near wild heaven

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

This week I entered Thesis Mode. For those of you who wrote honors theses as undergrads (I didn't), or who have polished off graduate degrees, you probably know something of what I mean by Thesis Mode. It is worth noting that I was in Thesis Mode two years ago, too, as I finished off my master's degree. But this one is different. The stories in my current thesis, my MFA thesis, I believe, will really and truly wind up (after much, much revising and bitter tears of frustration, and even then not until the summer of 2005) in a finished collection I will then peddle out to literary agents, who will then peddle it out to our country's larger publishing houses. If all goes to plan, of course. I'm in an early step of that plan, which is to prepare my thesis (a rough draft of the eventual finished collection; see remarks on bitter tears above) by early May for a thorough, three-week reading by Geoffrey, Mark and Michelle, who will then return it to me, with commentary that I hope will fuel the year's worth of revision I imagine it will take to get this thing publishable. Again, hope is the operative emotion here.

Along these lines, I took my own advice this past week. Not long ago, my friend the venerable Michael was complaining of a lack of focus, an inability to get done all that he must accomplish by October. Without hesitation I suggested that he give himself over to the organizational imperative that is the planner. I made this suggestion knowing that Michael responds well to a structured life--so what better way to structure your own life than to run it out of a planner? I said this, as well, without ever having successfully kept my life organized in such a way; I keep all appointments and deadlines in my head, which can lead to bouts of stress and forgetfulness. But as we have seen, I have also been complaining of a lack of focus lately, here in these crucial months. So I thought I'd give it a try. I went to the UCI bookstore and dropped twenty dollars on a nice planer. Early results? Doing better, but could do even better still. I'm still learning how to use it. But it's nice to have a centralized place to record all my deadlines, be they self-imposed or institutionally-imposed. The way I see it, I must revise five existing stories and write two new ones by early May. A tall, but do-able, order. And if I do that, all with be going according to plan.

In other news, a dear and thoughtful reader of the blog suggested this week that I drop my storytelling and get back to telling stories about myself. This readerly feedback makes me feel like a real blogger--it only took four months! I'm not sure what to do, though. I mean, if my italicized stories are annoying or uninteresting to you all, I'll stop immediately. After all, I want to keep you all happy. What say you? 

posted by: zithereen at February 28, 2004 22:18 | link | comments (7) |

I should be, at this very moment, continuing to write an article on the nature writer C.L. Rawlins for the good people at the Dictionary of Literary Biography. This article was originally due in January and was extended to February 20, which as we all know was last Friday. I mean, this thing is only supposed to be 3,000 words in length. That's nothing, right?. In college I could pound out 3G no sweat, in graduate school too. But I'm stranded around the 1,000 word mark and farting around on this blog. It's strange; at some point in the writing process I usually lose sense of time and words and just type and get wrapped up in the work, and when I emerge some time later I have typed a couple thousand words. But that hasn't happened this time. This has been a very long 1,000 words, grating even. And it's not even that tough. The writer himself sent me a lengthy biography an CV and many other helpful things which should easily help write many of my 3G's. So what is my problem?  This might come down to my general lack of focus lately, which has gotten better even though it still alarms me.

In other news, I have a general date for the submission of my MFA thesis to my committee: on or around May 10. This means I'll hand the manuscript to them, they will read it closely over the course of three weeks, will return it with suggestions, and I will have one week to get it into the special archives department of the library, formatted just-so on 100% cotton bond paper. Of course, the thesis itself will really just be a rough draft of the final collection, which I hope to have ready for the agents in June 2005. It's almost on, folks. Zithereen will try to get a book deal. In some ways graduation will make this process easier; I'm excited about silencing all those voices fromworkshop, locking in what I've learned from those people, and keeping it between me and the page.

In still other news, some GoStats results. Most of you come to my page from a bookmark, or from Trespass, Likewise, Mictlan, or Wicked Cricket. Some search engine results, though, are in order. Many people who desire information on the MicroTouch trimmer have found their way (unintentionally, I'm sure) to Near Wild Heaven. People who want information on Maile Meloy, Ethan Canin or Emily Dickinson have also arrived here. A coule people from France have typed in "shaven heaven" and wound up here. One searcher desired "gay bars near lax;" another wanted to know about pygmy shrews in Iowa. And others just wanted to know the chords for the R.E.M. song after which this blog is named.       

More story:

The girl opened her eyes and discovered that, in the night, she had left the metal chair in favor of the smooth concrete porch. Her body was turned away from the river, and her first sight that morning was the porch where it met the house’s white stucco wall. The concrete was hard and cold against her curled body. Her bones and muscles ached when, after a moment, she tried to lift herself. They hurt so badly that she stopped moving for a few minutes and steeled herself for another attempt after she had her bearings. Her stomach growled.

            While she waited, the girl took an inventory of what she heard and smelled. She noticed first no noises coming from inside her house, which might not be unusual, depending upon the hour. But the girl had hoped to hear the busy, scuttling noises of breakfast, the breaking of eggs against a metal bowl, the whisk scrambling them, the sizzle of bacon on a skillet. She had hoped for the smell of hearty muffins blooming in the oven, sausage gravy simmering in a pot large enough for the whole family, fresh-cracked black pepper mixed with everything, its aroma sharp, flavoring the other smells.

This would make up for the night before, when her parents had come in too late and seen their daughter asleep in the chair, too late to grill out, how about breakfast?

