I just spent a lot of time talking to Chocolate the food server in my dining hall.
He always calls me Baby with that smooth jazz sway that makes me feel like I could pick up a trumpet and just go.
His given name is Daniel, but at work there were always too many Daniels, so he asked people to call him Chocolate. Why Chocolate? I did not ask. No one would call him that until one of the younger managers walked into work one day with a "Good morning, Chocolate," and then it was done.
I don't think the chicken tenders he was cooking cooked all the way through. I think I was distracting him.
Chocolate came from Mississippi with his then wife. His then wife's family came with them in an uninvited caravan and settled four houses down. They ruined the marriage. Chocolate said his then wife's grandmother told her she couldn't have any more kids after having had three, and one day she got her tubes tied without telling Chocolate. I don't know if that ended the marriage, but the way he talked about it, it might as well have been the Last Straw.
Chocolate has three kids. Two sons and one daughter. The oldest is 35, the youngest 21. They grew up with their grandparents, though I did not ask Why. I did not ask what they do, either. I told him about my two brothers, how Juan Carlos was a business man and Darren was a theater director in China. Baby, Chocolate said, your Momma must be proud. And I thought about reminding him that Darren wasn't blood related, and then telling him that Juan Carlos has a different mom than me, then I thought about telling him that actually my mom passed away and so it was in fact my step mom who was very proud. I said, "Yes, she is very proud of us."
When I told him I was a writer he was impressed. Chocolate is the kind of person who makes you feel good no matter what you say, and I had him stomping around on the kitchen's raised plastic mats, bent over from laughing at our jokes about Californian hospitality. In California, if two Southerners were to fly by each other like two ships in the night, the only words they'd yell to each other before careening off, laughing, would be, "The hospitality!"
Chocolate is married again, to a Latina woman named Maria. Chocolate was going to visit his son and his ex-wife one weekend and he asked if he could bring Maria with him. Sure, they said. Chocolate said that when his ex-wife saw Maria the claws came out. I laughed. What is that? I said. What is it about dating a woman of another race, and when your ex-girlfriend sees that she goes crazy? What is that?
Baby, said Chocolate, stomping the mats, That's called an ass whooping.
One time Maria told Chocolate to listen to the radio. 107.3, somewhere around there. It's a Christian station. Chocolate mentioned how good the Lord was and I felt myself recoil, which I thought was wrong of me, so I tried to ask him questions. He said he had a hunger in his skin that wasn't satiated by sex. I didn't exactly understand, though I kind of did. I didn't ask much about that.
Chocolate's been working for Stanford Dining for 13 years. I forget. Whenever I see Obama on the news talking about the working family I always think, Who? It's hard to see it when you're in school around a bunch of people who will be making six figures in a couple years. It's people like Chocolate and his wife, Maria, who just got a second job to help pay for bills.
Chocolate recently went to his wife and said, Baby, we're moving out of the apartment. Why? She said. He told her that they were wasting all their money and that she didn't have a retirement plan, which was true. Chocolate had bought an RV, with a flat screen television for his lady. He said they've saved up $4,000 already.
That's good money, I said.
Yeah and you know what, he said. Now I want to put it all into my '57 Chevy.
We both bent over and he stomped the black plastic mat and I held onto the metal counter top so I could let out a good laugh without losing my balance.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Johnny Victory will have a story
I heard a radio show today about a guy who, when he was a teenager, was in a car accident that left him in a coma. His buddy's truck flipped and rolled and rolled. His buddy flew out the window. His buddy just got a few scratches, no problem. Our guy, Ian, his ribs were shattered and they punctured all sorts of important things and there was plenty of blood in places blood didn't belong, and he had a 1% chance of living but he lived anyway.
He was in a coma for a while, unresponsive. Another thing about our guy Ian was that he flew planes. Since he was a baby he was fascinated with planes, and he took lessons every weekend from a pilot named Johnny Victory. When he was in a coma his parents played him the theme song from Top Gun, which always makes me think of nicknames like Maverick and Iceman and Goose, and now I'll think of Johnny Victory—what a name.
In addition to the theme song from Top Gun, Johnny Victory made a cassette tape that was a flying lesson. It walked the listener through all the checks, led them through everything to get the plane up and out. And our guy Ian's parents put that cassette tape in a Walkman, and they put those Walkman headphones on their kid, and Ian just listened and listened and in the radio show Ian says that he heard everything—the Top Gun theme song, the flight lessons, his parents talking to him, the doctors asking him to respond.
