Well. . . I'm in bed at ten. I set the alarm for five am. If I'm lucky, I'll have two hours to myself before Dylan gets up. I wake up around midnight on my side, my hip in a pool of cold wetness, wondering if I've pissed myself. My bladder is bursting so it's entirely possible. But I wasn't drinking (and even at my most drunk I've never pissed the bed, I've just heard that's what happens, and that's the first bleary thought I have, I'm not even drunk), I wasn't dreaming that I couldn't find a toilet (which is what I dream about when I need to get up and pee in the middle of the night), and if I pissed the bed then why would I still be able to get up and pee? But my bladder is sizable, so maybe I have enough storage capacity to piss the bed and still need to use the toilet. Maybe this is just a surprise my body has unleashed as I approach forty. Maybe all forty-year-old men start pissing the bed, but they're ashamed of it so no one talks about it; it's just something you discover alone, in the cold watches of the night.
Because the days are just packed! If you're unfamiliar with the Miami International Book Fair, it's in its 28th year.
Circa 1984. That's my boss on the left.
Because of Mitchell's involvement with MBFI, and because of our rather large sales tent, folks assume that Books & Books always handles sales for the author events. This has been true from time to time over the years, but it's never a given. 2011 is a make or break year. We're trying to be more organized than ever, looking at everything as hard as we can, to determine once and for all whether handling event sales at MBFI makes us money, or if we should hand event sales off to someone else (again).
I mention all of this because MBFI is consuming me. I do the event appearances for Books & Books, among other things, and I've been tapped to order for this event as well. It's like being handed a second full-time job on top of my regular full-time job.
Thankfully, some co-workers have stepped up to lighten my load. Not a lot, but enough to where I haven't actually torn my hair out.
I know, I know, I'm lucky to have a job in this economy. Particularly a book-industry job.
Then there's being a husband to my love, a father to my other love, Halloween, the After-Wedding Karaoke Jam Party, costumes, cleaning, meals, scratching the cat (no, that's not some gross metaphor). You know- life. I could be selfish and lock myself in my room until I'm published, but I don't think that would make me happy.
Besides, art doesn't happen in a vacuum.
I'm trying to keep the faith. Pushing the cursor isn't coming as easily as it has at certain moments in my life, but I still tell myself most days that it matters. I will dream big, and not listen to people who aren't. I will stop listening to the little voice in my head that says "It's been five years, Curtis, who you trying to kid?" I will follow The Rumpus's rule and Write Like a Motherfucker.
In the meantime, you'll probably find me in Books & Books buying office. Please send dark chocolate peanut M&Ms and Tito's Handmade Vodka.
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 afterJust 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.
I had just turned six years old when my brother and cousins took me to see Halloween in the theater.
At the time, you had G for General Audiences, PG for Parental Guidance suggested (“some material may no be suitable for pre-teenagers”), R for Restricted to folks with a a parent or adult guardian, and X for Midnight Cowboy (IE, no one under 17 admitted). My adult guardians would have been my brother AJ and my cousin Shawn, who were 13 and 15 at the time. They watched over my cousin Shane, age 13, sister Cass and cousin Shannon, both 11, and six-year-old me - the same age as young Michael Myers on screen, when he stabs his older sister to death for having sex and gets sent to a mental institution.
1978 = good times. Try getting a group kids aged 6 to 14 into the next Saw and see how far you get.
Having personal experience with a six-year-old has taught me that one thing they can’t do is distinguish reality from fantasy. Sample questions along this line include, “Are vampires real?” and “What would we do if zombies attacked this house?” I might as well have been watching a documentary.
Listening to John Carpenter’s synthesizer now, which he says is an homage to Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho, is a mix of nostalgic terror, judgment over its hokey creepiness, and genuine shivers. Listening to the music, watching Michael Myer's white mask fill the screen, I was bathed in horror.
At one point, my brother leaned over and whispered in my ear.
“Isn’t this awesome?” he asked.
