Boston, On Writing

Leaving You

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The day I decided to quit the job I loved began like any other day. I got up, got dressed, brushed my teeth. On my way out the door, I struggled with tangled iPod headphones, tried to find a song I still liked. I don’t remember what I was wearing. It’s possible I looked amazing — but it seems unlikely, since a nose infection had spread to my left eye two weeks prior and I hadn’t been able to wear make-up without risking contaminating my entire goddamn face.

I got a bagel and a coffee on my way in, opened my laptop, and unplugged the router. As I sat there waiting for the wireless to reboot, I began thinking about my tax return.

“That is certainly a lot of money,” I thought slowly, eyes wandering into the ether. “You could pay off a somewhat noticeable portion of school loans with that money.”

Yeah. Way to go.

I raised my hand to poke at my irritated cornea, then decided better of it.

“Oh, also,” I reasoned, “you should really put some of it into savings. That account has maintained nothing but the minimum balance since you started working. You should be more responsible now, look into having at least some kind of safety net. What if something were to happen?”

Right, right. Good thinking.

“But heeeey, celebrate a little bit, too. Get yourself something a little crazy. Something you wouldn’t normally purchase, you know, for fun.”

The wireless router blinked blearily, a slow green awakening that seemed to say “fuck. You. Fuck fuck. You.”

“I know!” I thought inexplicably. “I could get my hair highlighted! I’ve always said that I hate highlights.”

Fuck. You. Fuck fuck. You.

“… Or I could spent three hundred dollars on that duvet cover! Wouldn’t that be nuts! And it’d really bring the room together.”

Fuck … fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckyoufuckyou.

Back in business. I noted the four full black lines with pleasure, each neatly stacked upon the other in a precise, growing triangle: a full wireless signal. It seemed so clean, so ripe with possibility, like the first day after doing laundry.

“Or!” I thought insanely, “you could put the money in savings, and leave this place!”

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From Others, Poetry

Poet, Be Like God

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I’ve briefly mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: I think if there’s one, immediately irksome subject for a poem to tackle, it’s writing poetry — describing the writing process, the agony of writer’s block, the expectation from an imaginary audience. Such poems are inaccessible to people who have no interest in writing poetry. They’re annoying to people who do. The only audience I could see actually enjoying such self-important, self-indulgent, generally self-y whining are the people who romanticize poetry writing — who think that, if they only had the time, if they only lived in the Catskills, if only there were fresh strawberries, they would be poets.

Unsurprisingly there’s a lot of such poetry out there. Surprisingly to me, today I read one I really liked. Courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac — this is “Man Writes Poem” by Jay Leeming.

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Dialogues

My History With Authors

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He had come to Porter Square Books to talk about Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, The End Of Civilization and had attracted the crazies you might expect — white-haired war enthusiasts who raised their hands aggressively, all ooo, ooo ooo ooo, warbling incomprehensible yelps about 1914, or why we shouldn’t negotiate with madmen (madmen who have hurt others before! Fool me seven times? Fool, ff-fool me fourteen times?), or with new historical scenarios — if we invaded then, don’t you agree, surely you can’t deny, we would have immediately won the war?

Some kid in hipster glasses wanted to know what all of this said about global warming.

“… I don’t know,” Baker shrugged, good-natured. “I can’t even begin to talk about global warming right now.”

Afterwards, my friend Angie and I joined the book-signing line — which was, granted, a little slow-moving, with all the crazies and their follow-up questions. I had brought my copy of Counterpoint, and she asked me what it was about.

“Oh, it’s great. It’s about these two guys … so, one of them wants to kill George W. Bush, he’s the kind of crazy one, and it’s a play, and … um, so, the play is about him wanting to kill the president … and he talks about why that might be justified. And it’s just the two of them talking, about that.”

“Huh,” she said. “Hey, do you like Soduku?”

* * *

I had been practicing the sentences I would utter to Nicholson Baker, and they went like this:

“I have two potentially gauche questions for you,” I said. “One, is it okay to ask for a signing of a book that isn’t Human Smoke?”

“Of course!” he smiled. “I’ll sign anything!”

“And two, is it all right to ask you to sign more than one book? One is for someone else; she introduced me to your work.”

“Of course, of course!”

I glowed in the shadow of this physical and metaphorical giant, and inwardly congratulated myself for both casually using the word gauche, and neglecting to make a complete ass of myself in front of Nicholson freaking Baker.

“Oh,” he said, as he handed the books back to me. “And I heard what you said, about Counterpoint, and that’s really not how I think of that book. It’s more about the man convincing the other, why it is not appropriate to kill the president. Not the other way around.”

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Costa Rica, Essay

How to Arrive at Your Destination

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As is my custom when Leaving Home For An Extended Period Of Time, I began packing for Costa Rica a week before our flight’s scheduled departure. Bright flowery summer dresses draped off the ironing board, with corresponding undergarments and shoes nearby; tank tops made precise, cotton multicolored tiers on the rug, and piles of t-shirts, skirts, denim shorts, linen capri pants, sunglasses, and swimsuits overwhelmed the bed in a collage of potential perfection.

I love this ritual, and it stresses the hell out of me. It’s exactly the kind of thing I try to keep from a significant other for at least two years.

“Don’t . . . come in,” I told Jurvis. “I have . . . delved into summer storage.”

There were chargers, extra batteries, extra lenses, extra books, necklaces and earrings in appropriately-sized Ziplock bags. Two notebooks, an iPod, three purses, my favorite pen, eyeliner, travel-sized shampoo and conditioner — freshly labeled with pungent permanent marker. And when I had finally gathered and prepared everything in my possession I could possibly desire in Flamingo, I set about putting back ninety percent of it.

I like thinking of the suitcase as the harborer of a new life, where I am beautiful all of the time, in love with everything, and I never think to myself is this just weighing me down? Do I really want to carry it up five flights of stairs?

Leaving home for a time is — I hope — becoming a new person. The kind you see in catalogs.

Welcome to Miami. I went to the bathroom after deplaning in Miami, and when I came out the door, Jurvis informed me that our connecting flight had been canceled.

“Canceled?” I said. “But we have boarding passes.”

“Canceled,” he said

Since the next flight — on any airline at all, let alone ours — wasn’t until the next day at the same time, an airline agent gave us six airport meal vouchers and a night at the nearby hotel. But this was not entirely convenient: besides missing a full day in Costa Rica and spending a full freaking day in hideous airportville, Miami, we had no way of contacting my cellphone network-less parents, who we were scheduled to meet in Liberia in two hours. I envisioned their panicked faces, the checking and rechecking of watches as they stood in the midday heat in the middle of the world, uncertain, unmoving, purgatorial.

What if they mispronounced the Spanish word for “money” with the word for “testicles”? What if I mispronounced the Spanish word for “money” with the word for “testicles”?

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Costa Rica

What We Did While We Were There

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What we meant to do while we were there: zip-line canopy tour of the Cloud Forest, wander near the molten sputterings of Mount Arenal at night, snorkel in the Pacific Ocean with neon fishes, read at least three to five books apiece, acquire golden skin and blonde-streaked hair.

What we didn’t expect to do while we were there: go to bed at nine-thirty every night, six hour cab tours, consume homemade sorbet from a fruit I can’t even google correctly. Was it a coz?

More pictures here and from Jurvis here.

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