A couple years back, when she still looked decent enough to be the friend of some well-off classmate, she had stayed the night with another girl. In the morning, she woke to find her friend’s parents busily preparing breakfast. Plates were set at the rounded oak table, which included a place for her. The kitchen, tidy the night before, was a mess of eggshells, flour and flapjack batter. Several skillets were sizzling on the stove, and a raw, doughy smell emanated from the oven. The girl stood in the doorway and let the scents wash over her. She watched her friend’s parents scurry around the kitchen, keeping in balance the half-made breakfast. It could all fall apart, the girl thought, this mess might never come together. But the purposeful, clipped movements of her friend’s parents gave her confidence, and that confidence was rewarded. She sat at the firm oak table with this family that was not her own and ate the breakfast that had been assembled before her very eyes.

posted by: zithereen at February 22, 2004 22:52 | link | comments (7) |

For those of you who have been reading my blog over the past month or two, you may remember my dear friend and professor Michelle and what befell her last month. I won't bother repeating that very sad story, but if you're new and want to know, you can find it in the January archives. Anyway, I saw her on Thursday for the first time since the funeral. I stopped by her office after teaching, and not surprisingly, a few of us MFAers were there, talking her up and keeping her company. She has said many times that our program is like a second family to her; she and Geoffrey pretty much select us single-handedly, wading through 300-400 applications to fish us out, and by the time they pick us they're already attached to us, and when we get here they treat us like family. Anyway, their treatment of us goes along way to breach the normally formal aspects of graduate school. I think that's one reason why Michelle's situation has been such a sad, sad thing for me, because I have come to know her as warm, lovable, rigorous and uncompromising, a seemingly contradictory combination that only makes sense when you meet her and know her, to see just how that combination is manifested in her. I bring this up because the sight of her brought back that difficult day in January that was the saddest thing I have ever seen. Thankfully, the sight of Michelle on Thursday was a recognizable one: she looked rough, don't get me wrong, but she was still recognizably Michelle. And I'm glad for it. Michelle is a person so thoroughly herself that you want desperately to know yourself just as well. I'm glad to see that, despite this bottomless pain she's enduring, Michelle is still herself. In a small, glimmering way, it gives me hope that we can all know ourselves and hold fiercely onto it.

More of "Document," which I began posting last time:

That night, she had a dream that felt more real to her than the life she had escaped. She was aware all the while that it was a dream, which made it special. She understood that she was in the dream and controlling it from afar, just as she had wished many times watching television. Once she knew where the show was headed, she tried to will it elsewhere, concentrating hard to alter that which could not be altered. In this dream there were no such problems. She understood that anything was possible, that she was limited only by her imagination.

She imagined a photograph she had seen in a textbook from school, a family in a rowboat paddling through the flooded street of some small town. At first the dream was just this photograph and all she remembered of it. She studied each detail. It was black and white, the faces of the family fuzzy. She tried to see the faces but all she saw were the small openings for the eyes and the wide smiles of each family member. There was a mother, a father, and two young children, a boy and a girl. The father stood at the bow of the boat in overalls, his long thick body facing the invisible photographer, a hand raised and waving. The father understood that this was one for the history books, that his figure would imbed itself into thousands of future dreams, of this the girl was certain. His figure was just so square to the camera, so poised. Behind him sat the mother, in a dress and wearing a bonnet, her shoulders angled toward the bow of the rowboat but her face also turned to the camera. In the grainy resolution of the photograph, the girl could make out the mother’s high cheekbones and dainty chin, disappearing into the pattern of her dress. The mother was waving at the camera, too. In the back of the small boat were the children, each with an oar in hand, the boy wearing a cap, the girl with her hair tied in pigtails falling across the front of her shoulders. They had momentarily ceased their rowing duties and had also turned to the camera. They, too, were waving and smiling at the unseen photographer. Everybody was very happy.

When the girl imagined this photograph in her dream, she saw it first lying on a table, as if she were leaned over it herself. She saw the frayed yellowish borders of the photograph, the fibers set against the surface of a stained wooden table unlike any table in her real home. The surface was robust and glossy, an aged piece of wood that had been preserved and treated carefully, that had been kept for generations in a single family. But because the girl could change anything she liked—because of this, the borders of the photograph faded and then disappeared, and the image grew closer and sharper. The table surface disappeared as the photograph ceased being a photograph at all and became a frozen moment in life. The mother and the father and their rowing children were all suspended there, looking at the photographer and smiling and waving. It was all real. Then, because she wished it, she became the photographer who had only an instant before snapped that photograph, and she entered into that instant just after, and there she was, held still, in that one small seam where an action has occurred but nothing else has come to replace it. The scene’s details changed the moment she looked at them: the blurry background sharpened until she saw the buildings of her own hometown poking above the water’s surface like reeds. A faraway hill materialized behind everything else, a gentle slope that was exactly the same as the one overlooking her little town. It was a slope far from any road, large or small, and for that reason it existed in the girl’s mind as a faraway, unattainable thing, a benevolent arc of land watching over her little town and the river. She had imagined that gods lived in those hills, in elaborate treehouses, directing the traffic of her life, always watching. This instantly became truth. The gods existed, as did their treehouses, and they guided the girl and the town, but they were never seen, and nobody ever ventured out to seek them. They came to you when they were needed, and they never deserted you. Everybody had a tremendous amount of faith in the tree gods.

Finally the faces of the family deepened; they gained color and their features sharpened, until, naturally, the girl saw frozen before her the faces of her own smiling family. Her father was taller and more solid than in real life, but this did not matter, and the dream figure of her father became real.

The girl looked at her mother, who was seated, her head protected from the noonday sun with a bonnet that spread itself outward, in front of her face, casting it in a modest shadow. Her smile was clear, as were her cherubic cheeks, and the full roundness of her face. This face was not at all like the face of the girl’s real mother, that in every way the dream face was happier and more beautiful than the gaunt, expressionless face of her real mother, the way that face had its own clouds and rain. But the woman before her was her own mother, she knew, and so it was.