I felt like a silhouette, a piece of blackness in that dark theater. He words entered my ear like light, found my spine, and exploded throughout my body. I couldn’t speak. I think I managed to nod, but I don’t quite remember.
Jason Zinoman’s Shock Valuehas a chapter which deals with the question every horror fan must face at one point or another: “How could you watch those kinds of movies?” Apart from a glowing review from Powell's, part of me probably picked it up to answer that question myself.
I can always use the excuse that I had no choice; I was indoctrinated early.
As far as the book, it’s fascinating if you’re a fan of any kind of film - Zinoman makes a compelling argument that most critically-lauded, Oscar-winning films of the day are shot by folks who grew up idolizing what many considered schlock when it was first produced.
When I opened my mail at Books & Books this week, I got a pleasant surprise: a promotional flyer for the paperback version of the mighty Brocke Clarke's Exley. Let's have a look, shall we?
That's right. Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times... and Aaron Curtis (oh, and The Washington Post). Sweet Readers were the first to realize that I'm a taste-maker, but now the publishing industry has spoken.
Yet this flyer is served with a soupcon of shame. I've mentioned Exley three times in passing here at SwF&F. Well, five, if you include The Heat Lightning and the best of 2010. But I've never recommended it all on its own. I've also yet to review it on Goodreads, although I read it more than a year ago.
Call it Out of Sheer Rage syndrome; I loved it so much I didn't want to turn anyone off with a lame recommendation, so I ended up writing nothing. But it's even worse than that. Some people have a tough time blogging about friends and family. I feel that way about books which have won a place near my heart.
So if I haven't been clear, you should read Exley. You'll love it, and it might even win a place near your heart.
I didn't find what I was looking for when I Googled Cara Hoffman hates men, but I did leave an internet trail to her blog.
She wrote a post about it called Cara Hoffman Hates Men. In the comments, "Mike D" actually characterized my search correctly. I've added emphasis to his remarks below:
I agree with your essay and am impressed that you're able to respond to what appears to be annoying ignorance so calmly. However, there's something else going on here. Google Analytics. The idea of judging someone's opinion by their internet searches sounds pretty dangerous. The thing about "Cara Hoffman Hates Men" is you don't really know the intent of the person who entered that search. How many were interested in refuting the idea or agreeing? You can't tell what occurs in the mind by one's computer history.
Cara Hoffman responded thusly:
Reasonable point Mike D. I'll try to consider the benevolent reasons one might research cara hoffman hates men.
I almost posted a comment but in the end I chickened out. Probably because the same post mentions searches for nude photos of her. Also, I felt guilty and stupid. I picked the wording; no one suggested it. I was afraid of what that says about me.
As Hoffman writes when embracing hatred of people who commit violence against women, "So Much Pretty didn’t get written in a state of graceful acceptance of the yearly murder of thousands." It was stupid to search for backlash against a book with a feminist bent when we live in a culture that supports rape and fetishizes dead women. Look around; there's backlash everywhere.
As a side note, I have to wonder if I was the only one who searched that term.
Google analytics tells me that second only to "Sweet with Fall and Fish," folks find my blog by searching the phrase "Za Za Zoo." As Sex and the City is so popular, that makes sense (although, as I pointed out, Carrie Bradshaw actually spells it Zsa Zsa Zsu, so a true SATC fan would never find SwF&F). Yet there's one I can't understand, and that's "John Cusack Fish." What does that even mean? I have no idea, but six people have Googled it and found my blog.
Sweet Readers, you've heard me sing the praises of So Much Prettybefore. Now check out The Huffington Post, NPR, Jack Cameron, and Reading for the Joy of It. There are many more blog posts out there about the book, but those are my favorite. And the more copies she sells, the more likely she is to have a second book.
I wasn't totally off. My last post also made it clear that the business was a bakery. So, yeah, this place:
Making Delicious Happen.
