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.

Dear Passport Application: Don't Judge Me

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.

In the meantime, let’s keep this between us.

This Writing Gig Can Be Frustrating

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.

I Quit the Gym

The One with the Ballroom Dancing

Examining my monthly spending to see how my income can better suit our family’s needs. . . was how I originally began this post.  Truthfully, I don’t think about money all that much.  Well, that’s not accurate either.  I think about money indirectly all the time, as in I’d love to go out / visit your aunt in California / see an opthamologist / update my wardrobe, but after rent and groceries there’s not much left.  I didn’t “examine” anything, though.  There were no pie charts or graphs involved, I just got rid of things I didn’t need.  This fiscal spring cleaning led me to cancel my membership to Bally Total Fitness.

My relationship with Bally goes back to 1996, when I saw pictures of myself on Virginia Beach and realized over-eating every meal wasn’t the giggle it used to be when I was seventeen.  I joined Bally when I got back to Syracuse, and it only cost me $50 down and $35 a month.  

I stayed long enough to lose the jelly roll and stop feeling like my limbs were filled with lemon juice instead of blood after every weightlifting session.  Three months at Bally cost me $120.

Then I moved to Miami and saw pictures of myself papering cars for Starbucks short-lived Tiazzi frozen tea beverage.  True, the big green apron wasn’t doing me any favors, but I’d skipped Billy and Stephen and gone right to Daniel Baldwinsville.  I spent $250 on a Premier Membership, with access to a trainer, a supply of some kind of legal speed pep pill, and the promise that my monthly membership fee would only be $15.  

Bally had gotten smarter.  They locked me into a one-year contract, so I paid them $430 for my second go around.

On the plus side, you’d be amazed what those pep pills will do for your motivation.  I dropped back into the 190lb area in no time.  Unfortunately, the motivation only lasted as long as the free pep pills.  I didn’t want to spend money to buy more legal speed, so I stopped going regularly after two months, and completely after three.  Through the magic of automated debit, my payments continued.  When this contract expired in 1999, I’d paid Bally’s a total of $550.

1999 was also the year I got digital cable.  Apparently, sitting around watching TV and eating potato chips doesn’t burn calories like you’d hope; it was the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life.  

This time I wanted to do it right.  I was tired of putting down huge sums every time I got fat.  I wanted a low monthly payment I could live with the rest of my life, so if I ever caught the workout bug again, the cure would be as close as the nearest Ballys.  I became a Premier Fitness Plus Member because the monthly payment dropped to a mere $5 after a year of $15 payments.  It also came with a trainer for six weeks, plus free training consultation whenever I wanted it, for as long as my membership lasted.  It also came with a humiliating body measurement session, eight weeks of legal speed, protein supplements, and the promise that I could go anywhere in the world and always have a Ballys nearby to keep me in shape.  

The big pimpin' package cost me $499, bringing my total Bally payments (as of August 2000) to $1,229 dollars.  

I’ve been a Premier Fitness Plus Member since 1999.  Unlike some of the horror stories I’ve heard, my monthly payment did indeed drop to $5 after a year.  This lasted until 2004, when it went up to $8.  Since 2006, my monthly payment has fluctuated from $11.41 to $10.15, every other month.  I’ve no idea why.  

After the millennium, I read Critser's Fat Land and Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.  I eliminated high-fructose corn syrup from my diet, and ate every couple of hours.  I started doing yoga.  Gradually, over the course of a few years, I became comfortable with my eating habits and my weight.  Before the car accident I was very into yoga.  Post-accident, as soon as I was able, I was back in the gym at my apartment complex, and biking to and from work.  

What I did not do was set foot inside any Bally Total Fitness, anywhere.  

But I kept paying that $10.15 to $11.41 every month.  If I ever decided to blast my body into shape again, I didn’t want to lose a huge down payment.  Trouble was, that didn’t work for me.  I need exercise that fits with my schedule, and biking to and from work and is it.  Finding time to travel to a gym is not.  

I’ve paid Ballys $2,178.44 for very little of my time.  I could have travelled.  I could have bought clothes.  I could have bought a used car.

Anything but exercise.  

Christmas Miracle

The house we're renting was built in 1928, impressively old by Miami standards.  Some months back, Becky and I decided we should remove the decades of accumulated paint before we chose our own pallet.

