Toggle Time
I’ve been toggling between a lot of projects lately, but let’s face it: I’m mainly toggling between Facebook and Twitter. This makes me sad as I see myself as part of a media future I don’t want to live in. I haven’t even been following the links and tweets on hard news lately. I can’t pretend that Herman Cain, Rick Perry, or Michele Bachmann will be anything more than a footnote in history, so why read about their respective sexual blunders, debate snafus or religious fundamentalist ideology?
I’m in a coffee shop right now, and I’m toggling between overhearing two conversations that are actually the same one: a woman complaining to another woman about a man in her life. Almost everyone at the coffee shop can hear these conversations, and almost everyone is on a product that Steve Jobs designed. I toggled between feelings about his death. At first I felt something, and then I remembered that this guy was a CEO who inspired me only to consume things. And yet, the computer I’m typing on right now is well designed, and I appreciate that. With him dead, my next computer won’t be as beautiful. And in this way, I can relate to the people in front of Apple stores who held up iPads with images of memorial candles, mourning that Steve Jobs won’t make them things to buy anymore.
Another thing I’m toggling between: edits on two different short stories. One thing about writing a novel: there was no toggling. But there will be more focus soon: I’m starting training for Big Sur on January 1. And once that starts, I’ll be toggling between my next run and my next milkshake.
Being in the middle of a good novel is not unlike being in love. Since I started with IQ84, it has been my date to every occasion. It is there in the morning and it is there at night. The companionship feels so natural, like an extension of myself, that it is easy to forget how rare that feeling is. And while a good short story can fill my heart, it won’t hold my hand for a whole plane ride. At 925 pages, I feel like I could travel the world with 1Q84. I’m about halfway through, and I’ve already ordered a Chekov book that has a cameo in 1Q84 as a sort of literary rebound. To Murakami’s credit, the writing is much lighter than the book, and carting around this 4-pound tome has none of the burden a long-term relationship or War and Peace. 
