Raronauer Out Loud

When I was in 5th grade, I ran for president of my class. The slogan was “Aronauer: Time For A Change.” What needed changing at William B. Ward Elementary? I wasn’t so sure about that, but change is what politics is about.

Before I gave my speech, I threw up. I suppose this was better than throwing up during the speech or even after. Vomiting releases a lot of endorphins, and I got all my nerves out of the way. (I suppose what would have been even better than throwing up before my speech is notneeding to vomit out of fear of speaking to 300 8-11 year-olds.)

So public speaking isn’t my thing, and neither is public reading. The only time I’ve ever read my work aloud was in Vermont, when I was in at an artist colony and taking my writing too seriously. Reading part of my book to people made me feel very uncomfortable. I was afraid of being judged.

I realize now that not everyone shares my narcissistic personality disorder directed at me. No one really cares what I read. I’ve gone to a lot of friends’ concerts, art shows and readings. And to me, the fact that my friends are making something is more important than what they actually create.

The second time I’m going to read my work aloud is this Saturday night, at Northeast Kingdom in Bushwick. Unlike last time, I’m not going to spend hours making the work perfect, nor will I burn the transcript afterward. I’ll be reading a new short story, “Float” and if you’re around, you should check me out aloud. 

From the Raronauer Catalog

There’s a picture of my dad and me, with me being less than three and my dad being young enough to have all of his hair. I’m young enough that there’s a 50-50 chance that I cried once that day. And my dad was probably stressed about something to do with time or money. Who knew what my mom, the likely photographer, was up to? She was probably worrying about time and money too.

But looking at the photo, my dad with his arm around me as I sit on his lap, we’re not even ourselves; we’re the platonic ideal of a child and parent. We could be anyone who is happy to be three and happy to have a three year-old.

And it’s not like I’m unhappy to be 27 and my dad is unhappy to have a 27 year-old. But I don’t think a recent photo of us would look like an advertisement for being a kid or becoming a parent. I guess things seem simpler in the photos you can’t remember posing for. 

I Have a Bad Case of the Februarys

This month is hard. Even if you’re not waiting for anything from life, like word from grad school, you’re waiting for spring. The only way to experience February is to find a project that defines the month instead of seeing the four weeks go by in cold days. So this month, I’m only reading Ernest Hemingway.

My idea of Ernest Hemingway, before having read him, was that he was this serious, grim writer, so I thought a moveable feast was some sad thing that stays with you after the war, like herpes. But really, the title comes from a letter Hemingway sent to a friend, describing his experience in Paris: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

In a month like this, it’s important to remember our own moveable feasts, like coming home to a dog as a child, running in the park as spring is blooming and reading sentences like “when the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.” Let’s just hope that’s not what happens this year. 

Radiant Brow

When Frank Lloyd Wright moved to Scottsdale, Arizona to build Taliesin West, there was nothing. It was the 1930s, and Phoenix was just an idea of a city. The outlying areas were deserts. There wasn’t power in Scottsdale, and when FLW first checked out the sight, he camped out. He was in his 70s.

While he was building Taliesin, FLW used to watch the western sunset every night. Phoenix and Scottsdale being so small, there was nothing to obstruct his view of the sun fading into the mountains.

But we all know what happened to the American West. Air conditioners were invented, the fact there wasn’t a natural source of water proved not to be a problem, and eventually, power came to Scottsdale.

Of course, power lines would ruin FLW’s sunset. So he petitioned the government to let him build underground ones. No dice: his designs would be too expensive. (And let’s face it, if FLW made the power lines, somehow they would leak.) And so big, bulky power lines were put up, and Frank Lloyd Wright never took in another western sunset again. And he was so angry that power lines destroyed his sunset he didn’t get electricity at Taliesin for several years.

Frank Lloyd Wright chose aesthetics above everything else. And while I wouldn’t make that same choice—I’d get power as soon as it was available—you have to admire someone who knows where his priorities are. 

