Sometimes I think about graduate school and did I go too late or too early or right on time.
And sometimes I think about graduate workshops and how scared I was most of the time. But then I’m usually scared. Being scared is what I am.
Sometimes I think I wasted the opportunity.
Sometimes I think about the stories I wrote my first year, which were copies of stories I’d read somewhere else. Literally. My first workshopped story was a thinly disguised “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
And then I think about the stories I wrote my second year, all of them experiments and most of them failures. I think about stories I’ve forgotten and stories I want to forget.
Sometimes I think about the stories I wrote my third year and crammed into my thesis. How there was maybe one or two actually good stories and the rest were like puppets.
Sometimes I think about how lonely it was. Or full of people.
Sometimes I think I should have made it to the IR office more.
There are times when I think about what people said about my stories. How they were really talking about their stories.
Then I think about what I said to them about their stories. How I was really talking about my stories. Sometimes I think about how mean I was (unintentionally), or kind (also unintentionally). Sometimes I wonder what’s missing.
Sometimes I think about stories.
Sometimes, when I’m teaching literature, I’m thinking about stories.
Sometimes I think I didn’t learn anything. Other times I think that maybe I’ve learned everything and it’s a matter of remembering it all in order.
Sometimes I think it’s weird that I keep writing stories.
Other times I think it’s weird that the stories I write keep changing like little chameleons.
And other times I think it’s so obvious when I write anything, the dead give aways, the sentences, the rhythms.
Sometimes I think I should just write.
I’ll give you three chances, he said.
One, you’re someone.
Two, you’re nothing.
Three, you’re downtown.
I knew him three ways: the salt from Trona, whatever it is they mine there; leather and tar, I think maybe he ran the oil rigs or changed motor oil or blacked roofs with tar, something with tar; and then smooth when he was in the city, slick, open-shirted with the girls and the boys sighing. Charlie C. I call him three things:
One, Charlie.
Two, my coyote.
Three, lost.
The last time I went to New Zealand, I carried an American passport. When asked by an Auckland airport official whether I was “coming home” or “traveling,” I spilled out in about six seconds the history of my heritage. He was uninterested. He wanted facts. He wanted to stamp my passport.
Stamp it he did.
I’m slowly making progress today. Books to read, papers to grade. Memories of New Zealand to memorize.
It’s hot and ugly and sexy in Los Angeles right now.
Life after the MFA is remarkably like the life during the MFA and the life before the MFA, only now you get to say you have an MFA. And you also get to explain to people what an MFA is, and that it’s not an MBA and not quite an MA and not the same as a PhD but not that different either. If you say this last bit, beware of the hopeful light in the eyes of those you’re speaking to because often they will ask you if you’re a doctor, and then there’s a humiliating little pause and the truth, and then you’re back to blank stares.
The major difference is this: guilt and lampshades. You’ll understand next time you’re shopping for antiques in Pasadena instead of writing 300 words of the book that’s lingering somewhere in you. Just spit it out already.
Ten days after the earthquake and six days after the aftershocks, she discovers it’s gone. She looks everywhere: the linen closet, the old bureau, below the kitchen sink, all the likely places. And then she thinks of the books that had fallen from the living shelf, the piles she made of them, and spends a fruitless afternoon opening and closing each one in search for it. In her despair, she searches the attic that no one atticks in, the new damage from the rumble of the ground: crevices that blossomed in the brick path, the uncertain slant of the driveway, an exposed tree root, a surprised roof shingle. The more she searches the less she remembers until she is only searching and the thing, whatever it was, is just a thing that she can’t find. And the search becomes its own search. This is ten days after the earthquake, six days after the aftershocks.
Kafka is the shit:
“Absent-minded Window-gazing,” as translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
What are we to do with these spring days that are now fast coming on? Early this morning the sky was gray, but if you go to the window now you are surprised and lean your cheek against the latch of the casement.
The sun is already setting, but down below you see it lighting up the face of the little girl who strolls along looking about her, and at the same time you see her eclipsed by the shadow of the man behind overtaking her.
And then the man has passed by and the little girl’s face is quite bright.
I have these deep down urges to drive far distances.
Today: am fighting the urge to take my car up into the high sierra. What would I do at Mammoth Lakes? Stare at the condos? I like hiking and live in southern California, where excellent trails abound. I don’t need to go up to the mountains. And what I really want to do is drive, drive, drive. I could go to Lee Vining! I could go to Bodie! I could cross into Nevada like a bandit!
1. It’s bad for the environment (needless consumption of fossil fuels).
2. It’s bad for my ass (sitting still and getting flat and wide).
3. It’s bad for my knees (all cramped up, like).
4. It’s bad for the car (extra mileage).
5. I have other things to do today.
And yet! And yet!
I love it when two beautiful things collide.