Beside the dream-girl was the brother she had always wanted. She had imagined him many times, in many forms, but always a friend, on her side. In the dream, the boy took such a specific shape that the girl wondered if he corresponded to someone real, that this brother was an improvement on some disappointing brother in her real life. But she had no real brother, a fact she now allowed herself to forget. It no longer mattered. The boy’s face was small, his features modest and sharp, his eyes dark and narrow and mischievous, eyes that lured his sister into troublesome adventures. Even in the frozen scene before her, the girl could see that familiar glint in the half-closed eyes of her younger brother, as if, in the next moment, he might plunge into the muddy river water and swim the length of downtown, inviting her to come along on another adventure that would worry their mother until their father placed his thick arms around her shoulders and assured her, again, that their children would be fine. She imagined holding her breath as she and her brother dipped beneath the surface of the calm waters and held hands as they swam for the bottom and touched the wet concrete of Main Street, then made their way back again, safely to the surface.

Then the girl looked at the dream-girl, her mirror. She was holding an oar that rested on both knees; she was sitting Indian style, and she too was smiling. Her hand was still in the air, waving, the fingers bent in stopped salutation. The girl felt herself squinting, looking closer at the better version of herself. The bones of the dream-girl’s face were not hidden underneath the pasty, puffy skin of early adolescence. Instead, the cheekbones were just beneath her eyes like pulled blinds, her jaw two vertical lines down either cheek, lengthening the face, making it prominent and powerful. Their color was high. The girl knew this was the sort of face people stopped to look at, that it was the sort of face she stopped to look at, and that in years to come the skin would tighten around the bones, that she would grow into a beautiful woman.

When she pulled back to see her family whole, the girl had no mind to put this picture of life into motion. She wanted it like this. She wanted to remember this. It was a beautiful day in her dream, and everybody was happy. It was clear as day. This family had survived a flood, and—look at them, she thought—they were happy, they were attractive, they were together. Look at them, she thought again, and imagined she smelled the river in her dream.

posted by: zithereen at February 20, 2004 23:50 | link | comments |

Okay, kids: happy birthday to me. Kind of. My birthday has come and gone in every part of the world by now, even in California, but still. I stand before you an older man. A tired, sleepy man.

Here's another story start. What do you think of this?

DOCUMENT

The evening before, when her parents took twenty-two dollars of wadded singles and headed out to the grocery, the river had very nearly reached the top of the embankment on the other side of the street where they lived. Usually a half mile across, now the water bobbed and splurted over a mile wide, she imagined, though she also knew it was hard to figure distance over water. She knew only that the river was larger than she had ever seen it in her eleven years. It had been lurking for a couple days already, promising something big. So she’d hoped for a flood, and when the radio promised such a thing, she became so excited that she sat on the porch overlooking the river, hoping to observe the moment the water climbed above the embankment and spilled onto her street. She sat in a metal chair that was rusty and squeaked cheaply as she rocked. She had been sitting there the entire day, no school, when her parents hurried away in the evening, her father’s pockets stuffed full of her own wadded singles, and he had promised to return soon with the groceries the girl hoped would satisfy her hunger. That night they would grill burgers in the front yard, together, and listen as the watery cadence grew louder in the dark, then the next day they would all make their escape from their house, their town, before it all flooded over. Maybe, she dared to think, they would never come back here.

            By nightfall, she had allowed that they had gone to the grocery but stopped off elsewhere for a drink, as they would. Or they were right around the corner and the car’s headlights would appear any second, and for an instant a wide swab of the dark river would appear to her in all its blackness, and the headlights would show the small crests in the water, and how very close it had come to the street now, that it was bound to spill onto the gravel and concrete and begin to make its way into the town, soaking everything. She wanted to see the river so badly that night that her mouth watered. Then they would grill out, there in the front yard, celebrating right in the river’s swollen face, late into the night. She hoped her father would remember the American cheese she liked so much.

            When she fell asleep in the metal chair on the porch, she had been taking deep, cleansing breaths of the sweet air rising off the river. She pictured the air carrying river smells like in a card she had received once, from a faraway aunt, with a breeze carrying a red feather into the window of a small, happy girl who had her bedroom on the second story of a vast farmhouse. The feather had made the girl in the card very happy, it was plain to see. Her aunt had signed the card, Remember always, you are loved. Her mother said her sister was some sort of Jesus freak, but that didn’t matter to the girl. She had loved that card until it went missing, and had loved it even more after it had gone.

posted by: zithereen at February 18, 2004 01:54 | link | comments (2) |

In a fit of enthusiasm last night, I posted the quasi-magical survey you see below. What I was really doing at that time was trying to distract myself from work to be done, so when I happened upon the survey(?) on another blog, I was instantly taken in and made haste to do as I was told. As Trespass and Mictlan have pointed out, it's easy to slice and dice this thing; it's a pretty blunt tool, after all. Nevertheless, I'm a sucker for these types of things, I don't know why. But because the survey takes up so much space, I have now thoroughly buried the end of my story, which I had spent two weeks carefully copying and pasting onto my blog. Silly me. I hope you all liked the story.  

Did in fact do some work on the O'Hanlon article yesterday, after all requisite procrastination. I'm about 25% done with it now, and I hope to get the damned thing finished in the next couple of weeks because I sure could use the payday. With any luck, I'll finish the part of the article where I discuss O'Hanlon's journey into the jungles of the Congo, which is a thick but rather fascinating book. So maybe I'll be up to 35% finished by the end of today, if I don't drag my ass.

By the way, to all you Americans out there: happy Presidents' Day. The holidays just keep on coming.