Becky and I purchased one chocolate cupcake and one red velvet cupcake, ate them on site, and then left. Realizing we might never encounter another cupcake so delicious, we turned around after half a block. This delighted the staff, who sold us two more red velvet cupcakes while we tried to sell them on the idea of a Donna Bell's Miami.
We got about ten feet before we returned, this time for a single red velvet. We want a Donna Bell's in Miami because there is no cupcake in this entire city which can hold a candle to them.
"Wait, what about Misha's Cupcakes?" I hear you Miamians saying. Blah, blah, blah. Yes, they're great. But you know what? Homemade cake is great, like the one about sex and pizza.
Male propaganda.
I'm not saying Misha's are bad, at all, but one bite from Donna Bell's and I knew I wouldn't be able to eat another Misha's for at least a year. It's like reading James Salter'sLight Yearsor John Irving's Cider House Rules; you know other fiction will pale for a time.
"Some Chick from CSI" is actually actress, singer, and philanthropist (and if IMDB and Wikipedia are to be believed, director / photographer / producer / poet / spoken-word artist / writer) Pauley Perrette:
I IMDB'd her. I've seen her in Frasier, Almost Famous, and The Ring, and I've heard of NCIS, but I didn't know who she was. NCIS is a number one TV show. This year's Harris Poll ranked it America's Favorite Television Show of All Time. Perrette's Q Score (yes, that's a thing) ties Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman as the number one Performer. She's also 5'10", black-haired, and badass. You'd think I'd have celeb-crushed on her like I do on Eva Mendes or Angelina Jolie, or at least that I'd recognize her.
But really, does it matter how big of a star she is? I'm sure NCIS is a fine program, but I'd have to guess Perrette's voluminous fundraising efforts, monetary donations, and charitable contributions - be they time or using her celebrity status to raise awareness - are of much more importance to the world.
Well, all that and sharing her mother's baking recipes.
This is a clarification post but if you want a love-letter to Donna Bell's a good example can be found here, with pictures of the offerings AND the girl who rang Becky and I up. If you're in New York City around the Theatre District and Hell's Kitchen, do your day right and stop by Donna Bell's Bake Shop.
Here's hoping it will be there every time I'm in town.
Despite what you may have read in the Miami Herald, I've been drinking Cuban espresso since 1991, not 1997. It was too complicated to go into. My ex-wife worked at an office in Miami with a group of viejitas who refused to leave their desks but who insisted she make their cafecito each morning and afternoon. She brought the stovetop coffee maker to Syracuse with her, along with bricks of Pilon. I was already hooked on the stuff when I moved to Miami.
Becky told me I had it all wrong. Bustelo, not Pilon. Don't leave the grinds loose so the water shoots through it easily, tamp it down tight. Don't eyeball the sugar and the first black spit-up of espresso for the espumita, measure it. I was even using the wrong brewer.
Whatever, I had been brewing delicious Cuban coffee for a good eighteen years and I never heard any complaints.
"Listen," Becky said. "Don't mess with my Cuban cofffee. I'm Manny Q's daughter."
Or words to that effect, which, if you knew Papa Q, would be saying something.
Of course she was right (being right is one of her strengths). Her espresso was darker, richer. Her espumita the perfect caramel color each time, without adjustments. She served her shots with a good quarter-inch of creme across the top. I drink my "American-style" coffee - as they call it in Miami - black and sugarless, but those little shots of sugary espresso goodness are something special.
Miami brewer Rowland Coffee owns the two most recognizable and successful of the local coffees - Pilon and Bustelo. Really, they're like Coke and Pepsi. Some people taste the difference, some don't, but those who do are fierce advocates of their choice.
Rowland's patriarch, Jose Angel "Pepe" Souto, died four years ago. His sons just sold Rowland to Smucker's for $360 million. In cash, for some reason. Jose Enrique Souto, who co-ran the company with his brothers Jose Alberto and Angel, called it, "The all-American dream to start a little business, sell it to a big company, and then go enjoy life." I suppose. But it sounds like Pepe dreamed of coffee, and Pepe's sons dreamed of money.