Having Just Finished For Whom The Bell Tolls, and Having Read A Farwell To Arms a Year Ago

Hemingway’s love scenes are always absurd. Characters fall instantly and irrecoverably in love. Their love has no basis in reality or experience, but that doesn’t make them stupid. It’s just becomes another existential to the story. But isn’t that how love always is? Indescribable by anecdotes or exchanges, but just a thing that one must deal with, whether during the Spanish Civil War or WWI, or now? 

The Bell Tolls in February, Too

February is a weird time. It’s been winter for long enough that snow and long johns have lost their novelty, but it’s not close enough to the end of the season for spring to peak through for a few days. And even though it gets dark earlier in December, it feels like winter is closing in around you all the time.  

But at exactly four weeks, February is ripe for a cleanse or some sort of absurd, short lasting resolution. I once wore the same pair jeans for all of February. A few years ago, I went to a writers’ colony for the month. But my best February project was reading Moby-Dick as a freshman in college, and since then I’ve thought of this coming month as a good time to read an epic novel.

There’s been so much snow, that I sort of blew my load, and started For Whom The Bell Tolls a week ago, which is great in ways I never would have imagined after hating The Old Man and The Sea in high school and loving The Sun Also Rises in my 20s. Hemingway is incredible with language, imagery, and he can also be funny and inventive and interesting. By virtue of his iceberg writing, Hemingway makes me concentrate in a way that other writers don’t. This isn’t to say Hemingway is my favorite writer, but when I’m into a passage of his, I fall into a rhythm that no one else can lull me into. His writing creates a unique reading experience.

So for those not giving up soy protein for the month of February, I recommend For Whom the Bell Tolls. (Spoiler alert: the answer is “thee.”) Moby-Dick is also great. The only thing whiter than this winter is The Whale, and Melville has a whole chapter devoted to that whiteness. 

I Have Measured Out My Life in Fruit Snacks

I’m running my first marathon on my 28th birthday. What’s up, aging?

There’s a transition between running half-marathons and real marathons. For one, when you’re training for a full marathon, you think an 8-mile pace run is an acceptable thing to talk about in public. It’s not, but it’s easy to let training take over your life.

And in my life, which includes a book on hold, weeks of waiting to hear back from grad school, and a couple of short stories kicking around, the marathon is a tangible thing to worry about. Running is a structured escape. It’s a reason to leave a party early. It’s a way to get out of the house for hours at a time. And if 18 weeks are passing you by, it’s a way to make sense of the time that never ceases to move forward.

And in this way, running is no different than smoking cigarettes. Well, it’s better on the lungs and worse on the knees.

As Jonathan Franzen explains:                              

There’s no simple, universal reason why people smoke, but there’s one thing I’m sure of: they don’t do it because they’re slaves to nicotine. My best guess about my own attraction to the habit is that I belong to a class of people whose lives are insufficiently structured. The mentally ill and the indigent are also members of this class. We embrace a toxin as deadly as nicotine, suspended in an aerosol of hydrocarbons and nitrosamines, because we have not yet found pleasures or routines that can replace the comforting, structure-bringing rhythm of need and gratification that the cigarette habit offers. One word for this structuring might be “self-medication”; another might be “coping.”

The other thing that’s different about training for a marathon is that you can’t get away without carrying anything on a run, and just vomiting from salt depletion when you get home. And so nutrition becomes another thing to think about, you know, instead of considering the human condition.

I bring Fruit Snacks on my long runs. I can already picture myself packing school lunches for my children that include such Fruit Snacks and wistfully remembering this period in my life, when I used Fruit Snacks to measure time’s passing. Not that I’d ever let my kids eat that shit for lunch. 

IT WASN'T ALWAYS LIKE THIS

jamesnord:

Rebecca: So I got sucked into a James Nord black-hole last night
Me: Oh, I am sorry. How bad was it?
Rebecca: Pretty bad, I went through the blog, then made it all the back through your college Facebook photos
Me: Sweet Jesus.
Rebecca: Yea, but you know what? It is nice to know that being James Nord didn’t always come so naturally to you.

