near wild heaven

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

Skeleton Search

I heard back from the man at the Science Museum:

This is indeed an unusual request but I am 
sad to say it lies outside the scope, purposes 
and mission of our biological collections 
according to my supervisors. You might contact 
medical schools in the area for possible 
materials to examine. Good luck.

Where can a normal guy like myself get his hands on a 
human skeleton? I liked the suggestion of Museum Man
and will have to look into it in the coming weeks. Oh, spring!

Interviewed yesterday for the Egypt job. It seemed to go well, 
but I have felt that way before and I am still temping, so...we'll
see what my options really are. But, they would fy me there 
(and back) for free, with one free ticket home each year. They give me 
three months' salary when I arrive. Someone meets me at the airport 
and drives me to my flat, which is free (no utilities either). 
They will ship my belongings for free from the US. It's a three course
load per semester...but only 13 students per class. You teachers
out there know how sweet that is. The exact pay I do not know yet.
The director, with whom I interviewed, claimed not to know the
exchange rate off the top of her head, plus there is some experience-related 
pro-rated salary cocktail she claimed to know nothing about. Frankly this 
concerns me, this fronting all the perks but not bothering to come prepared 
with even a general ballpark as far as the actual pay. She says she'll get 
back to me next week with an estimate, when she is back in Cairo. 
I will wait and see. 

Otherwise it's been a clump of confusion-clearing this week. No MacDowell Colony 
residency for Zithereen. It's a hard place to get into, and even Pulitzer Prize 
winners have to apply to go there. So I was up against the best. I got a 
rejection that was complimentary in a non-form-letter sort of way. They said I 
should apply again next year.  I've learned that the rejection letter matters, thanks 
to Geoffrey Wolff. He told me that UCI has several different rejection letters, 
ranging from please apply again to all the best with your future endeavors, that sort of thing. 
When I was rejected there in 1999, I got a "nice" rejection. And what 
do you know! It mattered. He remembered me when I applied 3 years later. 
But I was bummed in '99 when UCI rejected me, and I was bummed 
yesterday about MacDowell. And freakin' Crate magazine couldn't use my 
story. AND saw on the Stegner website today that they've chosen their 
fellows for next year and I'm not it. It's a 10 in 1400 shot, though, so I don't feel bad--just that little
lump of disappointment to swallow down. 

There's more to come. By late April I'll know what's what, where we're headed. 

posted by: zithereen at March 21, 2006 22:55 | link | comments (1) |

This is the life. There was no work today, and it's a beautiful, sunny and brisk winter day, late in the season. The temperature stayed below freezing, but there were no clouds or wind, so this week's snowfall began to melt off anyway. The streets run with the shiny melted snow. I slept on the couch kast night, as I sometimes do when my girlfriend is away. It's like, Why bother going to bed? I'm plenty comfortable right here. I did wake up in the night--TV on, teeth not brushed--and grabbed a pillow from bed. Then back to the couch.

I woke up this morning from a dream where a man I didn't know was dying very painfully in front of me. In the dream I knew who he was, but once I woke up, I only had the dreadful memory of his familiarity--but I could not remember who he was. The TV was on so I watched a morning show and checked the weather. After coffee it was time to write. About that. lately I've found refuge in exploration--in the notebook, where any idea can be jotted down and abandoned, or investigated to its fullest. I've been doing a lot of that lately, so the novel has become like a hydra in my mind--one body, many heads. I've written 36 pages in my notebook since March 1, but nothing more solidly formulated on the computer until this morning. I really like falling into this exploration, recognizing the need for it and just relenting. I can more easily think of my characters as equals--which, as people, they are. Even the minor ones. I don't overdetermine plot or story. I can allow connections to occur in what might be called a natural way. Now, the relative formlessness of the notebook seems to be congealing, forming solid chunks for me to write from. I started a new chapter today, just a few hundred words. But those few hundred words vould be .5% of my draft of this novel.

Found some good deals at the Unique Thrift Store today. Unfortunately, they do not allow you to try on clothes, so you have to guess. I bought some cool shorts that barely fit around my belly. It figures. I've been a complete pig since my birthday. Still I was like, Where did that come from? I need to start running again. If I could run a mile back when I smoked a pack a day, it should be no problem-o now.

posted by: zithereen at March 17, 2006 17:03 | link | comments |

Today I wrote perhaps the strangest letter I have written so far in my life. Technically, it was an e-mail, but I think, given our times, that it qualifies. Here it is:

I write to you with what may be an unusual request. I am a writer who is working on a novel. As it happens, an upcoming portion of my novel will feature rather prominently a human skeleton that is discovered and cared for by the protagonist. I have not had any contact with a human skeleton, and I think it would behoove me to do so as I prepare to write this upcoming section of my novel.

