A Little Bit On Size

I’m concerned with size. No, not that kind. Eyes above the shoulders, please. Size of me writings, that is. Among all the other things I’m working on, I’m reading through a book of Aesop’s Fables I had as a kid, with an introduction by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It’s a printing from the late sixties, with wonderful little drawings every page or so. In reading these little paragraphs that hold so much, I’m reminded of Hemingway in a way (ho-ho), mostly the way he wrote when he was at his best: paring down his words to just the bare necessities, and sometimes even less. The iceberg method of writing, where only a fraction of the story is exposed, fascinates me and frustrates me, as I’m always tempted to wax on and off about some little detail in a Dickensian manner (“the Sofa…”). I’ve recently written a short story that came out around 4,000 words. I think it’d be a damn good piece if I could get it down another five hundred or thousand words. Like Wash says in Knocked Up, TIGHTEN.

A bit breezy in here, ain’t it?

And now, the first fable from the book. I’d like to dedicate this to politicians, past, present, and probably future:

THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
A wolf, meeting with a lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the lamb the wolf’s right to eat him. He thus addressed him” “Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.” “Indeed,” bleated the lamb in a mournful tone of voice, “I was not then born.” Then said the wolf, “You feed in my pasture.” “No, good sir,” replied the lamb, “I have not yet tasted grass.” Again said the wolf, “You drink of my well.” “No,” exclaimed the lamb, “I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother’s milk is both food and drink to me.” Upon which the wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, “Well! I won’t remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations.” The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

Short, simple, to the point. Well played, Aesop.

Hurry Up!

Often I stumble upon some book that was written by someone younger than me, and I find myself feeling depressed at the state of my writing. It’s in those times that I find myself drifting around the internet, looking up hopeful information like this:

William Faulkner: first novel published at age 29

Anthony Burgess: first novel published at age 39

It’s an obsessive compulsion, like some of the other things I find myself doing. But it has a sort of calming effect on me. While I wouldn’t dream of comparing myself to Faulkner or Burgess (or Cormac McCarthy, first novel published at 32, or Don DeLillo, first novel published at 35), it helps me put things in perspective. Lately I have written a few short stories and several poems. I’m into the thirdish draft of my second novel (well, second novel where I actually got to the end – I’ve got a stack of fizzled fireworks tucked away somewhere), and the last thing I need to do is stress myself out over such a stupid thing as being an unpublished writer at the age of 27.

Reading Status: I finished reading “The House With A Clock In Its Walls” again. Just so damn good, and worth paying the library fines for. Tried to find a copy of the second book in the series at the library but it’s missing, so I got Anthony Burgess’s “Any Old Iron”. Looks interesting, and I’ve been meaning to read his stuff for years (aside from the impossible-to-avoid “A Clockwork Orange”).

Sorry for the boring state of this post, but it's been one of those weeks...

Why am I not surprised?

I’d like this to be a more personal blog than political or anything of that sort, but sometimes a story I read on one of the many news sites I check at work brings back memories. This is a weird one, complete with a shocking headline: Bomb Parts Smuggled Into 10 Federal Buildings During Test.

You see, in 2004, I was a mailman. Officially my title was casual carrier, as I wasn’t part of the union, and thereby only allowed to serve for 6 months before taking time off to apply for full-time letter carrier status or doing whatever until my next 6 month tour came up. I was actually surprised at how much military-official lingo was used, especially when I had to take an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America. I had the average American perspective of mailmen, which was that they fill up their bags and trucks and go around all day and at the end they go home and play with guns and drink their brains out. Not entirely untrue in some cases, but not entirely accurate. Some of the nicest people I’ve known are from my days at the USPS: hard working, honest, nice people, real sweethearts. Some total assholes, but mostly really nice people. They’re government agents, albeit without any real authority, other than the authority to take your personal letters and packages and open your mailboxes and apartment buildings.