Everyone involved in this story has a web site.

I met James Nord through a friend of my friend’s boyfriend. (My friend and her boyfriend met at a bar, you know, where people used to meet before meeting online.)

So this friend of my friend’s boyfriend, Chris, barbeques a lot. And a fellow frequenter of these barbeques is this guy named James Nord, who I will continue to refer to as James Nord because his name is more fun to say that way.

I met James Nord a couple of times, noticed he shaved legs, which he claimed was for cycling, but I suspect was mostly to show off his shorts. The most fun I ever had with James Nord was when his brother Dylan Nord, my friend Jordan and I google-imaged 80s Ferraris, and James Nord insisted he was going to buy one, despite how absurd having an expensive (and expensive to maintain) car in Manhattan would be. This conversation went in circles, with James Nord acknowledging he’d be an asshole to own a 80s vintage Ferrari, and only to look at the car, and decide again he needed one.

(Also, during this experience, Jordan found her dream car, only to realize moments later that it was a toy.)

So the fall came, and Chris stopped having barbeques and I stopped seeing James Nord, until I saw one of his photos on Gothamist, and then found his web site, fell into the James Nord black hole referred to above.

The thing about James Nord is that he’s kind of life casting ala Julia Allison. (Hey, remember 2007?) But instead of serial dating, he’s into biking, fashion and is an excellent photographer.

The Jamesnord.com experience is a weird mix of voyeurism and exhibitionism, not exactly like the James Nord acquaintance experience. Online, his life is fascinating and filled with great natural light. In real life, he’s just a dude who can laugh at how seriously he takes fashion and sometimes goes home early to bike in the morning. But on the internet, people who have never eaten Chris’s rubbed chicken with James Nord, have feelings about him. Like a lot of feelings – some want to be him, some hate him, some want to join his family. James Nord is a stranger to these people, but he’s sort of an internet celebrity. 

Recently, I’ve come into the real life friendship of people who refuse to be on Facebook. While I admire their self-control, they’re on the wrong side of history. People like sharing their lives on the internet, and they like consuming the lives of strangers. Everyone gets to be the star of their own web based reality show. It’s a weird thing to watch happen, but it is happening. 

Losing Things

About two and a half years ago, I went through a phase of losing things – $20, a watch, headphones. I just couldn’t hold onto anything. About three years before that, I stopped working full time. Clearly, there was some correlation.

But it wasn’t like I was unaware of the fact that my life was changing. When I first stopped working full time, I would wake up on Monday mornings in a panic, unsure how I would get through the week without somewhere to be from 9 to 5. By the time I had started losing things, I felt more in control of my free time. I guess sometimes, your subconscious just knows better.

Winter makes me feel like this all the time. In the past week, I was an unfriendly stranger away from losing my hat and one of my gloves. I don’t think it’s my subconscious acting up.  

(Though recently, I dropped a new phone in a toilet, only to recover it and then lose it on a train a few hours later. But really, that was about me hating that phone, and having no reason to get rid of it unless my id acted up.)

It’s just that things don’t have a place in the winter. I can organize a purse, but with jacket pockets, there are just too many options.

There are things to like about the winter. I like being in Prospect Park, and seeing only the others runners and cyclists who love being outside more than they should. I like the feeling of walking somewhere,  and after a few minutes having all the layers and increased blood flow kick in, and feeling like it’s not so cold out anymore. But I’m ready for warmer weather, if only to stop worrying about where my neck gaiter is. 

Sad Smelling

Recently, I was complimented on the way I smell. I suppose I did smell good – I was wearing Emporio Armani She, the same scent I’ve had since sophomore year in college. (Not coincidentally, I’m still on the same bottle I bought at Duty Free after a trip to Europe.)

I liked the smell of the perfume when I got it, and it does have an elegant, subtle scent. Maybe it’s the gardenia base. But I only wear perfume when I’m going out, and so often, the expectations and the reality of a night out don’t meet. So now Emporio Armani She just smells like disappointment to me now.