Souto claims this deal honors his father's legacy - "The future of our brand is assured with this deal." Rowlands made $115 million a year, but we all know that won't be enough for a corporation that makes $4.6 billion a year. People who need "creative ideas" to justify their jobs will get in there and try to make something happen. They will decide a red and yellow package design is too loud for a mass audience. They will kill the charm.
But that's just speculation. The reality is that part of this deal entails closing Miami's facilities and folding those operations into Folgers, putting 150 employees out of business. This also affects local businesses whose services Rowland purchased - pest control, linen delivery, area eateries, etc.
Hundreds of people are blown out of the water so three dudes can roll around in $120 million each.
Simon & Schuster wants to brand this chick lit, but I liked the hardcover cover better;
you should see the Norwegian cover.
I sounded off on Fabiola Santiago's Facebook post of the link above, so she asked me to elaborate in a side email. She writes for the Miami Herald, and coffee and books are my passion, so this happened.
Talk about books for years and no one gives a hoot. Talk about coffee one time, the world listens.
My post originally stated that "Miami brewer Rowland Coffee began in Cuba in 1865, and they own the two most recognizable and successful of the local coffees - Pilon and Bustelo." I got this info from the Rowland Coffee website. A reader graciously pointed out that this isn't the case (in fact, "Pepe" Souto's obituary mentions that they were primarily ranchers in Cuba before they lost their businesses to Castro).
Manuel Jesus Bascuas started the very popular Pilon in Cuba. According to his daughter, this was in the early 1900s.
Rowland purchased Pilon in 1967.
(As far as Bustelo, Gregario Bustelo started making coffee in 1920s and Rowland bought them in 2000.)
We have Manuel Jesus Bascuas to thank for the packaging and flavor we know today.
A few things before I move on from the last week of posts.
1 - Blogger has been spotty since Tuesday. I had no intention of leaving that misery up for an extra week, unbuffered by book reviews, navel gazing, and cooking tips, but I couldn't log on. Watcha gonna do?
2 - I went out on a weekday this week and it didn't even involve my book club. I stayed up past eleven, because I'm a rock star.
3 - Becky and I are impressively happy, I promise. I offer this link to our wedding website as proof, 90% of which was created post-Fester.
Mothers Day, 2011
I see that "Long Time No Post" has creeped up to #2 on my all-time most-read list. That's almost enough to make me remove the "Popular Posts" feature from my blog, the fact that some meh about why I haven't posted in a while is the second-most read item I've ever written. It doesn't even have a picture. Still, I've watched its steady climb from #6 to #2. Again, watcha gonna do?
On the writing front, our fledgling Writers Group missed a month, but we've set a date in stone. Going forward, this should be a great opportunity to talk shop. I've promised myself I'll continue my homework by submitting stories to two publications this week.
On the reading front, TC Boyle's The Inner Circle, Tina Fey's Bossypants, Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf, and Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes (still) all have been or currently are treating me very well. I've got an Advanced Readers Copy of Diana Abu-Jaber's Birds of Paradise that I'm very excited about. I think I'll also start writing about my book club here. Page Against the Machine is awesome, and it's another excuse to talk about books.
On the biking front, my tires are flat. Or rather, the tires on the bike I borrowed from Mitchell are flat, a situation I hope to remedy with my next paycheck.
On the home front...
The truth can always be questioned. Religious beliefs, moral convictions, love, it's all worth examining. It's important to examine these things because we live our lives by them. If they can't stand the scrutiny, if defensiveness and hostility meet these questions, than the answers are damn shaky.
I taught a six-year-old to tie his own shoes on Friday. The first knots he's ever tied, one for each foot. After a few frustrating evenings of trying to teach him how to tie his bathrobe, I was surprised it finally happened for him. The satisfaction, love, and fear (yes, fear, because he's listening, and what if he inherits my bad along with my good?) flooding me made it almost impossible to function, but I managed to get our lunches together and get us out the door.