I also talked with my girlfriend last night about my need to graduate; there are many reasons for this, for both writerly and personal reasons, some of which I have articulated in earlier entries. Michelle, bless her, told me once that she thinks this area was built for loneliness: southern California does not have many spaces where people can truly interact. It's a region built for the car. Now, of course, Michelle's assessment has taken on more dire significance for her, which worries me. But I agree with her. Also, the intensity of the workshop is starting to wear on me. There's still plenty for me to learn, and I keep myself keen for the learning, but I'm looking forward to establishing a more intimate relationship with my work, without all the voices in workshop intervening in the early writing process. This program is truly designed to cure you of workshop forever, I've heard it said. It's so intense, and you learn so much in such a short time...I may have aged only two years by the time I leave, but in writer years I feel much older, like someone pressed the accelerator on my learning process and hasn't let up. I'm looking forward to slowing down, establishing my own pace, locking in all I've learned. In other ways, too, I'm feeling an urge to get  on with my life. In a few months things will change, and I'm excited about that. I'm excited to be headed someplace new.

So, should I start posting another story?

posted by: zithereen at February 16, 2004 11:31 | link | comments (1) |

Okay, just saw this on some random blog and it freaked me out because it was so apt. Follow the instructions--and don't look ahead! It only takes a few minutes and is worth the wait.

Cut and pasted:

FIRST GET PEN AND PAPER

WHEN YOU FINALLY CHOOSE NAMES, MAKE SURE IT`S PEOPLE

YOU ACTUALLY KNOW, AND GO WITH YOUR FIRST INSTINCTS!











SCROLL DOWN ONE LINE AT THE TIME - DON`T READ AHEAD
OR YOU`LL RUIN THE FUN.










1. FIRST, WRITE NUMBERS 1 THROUGH 11 IN A COLUMN














2. THEN, BESIDE THE NUMBERS 1 AND 2, WRITE DOWN ANY 2
NUMBERS YOU WANT.















3. BESIDE THE #`S 3 AND 7, WRITE DOWN THE NAMES OF
MEMBERS OF THE OPPOSITE
SEX.













DON`T LOOK AHEAD OR IT WON`T TURN OUT RIGHT
















4. WRITE ANYONE`S NAME (LIKE FRIENDS OR FAMILY
....)
IN THE 4TH, 5TH, AND 6TH SPOT.














DON`T CHEAT OR YOU`LL BE UPSET THAT YOU DID















5. WRITE DOWN FOUR SONG TITLES IN 8, 9, 10, AND 11


















6. FINALLY MAKE A WISH


















AND THERE IS THE KEY OF THE GAME













1. YOU MUST TELL (THE NUMBER IN SPACE 2) PEOPLE
ABOUT THIS GAME.

 

 

2. THE PERSON IN SPACE 3 IS THE ONE YOU LOVE

3. THE PERSON IN 7 IS ONE YOU LIKE BUT CAN`T WORK
OUT

4. YOU CARE MOST ABOUT THE PERSON YOU PUT IN 4

5. THE PERSON YOU NAME IN NUMBER 5 IS THE ONE WHO
KNOWS YOU VERY WELL.

6. THE PERSON YOU NAMED IN 6 IS THE YOUR LUCKY
STAR

7. THE SONG IN 8 IS THE SONG THAT MATCHES WITH
THE
PERSON IN NUMBER 3

8. THE TITLE IN 9 IS THE SONG FOR THE PERSON IN 7

 

 

9. THE 10TH SPACE IS THE SONG THAT TELLS YOU MOST
ABOUT YOUR MIND

10. AND 11 IS THE SONG TELLING HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT
LIFE

SEND THIS TO 10 PEOPLE WITHIN THE HOUR YOU READ
THIS.

posted by: zithereen at February 15, 2004 23:54 | link | comments (9) |

If I'm not careful, today is going to get away from me. I sat down only moments ago to make another 1000 words' worth of progress on this long article I'm writing on the British travel writer Redmond O'Hanlon...10,000 words long. And it's two months late now. Argh! Of course, I sat down to do this writing only after sleeping in, lifting weights, making an enormous egg-and-bacon brunch, talking baseball with the venerable Michael, playing online chess with the same venerable Michael, posting a color-coded map of the United States on my blog (see below), phoning my sister and leaving a message, and hanging up all my shirts I'd draped over chair backs throughout the course of the week. I also washed some dishes and took a shower. And now it's nearly 3:30! This is to say, I have been noticing a specific lack of focus lately--I have it sometimes, but it's difficult to sustain. Like, I spend an entire weekend writing a story, really focusing in on it, but then this weekend I have not done nearly enough. Case in point: I am writing this entry rather than get my hands dirty with Mr. O'Hanlon. But really, I'm trying to think of this entry as a warm-up...I do this, get the dexterity in my fingers going, and dive in. I have the article called up on a window just beneath the window into which I am currently typing. I should really do it. They actually pay big money for these articles, and like most of us I can use every cent someone is willing to pay me.

Another note: the IM feature is very cool.

I thought I'd go ahead and post the rest of the story I've been revealing over these last two weeks. Here it is. Thoughts?

The story finishes like this. Your sister calls your father and packs some clothes. You do not see either of your parents, because your mother stays in her bedroom and your father never leaves the car. You watch from your sister’s bedroom window when his car pulls up and the headlights shine in your face, and you hide because you do not want to be seen. You see your sister’s figure run toward your father’s idling car, and her silhouette looks like that of a girl. Then you watch your father’s car back out and drive away, and only then do you hear your mother’s awful, awful sobbing from her bedroom next door. Everything is so sad that you feel drilled into place. Part of you wants to knock on your mother’s door, and for her to open that door and see you and lean hard against you as she hugs you and sobs all over your shoulder, and for you to understand why all this has happened. Another part of you wants to smack her across the face, to tell her that what she’s done tonight is wrong. But you are ten years old and what you know, the only thing you know and the only action you can really take, is that everything, and I mean everything, is wrong.