Okay, it was my brilliant idea.  Blame me 100%.  But the windowsills are flaking without our help, and previous peeling has obviously been painted over.  None of the doors close because of the accumulated layers.  The crown molding has no detail, and the corners sag with frozen drips.  Apart from the floors - oak in the front rooms, pine in the bedrooms - the house's wood energy is suffocating beneath years of latex and lead.

Little did I know how difficult it would be to remove.  

Five days of work spread over several months later...

Work is nothing without a deadline, so we invited Becky's family for Christmas brunch at our place.  Dylan stayed with his Abuelo and Abuela.  Becky and I could work all night if we wanted.

"So we'll be tired," I said, "so what?"

Well paint-scraping tired is not writing tired, or internet-surfing tired, or drinks-with-friends tired.  It is where-did-that-cut-come-from, aches-in-muscles-and-tendons-you-never-knew-you-had, making-a-fist-hurts-like-hell strung out exhausted, especially after a few hellish weeks of holiday retail.

This hurts.

We worked until three AM Thursday night then popped up at eight Friday morning.  We scraped until we physically and emotionally could scrape no more, until no amount of willpower would force our muscles to obey.  One cabinet is better than nothing.

We hit one cabinet with chalkboard in a can and painted the walls Chianti (Behr S-H-150).  The other cabinet, baseboards, and trim will wait for another day.

Through dividing and conquering, we managed to get the dining room not just presentable but lovely, while picking up paychecks, cleaning, and grocery shopping for the brunch.  We also learned that even exhausted at three am, we're a great team.

Yum.

Oddly enough, the red is so rich that it makes the last few layers of paint to be scraped look like a deliberate attempt to be distressed and antique-looking.  We were praised to heaven for the look.  It's a nice thought but I doubt we'll go with it, particularly when only one more day of work will give us a finished room.  Well, maybe two days.

Either way, we can't let the paint win.

Luck is Opportunity Plus Preparation

I had an agent’s attention a couple years back. Before coming to Books & Books, Marissa had ghostwritten a couple of biographies with famous folks and had also interned at several agencies. When she found out I’d written a book, she demanded to know why I hadn’t approached her before. After asking about what I was working on and what I’d completed, Marissa suggested I contact Courtney Miller-Callihan at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, Inc.

Not only did Miller-Callihan accept email submissions - quick and easy - Marissa had seen her in action and knew she was good at her job.

I emailed Courtney Miller-Callihan at SGA the second draft of Scratch the Dead Places (horror of horrors; at least it wasn’t the first draft). She passed on it, of course. At the same time, she told me she liked my writing and would look at something different. I sent Ming and she responded enthusiastically. I sent a version with some revisions she suggested, along with an outline for parts one and two. She replied with a tremendous email that was two pages long when I printed it out.

I made the changes she suggested immediately. Then I sat on them.

When I sent Ming back, along with a short story collection called Whistling Past the Graveyard to apologize for taking so long, I was shocked to find that a year had passed since our last correspondence.

I’ve since learned how rarely this kind of feedback happens, and how well it portends. I’ve also learned that from an agent’s perspective, when there’s a long period of silence after so much back-and-forth, the agent assumes you’ve used their advice to improve your work, attempted to sell it to a different agent, failed, then come crawling back like nothing ever happened.

Timing is everything. There has to be a reason I didn’t just send it off immediately, right? I had to deal with my marriage breaking up, after all. Cheap excuse. The fact is, I wasn’t aware of those problems until a couple of months after the revised Ming was ready. The breakup prompted me to send my work out, to try and make something of my life.

Am I so afraid of failure I sabotage every opportunity?

When we first corresponded, Courtney Miller-Callahan was not listed on the SGA website. Now she is. I can only assume her plate is fuller than it once was, or (uh-oh) she’s lost interest, or (worst of all) she’s forgotten Ming. Do I follow up? Do I use divorce as an excuse? Do I take it as a learning experience and move on?

I think yes, no, and yes.

I've been preparing long enough; it's time to create an opportunity.