This was a letter I sent to a man who works in the collections department at the Science Museum of Minnesota. I am hoping they have a secret mausoleum of bones, tucked away someplace, in a distant, subterranean basement perhaps, that I might be allowed to study for an hour or two. As usual, there was a touch of self-importance in the letter, I'm afraid--to see what I mean, refer back to any half-drunkenly composed blog entries sice November 2003 (they're the weepy, nostalgic, grandiose ones). But I do want to comport myself seriously, and I thought it best to err on that side.

posted by: zithereen at March 15, 2006 18:37 | link | comments |

Welcome to new-look Near Wild Heaven. The avatar you see to the right is of a chunk of trinitite, which plays a small but pivotal role in an upcoming chapter of the novel.

I loved Forster's Where Angels Fear To Tread, so it was with regret that I had to recently suspend reading Howards End. I know it is a much longer book than Angels, and requires more patience, but very lttle of it surprised me in that satisfying way that Angels did. The opening chapter was promising enough, but then Forster backed away from that promise and engaged instead in what seemed like character-drawing. It was like reading a nearly stagnant-lake. Lots of idle characters and snappy irony, but in service of what? The first 80 pages seemed to bloat, whereas in Angels the story takes surprising turns from nearly the first moment. The class commentary and dripping irony served a story rather than their own idle needs.

Probably I've become a less patient reader in recent months, since I have less time for devoting to the stuff I really care about. But I have also decided that I don't need to soldier through books that dissatisfy me any longer--or, at least, for now. It's okay for me to put aside a book that isn't working for me. I can try later and meanwhile move along to another book--for example, Colum McCann's Songdogs.

Last night I was watching a movie, Vanya on 42nd St, and decided that I needed to get my hands on a human skull. The movie had nothing in particular to do with this decision, except for being wonderful and making me feel writerly and introspective as I watched. Upcoming chapters of the novel, the ones following the discovery of trinitite (or at least the revelation of it), will feature a human skeleton rather prominently. My narrator is not the sort to be creeped out by such a discovery, but just the opposite. She's so curious about the skleton that she visits it many times, talks to it, touches its visage with her hands, gently, carefully, with a kind of reverence--what kind I'm not sure yet. And I knew last night that I needed to do the same thing, to put my hands on a skull, a set of ribs, the pubic bone and kneecaps. Any clues where I can do this?

posted by: zithereen at March 12, 2006 14:36 | link | comments |

I don't want to be grandfatherly and tell you what to do with your work. I think you should write what interests you, what sustains you and what you can sustain. Two from my class, Sam and Elizabeth (whose novel is coming ou next month, who you've probably heard about), they worked on novels but in much different ways. They're both beautiful writers, again differently. Sam's work in particular seemed to instantly shoot through the roof the moment he started on the novel--as if selecting the right project made all the difference. I learned a lot witnessing that. I was on a different path. I needed to cut my teeth on stories. I needed to write a collection, which eventually I did do (even if I can't sell it right now).  It was just the right time and place for doing so . Now I'm onto this novel, liking it. Couldn't have written it before  finsihing the stories, and can't say exactly why. Just, you know, do your thing. Let the program fit your needs.

 

posted by: zithereen at March 10, 2006 22:56 | link | comments (2) |

Today is the prettiest day in these here parts in a long time. I could nearly feel the full smile of the sun on my skin as I walked outside at lunch today. Strangely, this morning the weather man warned of poor air quality and said that youngsters or people with heart conditions shouldn't go jogging. And then it turned out sunny! Winter's nearly over.   

Tonight is Survivor and tostadas night at Casa Zithereen.

Perhaps the ice has broken loose in other ways. This morning I received an e-mail from the good people at the American University in Cairo. Last November, I sat at this very desk and pounded out a letter of application for a job teaching composition...in Egypt. And they kinda bit. My girlfriend applied but has not yet received the e-mail I received about wanting an interview, so I told her she could tag along as my concubine.

Would I actually go to Egypt? Possibly I would. Frankly it's not at the top of my wish list, but at the moment it's at the top of my prospect list, which is really just a carbon copy of my progress-finally-made list. I'd much rather be at Stanford, or in Louisville, or even in England doing the fellowship there. It would be a real adventure, going to Egypt. If I'm lucky, I'll arrive just as the flu pandemic begins. After all, they've been tossing infected swans into the Nile.

I'm writing all out of order now, with the novel. The final section I originally thought would be twenty pages long, tops, paced similairly to the last chapter of Housekeeping. I've become increasingly preoccupied with what will happen in this section, eve though I haven't written the bridge of a hundred or so pages that it will take to get there...and the more I think about it, the more I want to capture these ideas, and the more prominent the final section becomes. I'm seeing all sorts of interesting possibilities, overlaps with stuff I've written or ideas I intend to write in the coming weeks and months. It may be that I'm writing a lot more that I'll ever actually use. I do love how this continues to evolve. Writing a novel is an odyssey.  

posted by: zithereen at March 09, 2006 16:00 | link | comments (1) |

For all my extremely dramatic complaining, I have written a lot of this novel as a temp. This is important. Some day I will stop temping, and I will be on to something else, and while all the many hours spent sitting in this incredibly uncomfortable seat surrounded by gray partitions will fall away, I will still have all this time I will need to account for in some way. My anxiety would be multiplied if I had temped for six or eight months and done nothing, or little, and had to start from the beginning in spring or summer. I think I've come a long way in a short time, but to think of being at the start again, with only an idea...