 

Do you love your mother? That’s the question I’d like answered, if you can answer it. I know it is a difficult question to answer, so let me try it differently. What do you say the next morning, when your mother finally stirs and takes a late shower and your sister’s bedroom is still ruined and the daylight only makes everything seem more cruel than the night before? Where are you in all this stillness and regret? I ask because I am much older now, and things have happened since. I have been an adult and made my own fortunes and mistakes. I broke my first love’s heart one day when I left her, and the last sight of her that day is of this beautiful woman curled on a couch with her back turned to me, sobbing, sobbing because I have caused her to hurt. And part of me wanted to turn back from this silliness and promise to die with her, but of course I did not do that. Instead I walked away and drove all night to get back home, drove through fatigue to put the miles between us. And I cannot even remember why I did that. 

            That’s why I’d like your best guess. Do you love your mother anyway? What do you say when the sun comes up and it is just you two in this shattered home? I do not know what I did; I only know that I moved in with my father two years later and the thought of it still breaks my mother’s heart. I try to go back to the time when I was ten years old and forget everything I have learned since then, and imagine this small boy with the big head and what he felt on the first morning of his new life.

            Well?

 

The end.

posted by: zithereen at February 15, 2004 15:30 | link | comments (1) |

"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taking Photofoxx's lead on map above; she posted a very similar one in her blog. Anyway, states in red I have visited, states in grey I have not yet visited. More soon, I'm sure.

posted by: zithereen at February 15, 2004 10:49 | link | comments (2) |

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Today I will write in pink letters to commemorate the day, such as it is. I wonder what narratives are being played out today, on this strangest of holidays. How does Photofoxx's boyfriend make it up to her after last night, with today being Valentine's Day and tomorrow her birthday? What attempts at romance are being enacted at this very moment? How about this evening? Is anybody doing anything for Valentine's Day? I've always overlooked this holiday, probably because it comes just before my birthday. This is even before my cynical holiday-as-consumerism reflex kicked in, caused by overexposure to academics, who are sometimes so cerebral they suck the joy out of everything, reducing our desires to some early childhood trauma (a misunderstanding with mother and father?) or to a vast code of conduct written in the air all around us, written into our history books, hard-wired into our brains. For me, I've always found it difficult to turn the dial on intensity on this particular day over every other day. I mean, some days we are more attentive than others, to everything: the air, our beating hearts, the world around us, world events, the lean muscle of a thigh, the smell a woman leaves in her wake when she brushes past inches from your body. Right? I don't mean to sound like a bugaboo (whatever a bugaboo sounds like...), because I have been known to take special measures myself on Valentine's Day. But sometimes it simply does not feel genuine. A dozen roses, today? Join the party. A romantic dinner for two in a restaurant packed with other romantic dinners for two? Can you imagine it, all the pheromones (sp?) in the room, all that flickering desire and anxiety clouding the air above the tables, battling it out? Welcome to the club. I suppose that taking a day for somebody (or somebodies) special isn't such a bad idea. And there's something sweet about the idea that so many people will be focused on their honeys today. I guess I shy away from the heavy expectations such a day can create, all the anxiety that everything go just-so, when most lovers are at their best in those small moments that cannot be calculated or anticipated, when a pocket opens, opportunity reveals itself in a brief instant. Those are my special memories. I hardly even recall past Valentine's Days.

But did I get my girlfriend a gift? You bet I did.

The story's latest:     

You return to the basement when the boys leave because you think there is nothing else to do. This is where I must ask you to pay close attention, although hopefully your attention has not waned because really it is all important, but soon I will ask my question and leave it to you for an answer as we agreed. What you hear is your mother’s raised voice, and then your sister’s. You can only make out little bits of what they yell, only that your mother is pissed and your sister is saying that he’s just a friend, and though you are but ten years old you understand this to be the older-looking boy your mother liked so much. You remember the hug and how innocent it seemed even to you and can imagine the dark implications your mother saw from her daughter’s body up against the older-looking boy. The argument starts in the kitchen and you follow the voices and footsteps to the living room, then the footsteps become more hurried and pound into the ceiling above you as your sister runs up the steps to the bedrooms, and it is at this point that you hear your sister scream. She is famous for screaming for no reason at all, but this scream is different. As she screams you hear your mother’s footsteps rushing forward and closing space, you hear her scream too, and her scream surpasses your sister’s in volume and terror,  then you hear an awful noise like the world is being ripped apart. You hear a little bell ring and your sister scream some more. The bell rings, your sister screams. You look up at the ceiling to the area where you hear these terrible noises coming down on you, and only then do you realize that you’re on your knees and your face feels tight and old, as if aging can happen all at once. It is a horrible noise and you know what it is, because a few years ago, not long before your eldest sister left the house, she and your mother had a fight. You had been standing right there as they wrestled each other down a flight of stairs, and that is really all you remember. Please, please do not feel guilty for not remembering more, do not feel as though you have betrayed anybody, because back then you were only seven or eight years old and there are many spotty memories from that time. Nobody will blame you for not remembering more.