You Should Read Elmore Leonard

“You asking me,” Catlett said, “do I know how to write down words on a piece of paper? That’s what you do, man, you put down one word after the other as it comes in your head. It isn’t like having to learn how to play the piano, like you have to learn notes. You already learned in school how to write, didn’t you? I hope so. You have the idea and you put down what you want to say. Then you get somebody to add in the commas and shit where they belong, if you aren’t positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words. There people do that for you. Some, I’ve even seen scripts where I know words weren’t spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it. So I don’t think it’s too important. You come to the last page you write in 'Fade out' and that’s the end, and you’re done.”
- Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty

My preferred method of recommendation is quoting an author’s work. As you can see from the paragraph above, Elmore Leonard is funny, real, and spare. He’ll never come up with a line so poetic that hipsters want it tattooed across their shoulders, but if there’s another writer as masterful at revealing character through dialog, I’m taking nominations. Whoever you want to bring forward, it would still be called the Elmore Leonard Dialog Award.

He’s created some of pop culture’s most memorable characters, folks who populate his fiction and film. Chili Palmer. Karen Sisco. Ordell Robbie. Of course, for every Out of Sight and Jackie Brown, there’s a Big Bounce or a Stick.

As is so often the case, you’re better off with his books.

More than providing hours of page-turning entertainment, I have Elmore Leonard to thank (or blame) for buckling down as a writer.

When Andi and I first moved to Miami, I was a mess. Looking for the job with the least amount of responsibility long before Lester Burnham, I’d gotten a job as a dishwasher at Bennigan’s some years before. Why go to school to teach yourself to be an artist? What did it matter what you did to keep food in your mouth and roof over your head? The work mattered, not the job.

Of course, this was before I knew what the work would be. That fundamental weakness in my pursuit of art led to a lot of late nights, LSD, and – most shamefully – to my spinelessness when presented with a dollar raise. I forgot my job was a necessary evil and not a calling

Airbrushing supplies gathered dust. T-squares collected cobwebs in corners. Paints dried up. The writing was dump and flush, amateur hour, the drivel of a dabbling dilettante (yes, I know that “dabbling dilettante” is redundant, but who can resist the alliterative pull? Say it five times fast, drivel of a dabbling dilettante, drivel of a dabbling dilettante… might make a better blog tagline than that if I care how others perceive my passions stuff. I’ll change it after I change the About Me section of my profile to “twat with a Tank Girl tattoo.”).

When Elmore Leonard pushed me into the writing life, I had the day off from my management job at Borders. I was watching a DVD of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, which is based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch. I’d seen it so many times, just watching the movie wasn’t enough of a distraction. I decided to watch it with the text commentary.

During the scene when Samuel L. Jackson's Ordell Robbie shows Robert DeNiro's Louis Gara a video called “Chicks Who Love Guns,” these words flashed across the bottom of the screen:

Elmore Leonard’s Rules of Remaining Invisible:

1) Never open a book with weather.
2) Avoid Prologues.
3) Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4) Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.”
5) Keep your exclamation points under control.
6) Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7) Use regional dialect sparingly.
8) Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9) Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10) Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

All these rules have exceptions but the most important thing is- if it sounds like writing, rewrite it.

I hit the pause button on the DVD remote, sat up on the couch. The first draft of my first book opened with a prologue in which a person with a thick northeastern / reservation dialect talks about the weather (and how I heartily wish that was a joke). Clearly I had a lot of work to do. I ejected Jackie Brown from the DVD player and got to it.

I printed Elmore Leonard’s Rules for Remaining Invisible above my desk, imagining them posted above typewriters and computers across America. I started a program called “Mind Pissings” with the words what to write when you have no idea? Mind Pissings became my journal, my drawing board, the place where I wrote every morning at five am before my judgment bone woke up and stopped the circulation of my imagination.

At a Books & Books appearance some years later, Augusten Burroughs told aspiring writers to write every day, and on the days when they had nothing to write about and no ideas, they should write about having nothing to write about and no ideas.

It’s the habit. Like pushups and sit ups before bed. Switching fried food for salads. Thinking before speaking. The tiny, healthy steps which, in the fullness of time, will get you where you see yourself. It takes build up to make big leaps.

Thanks, Mr. Leonard. I build my room in the Tower of Babble by your grace.

Let's Not Be Hasty

There’s a Sedano’s, a CVS, and a coin laundry walking distance from the Treehouse.  I haven’t lived here long, so I’m still developing a routine.  My grocery shopping was sporadic and bacheloresque.  Eggs, juice, and frozen pizza at Target when I bought a shower curtain.  Apples, eggs, and bread when I helped a friend throw a barbecue.  A Swiss cheese platter at Fritz & Franz kept me in grilled cheese and omelette de fromage for two weeks.  I ate a lot of eggs for breakfast and a lot of salads at The Rubber Duck for lunch.

