I was a smoker for a very short time. My cigarette-buying phase lasted two or three years in college and even then, most of my cigarettes were social or finals induced. I would frequently give away packs of cigarettes in an effort to smoke less. After I graduated college, I stopped buying packs, and in the next calendar year, I resolved to stop smoking completely.
Obviously, smoking is the worst by every metric, including health, appearance, and the capitalist machine. And let’s not forget the smell. The other night, the guy next to me in yoga was a smoker. I could tell because his sweat smelled like tobacco.
I haven’t bought a pack of cigarettes in a half dozen years, but I still smoke about three cigarettes annually, and I enjoy them all. Just yesterday, I considered getting a pack from a 7-11. I didn’t. I was at work and I would feel indicted by the smell on my fingers for the rest of the day. Plus, I would have nothing to do with the other 19 cigarettes. I still sort of wish I could have bought a loosie. Absurdly, I feel like a cigarette would have turned the day around, or at least made it into a day I smoked a cigarette.
I don’t know how people who really smoke ever quit. I was never chemically addicted to cigarettes, but I did, and do, structurally enjoy them. For people whose days are incremented by tobacco, I’m not sure that passing desire for a smoke ever really leaves them. It hasn’t quite left me yet.
The other thing I’ll say about smoking is something my friend once said upon quitting for his 24th birthday: “I feel like I’ve accomplished something: I’ve given myself an addiction and weaned myself off of it.” It’s one of those quotes I remember more than him, though now he remembers it as something I remember.
I think about that line when things don’t work out. For instance, in my first year in Denver, a job and a passing relationship fell a part at about the same time. And while both were disappointing, I did feel like I had accomplished something. I had built something in Denver that could be, and was, destroyed. I smoked a cigarette the day I got laid off, and I didn’t regret it at all.
*That Jonathan Franzen essay can be found here or in How To Be Alone
It’s mathematically weird how cold it is. Like, it’s already cold at 27 degrees, and yesterday was 20 degrees colder than that. Seven degrees feels different than you’d expect—it’s not super cold when you first step outside. The feel of outside is still more powerful than the temperature. But the cold is there, and after ten minutes, even with a balaclava, tights, wool socks, a neck gaiter, a hat, and lobster gloves on, it starts to feel pretty fucking cold.
It’s not usually this cold in November and even in February, it’s rarely this cold for this long. In any 10-day period for Denver, there’s a Weather Channel sun icon somewhere in the mix. That weather pattern is almost a city ethos—or a city-planning ethos anyway. Whatever snow falls, the municipal response is that it’ll just melt away. Things can’t stay cold forever here. Except right now. It’s cold and there’s about an inch of snow on the streets that isn’t going anywhere.
Weather talk is boring, of course, for a million reasons, but two primarily: there’s nothing you can do to change it and it’s impossible to recreate. I know what that first warm night of spring feels like, but that memory doesn’t do much for me right now.
But Rex, the dog who loves being a dog more than anything, is loving the snow. She gallops through Cheesman Park and covers her nose in the stuff. Snow beads up in her paws, and after our romps, she lets me clean out her feet for treats. Right now, Rex’s treats are just her regular dog food, but given to her in small increments. She’s so eager for them, it’s like she doesn’t know there’s a half-eaten bowl of the same stuff available whenever she wants. I’d tell her, but she wouldn’t believe me.
It’d be great if all this weather and dog stuff were symbolic of something larger. I suppose it could be, but really, it’s just cold out and I still need to walk my dog.
He’s suspended from the air cutting down branches, I’m considering third person. Both of us are professional heroes.
And if you have the login credentials, I recommend reading Anthony Lane’s review of “Before Sunset.” It’s like reading a diary entry about someone’s first date with their future spouse.
You know when you go to bed too early, intent on getting a good night’s sleep, and then you wake up at 12:30, and your body is like, awesome nap, let’s party!
That happened to me the other night, and with that time, which is not stolen time, but credit card debt time because the exhaustion comes back at a high interest rate, I read the William Finnegan article about fast food laborers.
Arisleyda Tapia, the subject of Finnegan’s piece, is making $8.35 an hour at McDonald’s and works 30 hours a week. Somehow, she is supporting herself and her daughter in New York and her family back in the DR. I imagine she’s already cut out the lattes.
What struck me about her plight was how far removed she was from the wealth in New York. Not just far from the economy of $70 million apartments, but far from the economy of people serving those people, where the real menial wages are. I’ve been part of that economy, tutoring and babysitting for kids whose careers could be renting out their childhood homes.