In the days after Uncle Fester, Becky and I have found our love is even stronger. We were being ourselves before, but now we're relaxing into our relationship, into each-other. There's a playfulness that can only come from confidence. More than trust, which is a necessity in a building a relationship, confidence only comes from sharing your days. The more you share, the stronger it becomes. The trick is not letting that confidence become cockiness.
We faced dark days and came out better for them. I didn't think it was possible to love Becky more than I already did, but there you go.
Anger has always been the most difficult emotion for me to express.
Don’t blame me; it’s filial. Grandpa used to beat grandma. My father grew up watching that and swore to himself that he would never. He kept his promise and became passive-aggressive. He spent my childhood brooding silently, a lump in a lounge chair, the angry God who slept beneath the volcano. He didn’t use fists, but he did use his voice. He has a tone that can wither flowers, destroy sunshine, and make you feel like you’ve never been worthy of love and never will be.
I have that tone. It’s taken me decades to understand where it comes from, and get rid of it. I also have the same problem my dad has expressing anger. I feel like the world will come apart if I do.
As we all know, depression is anger turned inward. I might have some residual depression to work out from my divorce, but what I really am is angry.
I have every right to be angry. She pulled away, she did the cheating, she looked around at our life and decided to destroy it. I had a peaceful heart once, but now I don’t. She destroyed that, too.
I hate her for that. I hate her for it, and I’m allowed to, dammit. I am allowed to hate my ex-wife for breaking my heart.
When I told my uncle Dom about the upcoming nuptials, he asked if I was going to tell Andi. He might as well have asked if I was planning on running a marathon. I can’t say running one is an awful idea, but it’s just never occurred to me that it’s something I might do.
“Do you think I should?” I asked.
“Oh, I can’t answer that,” he said.
I thought about it. I saw the logic (and we’ve all seen that movie); I’d rather you hear it from me than someone else. But the truth is, I don’t care where or if she hears about my marriage. Like my life, it has nothing to do with her. That’s the beauty of divorce. If I don’t want to consider her feelings, I don’t have to. At all.
If I ruin my relationship with Becky because of my ex, because of my broken heart, because of my anger and hatred... well, I can try hating my ex for destroying two marriages, but I doubt the lie would last.
If I don’t work these feelings out, they will poison what Becky and I have.
Becky and I are getting married on Friday, September 16th, 2011.
The divorce from my first marriage was final on September 3rd, 2010.
I didn’t really think about that until I was filling you out. I tried talking to you last year, but your marriage questions thwarted my efforts. You didn’t just want to know if I was married, single, separated or divorced, you asked if I’ve ever been married. Sure, whether one has been married informs a large part of one’s identity, but what do you care, passport? You even wanted dates, and got picky about it. You wouldn’t take my court appointment as the end date of my marriage because it was in the future. Fine.
So here we are again. I tell you the dates of my marriage. I use Becky as my emergency contact. Under relationship, I put fiance. You ask why I need you. I tell you for my honeymoon on 9/17/11, and you’re dated 4/21/11.
It’s not like I got divorced, met a stranger, and got engaged in seven months, passport application. It just looks that way.
Listen, application - that marriage ended two years ago, more than two years ago, now. Becky and I were colleagues, so even if I never looked at her in a certain light, I knew the cut of her jib. She got divorced after I did and they hadn’t lived together for years, are you going to judge her, too?
You know what, application? There are whole worlds out there you have no idea about, lives lived in the margins outside your paragraphs, emotions bubbling in the spaces between your lines. You don’t even have ideas, you’re just paper. Paper, and one really bad photo.
Guess what else? I found my favorite white wine at Walgreens for $3.99 when I was getting that lousy picture taken. You didn’t know that, did you?
I do not have shitty taste in wine.
Look, I don’t need your attitude right now, okay? It’s not my fault they made you more expensive and required you for a night in Niagara Falls. Just do your job, get me over the border, and no one will get hurt.