I would switch perfumes, but I’m sure the same thing would happen all over again. 

Year in Read, Year in Living, 2010

image

2010 brought the heat, but as the year closed off, I felt like I had met its every challenge. It’s weird to see people on Facebook thanking 2010– I mean, I guess for some people the year included marriages and babies. Less so for me, but if I were the type to thank years on the internet, I would say I’m glad I went through 2010. I’m stronger, as a writer, person, runner and reader, for it.

But whatever happens in each year, I always read a lot of books, and here’s the list of what I read in 2010:

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories, Alice Munro

The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus*®

Sometimes you just have to read a story about a man condemned to push a rock up a mountain every day to get inspired.

Two Lives, Janet Malcolm 

Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami*®

The first time I read this book, I was 18 and in Switzerland. The stuff about the well and the skinning in the Mongolian desert had stayed with me for the past nine years, and I wanted to reread it to remind myself how influential the book has been to my understanding of many topics.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami*®

Even though I didn’t love this book the first time I read it, I have a feeling I’ll be rereading it every six months for the rest of my life. This slim book always reminds me that running, writing and life are meant to be hard, and the only way to deal with that fact is to work hard.

Stitches, David Small

Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It, Maile Meloy®

Everyone read this book. Maile Meloy is able to write short stories around a feeling—loneliness, unrealized desires, mostly—instead of around some stupid narrative. She’s really great, and I’m sure her next book is going to be a Big Deal, so read this now so you can talk about how you knew all along.

A Farewell To Arms, Ernest Hemingway

Falconer, John Cheever

Cheever, Blake Bailey

Remember that time a college acquaintance, his girlfriend and I wanted to start a book club, decided to read an 800 page biography of a writer no one really reads anymore, and then I read the book and they never emailed me back about setting up a meeting?

Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

Half in Love, Maile Meloy ®

Read Maile Meloy. Especially “Garrison Junction." 

Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee

Men Without Women, Ernest Hemingway ®

The White Album, Joan Didion ®

The first thing I read my Joan Didion was The Year of Magical Thinking, which was not the place to start. This collection of essays is. I wish I had more adjectives around, but mostly, wow.

A Gate At the Stairs, Lorrie Moore

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

American Pastoral, Philip Roth*®

If I could write about anything the way he writes about gloves, I’d be a much more accomplished author.

Salvador, Joan Didion®

Self-Help, Lorrie Moore

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami*®

See above.

Seize The Day, Saul Bellow

My favorite thing about this book is still that there’s a dog named Scissors.

Elliot Allagash, Simon Rich

Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross

Reading Myself and Others, Philip Roth

The Big Short, Michael Lewis

I don’t think Michael Lewis could make short selling easier to understand, and yet, I still don’t understand it.

The Book of Common Prayer, Joan Didion

Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner

Long story short: don’t move to L.A. It’s an unsustainable city.

Good Bones, Margaret Atwood

Blind Willow, Sleeping Women, Haruki Murakami®

Natasha, David Bezmozgis

I wasn’t crazy about this collection of interconnected stories, but I did love Bezmozgis’s piece in the 20 under 40 issue of the New Yorker.

Lowboy, John Wary

Freedom, Jonathan Franzen®

Earlier.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Wells Tower

Where I’m Calling From, Raymond Carver

Changing My Mind, Zadie Smith ®

I go to readings fairly often, and they’re generally boring. After all, it’s just words on paper, said aloud. But I heard Zadie Smith read from this collection of essays at NYU, and was totally moved. Especially by her essay, ”That Crafty Feeling.“ I bought the book soon after.

Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You, Laurie Lynn Drummond ®

Truman Capote Stories, Truman Capote

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway*®

This book is even more depressing on the second go, because you’re not impressed by the initial glamour of Jake’s ex-pat lifestyle, you just see how empty his existence is right away.

Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee

Apparently, I can only handle jerk male protagonists if they’re Jewish.