People are willing to pay more for a babysitter who can talk books or a maid who can speak English. Which is fair enough. The service industry is another free market. But I feel like for all the liberal handwringing over how the lowest class is treated, there’s not enough effort to make better service jobs available to them. Where is the dog walking service that employees immigrants instead of hipsters?
I’m also reading Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave right now, which for a book set in Italy in the 60s, felt very relevant to Finnegan’s piece. I kind of wish Finnegan had included this excerpt from the book in his article:
Can you imagine, she asked, what it means to spend eight hours a day standing up to your waist in the mortadella cooking water? Can you imagine what it means to have your fingers covered with cuts from slicing the meat off animal bones? Can you imagine what it means to go in and out of the refrigerated rooms at twenty degrees below zero, and get ten lire more an hour—ten lire—for cold compensation? If you imagined this, what do you think you can learn from people who are forced to live like that? … The union has never gone in and the workers are nothing but poor victims of blackmail, dependent on the law of the owner, that is: I pay you and so I possess you and I possess your life, your family, and everything that surrounds you, and if you don’t do as I say, I’ll ruin you.
I want to qualify this post, and acknowledge that this one is extra narcissistic. But I think that might be a little redundant for a blog.
Right now, I’m waiting until September 13 to start working on my story again. September 13 is the next time my writing group meets, and the date has become an arbitrary marker of time in the way of all far off dates.
It’s weird to be waiting for feedback right now because I know my story isn’t perfect. I agree with what a lot of my other readers have been saying. The story is there, but there are like 18 sentences missing that would help solidify the characters. Eighteen is not a large or small number, but it’s a number that could make a difference. Think of how 18 home improvements or 18 pieces of clothes could change a house or wardrobe.
When I realized over the weekend that I needed about 360 more words to transform my story, I felt like my goal was closer or more tangible. But the more I think about it, the more I realize coming up with those sentences is the whole challenge.
In general, small things separate the good from the great. Even if it’s only one missing sentence, when it’s gone, its absence is the only thing that matters.
(Until about 20 minutes ago, I had never heard the original version of this song. I imagined it was by a Fleetwood Mac-like band, not the star of Popstars: the Rivals.)
I emailed the second official, and 11th unofficial, draft of my new story around to friends on Saturday, and since then, I’ve been spending my mornings cleaning, reading, and managing the email list for Making the Mountain. I’ve been productive, but I still feel pretty empty. It’s not like I think my writing is so great or could change any lives. It’s just that writing, for me anyway, is the only thing that makes life seem more than a variation of waiting on lines, looking for misplaced keys, and cleaning the bathroom mirror. This sounds self-important and melodramatic, but if I’m not writing, I don’t really know what this whole thing is about.
At the same time, work, which pays for whatever I’m waiting on line to purchase, all of the things my various keys open, and the cleaning solution for the bathroom mirror—along with summer fruit, weekend trips, and novelty yarmulkes—has been asking more of me, which is only fair, because it is my job.
This week, I’ve been fighting for my love, which means insisting on a schedule that gives me time to write, even if I don’t have anything to write right now.
When I was writing my novel, I thought I’d rather fail at it than not try, which is still true. My novel only exists in a drawer and my collection of short stories might have a similar fate. I’ve sent around five of stories, and all I have to show for it is a spreadsheet of rejection and one memento of kindness. There’s no guarantee that I’ll get anything published. The only thing that’s for sure is that my writing won’t get better if I don’t write, and that’s worth fighting for.
Though I prefer to think of myself as Gen Y, I’m a millennial when it comes to my music habits. I listen to about half of my music on YouTube. Occasionally pop songs, but mainly live shows of my favorite bands.
Here’s what I can recommend:
Beirut, Brussels
Beirut is a great live band, but this video has Zach Condon saying, “I’ve given up speaking French in this city.”
Vampire Weekend, Seoul
I’ve seen, or heard while writing press releases, a lot of Vampire Weekend shows. At under 50 minutes, this one is lean, features interviews, a Korean cartoon, and screaming teenages.
Wilco, Barcelona
When Jeff Tweedy says, “You guys are the best audience in the world and I’m not just saying that” Catalons should believe him. He doesn’t really care about most other audiences.
The National, Sydney
In an interview with Bret Easton Ellis, Matt Berninger, the lead singer of the National, says he drinks too much at shows. That’s evident in this show.
“The shadow life. He saw it everywhere—it was a kind of second sight—but what use was it? He looked back at his passenger, her face anxious, turned away. Her window misted, a single cloud. What could she possibly see?”
I used to hate when people complained about not having time to do something. It seemed like an excuse: no one has trouble making time to dick around on Facebook, but suddenly there’s no time to read or go to the grocery store?
