Journal ISMS

I've been reading Donald Barthelme again. Read him in college and love his play with language. It frees me up as a writer to see that a "story" can be forged by the connection between phrases and not just plot points. A while ago, I took a playwriting workshop with Maria Irene Fornes, who in a nutshell imagines characters and then "bumps" a scene with a phrase she has imagined or overheard. On my walk Saturday, I overheard an older man say to an even older man who had stopped to talk while the other did yard work, "Skipper's not going to do the Mack next year. So he might have more time." It sounded like a line right out of Barthelme. It also sounded like a good line for a start to a scene or story. I haven't worked it up yet, but offer it for any other writers who may want it. I know enough to parse its meaning. It's about an annual sailing race from Chicago to Mackinac Island. But without that context, it is delightful to hear and to imagine what else it might be about. And who the hell is Skipper?

These things seem too musical to be real, but are often from life itself. I once asked a cabbie his problems because, like a bartender, people usually tell cabbies their problems. The cabbie licked his gums and growled, "the usual: tryin' to make the nut." If I had written that line, critics might have said it seemed a cliché of cabbies. Yet there I was hearing it in the twenty-first century.

Part of what self-publishing in this blog can do is bypass such critics, but also put these ideas out there for other writers who might work them up before I do. I tend to be an idea guy and more focused on short sketch-ups than fleshed out works. I always fantasized than my journals would be published after my novels. (Ha!) Well, again, like with my Hopper book, I am self-publishing my journals. You might find stuff in here from a while ago, but it will all be things that I feel the thoughts or feelings are still worthwhile.

Many people's journals, essays, or nonfiction have been inspirational to me: Andre Gide, Bruce Chatwin, Ned Rorem, etc. I wanted to be part of that tradition. I think my writings can inspire the right people. Back when I was trying to publish the mainstream way, I one night went to Chicago's Quimby's Queer Store, looking for zines that might want my reviews. I found many that disappointed. But one stood out: h2so4. I sent a piece to the editor, who liked it and asked for more. That began a several-year working relationship. I liked the other writers in that zine, and they liked my stuff. I realized that I had found my audience, and that it was small. Like they say, "Love is blind," and what are you going to do if you find your true love and he or she is physically challenged or always has toothpaste on the corner of their mouth in the morning? Nobody's perfect, but the one(s) meant for you are meant for you: "for better or for worse."

So I realized that traditional paper publishing routes were probably not going to work for me. Thus, fame and wealth were also probably not going to follow soon. But I still felt I had something to offer the stream of literature. (A friend once described literature as a pond fed by many streams: no matter how small your stream, you were contributing to the pond.) Something Americans rarely think about. They're so obsessed with breaking traditions that they don't even realize that breaking traditions is PART of the tradition. How do you fit in? Many tradition-breakers have been flash-in-the-pans. And I don't think that anyone who dreams of writing fame wants posterity to view them that way.

* * *
Another idea I got for a story was when I passed a ramp up a house's front stairs. I passed a house with a wheelchair elevator on its front steps. It was permanently attached and had a fold-out seat. I could imagine local kids joyriding it late one night. The immediate instinct is to make it then malfunction when the handicapped person needs it. But then it turns into a morality play. Joseph Campbell nicely summarized American literature as "moral pornography." The money shot is when the bad guy gets his just desserts. But that rarely happens in life.

* * *
I watched the New Yorkification of Chicago, and it drove me out. So I went looking for apartments in Evanston, where I had gone to Northwestern University 20 years earlier and found that the Chicagoization of Evanston had occurred in the meantime. I ended up getting a place north of that in Wilmette. Now I slowly see the Evanstoning of Wilmette. In my first city election, I went online and saw each candidate's statement. It was amazing how they all said that the "real estate" along the Metra tracks needed to be developed. There is an unquestioned knee jerk response in the U.S. that "real estate" (space) needs to be "developed" (filled). The major justification each candidate gave was that the downturn in the economy meant the city needed more taxpayers to maintain the LEVEL of services. But therein lies the fallacy of this tax base argument. If you bring in more people to pay taxes to maintain the services, then more people want those services and each citizen gets less anyway. No one acknowledges that second half of the equation. It's not like the new taxpayers don't want to use services, too.

Smash the presses!

I'm for peer review as much (if not more) than the next guy. HOWEVER ...
Having published my book myself as a blog, I felt so freed that I am going to start self-publishing in this blog smaller pieces that I have written.
No more submitting to journals and waiting three months for their response.
No more having a piece accepted, not run, and being told when I followed up, "send me something." (true story)
No more being told they got my stuff and that someone will get back to me and being told when I followed up that they never got my stuff. (true story)
So, here's a poem. I'm open to suggestions but please no snark. I don't want to know THAT you hate it or WHY you hate it. I do want to know if you see a way to make it better.
Thanks for reading!

Unhinged

the door opens again
 the door opens again
  and may never have opened
   in the first place
in the first place
 it may never have opened
  that way
no, not that way
 please
the door opens
 and your father steps through
  your father steps through
   the open door
    opens
     the door
and is gone.  

 And the door
  you've come from
   remains a memory
your whole life 
a memory
of someone else. 

