought about it much since then. Looking back, the jokes my sister and mom made about the many men cruising my tall, raven-haired, blue-eyed father have clicked into place.

My second trip to Florida was my first trip to Walt Disney World, and more importantly my first makeout session, with a Spanish girl named Larissa.

Neither experience sold me on Florida. As much as I loved visiting my girlfriend’s family in Miami while we attended Syracuse University, I never saw it as a place to live.

When I first moved here, my friend Amanda told me, “Sometimes Miami feels like a giant party, and it's your fault if you're missing it.” That’s stuck with me over the years.

Unless you’re going out (preferably someplace with waiting involved, be it waiting in lines behind velvet ropes, or with people waiting on your table, or waiting for the buzz to kick in) with fast friends wearing outfits that reveal a tad too much, Miami feels like a giant party you weren’t invited to.

Deleted Scenes 3: Hao

Part of the finished essay involved Floridians atypical the image the rest of the country has. If this essay gets in, I'll be disappointed that readers didn't get to meet Hao.

Florida isn’t Shaq or Sly or Madonna or Rosie. Florida is Hao, who heard the call of sunshine all the way from China. When Hao discovered his wife cheating shortly after they moved here, he decided to take some time to himself while his divorce came through. He’d heard that Key West was one of the most beautiful places on earth, so he rented a car and started driving US-1.

Unfortunately, Hao went north. Law enforcement in West Palm Beach clocked him doing well over eighty miles an hour. Hao apologized profusely, brimming with enthusiasm for the open road, babbling about the promise of Key West, effusing on the size and merits of his American Chrysler LeBaron. Instead of ticketing him, which would have been like slapping a child for misbehaving, the cop politely told Hao he was headed in exactly the wrong direction. Hao thanked him to the heavens, turned around, and set off for the Keys.

Somehow, Hao wound up in Tampa.

He refused sympathy over missing out on Key West, explaining that he found a place just as good. In fact, this place was so amazing that Hao spent his entire vacation there. For Hao, the happiest place on earth wasn’t Disney, but a Hooter’s in Tampa.

I'm enjoying this clip more now because a group of friends and I just visited Hooters in Coconut Grove. Hillary got a handful of ketchup before she even sat down and Maria got a slimy beer glass. I'd already had a litre or 2 (or 4) of Warsteiner Dunkel at Fritz and Franz. I kept telling the waitress, "We're locals. And we're at Hooters."

Deleted Scenes 2: Becoming a Floridian

There are two ways to become a Floridian. Being born here is the less common method. The other Floridian was born elsewhere, and carries a hatred of winter so intense that the other three seasons might as well not exist. Enjoy summer while it lasts, this Floridian thinks. Foliage turning is only a sign that winter is eminent. Sloshing through the spring thaw, this Floridian promises herself she’s seen her last snowflake. Sooner or later, this Floridian tires of the few short weeks she’s allowed to swim and leave her sweater at home (she’s always cold) and moves to where she should have been born in the first place. Once here, something inside her cries in relief.

Snow angels and forts and sledding may have been years behind me, but I loved winter. Sun gleaming off crusted ice, or a powdery snow sugaring the landscape. Even slogging through the wet ash of exhaust-stained slush meant I got to wear my cool boots and knee-length leather jacket. A scarf crusty from a running nose came with coffee or hot chocolate once I got inside. Besides Halloween (even though it sometimes snowed in October), all the best holidays were in winter

Spring and fall both had their charms, but apart from barbecues I didn’t much care for summer. My skinny arms and pale legs made wearing shorts and t-shirts an embarrassment, and I really didn’t like showing my love handles (which I’ve had since junior high, thanks) for swimming. Yet I moved here, carrying my Northeastern stoicism like a chip on my shoulder.

I’m sure some of my resistance to becoming a Floridian was simple homesickness, but some of us need convincing about how great it is down here.

This innate love of Florida can’t be genetic. I have two cousins living in the panhandle, in a gorgeous, rapidly-expanding Gulf town called Destin. Growing up in a tight, Mohawk Indian family, these cousins felt more like siblings. Shawn, the oldest, loved the Miami Dolphins his whole life. In a family of Pittsburgh Steelers, Buffalo Bills, and New York Giants fans, Shawn looked twenty-five-hundred miles away for his team. He moved down shortly after he graduated college. Shane, the second-oldest cousin, visited Shawn for what was supposed to be a brief vacation after college, then never went home.

State by State Deleted Scenes

If you haven’t read State by State, fifty writers’ essays on the fifty states (with an extra on D.C. from Stephen L. Carter) edited by Sean Wilsey and Matt Weiland, you’re missing out on a lot of good cocktail conversation. I’ve been savoring each piece instead of devouring the book, which is easy because most of the writer’s intense love for their subjects means you need time to absorb the sense of place they create. It’s still given me several tidbits I’ve worked into conversation which have made me seem well-read and intelligent. Isn’t that the point of reading? To appear to know something worth knowing so you’re someone worth knowing?

Harper Collins plans to publish a collection of booksellers’ essays on their homes, working in installments. They may not get to the southeast for some time, but cross your fingers for me.

To write one essay I felt worthy of showing to Carl Lennertz, I had to write several. Most of it was garbage – or process, we might say kindly – but some of it hurt to lose.

My next several posts will be like deleted scenes on the special feature of a DVD. Most of these passages were deleted to trim the length of the overall piece. Others, like the visit to Café Risqué, didn’t fit the tone.
I hope you enjoy these, as I enjoyed exploring why I love Florida.

Here’s an opening I thought of using:

A few months back, some friends and I went bowling on Bird Road in Miami. At midnight, with the lanes, bar, food counter, pool tables, and videogame room in full swing, Bird Bowl shut down two lanes. A DJ booth sprung up across these two lanes. Then a Stripper Dance Contest sprung up around the DJ. For people unfamiliar, this doesn’t involve poles and chairs and splits. The stripper dance starts with a wide-legged squat and booty shake, and any variation and amplification of this move qualifies as a stripper dance.

We bowled five lanes away, yelling conversation over the music. Two gay teen boys – and although my assumption of their sexuality is based on flamboyance, intimate mutual hip grinding, and staunch rejection of the girls flocking around them, it’s still an assumption - tied for the prize. It didn’t matter. A roiling sea of bodies continued to grind their hips and shake their asses to Latin-tinged hip-hop blasted at earwax-melting levels.

My friend Debra held her bowling ball to her chest, watching kids ten and fifteen and twenty years younger than us writhe into a frenzied sweat.

“This wouldn’t happen at just any bowling alley in America,” she deadpanned.