near wild heaven

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

Currently reading: Pierre and Jean by Guy de Maupassant

Did you know that Maupassant was a protegee of Flaubert? For some reason I find this interesting; already I'm imagining a piece of fiction about this relationship. Which will surely return me to Carver's "Errand," about the final days of Chekhov's life.

I would have finished Forster earlier, but my mother and stepfather visited this weekend. They arrived at 5pm Friday, just as the "Aveda girls"--a gaggle of women who wear white smocks and black slacks, and impress with their monolithic beauty--returned to their cars after another day of training at the Aveda Institute, which is just down the street. It amounts to a very fashionable trade school where they teach you to cut hair, wear makeup, and eat candy bars and smoke cigarettes for lunch.  My stepfather, who grows on you over time, made sufficient comment about the young babes, but at least he said so tastefully under his breath.

Other highlights. I was banished to the floor for my sleep, so really it felt like I got not sleep at all, just a few dark hours on a slab of concrete (after they left, I slept heavily in my own bed). We shopped at IKEA, the Swedish furniture store, and Surdyk's, the wonderful liquor store down the street (they returned to Ohio with quite a booty of alcohol). Saturday night dinner at Nye's Polonnaise, a Polish restaurant with a piano bar and a portrait of Chopin, and the Appletini, which were apparently so yummy that my mother drank three of them before switching to Jack and Coke (which I finished for her). Bleary mornings at the Wilde Roast, a coffeeshop and eatery run by two buff gay men, which my stepfather inexplicitly loved--a pleasant surprise. Standing over the Mississippi River on the Stone Arch Bridge, as barn swallows flapped their wings furiously all around us. Sunday at Canterbury Park for horse races--my stepfather's favored pastime. I bet no money, but as usual when it comes to gambling culture, I was fascinated. This seems like a higher class of gambling than casinos, since it does involve data and research--if in limited capacities--and not strictly the mathematical imperative of casino gambling (a tip, everybody: the house always wins; why else would state governments propose casinos as another source of revenue?).  Anyway, stpefather won $140 on the last race, because the horse I picked for him--Chuckie's in Love--came from behind to take the day. It was exciting, but it wasn't my money.

posted by: zithereen at May 31, 2005 23:58 | link | comments (1) |

Occasionally I am reminded of something past--something about myself. A friend once held dear, a belief or fear once clung to desperately...now, no more. But what of all those people who knew me back then, when I was still, gasp, somewhat more embryonic than I am right now? When my hairline was a bit lower, or I weighed less, or when I was still a smoker, when I was in my "blue" period between girlfriends? I suppose they might think of me sometimes, but always, I imagine, certain of my characteristics will not change. They remember something half-said, or semi-understood but said anyway, something defensive, reactionary, something embarrasing now that I think of it. An impulsive something done, enjoyed, not entirely regretted upon further review. But I said it, I did it, and somewhere I am still accountable for it. Somewhere, not so far away maybe, is Zithereen v. 1998, or v. 2000, or whatever version you like, he's out there, in the present mind of somebody I may never see again. Or who, suddenly, I may someday see again, who may by her very presence hold me accountable, again.  

We'll find out, I suppose, you and me.  

posted by: zithereen at May 23, 2005 22:39 | link | comments (4) |

Currently reading: Where Angels Fear To Tread by E.M. Forster

Finally finished Rechy, today, and whetted my appetite for Forster, who is really a writer I should have read by now. I find that I'm doing a lot of that lately. And scrawled very rough scenes for a story I'm slowly writing....I decided to rethink the structure, psychology (although that sounds so pathologized), and theme. In many ways it's my most ambitious story, but I can't tell if it's any good. Alas. It's too early to worry about that. I'm just trying to clinch the last few pages, which are proving difficult. But I'd like to get a decent draft finished, and work ona different story done, before my mother's (and stepfather's) visit next weekend.