A casual carrier, in my time (it’s been five years, so I don’t know what’s changed), is paid less than a regular carrier (who can earn up to $75,000 if they’re there long enough), doesn’t have a set route, and doesn’t wear a uniform. The regulars have to pay for their uniforms, true, but they actually look like mailmen. I was shown a room with discarded uniform parts (hats, shirts, capes for when it rains and snows but you’ve got to get the mail through) and I took a few items, but for the most part I wore khakis and tee shirts and sweatshirts of my own. This may not seem to be important, but it is.

Depending on the route, I’d either leave the station walking, in an LLV (long-life vehicle, your typical mailman truck), a larger truck for pickups and deliveries (like when I’d go to Phish Dry Goods, if I may casually drop a name), or in a plain white van, where the only identifying marks were the US GOVERNMENT license plates. I had a funny incident once where I delivered a package to a house that housed some college students, and they thought I was the DEA or some other agency. I got out, heard toilets flushing, and when one of the guys came out and saw me handing over an Express Mail parcel he yelled “it’s the fucking mailman!” to his friends, who I’m sure wished they had waited just a bit longer before sending whatever wherever.

How does this relate to the story? Well, I once had to deliver to a government building in South Burlington that housed a division of Homeland Security. I rolled up to the guard gate with my white van and tee shirt and khakis, and there was no one there. I pressed a talk button, and a stammering voice asked “uh, can I help you?” It was Saturday, so it seemed no one official or important was there. I said I was going to drop off the mail and pick any up, and I hadn’t been there before, could I be directed to where I need to go? The voice told me where to go, the gate was raised so I drove into the parking lot, the side door was buzzed open, and before I knew it I was wandering around the offices. I found the mail dropoff point, left the white tub of mail, and as there was nothing to pick up, I simply left.

In summation: I showed up to a government office in an unmarked (except for the license plates) van, showed no identification, interacted with no one other than over an intercom, and was able to walk around their offices. I could have swiped a hard drive. I could have brought a bomb in under the pile of mail. I could have poisoned their coffee. I’m not a terrorist, so I didn’t, but still, I’d like to think that, after five years and billions of dollars, shit like that wasn’t still going on. But as the GAO showed, it does.

Something The Day.

Instead of seizing the day, lately I seem to be just salvaging the day. I’ve been making little headway in my novel lately, but I’ve pecked at and finished two short stories recently, written some poems that I’m not ashamed of, and almost finished planting my garden. That’s the kind of thing that keeps me going, that and my wife and kid(s).

Today I intended on going to the library and cranking on my novel, but stress from work took its toll and by the time I was on my way to the library my brain felt worn and I couldn’t shake the sense of anger and sadness. However, I saw something on my way to the library that I hadn’t noticed before, and I pulled into a random parking lot to write down what I later at the library formed into a pretty damn good poem if I say so myself. After working two drafts of it, I sat in one of their firm, purple chairs and read some Robert Frost with some humble satisfaction before heading back to my place behind the desk and monitor and stacks of papers.

I didn’t accomplish what I had intended to, but I suppose I salvaged the day, and even if that’s all I get, I can’t complain all that much in the end.

The Bits You Don't Get To See

I’ve written a lot over the years, but for every story or novel or screenplay I’ve done, it seems that there are three or five or ten other things I’ve started and worked on and then left unfinished. Case in point, this is about the sixth blog I've ever started. I’m still writing one of the previous ones, just in haiku, but with the private setting enabled, so it’s just for me (all mine, all mine, muhaha).

I write however I can; I prefer to use a typewriter for fiction, as it’s less distracting that the computer, which has games and the internet and so on. But if I have to, I use the computer, and my little folder marked WRITINGS is full of completed stories and half finished ones.