Opening files this morning and I came across this snippet I really love. Pardon me while I subject you to the horror of a first draft:
Hannah Delaney sat in the garden of sound, thinking of how wonderful and cruel life could be.
The pleasure was wonderful. Hannah was odd but not so odd to think the garden had been made just for her. Even though it was one of the few pleasures she had in her days, the cruelty it took to create the garden could only come from God.
The Delaneys were big on God. On Sundays her parents took her to the big gym outside of town, almost twenty minutes away. She listened to the tall, thin, white haired preacher talk about God and life and television and family, his timbre smooth, his tones bright. He sounded like a commercial himself, a Voice You Could Trust stumping for a Life You Should Lead. Every talk ended with the flock bowing their heads. The preacher talked to God hard. He invited people to raise their hands if they wanted to be saved. Yes, I see that hand, the preacher would murmur in a tone like thick honey. Yes, I see that hand. Praise God. Yes, I see that hand...
Hannah never opened her eyes to see if people were really raising their hands, but she was always curious. The idea of raising her own hand built over several months of Sundays until she realized she'd never have the nerve. She gave up, and kept her head bowed and her eyes closed. A few weeks later, when the preacher asked anyone who wanted God to enter his heart to raise his hand, Hannah's arm shot up at if pulled by invisible strings.
"Yes, I see that hand," he murmured, sending a flush of pleasure from the pit of her stomach through her entire body. She would have liked to sit with that feeling for a time, but he'd already moved on to the next person longing for salvation. Yes, I see that hand...
The moment came suddenly, and ended just as fast. Bookending her as usual, her parents must have felt her movement. They'd never remarked on it.
God ate breakfast and dinner with the Delaneys. God was invoked when her aunt caught the cancer, or her cousin was born deaf. God was invoked when the radiation treatments worked, or an uncle's business thrived. God could send a station wagon to kill a beloved pet, God could eased psoriasis, God could inspire good people to do great works.
When she turned thirteen, Hannah attended youth group on Tuesday nights. Youth group took place in the chapel instead of the gym. The chapel was so beautiful Hannah wished the church had never outgrown the building. It was round, built entirely of wood so dark it was nearly black. The spire on top was all glass, saving the space from gloom. The podium was raised, the stage small, the cross simple gold. She knew growth was a good thing, that sooner or later there'd be enough Christians to save the world, but she never felt as close to God in the gym as she felt in the old chapel.
There were so many great churches downtown, miniature versions of the old churches of Europe, hulking in stone, swallowing city blocks, stained glass windows, copper roofs turning green, doors painted gleaming red. She didn't know what kept the Delaneys from
They didn't finish construction on the new chapel before she was exiled, so she never knew if the new, huge chapel was as warm and beautiful as the old one.
It's written in a different voice. I've never used "stump" or "timbre" in my life. It's a promising beginning, more polished than some first drafts usually are, with a character I knew and a situation I wanted to explore. Sure, I'd lose the first two paragraphs, but still; good stuff.
I must have been affected by all those churches I saw in central New York on vacation. Growing up there, I never noticed how many of them there are. And Garden of Sound is the phrase I think of when I hear one of Becky's favorite songs, Regina Spektor's Consequence of Sound. I also remember that preacher from when I was born again. That's where my knowledge of this piece runs out.
She didn't know what kept the Delaneys from- what? What's the Garden of Sound? And why was she exiled? The water was flowing and I didn't get to the pump before it dried up, so I have no better answers than you. I let the holidays or reviews or blogs came before Hannah Delaney, and she died.
I only knew her for a moment, on Monday December 20th, 2010, but I mourn her passing.
Not greased lightning but my latest review for The Heat Lighting, a face off between Ape House and Great House. I missed posting for THL in February because it took me forever to figure out how to get both cover shots into one image.
I'm not a computer whiz, but I have presidential taste in music.
If you can find the cracks, you should go to medical school
On February 23rd, 2007, I could have died.
This statement is as close to meaningless as you can get. I could have died on December 1st, 1982 or August 15th 1996. I could have died yesterday, I could die today, and I could die tomorrow. But could have died feels more honest than saying I almost died.
