Things That Have Been Great

The Brother HL-2270DW

Printing, or rather my continual disappointment of the life of inkjet cartridges, had been a source of some strain for most of my freelancing life. No longer! I got a printer that only prints and now I print, double-sided, old New Yorker articles like a baller/paralegal. Being able to look at the physical draft of a story I’m working on feels like the writer’s version of indoor plumbing – that is, a luxury that shouldn’t be one.

“One Radio Host, Two Dancers”

Ira Glass’s dance company came to Denver this weekend. Part of the fun was having no idea what a collaboration like this would look like. I went because I have faith in Ira Glass. The show is thought provoking and accessible, and only exists as a performance. It’s not a streamable experience, and if means allow, it’s definitely an experience that’s worth having.

Finishing a Story

I PDF’ed a story I’ve been working on off and on for the past 18 months, and I feel good about putting it behind the glass door of an Adobe file. I spend about seven hours a week writing, which isn’t that much. Most of the time, I feel like I’m not doing anything other than waking up early. Turns out, I was writing a story!

Whenever I hear “Scenic Life,” I feel like I’m in a movie. In this case, a movie about finding the best live version of “Scenic Life” to put on my tumblr. 

Lauren Collins: Between, South Korea’s Romance App →

You can have only one contact on Between: your significant other. In South Korea, more than half of twentysomethings have used Between. The app has become a synecdoche for commitment: whereas a boy might once have asked the object of his affections, “Do you want to be my girlfriend?,” he now says, “Do you want to Between?”

Book club for this article please. 

Just A Moment

I tend to blog more when I’m starting a new writing project, as a way to feel like I’m doing something even when I’m not working. For me, blogging is a way to try out phrases and ideas. Even if I’m not writing fiction, at least I’m at my desk, staring at a screen, thinking about how words go together. Blogging is the writing equivalent of 30 minutes on the elliptical. 

I’ve recently become obsessed with the idea that the best short stories are about a moment when something is true, or a truth about a character is revealed. So right now, I have a moment, but I’m trying to figure out who would be there and why. It’s confusing and difficult, and leads to a lot of moments of staring out the window and procrastination cleaning. 

The more I think about this Moment idea, the more I think the short form is more honest than the novel. The length of the novel implies that you’re getting the whole story. But there’s no “whole story.” Things continue even after that whale hunt that changed everything. A short story doesn’t make a promise to tell the whole story. A short story is just a true moment in a person’s larger life narrative. 

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I’ve also been thinking about how pleasant this fall has been in Denver. It snowed in the first week of October, but then, for whatever reason, the weather has stayed in the 50s and 60s. Fall and spring in the West aren’t as fragrant and lovely as they are on the East Coast, where things are more verdant and fast-paced. Most of the trees turn yellow here, but every once in a while, there’s a tree that goes orange or red. Last month, I was a foodie for fall, and I took pictures of any tree that reminded me that fall in Denver was still worth having. You know me, always capturing the small moments.  

Crush

For the past three nights, I’ve had a dream about a medium-famous person. He’s famous enough that most people would probably know who I’m talking about, but not famous—or destructive—enough to be in the pages of US Weekly. 

Other than the fact that I’m not famous, this medium-famous person and I would get along, I think. We seem to have the same sense of humor, definitely like the same music, and, according to Wikipedia, have similar backgrounds. We could celebrate various holidays together with the same level of irony. 

One of my real-life New York friends, who is known in certain circles, though is not famous by any means, knows my medium-famous crush. When I wake up from these dreams, I think maybe I could get set up with this guy. And then I remember someone medium famous probably isn’t interested in starting something long distance. Hell, I’m not famous and I’m not interested in something long distance. 

In New York, it’s easy to be adjacent to things like fame and creativity. Bumping up against money isn’t hard, either. One of the best restaurants in the city is in a mall. A fancy mall, but still a mall. In Denver, I’m adjacent to the mountains, which, when considering reality, is much better for my quality of life. But for better or worse, or just honestly, I miss the chance to be adjacent to more unattainable things. 