I finally shopped, lugging a cartful of groceries six blocks in one of those big blue bags from Ikea.  I switched arms often, but I think they still stretched a good two inches each.   This is the last thing I need.   It’s not height giving me my impressive reach, it’s my simian arms.  I once beat the captain of our high school basketball team in a tip off, and I have no vertical leap.  None.  Another few months of lugging groceries, and I’ll look like I’m walking with ski poles.

Thankfully, my bike is fixed now.  I can shop every few days.   I’m down to one plastic bag too many.  My next trip, I hope to fill my backpack precisely and not need to worry about beating my groceries to death with my knees on the ride home.

While procrastinating getting my bike fixed (or rather, procrastinating asking someone with the means of transporting my bike to the shop for help), I stopped getting rides into Books & Books from co-workers. I decided to walk instead.

Coral Gables calls itself The City Beautiful, and it is.  There’s so much foliage around my house, the air feels thick with oxygen.  The sun shining down from Miami’s blue skies, banyan trees shading my path, I feel very European, going for long, rambling walks among the greenery.  It's easy to smile surrounded by all this beauty.

My internal dial has adjusted itself to a slower pace.  Cars move at improbable speeds.  TV ads and sitcom dialog sound ridiculous.  I can’t bring anything into my home, dirty any dish, wear any shirt, without thinking of the consequences.

My hope is that I’ll continue to live life more deliberately.  I want to consider my words, and my relationships.   One of my problems has always been saying the first fool thing which comes to my mind.   I’d love to take a breath before speaking.  I’ve been giving my time to people I normally wouldn’t, opening myself to new experiences.  I’ve rediscovered one of the talents I had as a younger man, which is listening without thinking of what to say next (the trick is not to be so afraid of silence).

The questions we need to answer about why we’re here, what we’re supposed to do, and what does it all mean, along with searching for the joy and the lessons in any given moment; lately, I seem to have more time for all of that.  Which is ridiculous, since my days are fuller than they’ve ever been.  Must be just perspective.

People marvel that I don’t own a car in a city with terrible public transportation.  If I did, I’d crank the music up and joyously sing along, but my exercise and meditation time would be lost.  My grasp of the present would fade.  I’d go back to drifting through life, instead of living it.  Not gonna happen.

According to Paul Auster, I’m already there in my chosen mode of transportation.  He compared trying to make a living through writing to watching people zoom past in their SUVs and saying, “Yes, I see those cars and that's great… but I’m going to stick with my bike.”

Me, too, Paul.

The Week in Review

The job has been terrible. Mitchell dumped a large project on top of my already large workload and every day has been a struggle not to drown. That it was nothing either of us had planned doesn’t give me more hours in my day. Fortunately, I’ve been adhering to a strict regimen of Warsteiner Dunkel at Fritz & Franz’s Oktoberfest to keep me sane. Infant cow rendered into bratwurst, sauerkraut, beer pretzels, blondes in short skirts and low-cut shirts with puffy sleeves, bearing the gifts of cleavage and refills – what’s not to love?

Before I started drinking five years ago, I didn’t realize different alcohol could have different effects. Red wine hits me like a mild ecstasy pill (warning and advice, ladies). Martinis go right to my head, without affecting my speech or coordination. I’m buzzing but still able to make pithy, witty, Oscar Wilde-type observations. Beer is all aboard the drunk train. “Boisterous” is the term we’ve come to use for my loud, childish behavior under the influence of beer.

I took Hilldawg out on Tuesday to get her beered up, help her forget she just got laid off. A few more friends showed up and we left feeling good. Then I biked home and cried hysterically for no discernable reason. The separation really is like a death, hitting me at the oddest moments, when I’m so sure I’m done mourning.

Wednesday, same deal at Fritz & Franz, only more so. It took a few hours of farting around online before I was sober enough to bike home and watch Superbad.

Nights like those are bittersweet. Within all the fun, I know there’s no way I’ll be writing in the morning. After drinking, a five a.m. alarm is a joke. My whole day will feel off because I didn’t work for myself in the morning before the job, and the job will be awful because I slept in and the work didn’t do itself while I was slacking off.