            Stay focused on your thumping little heart. Do you feel it? If not, pretend to feel it, remember that it’s there. Listen to the sounds of struggle coming from upstairs, think about what to do. You consider calling your father but you don’t. Instead you run up the stairs to the kitchen, then up the stairs again to the bedrooms, not really sure what you’re doing or what you hope to do, but you cannot stay downstairs by yourself for another moment with these horrible noises pressing down on you. You want to be near it. But by the time you arrive it is over. Your mother has gone to her bedroom and your sister weeps quietly from behind her door, and you knock and she says what, and you open the door to her ruined bedroom. All of her carefully arranged perfume bottles and stuffed toys are on the floor in a mess. The mirror from her hope chest is on the floor, too, and so is her telephone which is off the hook. At the sight of the telephone you remember its ring, and in an instant you know the muffled bell noise from earlier was that phone as it banged against your sister’s body. Only later will you know your mother pounded the telephone against the thick part of your sister’s back, but that is irrelevant because it is in the future. In the moment you imagine the phone being pounded against your sister’s skull and the little bell inside ringing as your mother thrust it down on your sister’s head again and again. And then everything is at rest. You just stand there as your sister lays on the floor sobbing and you don’t know what to do.

posted by: zithereen at February 14, 2004 11:15 | link | comments (2) |

Not too long ago, the venerable Michael noticed that the hits on his blog had spiked. Now, when the same thing had happened to me, I enjoyed it for the massive ego stroke that it is. I figured I had done something right, that my efforts to generate even a modest readership had met with some degree of success. My friend, however, was a little uncomfortable thinking that strangers might be reading his thoughts. I reminded him that this is a public forum wherein we share some degree of private thought, but that didn't make him feel any better. He grumbled instead that he ceratinly would like to know who's been reading his blog.

Well, thanks to the ever-increasing wonders of technology--and to Trespass for writing her latest blog--there is indeed such a way for my friend and others to monitor their blog's traffic. Do you notice the trendy new counter I have at left? If you click on it, you'll be whisked away to a website providing a free service wherein you, too, will be able to monitor how many people visit your blog, how they come across it, what country they accessed you from, what operating system, and--strangely--what their monitor's configurations were at the time they viewed your blog. Isn't that crazy and just mildly creepy? Nevertheless, I made haste to install such technology right here at Near Wild Heaven. So: I am watching. NOt to monitor with impunity, but because I'm curious about you all. And it is another massive ego stroke. That too.

More of the story tomorrow. Now I need to call my lady friend.

posted by: zithereen at February 13, 2004 22:10 | link | comments (3) |

So another Thursday has come and gone, another workshop marked off the list. Tonight I shared a thin little portion of my novel, and I had one of those experiences where I could feel myself gaining knowledge right there at the table. Usually I learn on some type of delay loop; what I have learned, and how I have learned it, comes at me later in some surprising fashion. But tonight I felt the gains locking themselves in, packing into my brain. That's a great feeling; I came away excited about the novel AND daunted by the enormity of the task before me. Anyway, I had this same experience in Mark's workshop last year, when I was obsessed with learning how to write a story in the 3rd-person.

At the same time, I resist Mark sometimes. Like Geoffrey and Michelle, he is outspoken of his opinions and usually has excellent reasons to support these opinions. Somewhere along the line he made the observation that my best work concerns the stuff closest to me...families, dysfunction, the midwest (home sweet home). And he's right. The problem is that he's dubious about any work of mine that varies from this, and I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm always trying to come at stories from different angles, mainly because I don't want to be one of those writers who tells the same story over and over again. I've seen that in writers and it worries me. In trying to do this, my stories' vital signs sometimes fluctuate, are uneven...I'm trying to learn to tell all the stories that interest me. In some ways I am still testing my range and limitations, and slowly zeroing in on "my voice" as a writer--I know it much better than a few years ago, but I still feel as though I'm undergoing a process of discovery that I hope never completely ends. But Mark was really dubious when I told him my concept for the novel, and I don't know what to make of it. I think he's right about some themes that I naturally gravitate toward, but isn't it good to test your limits, press against your ceilings and see where and how you grow, what you learn? I really think that's the only way I've learned anything, this pressing against whatever my limitations are at a given moment, even as that effort sometimes does not meet with success. Hell, sometimes it does meet with success, in surprising ways I could not have known beforehand.

Alas. My post-workshop musings. How about more of that story I've been telling?

The other boys are ready to go as soon as your mother returns from the beer run with the older-looking boy, who had to drive your mother because she was in no shape to do it but intent on having some more beers anyway. You do not recognize this as a pivotal moment in your life, the genesis of your weirdness toward and love for alcohol, because at this age you have never had a drink. You will not have your first beer until you are sixteen and on vacation with your father and his girlfriend in Tennessee, when you and some friends smuggle a case of beer and poke holes in the cans with car keys and suck out the metallic fluid. That is far off still. But this night, now, may be why you will so dutifully clean up after your first love on the night she drinks too much cheap wine and tries to run to the bathroom but doesn’t make it, and leaves a trail of purple vomit on the hardwood floors leading from your bedroom to the toilet. Without even a moment’s pause you will go for the bucket and mop after she has returned to bed and curled in embarrassment, and after you finish you will curl up beside her and tell her that it’s okay, it’s okay, that she should not be embarrassed, that you love her. And you will not pause to kiss that next day, fully, the taste of wine and bile and morning on your tongue. You will see it as an expression of love to kiss her when she is like this.

            Your mother steps from the older-looking boy’s passenger seat with an open beer in her hand. She stumbles and rights herself, looks around and does not notice that you have seen her. The older-looking boy is a guy that you like. He seems to understand that your mother is not herself, and he is friendly and a gentleman. He is gentle to her but soon he and the other boys decide to leave, and then he is gentle toward your sister who is clearly embarrassed by your drunk mother, and just before he leaves he nods his head and gives your sister a hug, and whispers something in her ear. This is in the kitchen and you’re there watching, and so too is your mother. You can’t remember just where your mother is, but you know that she saw the older-looking boy hug your sister, and even at ten years old you know the difference between a friendly hug and a hug that means something else, and clearly this is a friendly hug. It’s plain to see.  

posted by: zithereen at February 12, 2004 22:08 | link | comments (4) |

Tired. Should be grading a student's story for tomorrow; instead I am drinking cheap red wine from a goblet I purchased at Target. How's that for originality? I'm already plotting my early-morning rush: grade the story, finish reviewing those last few writing exercises, on the road to Irvine at 11 for teaching at 12:30. It is a plan I have enacted many times before, with great success. The heat of a deadline makes a productive little fucker out of me. If nothing else, I must do an update to my course webpage tonight, including the workshop dates for my students. Yes, that I can manage before collapsing for one blissful hour in front of the television before collapsing for several blissful hours in my bed.