But speaking of America, I just read Independence Day, which is about as American as books come. The book is set during the long weekend of our national birth, and our hero, Frank Bascombe, is a real estate agent. 

The book is long and often rudderless, but it’s worth reading if only because Richard Ford comes up with sentences that break you a part. One of my favorites was: “The world, as I told him, lets you do what you want if you can live with the consequences.” 

On first read, the consequence part of the sentence loomed large, as consequences are often impossible to imagine. On the other hand, doing whatever you want is pretty easy to conceptualize. In this framing, consequence seemed like a never-ending punishment for choice. 

I quoted this sentence to a friend, who had, as Ford would put it, a hardscrabble start. She thought it was an optimistic view. Not everyone has the freedom to face consequences. Another friend said the fear of consequences is what keeps most people in their place. (In either view, North Koreans—the ones who can’t defect and the ones who do anyway—are a powerful example.)

Sometimes when I’m nervous at parties, I’ll ask a stranger what he thinks the American Dream is. Recently someone said there’s a “pat answer,” and that answer is having your children do better than you. In Frank’s case, his child isn’t going to do better than him. But I do think Frank is living a kind of American Dream, and not just because he owns property and has a business. He is able to face the consequences of his decisions, which might be just what the founding fathers had in mind. 

Marathon as Melting Pot →

I love New York, I love the New York City Marathon, I love the local New York Times coverage of the New York City Marathon, but quoting a man saying that “No other city is as competitive [as New York]“ without qualifying it is like a bridge from Manhattan to Staten Island. That is: a bridge too far. New York is the best at a lot of things, but not running.

I spilled water on my computer and I have to wait for a few days for everything to dry out before I know the extent of the damage. It sucks, but this little parody song I came up with almost makes it worth it: 

Computer in a coma/I know I know/it’s serious

Three Things

Confidence; as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I love cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved. Those three things haven’t changed from my childhood. I know what I love, still, now. That’s a confidence. If you don’t know what you love, you are lost.

I think about this Haruki Murakami quote a lot, I make conversation with it. I ask people what their three things are. Knowing three things is a lot to know; it took me like a quarter of a century to settle on my three. For the record, I love reading, writing, and running, though since I moved to Colorado and bought a bike, the last one has changed to being outside at large, which has less rhythmic prowess.

While this is a great and valuable pull quote, I think it’s misleading. Because knowing three things isn’t a panacea. Life can still be a bummer even with three activities or nouns that you enjoy. In a small, not super personal example, this last weekend, I was lonely. I went like 30 hours alone, which would have been fine if that had been the mood I was in, but it wasn’t. I wanted to be social and eat poached eggs or even talk into someone’s ear with a drink in hand. In short, I wanted to do more than reread the good parts of Freedom, bike in spandex, and write for 60 minutes without internet access.

Now it’s Thursday, and I’ve since been social, and that specific loneliness has passed. I can’t speak to what having three things has given Murakami beyond confidence. But for me, knowing what I like means even during bleak times, I’m doing something productive with myself. Maybe that’s a hyper American way to tackle being bummed. But I am an American, and I’m glad I spend my lonely times doing things I love.

Just Some Hippy Shit

One of the great things about living in Colorado is the bumper stickers. The other day, I saw one that said, “Guns Don’t Kill People, Abortion Clinics Do,” which, whatever you think of those values, is an elegant combination of offensive ideas. There are a lot of keep Christ in Christmas and Jesus fish on SUVs, but just as many stickers about “Karma” and “eARTh” on Priuses. This is a purple state after all. 

A few weeks ago on my bike, I saw one that said “If You Want Peace, Want Justice.” I was on a long ride, and I had time to think about this. While I appreciate the sentiment – Who’s against peace? Who’s against justice? – I think it’s misguided. 

“Justice” is a platonic ideal, and a subjective one at that. For instance, “justice” in the Middle East means different things to different people, and no one seems close to getting it. We strive for justice, but no punishment can bring back someone who has been murdered, remove the wounds of rape, or a thousand other extreme examples where no punishment can ever create true justice. 