According to Wikipedia there’s lots of “trunk novels” out there. Nabokov’s “The Original Of Laura” is going to be published this year, against his wishes (he wanted it to be burned). Stephen King’s got a bunch, like “The Aftermath” and “Sword In The Darkness”, that petered out or were rejected and then stashed. Herman Melville wrote a novel called “Isle of the Cross”, which was never published and then lost. I’ve lost a few works over the past fifteen years, since I seriously started writing outside of the assignments I was given at school. My favorite lost bit was one I did in eleventh grade, where I wrote a sprawling 20-page story on the path of a Bible from printing to its burning in the parking lot of a gas station in Vermont. It was an assignment for English class, and I had a lot of fun with it.

I just “took out” out of the folder and read a rough draft attempt at writing a novel based on my experiences getting sent off to a boarding school in the tenth grade. I sort of disappeared from my public school after the first quarter, and I honestly don’t think too many people noticed my absence. I wasn’t exactly in the running for most popular. More like most likely to be the person you look at in class photos and go “who was that?” or “I hope that bastard’s working at a gas station”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If I looked back at my high school years as the Glory Days, I think I’d jump off a bridge. I wrote the novel until about page 125 or 130, then lost the energy when realized I was only on the second day. If I wrote all I felt I would need to write to give the full span of the experience, I’d be looking at a two-thousand page monster, filled with bits like this:

The swings, and the surrounding wooden playground, had been built before he had come to the school, and while they showed their age they worked just fine for the kids of the day and Patrick. With his greater weight came greater speed and momentum, and he soon found himself nearly level with the top bar at each side of the swing, back and forth. The feeling in his stomach flipped around from enjoyment to a sudden irrational fear of letting go and falling. He slowed the muscle movement that kept the swing moving so fast, but just for a few seconds. When the swing was about forty-five degrees up and he felt it could and would go up further again if he continued, he let go and pushed off into the twilight. His body glided through the air for what felt like minutes but what could only have been a second or two, and then he fell to earth and the tiny gravel pebbles that the school had determined would be safe enough for the children to play upon. He tumbled, as that is the only word he could think of to describe it to himself, and his hands and knees were bit red raw by the little grains he had walked and scuffed on so many times before.

Patrick lay on the ground on his hands and knees and felt the burning increase in the parts that had made contact with the ground. Small, hot tears formed in his eyes, but with the extra years of experience he found a way to blink them back, letting only one hit his cheek and only for a brief moment before being wiped away by a gritty hand sprouting blood from miniscule fractures on the skin.

Hm. I wrote this about two years ago, and I’d like to think I’ve gotten better since then. It's almost 300 words that could be cut down to 100. It’s got sappy bits, and while I like the “gritty hand sprouting blood from miniscule fractures on the skin”, the composition feels chunky, and I’d have to rework it. “Miniscule fractures OF the skin”? “[K]ids of the day” is just a stupid way to term schoolchildren. Whatever. It was a learning process, the writing equivalent of going to the driving range or batting cage. In the folder it stays. Perhaps I could print it out and stick it in a trunk.

Driving to Sleep

I've found that one of the requirements of fatherhood is the ability to deal with a child that just won’t go to sleep. It’s a lot easier to deal with when they’re younger, as they are less mobile. My daughter is almost two, so her nighttime fussyness has made the transition from just screaming to screaming and running and throwing and out-and-out tantrums.

Last night, around nine, when she should be in or getting to bed, my daughter was doing everything she could to disturb her pregnant-with-twins mother and myself, so I resorted to the old standby of packing her in the car, putting on mellow music (classical or, as was the case last night, jazz), and driving around until she fades off into what has to be the best sleep, as it refreshes her and gives her the energy the following day to go about her day like a squirrel, dipping and bouncing and running every which way.

I like our little town in the woods, so I try to not take the same route twice when I get out with her at night (usually once or twice a week). Last night I drove up to the top of the hill that the town is built on, and as I started down the other side I saw the last layer of Pentecost red sky disappear behind the hills and mountains in the distance. In the mirror I could see my daughter in her seat, playing with her ears. That’s a telltale sign that sleep is imminent.