In the meantime, the latest update of the story:

That is, until your mother goes inside for more beer and discovers there is no more beer to be had. While she is discovering this the tension on the porch seems to break and it is as if there is no trouble at all. The boys give each other sidelong glances and say something about leaving, but the boy who is sweet on your sister says no and one of the boys in the back, the one who has a full beard and really does look like a man, agrees because he is worried about what’s going on.

            For your part, you are standing around while all this happens. You do not yet recognize this as a normal posture for you, but already it is. Just before your parents divorced, when all they did was scream and fight, you were often in the next room, staring at the television set and pretending to watch it very intently. Or you were standing in the doorway watching, waiting until they noticed you and came to their senses, looked at you and then looked at each other, understanding, conciliatory. This was right before your mother went in for her surgery. Not long after the divorce your mother went to another hospital for a few weeks but you were kept from knowing that she had lost it. Your eldest sister, who likes to dote on you, made sure you were kept from knowing even when you went once to the hospital to visit your mother. You don’t actually remember talking to her and have only one memory of your visit to the hospital that day. You were staring out a window looking diagonally across a courtyard into a narrow row of long windows, and you saw your mother going back to the part of the hospital where she was staying. You do not remember anybody being with you at this moment. All you have are the cold windows against your palms and your mother walking away.

            While your mother is searching the refrigerator for beers people get up and go inside. This part might also require more imagination on your part, because all you remember are dim rooms and your mother saying something to the older-looking boy about a beer run. You see your mother standing close to the older-looking boy and tossing her hair back. The color in her cheeks is high and you think she does not look as beautiful as you have seen her look before. She giggles like a girl, and when she does it you know that she is flirting. You do not know what it is to flirt actually but you sense it, and it makes you sad.

posted by: zithereen at February 11, 2004 22:05 | link | comments (2) |

I'm working at this moment on a different writing project, a novel. I first had the concept for it last June while visiting a buddy up in Davis. What's funny is that I cannot even remember how I conjured the idea, why I thought it was a good idea, because really it is out in left field in some ways. The novel is a retelling of the Rapunzel fairy tale, only it is set in the here-and-now and there is no "magic," per se: everything that is explained by magic will have some realistic correspondence. I've based my retelling on the Grimm Brothers' version of the story, a translation of which you can find here. But I've also read an Italian version of the story (the Grimm Brother's version, like most versions, is German in origin) which is not named Rapunzel but Petrosinella, and Anne Sexton wrote a great poem about it, too. What I'm most intrigued by in the fairy tale is all the wiggle room that is available for the retelling of this story from a number of different angles. The Sexton poem, for instance, focuses on the love the witch feels for Rapunzel. My version's focus is Rapunzel's desire to discover why her parents abandoned her. I found it strange that Rapunzel never wondered about it, but was able to "forget" her troubles once she is saved by the prince--and once she saves the prince (which also happens, I think). Of course, I don't know why the parents in my version abondoned her; but I do know that the parents in the Grimm version are tempted by a vegetable in the witch's garden called rampion, for which Rapunzel is a synonym. Same is true in the Italian version: the parents are tempted by an herb in the witch's garden, for which Petrosinella is a synonym. So Rapunzel is named (by the witch) after the very thing that led to her parent's abandonment of her. Interesting, but again the fairy tale does not make that much of it. Such is an example of the open spaces, the wiggle room, that can be taken in so many directions. For me, these are essential issues: not only that her parents abandoned her, but why, and that Rapunzel wants to know--and the only person who knows is the witch, who in my version must eventually be compelled to share this information with Rapunzel. And that's my take on it.

Okay, the latest installment of the story I've been posting over the past 10+ days. You newbies can start on January 30 and go from there:     

            What happens next confuses you because you have not yet realized that it is much easier to cause pain than pleasure, that it is easier to imprint your own little strife than it is to tell somebody that you love her, and this may be why the future you will have difficulty expressing love to everybody you love. You will find the feeling welling in your heart and coming up your throat, but rather than say it you will choke on it and swallow it back down and say something else altogether, and in this way you will lose a great many people you love who love you back. You will be relieved to be cured of this, mostly, when you meet a young woman at a party in college who is at a glance the most beautiful woman you think you have ever seen, and you two will be drawn to each other like magnets, all that silent tension, you will find each other at the edge of some dance floor and talk beautifully about mundane things, and as she leaves that night you will get her last name for the purposes of sending her an e-mail the following morning. You will do this and things will propel from there, and not too long after this initial meeting you will kiss her at a playground in the middle of the winter, sitting inside a wrought-iron pumpkin surrounded by snow, and your insides will melt against her warm breath, and not too long after this you will tell her that you love her, you will say it desperately and with certainty, and she will say it to you, and not too long after that you’ll agree to be married.

            But you do not yet know this  relief, because you are only ten years old and right now she lives two hours west and is only nine years old, and while she is having her own troubles right now, you cannot help because you do not know her. You will not know her for another ten years, so you’re both on your own, and whatever is happening right now might explain why everything with this woman you will love does not at all work out as you both hope it will. All of this is far off, it has not even happened, so forget about it.