Thursday night, some friends and I attended a fundraiser for Lauren’s Light at the Miami Improv called Lighten Up. I paid $20 for raffle tickets and won a $25 gift certificate for Guadalajara. We ate, drank, and watched some very funny stand-up comics. They kept thanking us for our contributions, but it didn’t feel like charity at all. There were beautiful women there and I flirted copiously, but I only had eyes for Anastasia (not her real name). Unfortunately, I had no flirts for her. Letting this whole man-woman square dance happen naturally can be poetic, but I get around her and become a mannequin.

Friday was a dark day. Work was terrible for everyone. None of us felt like a third day of Oktoberfest, knowing it would be more crowded. I forced myself to go, and forced myself to force others to follow. The crowd was thick and loud. Two friends left after one beer. I wasn’t supposed to drink with the friend who remained. Keeping pace with a problem drinker is no way to start a weekend, but I did it. The horror, the horror.

It’s exciting, not knowing where my day will end, agreeing to whatever anyone wants to do. Now I wonder about my motivations. I tell myself I’m taking the move slowly, but come on. Getting drunk or staying out late, ensuring I’ll do nothing responsible when I get home - have I been delaying and denying my new life?

Friday night, I had a dream. The Treehouse was finished. Everything stored, hung, cleaned, etc. etc. I woke enflamed to activity.

Hanging picture rails, drilling holes, assembling lamps, these things take more time than I thought. Also, I went out to a movie and drinks with Hilldawg on Saturday night. Then Sunday, I rescued my artwork from going into storage by giving it to friends. They used the word honored, as in, “I’d be honored to display your artwork in my home.” The honor is mine. That someone would like my paintings enough to want to look at them all day, in their homes? Wow.

Sunday night, Hillary had a barbeque. I got to grill, drink, and talk shit with friends until the wee hours. When I got home at four a.m., my column lamp was still only one third assembled. I finished putting it together and drifted off around five. After work Monday, I finished the rest, sometime after midnight. There are still purchases to be made and projects to be done, but I am home at last.

I’m still discovering how that feels.

Why I'm Not Published

Unless you count this blog, which does say push-button publishing when I log in. Or the Moxxie column, my words printed by someone else and put out for all of Miami to see. To clarify what I think of when I think of a published writer, I don't have a nice advance from a publishing house or an acceptance letter from a magazine or a good answer when someone asks if I've written anything they might know; I'm missing the moment that says my discipline over the years hasn't just been masturbation.

I finished my first book ... three years ago. Like many first novels - and I've heard many stories like this watching author appearances at Books & Books over the years - it was unpublishable, an important exercise in focus and determination, a milestone for anyone whose ambition is to write a book, but nothing anyone should have been subjected to reading. Unfortunately, I did subject people to it. Friends, family, a sales rep at Harper Collins who promised to pass it along to the mighty Carl Lennertz. I was so excited to have finished something three hundred pages long, I wanted the world to know.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten Hemingway; "The first draft of anything is shit."

I couldn't rework "Skritch Skratch Man" into something readable, so I junked it. Started from a blank page. "Scratch the Dead Places" was a vast improvement, but still not what I wanted it to be. I sent it to an agent in NYC who liked my writing but not "Scratch," so I sent her my second book, "Ming."

Meanwhile, I had a breakthrough with "Scratch the Dead Places." I threw it out a second time, only I resisted going back to the source material. I started a third edition. The hundreds of pages before amounted to character research and plot outline.

The agent liked "Ming" and thought it would be suitable for a young adult audience. I wasn't thinking YA while writing it, but the finished product screamed YA. The only roadblock is the last fifteen pages, where the violence goes a bit far. I promised to edit and send her an update.

So here we are.

I have a finished YA second novel that has resonated with various readers whose opinions I respect. I toned down the last pages so slightly it might not even count, which is why I hesitate re-submitting it, but I have an agent who is interested. I have an outline for parts two and three of the triology and the first fifteen pages of a movie script which placed top twenty in Writer's Digest's 76th Writer's Competition out of 10,000 entries. Why am I not working this for all its worth? Throw a nice cover-letter on it, and you've got a ready-made package to send to agents and / or editors everywhere.

Instead, I do columns for imaginary publications. I write short stories I send to no one. I plod through "Scratch the Dead Places Redux," relishing the craft, patting myself on the back that I've finally found the right approach, gritting my teeth that I only have a couple hours each morning to tackle this beast.

Why do I reject myself before anyone else has a chance? Is it sucess I'm afraid of, or failure?