Empire Falls, Richard Russo

Sexy, Joyce Carol Oats

La Place de la Concorde Suisse, John McPhee

Previously read: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006

Joy in Franzen

So the thing about Freedom: it’s good. I would love to be contrarian and say that it’s exaltation is the result of the old boys clubs of literary criticism. But that’s not true.

One reason Franzen has gotten so much praise, and even the re-endorsement of Oprah, is his self-seriousness. He set out to write a Big Book: one about families, environment, Iraq and America. Freedom is like a 19th century English novel with its character studies and subtle social clues. Even the vocabulary of the book, or as Franzen, might say, its lexicon, is comprised of many words I’ve only recently learned the exact meaning of through studying for the GREs.

I wouldn’t say Freedom is my favorite book from the past five years, but it’s the most ambitious book I’ve read since college. The reason Franzen’s book has received so much attention is that he succeeds in his ambition.

This was true in The Corrections, his previous book, which was almost as revered by critics, but I didn’t like. There was the stain of misanthropy through the book, and while Franzen’s prose, as always, was quite readable, I didn’t enjoy reading it. In Freedom, Franzen loves his characters the way you love your elderly dog who has lost control of his bowels. There’s shit everywhere, but what are you going to do? It’s still your dog, and Patty, the protagonists whose character is as enigmatic as anyone else’s, is still Patty.

And just as a fact: Franzen doesn’t give himself access to the internet when he writes. Not to say that’s what makes his book work—he also chews tobacco—but he probably has a point.

Race Time

I have this idea that if I plan ahead in the increments that it takes to train for a half-marathon, I can control where I’ll end up by race day.

This spring, I trained for the Brooklyn Half-Marathon and planned to finish my book around the same time. It worked. For about a week, I was very pleased with my time and the version of the book I showed around. But then whatever happiness I felt from the race and completing what amounted to a strong first draft faded away after about a week.

So I tried to do the same thing for the Hamptons half-marathon, which is Saturday. When I signed up, I was frustrated with my writing, hating the way the heat made running so hard, and hoping that a bunch of friends would do the race and we’d be able to make a Hamptons weekend out of it.

The race is Saturday, and not everything has turned out the way I hoped. Writing is still difficult, I didn’t train enough and none of my friends are doing the race. That said, I’m still writing every day, I continued to run through the heat and humidity of the hottest summer on record, and my brother and a cousin are doing the 5k. Besides, I ended up having a Hamptons weekend earlier in the summer.

All this is to say that time passes. Which is a duh thing, but in this age without graduations and due dates, it’s hard to tell what has happened in five months.

I’m not sure how I’ll do on Saturday. Like I said, the summer hasn’t really unfolded the way I had hoped and I didn’t train as much as I should have. But Saturday is still October 2, just the way it was a few months ago.

And anyway, didn’t it seem like Fall was just going to happen after Labor Day? It started getting cool and the air had the smell of decaying leaves and changing weather patterns. And then it got hot again in this sort of unpleasant, I was ready to wear flannel again way. I know it’ll cool off eventually. By February, I’ll wish it was warm enough for bug bites. And by then, I’ll probably be training for another race.

In Reassuring News

I have a word document entitled “maybe blog post” that’s just a collection of possible blog posts that never made it. In an attempt to get myself excited about writing, I’ll be publishing some of these posts, along with some new ones, in next month.

A new Hollister opened up in Soho, and like their parent company Abercrombie and Fitch, young men with great abs and no chest hair will open the door for you when you enter.

Let’s be honest, being good looking is an advantage in life and with such defined pecs, these doorman will never have trouble at a frat party. But contrary to my opinions as a 14 year-old, there’s more to life than abs. Besides, I wouldn’t want to be so good looking that my job would be to be objectified live.

Also the original title for Netherland was The Brooklyn Dream Game. Seriously, whoever was responsible for that change, good work.

Changes Along the Avenue

I have a word document entitled “maybe blog post” that’s just a collection of possible blog posts that never made it. In an attempt to get myself excited about writing, I’ll be publishing some of these posts, along with some new ones, in next month.