But as I get older and collect responsibilities that I can’t shift around as easily, I’ve become more empathetic. Lately, with a puppy and more professional obligations, finding the time on weekday mornings to write—without the pressure to do more than stare at my computer and be in the space of whatever it is I’m working on—has been challenging.
To compensate, I’ve resigned myself to missing out on early morning weekend adventures. I can only seem to write before lunch, and it’s become a weird truth that I’d rather write one perfect paragraph before noon than do just about anything else. When I miss out on these outings, it’s not because I don’t have time, it’s because I’d rather be writing.
Even if I won’t be going on a day hike tomorrow, I realize this is one of the least obligated times of my life. Which is why I had some compassion for a woman I came across on my run yesterday. The track near my apartment was empty except for two women, probably in their 40s, and a bored nine year-old girl looking on. The track is the most pleasant way for me to exercise with my dog, Rex. She can race around and sniff, and I can run without worrying about her racing around and sniffing.
I did my first lap between the women’s 400s, but once they started again, Rex began running alongside them. One of the women, I like to think the mom, said in the loud, under the breath way of a passive aggressive without any power, “A dog shouldn’t be on the track.” Fair enough, and I left because in her tone, she was saying, “This is my moment not to worry about emails, or my husband, or the laundry, and even then, I had to bring my child, and you and your dog are ruining this.”
I felt bad, not for her disrupted 400, which to be nasty, wasn’t that fast, but for how little time she felt she had. Maybe I just felt bad for my future self, who one day will have a fuller life that I will try to escape in regular 90-minute increments to write. I hope that in those flights, I can be more at peace than that woman, but I’ll probably be just as anxious to do something with my bursts of freedom.
After the track incident, I took Rex to the park, and thought about the opening of “Pretty Hurts.” Like Beyonce, or her songwriter Sia Furler, my aspiration in life is to be happy. But more specifically, it’s not to worry about time or money.
“School’s Out for Summer” – Alice Cooper “American Music” – Violent Femmes “Goodbye Stranger” – Super Tramp “Omaha” – Counting Crows “Beautiful Girl – Pete Droge & The Sinners “When I Come Around” – Green Day “Radio, Radio” – Elvis Costello “At My Most Beautiful” – REM “Walk Away” – Ben Harper “I’ll Miss You” – Ween “Sweet Caroline” – Neil Diamond “Another Brick in the Wall” – Pink Floyd “Underground” – Ben Folds Five
I recently found the high school graduation mix I made in 2001 (track list above), and 13 years later, it holds up. “American Music” for instance: still a great song. I did so much math homework listening to that song, and hearing it again, I felt a twinge of that sadness from “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”: where did my love for that song go?
It was nice to listen to something I made, or curated, a Bar Mitzvah boy ago, and still enjoy it. At the time, I was very self-conscious when I handed the mix out through the halls of my high school. I didn’t feel proud of it, or like I had done something cool. I felt like I was trying to do something cool, and in the trying, I had some shame.
In general, it’s hard for me to feel completely proud of things. There’s always a caveat, a clause I add to put things in perspective and diminish whatever I’ve done. But recently, things have been going well. Specifically, I adopted a dog and Making the Mountain, the artist night I put together, is heading in a good direction. Catching up with a friend, I said about Making the Mountain, though I could have been talking about the dog, “I’m trying to just be proud of this. It’s something I wanted and I’ve made it happen.”
She reminded me that I had said something similar after running my first marathon, which I completed a few minutes faster than my goal. I had forgotten that I had said that. Even the sentiment felt distant, like a memory based on a photograph. Which is too bad, because I have a great memory for not feeling proud. I could chart the days I’ve felt embarrassed or silly, many of which were in high school.
I’m not one to advocate the ego, but it seems unproductive to be able to hold onto disappointment so tightly and not be able to remember pride.
I recently put together a night where people talked about what they make and why. Below is what I read:
I had a moment when I knew I wanted to write a novel. It was November 3, 2007. I was at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, and I was watching a 3-D movie about sunspots. I was not sober. I’d like to say that the inevitable destruction of our solar system made me think about my own mortality. But really, I was thinking about work.
I had recently changed jobs. I had been at a trade publication called “Sales & Marketing Management Magazine.” The best thing I could say about the job was that it provided me with health insurance. I had been trying to leave since I got there, and finally had. Now I was writing at a media blog, and it had felt like a big move. I had a ton of creative freedom and I was meeting interesting people. But watching this movie about sunspots, I realized that blogging for ten hours a day was not what I wanted either. I wanted to write a novel.