Gotta run.  

posted by: zithereen at May 22, 2005 00:29 | link | comments |

I'm poor, but I'm still buying books. Just yesterday, I was scoping out the dollar stacks, grabbed a Gore Vidal (never read him), went inside to pay...and there was Stop-Time, by the recently departed Frank Conroy. And only six dollars for a virtually perfect copy! And it's on Michelle's list of first booksI should read! So, with a swipe of my trusty debit card, Vidal and Conroy became mine. I've always said that I would pay to buy books, even when I was low on funds, and I'm certainly proving the truth of that statement now.

A note about poverty and writing. I don't think it's entirely necessary to be poor, or jaded, or perpetually fucked up, to be a writer. It's just that it sometimes happens that way, and right now I am Poor. I was leafing through Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude last week, thumbing my way to the biography in the back--which is more extensive than your typical novelist's biography--and he said he got the idea for that novel, in a flash, while on vacation with his family. Then he spent two years in poverty, with a family, writing the novel that would make him famous. What wonderful faith. It's easy to forget that these famous writers, whose reputations are glossy and polished, once were just like me, and a thousand other young writers. Who knew that those two years of poverty in Columbia would launch the literary career of one of South America's best writers? What writers are out there now--rich, poor, male or female, whatever--sweating out their own books?

I'm still finishing City of Night. It's a very dense book. It's good, and some chapters are beautifully intense, wonderfully rendered, triumphs. But I'm within sixty pages of the end, and I might have finished it if my girlfriend hadn't sprained her ankle this afternoon, requiring me to take care of her. I'll finish it soon, though, and then it is on to other books...

I think I arrived at the title of my own short story collection today. It's called The Wounded. For now.

posted by: zithereen at May 17, 2005 23:59 | link | comments (2) |

I finished one more year of teaching today. I remember having this sense of tremendous ceremony last June, as I finished up in Irvine, as I sat outside my office and collected final portfolios from my fiction students. The English TA offices at Irvine are on the top floor of a humanities buiding (read: one of many humanities buildings, if you can believe it), and the hallway is actually outdoors, wrapping around the outside of the offices like a porch. Oh, southern California. I remember sitting in that glorious sun, collecting the portfolios from students, talking to one who was especially engaged all quarter long, Jesus, who had taken a shine to Ulysses. I remember wanting to soak in that gloriousness of that day, the momentary settledness of my life, the fact that I was a teacher. t that time I knew I was coming to Minneapolis, but I had no idea what I was going to do. I wondered if I would ever teach again, and if I did, I thought it might be years. As it turns out, it was only a few months. Now I'm done again, except for a three-week stint teaching creative writing to middle schoolers at a summer camp in Oberlin. And I'm pretty sure I'm not going to teach in the fall. I think I'll be doing something else. My collection will be finished. I'll be working on a novel; these months of more intense reading have helped me conceptualize a story that might befit a novel's pace and length. Now I just have to write it.

posted by: zithereen at May 12, 2005 00:27 | link | comments (4) |

I used to play tennis, but somewhere along the line, I stopped. I think this coincided with graduate school, which was for me a generally stressful and cerebral time; I didn't exercise so much. But recently I've rediscovered tennis; I live a half bock from one of Minneapolis's fine city parks, which comes complete with a tennis court, and a wall suitable for banging a tennis ball against. Slowly, I've been rediscovering my swing. I'm also getting my legs back, which is not so sexy as it might seem. I'm getting quick again. And for the first time since college, I'm doing so with ache-free lungs. I'd actually forgotten what it was like to have lungs like these, but I'm glad to have them back again. I forged them from the misery of quitting cigarettes.

My friend the venerable Mike, who some of you may know, is away now, in Bulgaria. I was there in Chicago during many of his last hours in America; I slept on the floor of his hotel, and watched his bus pull away, to O'Hare. Another friend is in Portland, working 70+ hour weeks for an environmental group, and he does not write.  I feel close still to my friend the French professor, but even that friendship had to survive a good, long look at its own death.

Something is in the air. From Carver's "Fat": My life is going to change. I can feel it.

posted by: zithereen at May 08, 2005 01:37 | link | comments (3) |