            Concentrate instead on the trouble brewing on the porch. Your mother is asking the boy your sister is sweet on why he is driving his friends around in a portable bedroom, and as she does this she gestures unsteadily at the van. You’re not looking, but you can feel your sister sinking in her seat, wishing she was somewhere else, sensing embarrassment. The boy stammers something, but he is also trying very hard to be respectable, because in his heart he knows that he is a good boy, it’s just that he’s seventeen and horny and would not mind at all getting sweet on your sister. At least this is what you can figure from the expression on his face and the blush in his cheeks. Your mother has sidled up next to him and their conversation is the only noise around. Your neighborhood is a decent one that quiets down after dark when parents call their children in from playing. The boy’s friends are standing around teetering from foot to foot and for a moment you can see that they’re not much older than you, that a few years ago they were just kids. They look embarrassed and so does your sister. When you see her from the corner of your eye, she looks like she’s trying to slink from her chair without being noticed. But there is no getting away.

posted by: zithereen at February 10, 2004 22:20 | link | comments |

Today I received a jury summons instructing me to report to the Long Beach Courthouse on March 22. That's fine, except I had planned to be in Minnesota on that day, having my relationship. I called this automated number and found it surprisingly easy to defer my service to a more convenient time--like June, after I finish all my course work. As that time nears, I think I may call them again and say that I'm moving away soon, or lie and say that I've already moved. Shhh, though: don't tell anybody about that.

I think being on a jury would be fascinating. I mean, I've seen Law & Order. Seriously, though, it is a civic duty that Americans are expected to perform, and aside from siphoning off a hefty chunk of my salary every month, the government doesn't really ask too much of me. Except that I unlance and remove my high-top boots when I go to the airport. They ask for that. But jury duty, if not completely inconveniently timed, would be fascinating, and something I would be glad to do. Anybody ever been on a jury before, in American courts or elsewhere?

Because it is February I feel distinctly uninteresting. After the hustle of holidays in November and December, and the start of school in January, February is a boring month: I'm in my little groove, not much is happening. Thankfully my birthday is next week so I have something to look forward to. Even that, though, is strange from out here, because there will probably not be a large-scale celebration. Plus I used to see my birthday as the first harbinger of spring--almost there--but that is irrelevant here in the land of the warm. Still, people will probably call to say nice things to me, and that will be fun. My buddy Tim just sent me a present, a book written by a French-Canadian (Quebecois) named Mordecai Richler. Going to dive into it at bedtime. But first, I do some schoolwork. And of course, the next installment in my story:

You are her favorite, her only boy, the only baby your parents planned, and they planned you because they wanted to have a boy to go along with the two girls. When you were halfway out of your mother’s womb, your father asked the doctor if you were a boy and the doctor replied that he couldn’t tell by the ears. That is a happy thought, but you won’t know it until you are thirteen. Don’t pretend to know things that you do not yet know, please. It is important that you ignore them completely.

That you are the apple of your mother’s eye will gradually take on many forms, but when you are ten years old you can’t see the benefits. What matters is that your mother is having a hard time and so she likes to drink every so often, to help out. When she doesn’t go to The Chaise Lounge she is drinking at home, on weekends. Some weekends you are at your father’s so you can forget these problems. At this time in your life, your father seems more stable. He is young-seeming and handsome, and you like it best when you have him to yourself and don’t have to share him with a girlfriend. He has a lot of those. Weekends at your mother’s are much more difficult. She likes to pick on your sister who still lives with you, though you will not understand why she likes to pick on her for a long time, just as you will not fully understand that you are the apple of your mother’s eye for a long time, and so these do not matter.

Your sister has some friends over one night while your mother has some drinks. Even more important is the fact that these friends are boys and your sister is sweet on one of them, the one who is driving his friends around in his parents’ wide blue van. The boys are all sixteen and seventeen, and though they might have had beer before, they are probably still a year or two off from making it common weekend routine to drink themselves silly. They are still drunk on the freedom of the road, the mobility of the car.

Certain parts of this night are vague to you. It can’t be helped. But because you are imagining it, you can fill in the mundane blanks. Before things go bad, you only remember snapshots. Your sister is on the front porch talking with the boy she is sweet on and his friends. Their voices are deep with flirtation—you hear you sister giggle and for the first time you think she sounds like a woman. You remember your mother tipping back a flask or a beer. It doesn’t really matter what. It only matters that you remember your mother’s glassy eyes in dim light and the looseness of her body as she walks and the way it is so different from the woman who comes home from work, looking for what you’ve done wrong. This is something you’ve seen before, and you know to steer clear, to keep to the edges of rooms or remain alone in the basement, which for once you don’t have to share with your sister. You stay in the basement for a long time but you do not remember what you watch on television. Your attention stays upstairs—every so often you hear your mother laugh, or your sister’s voice, or the voices of her friends, deep and booming.

But you like being around other men. You want to impress them, you want them to like you. After awhile you ditch the television and head upstairs, through the dark kitchen and living room to the voices outside. When you get out there, you see the high school boys, your sister, and your mother. She’s holding a can of beer and talking to the boys who have come to visit your sister. Before too long you will come to know how this night might have been the most important night of your sister’s life, but for now you just sense something strange. You try to be charming, and the boys take a passing interest in you, but your sister is talking to the one she is sweet on and they keep to themselves. He is a tall boy with black hair and a light complexion who is trying to grow a beard. His hair is curly and unkempt, he is leaned forward in his lawn chair saying something to your sister, who looks shy.

posted by: zithereen at February 09, 2004 22:05 | link | comments (4) |

A moment for me: up over 1,000 hits now, most of them in the past five weeks. I must be very interesting.

posted by: zithereen at February 08, 2004 16:55 | link | comments (4) |