Reconnecting

I am in a Summer of Reawakening. I have had three now: after college, after grad school (and my first trip to Europe), and now after publishing my book as a blog. I'm a type A, get-things-done, goal-oriented guy. So when I'm in the middle of a project, I tend to have on blinders. Then when it ends, the world seems as if new. I put myself through college: Northwestern, full-time. I once had literally 10 dollars to my name. In our final acting class when we were talking about what we had experienced there, I started to cry and couldn't stop. It frightened my classmates—and me, truth be told. I hadn't realized how focused I had been on getting through. I worked 60 hours a week in the summer and every free hour during the school year. There was no time to breathe. When I finally could breathe, it came out as sobs. That summer, I vowed to enjoy my accomplishment and not push myself so hard.

In grad school, I lived with a woman with whom I had a messy break-up when I got done. I had always wanted to go to Europe, and I left right after grad school and the break-up for two months. Nothing to do but walk and think and get back in touch with my inner voice. I came back and went to the graduation ceremony to get my degree and chuckled to think that I learned much more in two months in Europe than in five years of grad school. I again vowed to look in my own life for experiences like I had had in Europe.

And now: I took my first research trip for my Hopper book in 2000. I just finished posting it this June. Thank God for blogs, or I'd still have that on my mind. My wise wife pointed out that I needed to get it out just to have the closure of the project. And I needed the closure to remove my blinders and reawaken again to the world.
If you've ever walked through a Frank Lloyd Wright house, you know that he likes to lead you through narrow spaces that open into roomy areas. I read somewhere that he claimed that he got the idea while walking Rome's narrow streets and coming upon its piazzas. Without those narrow passages, the space you come into wouldn't seem as welcome. That's my experience with these projects and the subsequent closure and reawakening. The tightness ends and space opens up.

* * *
I am reconnecting, and using the Internet this time. Any time an old friend joins facebook, I say, “Welcome to the online equivalent of a middle school hallway.” It's bringing back all sorts of adolescent feelings. Do they remember me? Do they like me? Do I know the "right" blogs? Well, one blog has been a big help: Chicago writer. Mike has a good friend who asked him, "Are you trying to live your life without making enemies?" Good question.

* * *
Dreams: A beautiful young woman with dark hair takes my hand, and I try to lead her into a garden. It is a very formal English garden. Square routes are contained within circles and scalloped designs. I realize upon awakening: she is my anima and we are trying to get back to the garden, the mandala that represents the soul.

I also had a dream that I was asleep in someone else's condo. Unconsciousness leads you to dwell in someone else's place, not your own.

When young, I had a series of airplane dreams. They always crashed. In college, I figured out that they represented lofty expectations crashing to the ground. The planes stopped crashing. But they continued to fall, dip, and perform various maneuvers. The other night was a new one though. In real life, I had seen Air Force One flying into Chicago a while back. In the dream, I saw planes and realized that two planes were protecting a bigger plane. "It's Air Force One," I said. Then one of the military planes came diving toward the ground. As it approached, it stopped and began maneuvering its needle nose along the road route at 700 mph. "It's making sure the area is safe," I said. And then the big airplane came to land right by me. As it got closer, I saw that it had "Canada" written in big letters on its side (in the color scheme of an old Molson beer can --I love dreams!). "It's not the president, it's the premier of Canada," I said. In the dream, my wife and I were on a walk in Wisconsin, where we often go to get away. She had lived in Canada for a while, so she wasn't as interested as I was to go see him. "How often can you see the premier of Canada on a walk in Wisconsin?" I asked her. Answer: I get to see the premier person associated with Canada on my walks in Wisconsin: my wife.

Weighing In

I usually stay out of the fray of popular opinion, but I've had lots of thoughts recently and little time to flesh them out into essays as I prefer to do.
If the lingering NON-story of Henry Louis Gates Jr. (who everyone was suddenly coached about Day 2 to call "Skip" as if they were chums with him and as if he would prefer this name) being arrested in his home teaches us anything, it is that this country is far from being past race. When news announcers can say with a straight face that a man with a black father and white mother is "racist," there is meaning in neither the word racist nor journalist.
Speaking of which, one of the things that nakedjen and I talked about was "Journalism 2.0" as she informed me it is being called. When someone with a blackberry at an event can inform people about it faster than the press, then what is reportage? I can foresee an Orson Welles moment where someone tweets a false event, setting off a tsunami of unfounded panic. Part of why I don’t normally jump in to current events and publish brief sound bites is that I don’t want to contribute to that culture that panics and responds from fight-or-flight. Perhaps our lives have so little that truly threatens us anymore that our inner lizard brain craves that fight or flight instinct, and we apply it to inappropriate events like the Gates story.
I have been reading Christopher Hitchens's Letters to a Young Contrarian. Get a copy. Hitchens can be strident, but here he is at his best, both witty and incisive and calling on everyone to follow their highest instincts.
Having just "self-published" my book, a phrase that jumped out at me was when Hitchens quoted George Konrad "… be a self-publisher even in conversation…." It's related to what I wrote above. Be truthful. Be original. Edit. Even your speech.
I recently vacationed in northern Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range, and read a book about the logging industry. We visited "The Lost Forty," a 40-acre stand of white pines spared the loggers' ax due to a surveying mistake. It's amazing to think what the country looked like before plundered. One big problem with capitalism is the faith that money is in and of itself worth something. During this delusional capitalistic time of human development, they turned all of the trees into money. They used the money to buy things, but what comes when people need trees and trees aren't around but money is?
Speaking of money: I saw a post on ESPN about how Billy Beane's Oakland A's are bad and that maybe "moneyball" isn’t working. Hmmm… a huge media conglomerate with a vested interest in generating money from sports thinks that frugality and making choices based on facts rather than the ol' boy network needs to be reprimanded. Remember the old journalism phrase about not believing only one side of a story. "If your mother says she loves you … check it out."