Here is the gist of my progress. I had an idea a few years ago, workshopped it. One eminent writer liked it, the other told me to trash the gimmick and fly solo. I wrote stories instead, and thank goodness. They're a great place for learning, relatively low-risk since they might only pile up to 20 or 30 pages of practice, as opposed to a novel, which can swell to 10 or 15 times that length. I'd like that investment to actually go somewhere beyond moral victory. I sat on the novel until I finished my collection, and all the while this idea simmered someplace in the back of my head designated for ideas I may someday wish to bring to the fore. Eventually, I came to a compelling story and concept--and by these things I mean a story that I thought would keep my interest for a few hundred pages. I think I've had to rediscover that part of my writing, or reclaim it--that it's got to interest me if I'm going to the mat over it.

I won't say I had the story all figured out, not at all. I'll say that I had a story with enough momentum for me toplunge forth deeply into it. I'll say that the idea was rich enough that it would give way to new ideas...I love this part especially. When I can sense the ideas I don't have yet.  I've made a lot of forward-march progress, taking a big gulp, 82 pages to date. My notebook is full of ideas, paragraphs that might appear in a hundred pages or not at all.  The notebook is my free place, where I can investigate any idea, or sketch a chapter or storyline. By the time I get to the computer, I'm typing draft 1.5 onto the screen, sifting and adjusting as I go, using the notebook for guidance.

Lately I've reached a point  where I've had a lot of revelations about the book. It's like, you start with a quality idea, and you work on it, and questions are presented in the text. You answer the questions and take the book in a direction (all the while knowing you ac extricate yourself from any choice you make), and the focus of the book pares down. The longer you go, the more that falls outside the scope of the book. I think this is how you arrive at a storyline, a plotline, a set of characters. I'm ass-deep in a lot of revelations, things I'd like to dig deeply into. I think I'm concerned that I don't have all the time right now that I want. Poor me, I know. I'm just really burning to write this thing, because i actually feel like I'm reigning it in, when it wants to race ahead, taking me with it.

posted by: zithereen at March 08, 2006 09:17 | link | comments |

Recently I happened upon the blog of another UCIer who happened upon this blog last summer, as he prepared to cross the country for Irvine CA. He probably considers me an MFA ancestor of his, since in MFA years, two years is a life cycle. (Case in point: his second years had just been accepted--as my class' replacements--when I departed for MN). If that jargon escapes you, then you are not an MFA student, sorry.

Feeling...I dunno, strangely pinched off. It is as if the world around me has got its steel-toed boot pressed against my neck. It tells me that all I have to do, if I want to take a full breath, or buy a new air of shoes or a winter coat that hasn't belonged to my girlfriend since the 8th grade, or not worry that a six pack of beer and a bouqet of flowers is going to keep me from paying my bills--all I have to do is name my price. Will I do a lame job for, say, $40,000 a year? That is many thousand more dollars than I have made in any other year of my life, ever. N0? How about 50? With that, you can buy that Honda Element you've secretly wanted. You can buy a bunch of new clothes and cookware and indulge in all sorts of other materialistic fantasies, like elaborate cable packages and a large collection of music. You won't have to be a temp at age 30. You won't have to explain that to people. You can get that gym membership, trim up, drink good wine, get a massage every month, get some health care, get those cavities filled before your mouth rots.

This is all a symptom of staying up too late last night because Sideways was on HBO. I'm not the sad-sack loser of Paul Giamatti, but I empathized to a saddening extent. I am prone to fits of the blues anyway. The blues, mind you, are not meant to be confused with my father's balls-out manic depression. For example: at age 30, my father locked himself in our basement for a period of months. I barely remember this, since I was only 3. I just remember the outline of sunlight in the blinds, on those occasions when I was down there with him. I wonder now, what did he think about all that time? Did he think he was slipping off the face of the earth? Zithereen at age 30 is desperate for a job that doesn't feel like one big empty gesture. He wants to publish a freaking story. He's a little bit alarmed that others of his year(s) are publishing, and he keeps getting nice notes attached to rejections. Especially since he knows his work is pretty good, that he's worked it over long enough to be able to say that and know it's been vetted through much humility and the pronouncements of big-deal writers. He is also desperate to find time to write his novel. He does so now during lunch or free time at work, on the weekends, but this makes him crabby and tired a lot, and there are days when he feels remarkably worn down because writing a novel takes an immense amount of energy and brain space.

No? How about 60, then? $70,000?

posted by: zithereen at March 07, 2006 14:24 | link | comments (1) |