Some people know their whole life that they want to write fiction. I knew my whole life that being creative professionally is hard. My mom is a painter, and each night, she’d come home from work vaguely sad or with news that no one could relate to, like that she had moved a bottle two inches in a still life. Her work wasn’t fun, and she resented when people ask if it was. It’s her second most hated question, right after, “Are you still painting?” Growing up, I’d see her go to her studio every day with the inevitability of gravity, but people still treated her career like a hobby.
But watching this movie about sunspots, the loneliness and the statistical odds of a creative life felt irrelevant. I wanted to write a novel, and I’d rather fail than not try. And so it became my 2008 New Year’s Resolution to make an effort.
Which is more or less what happened in 2008. I gave up blogging and started writing. All the things I feared about having a creative life have proved true.
It’s lonely. The problems I have as I’m developing a character or a scene don’t make sense to anyone but me. My novel exists mostly in a drawer. But that feeling I had at the Liberty Science Center, of having to write, is still there. And now I’m working on a collection of short stories.
There are all sorts of practical things I like about writing short stories. Mainly that they are shorter than novels. But I’ve always loved short fiction. A short story doesn’t pretend to have all the answers; it’s a snapshot of a character in a moment that feels true.
One of my favorite moments is from the John Cheever short story “Clementina.” It’s about an Italian woman who becomes an au pair for an American family and has lost her visa. Marrying an older, slightly creepy guy is the only way she can stay. Here’s the scene where she makes her decision:
The room where she read these letters was warm. The lights were pink. She had a silver ashtray like a signora, and, if she had wanted, in her private bathroom she could have drawn a hot bath up to her neck. Did the Holy Virgin mean for her to live in a wilderness and die of starvation? Was it wrong to take the comforts that were held out to her? The faces of her people appeared to her again, and how dark were their skin, their hair, and their eyes, she thought, as if through living with fair people she had taken on the dispositions and the prejudices of the fair. The faces seemed to regard her with reproach, with earthen patience, with a sweet, dignified, and despairing regard, but why should she be compelled to return and drink sour wine in the darkness of the hills? In this new world they had found the secret of youth, and would the saints in heaven have refused a life of youthfulness if it had been God’s will? She remembered how in Nascosta even the most beautiful fell quickly under the darkness of time, like flowers without care; how even the most beautiful became bent and toothless, their dark clothes smelling, as the mamma’s did, of smoke and manure. But in this country she could have forever white teeth and color in her hair. Until the day she died she would have shoes with heels and rings on her fingers, and the attention of men, for in this new world one lived ten lifetimes and never felt the pinch of age; no, never. She would marry Joe. She would stay here and live ten lives, with a skin like marble and always the teeth with which to bite the meat.
We don’t get to know how her marriage works out, if she has kids, if she’s happy, or happier than she would have been back in Italy. We just know that in this moment, she made a choice to always have the strength to enjoy life.
In that way, the short form is more honest than the novel. The length of the novel implies that you’re getting everything. But there is no everything, there’s no whole story. What happens to Ishmael after the Pequod sinks? Maybe Moby-Dick is just a cover letter for his next job.
Cheever used to put on a suit each morning before he went to write in the basement of his apartment building in Manhattan. He wanted to feel like he was going to a job, even if it was only an elevator ride away. My method is to wake up early every day. I learned from my mom that making art doesn’t happen by accident. She still goes to her studio every morning, and I never presumed that I could make something any other way.
It’s not that I want to write every day. I could be very happy—much happier, in fact—watching reality TV every day. I write every day because I want to get better at writing. It’s a vague goal. But the only thing that’s certain is that I won’t get better at writing if I don’t write.
Most mornings, I don’t get much done. I do laundry, I make my bed. I stare out the window. It’s a weird time to be up.
For a while, everything is just black, except for the diagonal streaks of light from the big apartment building on the corner of my street. And then the sky turns navy, the kind of navy you want to believe is black if you made a mistake when purchasing stockings.
From there, everything gets bluer, though it’s still a dark blue, a blue that could pass for this season’s new black, and the naked branches of the trees become visible. Then the sky is really blue, a blue that, if you were being gender normative, would do well in a baby boy’s room, a blue so light it would surprise you, considering how dark it still is.
And then, I’m not staring out into total darkness, but the house across from mine, though I can still make out my reflection in the window. Each moment, the sky gets lighter and lighter, which feels like a betrayal of the night, which I suppose it is.
And it’s just like that Hemingway line about going bankrupt—slowly, then all at once—and then it’s time for the day to start.
(I wrote that a few years ago, while I was procrastinating.)
All of my early mornings are sort of like water on the rock. Every day, I wear away at my inability to understand my characters and connect words to their feelings, and eventually, something emerges.