This is not to say when wrongs occur that we should choose to be silent in the hopes of peace. But to predicate peace on the achievement of justice seems wrongheaded. We live in an inherently unjust world, but we can still strive for a peaceful existence. 

Continual Joy on National Holidays

For three years in a row, I spent my July 4th weekend in the Adirondacks. A friend’s family had a house there, with room for everyone and their dogs to roam around the grounds.

For fun, we hiked, swam in ponds, and watched the dogs sniff at things and chomp at mosquitoes. We drank many cups of coffee on the porch, staring out at the High Peaks, not wondering what the time was. Something about that view and the hiking I did there was part of why I moved west. I loved the mountains, and I wanted them in my life in a more casual way.

We went to the Ausable Club for fireworks, which opened its golf course to the public and put on a show. As could be expected from a country club in a mountainous vacation region, there was a certain Waspiness to the place. On the khakis of the teenage boys, there were embroidered lobsters. On the walls of the main hall, where guests were politely discouraged from using the restroom, there were antlers. Still, the club invited the whole town to run barefoot up and down the 14th hole of its golf course and play bocce ball on the putting green. It was a nice thing the club did, letting us all sneak in to enjoy a summer dusk on its golf course and then giving us fireworks. 

The last time I was there, I chatted with an older woman from Boston who said this had been her 23rd time at the fireworks. I wanted to have a number like that, proof of some joyful continuity in my life. I believe we left the conversation saying we would see each other next year.

Like New Year’s, July 4th is a day where you don’t need to be anywhere, but are still aware of where you end up. I didn’t see that woman the following year; I haven’t been to the Adirondacks since I moved to Colorado. This year, for the second July 4th in a row, I’ll be doing a 14er, which is a mountain above 14,000 feet in Colorado. I’d like to do a 14er next year, but I’m aware that July 4th is a holiday where traditions are easy to start and hard to maintain. Joyful continuity is a lot to ask for, and if I had to choose between the two, I’d pick joy.

2009 was a long time ago. You can tell because babies born then can speak in sentences, and your favorite running shoes have gone through four updates. Back then, we were crushing so hard on Obama that the book he went on vacation with was national news. That book was Netherland, which was a novel about cricket, but also the American dream. 

A plot summary would be kind of useless—it’s a book to read for the sentences. There’s a moment toward the end of the novel when Hans, the Dutch cricket-banker searching for identity in a post-9/11 New York hits the ball like an American. It’s a heavy-handed analogy about Hans’s surrender to his new self, but it still works. 

I was thinking about Hans the other day, on my drive home from work. One of the hardest things about my journey to become an American – or an American outside of New York City – has been the automobile. One of the reasons I stayed in New York was the public transportation. For a while, driving wasn’t something I could do with any regularity, and living somewhere where I would depend on a car wasn’t a real option for me. 

But I also love public transportation, specifically trains, especially reading on them. Some of my favorite moments in New York came on the subway with a novel. I kept riding the 2 to finish Exit Ghost and Never Let Me Go, and I have a distinct memory of not getting anywhere in Infinite Jest on a round trip F-train odyssey from Park Slope to Queens. 

In New York, I never thought of myself as someone who read a lot, it was more that I took the subway often. I didn’t really know how to be idle while commuting, and in Denver, I listen to a lot of podcasts. 

But the other day, I didn’t want to learn anything about the economy, or how Americans live, or something vaguely about science. I wanted to sing “Second Hand News” over and over again to myself for 30 minutes. And I did. Until that moment, I didn’t really understand the American love of the automobile. But I finally got it: a car doesn’t just provide mobility, it provides privacy. On the open road, you can pick your nose and sing off-key without shame. 

And when I arrived home, without an increase in my general knowledge and my voice a little hoarse, I was much like Hans after hitting the ball like an American cricketer. That is, “I’d done so without injury to my sense of myself. On the contrary, I felt great.”