True, fire rescue doesn’t airlift you to a trauma center specializing in car accidents and gunshots for fun (or for free), but when I hear “almost died,” I think of heart attacks and strokes, sudden collapses, defibrillators and emergency surgeries. If the other car had been going faster, if he’d struck my car at weaker point... but those thoughts end with could have. Almost feels like an exaggeration.
Semantics aside, what I want to talk about this anniversary is pain.
Doctors told me most breaks heal in 6-8 weeks, which is not nearly specific enough when parts of you are sweating pain. I spent much of late April and early May of 2007 Googling broken ribs. Nothing I found encouraged me. Most posts began with, “I broke my ribs a year ago...” or “I broke my ribs two years ago...” and the posters were still in pain.
Yes, there’s still pain in my ribs. No longer a constant arthritic ache, it comes and goes depending on what I’m doing. Sit up straight in my chair at work for too long and the rib I broke up near my armpit feels the pressure, like a throat that can’t quite clear. Slouch too long and the rib I broke down by my stomach feels the pinch, like an over-tight belt. Ignore the discomfort long enough and it will deepen and stretch into a dull thrum.
When I imagine my hip, I always think of a wide-faced gremlin gnawing the end of one of those state fair ostrich legs. It crackles on and off throughout the day; only rarely does it shoot all the way down to my knee.
Even more rare is the dull nutcracker feeling clamped around my pelvis. That doesn’t seem to have a trigger, it just throbs up every now and again to say, you broke me too, remember?
Winter, even such as it is in Miami, intensifies both the level and frequency of these aches. The rainy season is just as bad. It’s a steady hum, like a chorus of strings, occasionally deepening to a throb of brass, every once in a while punctuated by a quick clatter of drumsticks over cymbals or the plaintive moan you might hear in a Pink Floyd song.
My body has aged beyond its years, but I’m less concerned these days with how all this will hang together on the seventy-year-old version of me than with how it’s affecting me now. Recovering from the accident, when I could barely move, I promised myself I would never take my healthy body for granted again. Well, guess what? I’ve been driving to work more than I’ve been biking, and it shows. It shows in my waistline, in the longer recovery time once I get to work, and my negative attitude.
Getting back on the bike consistently this past week has meant more than a rush of endorphins and sweat, it’s told me that my aches and pains are not as bad as I think they are. Just like when I pushed myself to start riding in the first place, the ache is temporary and the reward goes on.
Some lessons I need to learn again and again before they sink in. That’s why the pain it still here. Its most important lesson is that each day is a gift.
Since returning from Thanksgiving vacation, I've put in more hours at Books & Books than a Malaysian eight-year-old in a sneaker factory. I took last Sunday off to watch Dylan, and this weekend off to scrape paint in the dining room. These are not days off in the sense of coffee in one hand, Just Kids in the other, lounging in pajamas while Friends on DVD plays quietly in the background (just writing that sentence made me drool). I worked like an ox before the goad, I just didn't get a paycheck for my efforts.
Between sixty-hour work weeks, interminable renovations, and Christmas shopping, I've barely been able to get out of bed. I sleep, dream, and then Dylan rousts Becky and I out of bed. I set my alarm for five as always, but I was so sleepy I'd turn it off and have no recollection of doing so.
Christmas fever has made Dylan a handful. The other buyer, Z, has been on his honeymoon, leaving me solo during our busiest time of the year. I've been sleeping through the time alloted for the one activity which keeps me sane. We're still living hand to mouth, barely. The walls of our dining room look like the set of Silent Hill. MiniMe has fleas. So why am I so happy? Christmas? Becky? All the lights and carols? Coming home to presents form up north? Maybe a cocktail of all of those thing, with a fresh pine tree thrown in to stir it.
I'm sorry SwF&F has gotten anemic. I promise more words in the future.
In the meantime, I'm fine. Busy, exhausted, and fine.