Apparently, Bret Easton Ellis has a podcast. I don’t know what you were expecting, but if you were expecting him to talk about himself and shill for 90 seconds at a time about audio book services, you’d be right.
Though, I wouldn’t want Bret Easton Ellis to be anything but narcissistic and money driven—it’d be like asking a zebra not to be striped. It’s also kind of funny how he just talks about his relationship to his guest’s work instead of asking the guest any questions.
The other night, I listened to his interview with Matt Berninger of the National. “Boxer” was the soundtrack to BEE’s summer of 2008; “Alligator” was the soundtrack to my summer of 2006.
They do talk about music some, but Berninger is remarkably bad at remembering the meaning behind his own songs. (Those looking for context on “City Middle” should look elsewhere.) They also talk a lot about “Mistaken For Strangers,” a documentary Matt Berniger’s little brother made about the band and his own failures. From the trailer below, it seems like a future endorsement.
For the past four Wednesdays, I’ve woken up at 4:23 am to write before a 6:30 am track workout. This is the most responsible sounding thing I do all week. One problem: I have trouble getting anything else done all day.
A year is long, or long enough that when the end of December comes around, when the days are so short they start becoming longer, when there’s no work to be done besides eating sweets and vague thoughts about self-improvement, it always comes as somewhat of a surprise.
My favorite part of this time of year is watching the dusk settle into the night and staring at the bare branches against the changing sky. That’s probably the best part of winter anywhere. The best part of winter in Denver is the way the snow doesn’t melt if it’s covered in shadows.
I don’t have any grand proclamations about 2013, or any predictions about 2014. In 2013, I read and in 2014, I plan to do the same. After the jump, the books I read last year.
Key *Book club book ** Reread
A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers Half in Love, Maile Meloy **
Maile Meloy is one of my favorite short story writers, and for some sort of vague literary exercise, I typed up “Garrison Junction,” maybe her best story, here.
Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, Joan Ryan
The Twitter-length takeaway: Don’t let your little girls have dreams that involve eating disorders!
Swamplandia!, Karen Russell* People Who Eat Darkness, Richard Lloyd Parry
This is one of the best true crime books I’ve ever read. Anyone who is interested in Japan and being interested should read this book.
The Centennial History of the Jews of Colorado, Allen duPont Breck
A gag gift, though the gag is that I read it. Do you know the inventor of Samsonite luggage was a Denver Jew, and he named the company after his biblical hero Samson? For more dinner party conversation facts, check out #COJews
Light Years, James Salter 50 Shades of Grey, E.L. James*
The best discussion at book club all year.
The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer Generation X, Douglas Coupland The Woman Upstairs, Claire Messud When Everything Changed, Gail Collins The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins* Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, David Sedaris
I didn’t love this collection of essays, but proof of Sedaris’s talent as a memoirist can be found in “Now We Are Five,” a brave account of his sister’s suicide.
Pigeon Feathers, John Updike Freedom, Jonathan Franzen ** Born to Run, Christopher McDougall Where Did You Go Bernadette?, Maria Semple The Lowlands, Jhumpa Lahiri Where Men With Glory, Jon Krakauer * Many Lives, Many Masters, Brian Weiss* Independence Day, Richard Ford
A Dangerous Place: California’s Unsettling Fate, Marc Reisner The Kid, Dan Savage* Dear Life, Alice Munro Roth Unbound, Claudia Roth Pierpoint Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson Decoded, Jay-Z
I read three auto/biographies of literary figures in a row, and Jay-Z’s was the one that I enjoyed the most. Though I’ve been known to dance around to Izzo by myself, I’m not a huge fan of his music. It’s more that I find his story, his branding, and his cross-platform portfolio interesting. Jay-Z is living one version of the American Dream, and his telling of it is inspiring.
My uncle records all the books he reads. I admired this; such a list was proof of something. When I graduated college and the period of assigned reading had ended, I began recording what I read, too.
During the year, I write down what I read on a wall calendar. This year was Bernese Mountain Dogs.
After finishing the book, I record my name and the month and year I read it on the first page.
For bookmarks, I use tickets, race bibs, and business cards. I try to match the scrap paper with the book.
It’s nice when the bookmark goes with the color of the book:
The Middlesteins, January, 2013, Paine to Pain Half-Marathon race bib
Or when a narrative component of the book matches up nicely with the bookmark:
50 Shades of Grey, with the card of Office N. Huber of the Aurora Police Department, April, 2013.
The best is when both things happen:
The Centennial History of the Colorado Jews, with a train ticket from Grand Central to New Rochelle, my hometown, a place where Passover and spring break are the same week.