A few years ago, I wrote about a neighbor of mine who do not what Urban Outfitters was.

Since then, a lot has changed. Not for Urban Outfitters, but for Prospect Heights. The other day, I went to get milk, and I saw two gay couples run into each other. To my delight, there are cheap eats, coffee shops and bars everywhere. In short, and everything I wanted in a neighborhood when I moved to Prospect Heights for a cheap apartment and with a patient heart.

Last October, I relocated a block. It was one of those silly New York moves, but in moving, I crossed Washington Avenue, the defacto border between Crown Heights and Prospect Heights. My new block is mostly brownstones, whereas my old street had big, elevator-less apartment buildings, a vacant parking lot and a fire station. My building is mostly filled with people in my demographic—that is over educated and underpaid. My old place was mostly families who had settled in before there were any whispers of gentrification in this neighborhood.

While I haven’t made any apartment friends here, in my old building, I was friends with a teenage girl who lived on the third floor. Mostly, we joked about her brother, who was using the stairwell to the roof for intimate time with his girlfriend. I remember her saying how she was a little jealous of him. He and his girlfriend were clearly sweet on each other; they were condom wrappers in the stairwell all the time.

But since I crossed the avenue, I haven’t really seen anyone from my old building much. The lights on Washington Avenue are uninviting for crossing, and there aren’t as many reasons to venture into Crown Heights. But the other day I saw my old friend with a newborn strapped to her body. Her younger brother also had a kid in the time I’ve been living across Washington.

The Salad Bars of New York

One of my first memories of New York is coming into the city to go to a Knicks game with my dad. The actual game isn’t the memory, but the dinner beforehand.

My dad took me to my first pay-by-the-pound deli. Imagine being 8, and deciding how much macaroni and cheese, chicken wings and lo mein you wanted for dinner. It was an incredible experience. I don’t remember the actual dinner as much I remember choosing what I wanted to eat for it.

I didn’t know then that all the flavors would mix, that all of the food would be kind of bad and that the actual cost of my three quarters of a pound of a food would be so high. But since my ethnic food experience was limited to pizza and Chinese food, it was an exciting night.

Even though I now know how expensive and gross pay-by-the-pound bars are, I still love them. Where else could you get a quarter pound of roast, sesame seed encrusted, winged, and grilled chicken at one place?

The immediacy, extensive variety and ultimate mediocrity of salad bars seems like the perfect metaphor for a fallen New York. But luckily, there are better lo mein options than what you can be found for $7.95 per pound.

Now I Wrote Something Today

I suppose it’s better to update my blog than to watch another youtube clip of the National.

The Brooklyn Half Marathon went well; the book writing has been less successful. I’m trying to change the point of view, which has been really hard. It feels like I’m trying to move a bookshelf eight inches, but I have to take out all the books first and then restock them. In taking this metaphor too far news: I’m not even sure where I want the bookshelf to be. And my books are alphabetized.

Here are two things that would be lovely details in some other book:

When I was a teenager, a friend of mine scored tickets to a George Carlin stand-up show. To make this story easier to follow, I’ll combine this friend with another one who I had a crush on. Anyway, George Carlin made a joke about how when you trim your toenails, there’s this urgent need to bend the clipped nail between your fingers because by the next day, the nail clippings won’t be flexible any more. Also, interacting with a dislodged body part is weird and exciting. This friend, the one who is the combined ticket getter and crush, laughed knowingly at that joke. At that time, I had never bent my toenails after they had been clipped from my toes, and I thought his laughing at this joke was some huge insight into him. Not even that, but a real moment of intimacy. That’s as close as my friend and I ever got.

Secondly, in the ABC documentary about the Beatles, Ringo Starr said something about how his father was a baker, which was lucky because during the war, he always had butter and sugar. And if I ever wanted to make an optimistic character, there’s no better line than that, because Ringo Starr wasn’t wealthy as a kid, but felt rich because of his access to butter.

So those are two things I think about every time I trim my toenails and see butter being thrown away. Now you can too!