I took a left and drove through a rich neighborhood, one of those small, protected groupings of obese houses on lots that had once been farmland. Every lawn was perfect, two-and-a-half inches in height, and by the light of the streetlamps I could see that they were dark green and weed-free, without variation in the blades. One thing they also didn’t have were fireflies, which I have thousands of where I live just a few miles away, and which I saw many of as I passed through the developed parts of the neighborhood to the still-open hayfields that are untouched in life but divided on maps into zoned lots up for sale.

After passing through the (according to their website) “thoughtfully designed… scenic and private community”, I turned a corner and got back on the main road, a mile or two past where I had turned off earlier. Someone on the radio was doing a slow rendition of Miles Davis’ “So What”, and as I got to the top of the hill again I looked in the mirrors and saw that the sun was all gone for now.

When I got home, I took my daughter out of her seat, and she stirred a bit and patted me on the back as she buried her head in the corner of my neck and shoulder. I had been out driving for no more than fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Before I left the garage and put her to bed I waited for the security light to click off out front, and I saw a dozens of fireflies moving through the air like the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock.

Too Fast For Fiction

When I was in high school my father, in an effort to improve my grades and possibly improve upon his own intellect, purchased a speed reading course. This was before the internet took over everything, so it must have come out of the back of a magazine. The tapes came in a large, black case, with a strange looking pair of men on the back cover. It was Howard Stephen Berg’s “Mega Speed Reading”, and the photos were of Berg and Kevin Trudeau, the Penn to Berg’s Teller, if I may sully the names of my favorite magicians by making such a comparison.

If you’ve ever suffered from insomnia, you’ve seen Trudeau playing the part of a budget Larry King on an infomercial set made out to look like an actual news program. I have insomnia, hence I’ve seen far too much of Kevin Trudeau. One commercial that comes to mind is a colon cleansing program, pushed by a man with the dubious name of Klee Irwin and a moustache that reminds me of when my daughter eats pudding.

Much of the course consisted of Berg boasting about his abilities, such as reading Howard Stern’s “Private Parts” in about three minutes and passing a test on Stern’s radio show. The basic method was sweeping your hands over the text and skimming, identifying important words, so on and so forth. The ink from some books would build-up on your hands, which brings to mind the song “Informer” by Snow and (yes, I looked it up) MC Shan:

Take me to the station, black up my hands
Trail me down 'cause I'm hanging with the Snowman

I handled the method alright, and read a few books using it, but it felt like sticking a beautiful dinner into a blender, hitting chop, and then sucking the juice with a straw. For example: the following quote from Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit:

A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.

Those three sentences consist of 51 words. Berg claims to be able to read 25,000 words a minute, or about 416 words a second. That means that someone with Berg’s amazing ability would suck down that simile, given in a dialect, in a tenth of a second.

I love reading, and I wish I could do more of it. I used to spend entire days at the library or on a sunny lawn just plowing through hundreds of pages a day, getting pale when I was inside and red-skinned when I was out. Right now I’m blazing through John Steinbeck’s “The Moon Is Down”, a rich and moving fable from World War Two that was actually used as propaganda for the Allies, passed among the resistance, and banned by the Axis (the punishment for possessing a copy in Italy was death). Blazing for me is the expectation that I’ll be finishing it tonight, or about two days after buying it at the wonderful Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut.

If I was Berg, however, I’d be done with it in roughly a minute, minute and a half (it’s short, about 110 pages). I have a wife and kid and more kids on the way, a garden and writing and a day job, so my reading time is little now, but you know what? The minute or two or even three (or ten, if it’s Pynchon or certain Faulkner texts) it takes me to get through the back of one sheet and the front of another is a wonderful time, and I feel no desire to flap through it like I’m yanking sheets of toilet paper from a stubborn roll. Some things in life shouldn’t be galloped through to the end, and I’d like to think that fiction is one of them.

(Although I’d like to have all politicians trained to speed read. Then, maybe, if they actually read the laws they pass, they might not do so.)

Non sequitur: How my car's front passenger seat looks right now: