near wild heaven

This is now, this is here, this is me, this is what I wanted you to see.

Another quiz question, more fun: what is a near wild heaven? For this there is no set answer; I just want to be impressed.  

posted by: zithereen at January 31, 2004 17:21 | link | comments (5) |

Can't stay long just now; I'm writing something to wash the bad taste out from Thursday's crash and burn job. The beginning of it you can read in yesterday's post. But in the meantime, I thought I'd give you a quiz: what band recorded the song this blog named after? If I have personally told you already, you cannot answer. The first person who answers right gets a....a prize. I don't know what the prize should be, so I'll take suggestions for that along with your answer to the quiz.

Gotta blaze.

posted by: zithereen at January 31, 2004 17:05 | link | comments (6) |

Here's something I've been writing today, since my last post. What I've posted below is just the very beginning, the opening. Here's what I'd like to know: if you read this at the beginning of a story, would you keep reading?

 

Here you go:

 

Imagine for a moment that you are ten years old. Not just any ten year old, but me. This may be, I understand, a difficult thing for you, because we hardly know each other. We have only this one moment together, this instance of intersecting interests, but I’d like it if you tried. I’d like it because I need an answer from you.

            I’ll provide the setup, you provide the answer. Deal?

posted by: zithereen at January 30, 2004 15:55 | link | comments (3) |

The reasons why I enjoy Mark as a workshop leader are also the reasons why I resist him sometimes. What I enjoy is that he is so willing to circumvent all the crap--all the code and ethics--and dive directly into what he thinks is at the very heart of a particular story, and on a larger scale to the heart of your total work: themes and settings and so on. What worries me is that sometimes he is so focused on it, and in such a hurry to dive right into it, that he may overlook other things along the way. This is to say, he has on more than one occasion told me that a particular story wasn't at all about what I thought it was about, but about something else altogether. It's like he thinks I'm not telling the "real" story that needs to be told. This is valuable advice; conversely, I'm not sure where exactly to impose limits on that advice, because I am so impressed by its honesty. But I still feel the need to factor in my own interests with the sensitive and passionate advice Mark regularly delivers.

The story last night, as they say, did not play well with the masses. I sort-of knew it wouldn't, because I knew the story was taking on water in certain areas, but I just couldn't tell where the water was being taken in. Anyway, much of the advice was blatant and honest--the best kind--but predicated on Mark's assertion that I should consider abandoning the story, or expanding the moments he (and many others) found good into a different story altogether. Again this is valuable advice, and perhaps it is right, but I'm also not sure what to make of it, since the story is in such an early form. Scrap the fuselage? Focus on those individual, shimmering moments that beg another story altogether? Is it good to consider such massive reconstruction at such an early juncture? I think I need a little time to put the advice into context while not forgetting my own considerable devotion to this story I'd like to tell.

Thanks be to Elizabeth the novelist who took me aside afterwards and said she disagreed with nearly all the advice I had just been given. It's nice to see that someone found the story--with its current goals--worthwhile. Anyway, these ain't the minor leagues. Big stakes, big decisions. In the meantime I'm going to spend the day writing something else and reading some short stories.

posted by: zithereen at January 30, 2004 11:42 | link | comments (4) |

Well, kids, I am going to type a blog even though motime has been up and down the past twelve hours--so who knows, maybe this won't even make it into your eyes. I'm up for workshop today. What this means is that last week I handed out a story to my 11 other colleagues and teacher--this quarter, the writer Mark Richard (wonderful man)--and over the past week they have read my story carefully, written comments on it, and also typed a formal critique of at least one single-spaced page. This evening I will sit quietly for about an hour while they discuss the various merits and shortcomings of the story in its present form, offering me suggestions for revision.

It's not so bad as it might seem. I've heard horror stories from other top creative writing programs--Iowa, Johns Hopkins, etc.--but here at UCI the focus really is on helping the story, and being both kind and rigorous. Intent is so important in that way--if a teacher wants to trash a story, or if a particular student or students wants to use the workshop to gain a measure of revenge for some past  wrong, then the workshop can be damaging to the writer. But praise be to Geoffrey and Michelle for constructing a program that downplays those factors. Anyway, the workshop is the cennterpiece of my program. We meet every week, about 30-33 times per year. When it is finished, I will have written 132 critiques over two years (11 students twice per quarter, multiply by three, multiply by two) and so will have in the vicinity of 400 double-spaced pages of critiques written by me. I will have also been workshopped a total of twelve times and gone a long way toward writing my short story collection. Anyway, back to now. I am up for workshop tonight, and th story I so struggled to complete will come under critical review. I'm looking forward to it. Reports soon.  

posted by: zithereen at January 29, 2004 09:37 | link | comments (1) |

I have added some fun new links at left. These include some flying viking kittens and a teddy bear with wings and a guitar making perhaps the worst song ever into something worthwhile. Also: beatnik kitty. Right here at Near Wild Heaven. Less funny but more informative is the link to the website for the class I teach.

The swearing-off of alcohol has been successful to this point (at least one good thing came out of Saturday). I feel like I'm burning cleaner, more efficiently; everything seems a little more taut. Probably why I had a good day teaching today. My students this quarter are a polite bunch (not really a good thing), but I had also noticed a cetain flab factor in them so far. Some students not reading assigned stories, late writing assignments, an unwillingness to talk in class. In a class of only fifteen these faults are magnified and amplified, particularly in a creative writing class, where student input and participation is a primary ingredient. But I try to feel things out for a couple weeks to make sure that what I'm seeing is indeed correct. Today I was more aggressive, lecturing them only slightly about the importance of everything mentioned above, about the need to do what is asked and about potential impact on their grade--that last one I hate to do, because I try to make the class less about the achievement of a grade and more about the material. But sometimes I think you need to speak another language. We discussed two stories today: Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (the most beautiful evil story ever written) and Ethan Canin's "Star Food." Things were good; I started calling on students, which I rarely do, but it all goes to being more aggressive in my approach. And one student who I discovered during class last week had not read the assignment was this time a regular participant, giving the class a lucid summary of the Poe story and offering more comments. Anyway it was a nice feeling; I think we really did some good work today, particularly on the Canin story. I feel like I helped them gain a foothold on that story. When I have days like this I know teaching is the profession for me.

posted by: zithereen at January 27, 2004 15:38 | link | comments (6) |

I was one of the millions of revelers who on Saturday enjoyed their evening by drinking too much. Let us take into account that I had just come off a hellacious week and had found it impossible to sleep the night before until nearly dawn. This happens to me sometimes, when I am punch-drunk and tired but manage to keep my wheels turning--when the time comes to slow it down, I can't; it takes me a day or so to acclimate myself to normalcy. So Friday was a 21-hour day. Not wanting to completely screw with my sleeping schedule, I dragged myself out of bed at noon Saturday, a mere five and a half hours after finally crashing, and spent the afternoon piddling around and feeling half-dead. But I had to attend a good-bye party that night, there was no way to avoid it. Of course, nobody forced me to consume several delicious Sierra Nevada Pale Ales before switching, foolishly, to red wine. I wound up exhausted-drunk: my head felt heavy and I was slow in reacting to those around me. Sometimes when I drink it does what I'd like it to do, which is to make me feel light and happy and sociable. And while I wasn't unhappy and non-sociable on Saturday, I felt dulled. I justified it by knowing it had more to do with fatigue than the drink, but to the observers all around me it probably just seemed like I was a big fat drunkie.

At some point during the party, I had another moment where I looked around the room and thought that, if I had to decide, most of the people in the room were more like strangers to me than friends. I've had these moments many times as a graduate student, where most of my friendships have been so intensely conditional that it makes me sad. At my previous graduate school stop, Iowa State, I got tight fast with a group of friends and we had fun together, particularly in our first year. But when we graduated 21 months later and went our separate ways, these friendships all but dissolved. Now it is the occasional friendly email, more newsy than friendly. So--how good of friends were we ever, really, if we could lose touch so quickly and readily? That question I ask myself here, in this place, because I have met a number of great people but wonder what exactly will transpire when June arrives and I'm off to some other state. And that's when I look around the room at these people I didn't know two years ago and think about how many of them I will still know two years from now (when I am, gasp, pushing 30). I think friendships come and go all the time, regardless of context, but for some reason graduate school seems to more intensely cause the conditional friendship. As I evaluate the plusses and minuses of graduate school--I made myself a promise over Christmas to enjoy what was enjoyable about these last six months--I will probably return to this again. Any thoughts? 

posted by: zithereen at January 26, 2004 12:24 | link | comments (5) |

Off to a good-bye party for a friend, but had to say: if you enjoy a good laugh, and if your computer has sound, click on The Pygmy Shrew link at left. Mmm-hmmm.  

posted by: zithereen at January 24, 2004 18:26 | link | comments (2) |

I don't know about you, but I've heard a lot of people in recent years--people who value writing, who care for it--bemoan the fact that good writing is hard to come by. I do agree with that sentiment but I've really enjoyed reading blogs. I've been impressed by the thoughtful, insightful work you all do, your observations on your own life and the life we all share in common. So I say to those people who see the marginal status of writing as a positive value: you're wrong. Read some blogs. There is a lot of good writing out there and it makes me happy to read it. I really do mean that.

I was just now writing in a comment down below about how I love writing. I thought I'd expand on that word in this context. It comes down to the fact that I see the writing that I do as an inextricable aspect of my identity, the all-important Who I Am. I won't blather on but I will say that I took an interest in writing--especially fiction, for some unknowable reason--from a young age. At that point I didn't think in terms of formal elements or career; it was just something I liked reading and doing myself. What I liked then, as now, is the utter hope and possibility I associate with writing. As a reader I like entering into a world I recognize that neverhteless bears the specific watermark of the author; truly I am seeing a version of the world, a little pocket, unknown, a secret. It's comfortable there. And each good writer has a new slant on the world, a specific angle from which to write. It's strange to say but it gives me hope because it reveals to me the possibility of things, that within this one recognizable world there are so many versions of it, that everything need not boil down to ONE way, ONE method, ONE path to travel for ONE answer. I don't believe in that. I believe that we're all fiercely linked to each other, that we are the same in some ways, but I always, always want to be surprised. I always want to believe that the world I preceive is not the only world worth perceiving, and to be honest I have found that to be true in books and little else. So I love reading, even as I have a sometimes uneasy relationship with academia and its dangerous tendency to suck the very life from writing I value so highly.

And reading, like writing, is not all daisies and sunshine. To see the world from another angle requires exertion and abrasion. To create the world from your own angle requires the same. And at its heart--I really believe this--writing is interaction. It is communication, and communiation itself is a hopeful gesture. That is not a revolutionary thing to say, nor profound, but when I am writing I am trying to tell a story in the hopes that a chord is struck somewhere in someone, that the version of the world I have written is like the versions of the world I have read in so many different writers; that it hits someone at a new angle that cannot be foreseen by reader or, necessarily, by writer. Such a sentiment is perhaps an ideal, but you cannot convince me that an ideal is inadequate because it is what it is. It may be inadequate for other reasons, sure, but never for being hopeful. I believe in the very same way I believe that I have a body that such a thing is not easy. It is hard. It requires exertion. It is not always locally fun. What it is exactly, I can't say, except that I love whatever it is. Then again, knowing exactly what it is--defining it--imposes limits, diminishes what it is I find so valuable. And a little mystery in life, I think you'll agree, is a good thing.

posted by: zithereen at January 22, 2004 23:35 | link | comments (1) |

Exhausted from writing. Still dancing my little dance with the last damned paragraph of the story, the key moment among key moments for my character. The choice he makes, how he makes it. How he applies what all he's learned. Will return to it in the morning, to all of you sometime soon. Thanks to all who are participating in my "define fun" extravaganza. Keep it coming; I could use a little reminder on fun after this grueling session at my computer.

posted by: zithereen at January 22, 2004 01:33 | link | comments |

I don't have enough fun, people. While I love my work it requires extensive solitude. It also has required me to move to a part of the country foreign to me, where memories from childhood read like dreams from somebody else's life. I sit hunched over books or worrying about words on a page, my words. Worthy pursuits, but not without their costs. And sometimes I linger over what those costs are. I am 27 years old, people, and I will be 28 in less than a month. This is not old. But I feel older. My students all look like kids and most of them are only 19. I think I spend too much time writing, though at the same time I know I don't spend enouh time doing it. Instead I feel like I need to stay in touch with my sense of fun, and this is where you come in. Tell me, if you will and in your own words, what you do for fun. Define fun. 

posted by: zithereen at January 20, 2004 00:18 | link | comments (13) |

A story has finally caught. Not exactly on fire, but it's smoldering at least. Everytime I press through the muck, persevere, and remember again that I know a thing or two about writing stories, I am gracious. Relieved. I become more gracious and more relieved every time it happens too, because it is one more time that I have painted myself into a corner and found a way out. There is also a certain thrill and satisfaction that comes with it.

I have also spent the evening with my secret girlfriend Emily Dickinson. You may have heard of her; she gets around. The stated goal of my Dickinson seminar this quarter is to read all 1700+ poems Dickinson wrote, a lofty goal I hope I'm up to. The teacher is mad about Dickinson and quite a poet in his own right. In fact my Emily is calling out to me still, as she will be calling out to me for these next many weeks; I have read maybe a couple dozen of her poems tonight, barely anything at all.  

Back to it again.

posted by: zithereen at January 19, 2004 20:53 | link | comments (2) |

Thanks be to Likewise, Nous and Photofoxx for their thoughtful comments on yesterday's blog. I've provided links to their blogs at left. Other comments are welcome; I see myself returning to this great sadness in the future.

Here's an example. The other night I was playing chess online with my venerable friend Mike (whose blog you can link to at left) and he sliced through me as if I simply was not there. It was the strangest experience; I felt fine, but I was just stupid. At some point I looked at the chess board on my computer screen and it made no sense to me anymore. It may well have been Arabic or some other encodement I do not understand. Then I thought: what sort of masochistic asshole dreamed up this game? So then I was fighting two losing battles, one with Mike, the other with the prick who first conceived of chess. Not that losing a chess game to Mike is anything unusual or to be ashamed of. I've lost to him dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times over these past five years. But I've usually done so in full capacity of my brain, put up a good fight, lost to superior skill. This type of losing I can cope with; I can take solace in knowing that I tried hard and he was simply better, and sometimes I am even able to win. He was simply better the other night, but I was angry at myself--angrier than I should have been, it is just a war game after all--for being so utterly brainless.

I've also had trouble writing a story, which I must submit to the workshop this Thursday. This type of difficulty makes me truly surly. I have no less than six story scraps, and a novel, and I've been working a little bit on them all, typing a few paragraphs, hoping one would feel right and catch fire. Until very late last night, nothing had. I couldn't enter into the stories, and I had no confidence that I could create with paper and ink a world that would feel three-dimensional, that would elicit from readers any genuine emotional response except contempt. When you're a writer and you feel this way, it is the pits.

But I've tried to be nice to myself, too. I think my difficulty with thinking and writing and feeling lately has to do with the gaping hole that's opened up in the life of my friend. I think about her a lot and wonder how she passes the days, right here in the recent aftermath of this death. Ultimately I know she will survive, because she has so much will and fortitude, and too much life in her to be conatined forever, but I also know that this will never get any better for her, any easier. She will cope but this is a pain that never seals up and heals. At least, this is what I imagine. I have no idea what it is like for her right now, what it will always be like for her, and the fact that her grief is so unreachable is what I find myself lingering on.

posted by: zithereen at January 18, 2004 09:59 | link | comments (5) |

Welcome to the new Near Wild Heaven. Goodbye orange: hello electric blue and quasi-psychadelic imagery! This pattern really grabbed me when, earlier today, I was deferring my responsibilities as a writer and blatantly looking for things to occupy the hours. Look soon for: links to other blogs. That's right, I'm here to win back your trust and affection (if not your love).

Honestly, though, this has been a busy and difficult week, so my non-blogging might hopefully be excused once you hear my story. A teacher in my program has suffered a horrible tragedy: her husband comitted suicide last week. I write this not to use it as if it were my own notable news, or to be a gossip, but because it has been so thoroughly on my mind, and your thoughts (though perhaps not your judgements) are welcome. It is worth saying first that the directors of my program--let's call them Geoffrey and Michelle--have made many efforts to be more than our teachers and mentors. They are also our friends, my friends. Michelle in particular has been so warm and nurturing toward us, is almost universally loved by us all here in MFA land, and is a woman I've come to admire for being so utterly full of life. So the news of Michelle's tragedy hit me hard, because of all people I would not want grief to come at her like this. Beyond even that, though, I've been lingering on suicide and the people who commit it. I have tried, over this past week, to imagine myself reaching that point, to see what sort of bottomless depression makes that the only option. Bear in mind, Michelle and her husband had by all accounts a great life together--they had friends, interests, partnership, each other. At the funeral, most of the eulogists talked about the nature of their marriage, how it inspired possibility in the belief of partnership. And I believe these people, for I know that Michelle was enamored with her husband; she spoke of him nearly every time I spoke to her. Given all that, the reality of all this is even more difficult to grasp, and when I think of it (as I often do these days) I feel sluggish and dumb; the breadth of her husband's death is too large for me. I can't imagine reaching such a point; it dips beneath my ability to comprehend.

I've heard that suicide is a sin, that those who end their temporal life will not be rewarded with eternal life in the hereafter. But that sounds like bullshit to me. For those of us who have not reached those depths where love and prosperity cannot reach, how can we say it is a shame and then banish these people to hell? How can we qualify the nature of a person's capacity for love and hate, to render a judgement of what they should have done instead, to wade through whatever plagues them for the rich reward of heaven, hanging it before them like a dream of relief? To believe that the heights and the depths of a person can be contained in a text, can be understood and judged by any of us, is condescending and arrogant. Each of us is a mystery to everybody else, on some level. How else can you explain everybody's utter shock at this death?

posted by: zithereen at January 17, 2004 18:11 | link | comments (8) |

Oh man, I'm losing you! Readership has dipped--and understandably so, given that I have hardly written anything, and nothing, dear readers, for the past ten days. I apologize, for that and for my brevity here. It's late, I'm fresh off the train but decidedly not fresh-smelling (three days in trains sans shower, forgive), back in Long Beach and ready to tackle things again...after I sleep. In a bed. Where I can stretch out. Mmmmm. After a hot shower. Double mmmmmm. More soon.

posted by: zithereen at January 12, 2004 01:17 | link | comments (1) |