There's no point. Ian, the kid whose chance of recovery was one in one hundred, he lived, and he made a full recovery, and he still flies planes. That's a Good Thing.
The whole point of this is that I like the name Johnny Victory and Johnny Victory deserves his own story and I think I'll write it.
He was in a coma for a while, unresponsive. Another thing about our guy Ian was that he flew planes. Since he was a baby he was fascinated with planes, and he took lessons every weekend from a pilot named Johnny Victory. When he was in a coma his parents played him the theme song from Top Gun, which always makes me think of nicknames like Maverick and Iceman and Goose, and now I'll think of Johnny Victory—what a name.
In addition to the theme song from Top Gun, Johnny Victory made a cassette tape that was a flying lesson. It walked the listener through all the checks, led them through everything to get the plane up and out. And our guy Ian's parents put that cassette tape in a Walkman, and they put those Walkman headphones on their kid, and Ian just listened and listened and in the radio show Ian says that he heard everything—the Top Gun theme song, the flight lessons, his parents talking to him, the doctors asking him to respond.
There's no point. Ian, the kid whose chance of recovery was one in one hundred, he lived, and he made a full recovery, and he still flies planes. That's a Good Thing.
The whole point of this is that I like the name Johnny Victory and Johnny Victory deserves his own story and I think I'll write it.
Friday, March 16, 2012
A declaration
I am standing here at my computer in my underwear and I am bristling with ideas.
What a powerful thing it is to put words on a page—to guide thoughts and help someone create images in their mind.
A declaration:
To hell with an MFA. Okay, step back—MFAs can be good, I think, the point is I don't need one.
I've been sitting here thinking I'll work for a couple of years, write in my free time, get better at writing, then when I'm in an MFA program—that's when I can really get down to business.
No. I reject that. That's Wrong. See, I can start all of that now. Why do I need to wait two years before I start taking myself seriously? Like all the writing between now and then is just child's play, just fodder so that when the real writing begins I'll have a leg to stand on.
No, the real writing can and will and does start right this moment.
Reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Wikipedia page got me thinking of all this. Everything Is Illuminated started as a senior thesis. As an undergrad. I am an undergrad. Why can't my writing be just as urgent, just as focused, as his was?
I'm having a moment of, Damn it, if you can do it, so can I. This is good, this is a good moment to have.
The point is I don't need to piddle around with my writing, biding my time until I've had enough life experience for an MFA.
There's no set path for a writer, but there's some kind of path and, for me, that always involved taking time off, doing an MFA, applying for the Stegner Fellowship, teaching, then maybe, at the end of all of that, maybe I'd have a manuscript that was halfway decent and salable.
Screw that. This is my declaration:
*I refuse to wait for my writing to simply happen.
*I refuse to twiddle my thumbs.
*I pledge to devote myself to my writing.
*I pledge to take my writing seriously while not taking myself too seriously.
*I do not need an MFA to make me into a writer.
*I already am a writer.
*I have enough tools and knowledge to start writing in earnest now, this very moment, this second, this moment in time. There is never a better time to start than now. There is never a more important sentence than the one I'm currently working on.
*I pledge to write new stories.
*I pledge to be honest in my writing.
*I pledge to only write about the things in which I believe.
*I pledge to not be cute.
*I pledge to kill my (literary) babies.
*I pledge I pledge I pledge I refuse I pledge, God damn it, from this moment on—writing Matters.
What a powerful thing it is to put words on a page—to guide thoughts and help someone create images in their mind.
A declaration:
To hell with an MFA. Okay, step back—MFAs can be good, I think, the point is I don't need one.
I've been sitting here thinking I'll work for a couple of years, write in my free time, get better at writing, then when I'm in an MFA program—that's when I can really get down to business.
No. I reject that. That's Wrong. See, I can start all of that now. Why do I need to wait two years before I start taking myself seriously? Like all the writing between now and then is just child's play, just fodder so that when the real writing begins I'll have a leg to stand on.
No, the real writing can and will and does start right this moment.
Reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Wikipedia page got me thinking of all this. Everything Is Illuminated started as a senior thesis. As an undergrad. I am an undergrad. Why can't my writing be just as urgent, just as focused, as his was?
I'm having a moment of, Damn it, if you can do it, so can I. This is good, this is a good moment to have.
The point is I don't need to piddle around with my writing, biding my time until I've had enough life experience for an MFA.
There's no set path for a writer, but there's some kind of path and, for me, that always involved taking time off, doing an MFA, applying for the Stegner Fellowship, teaching, then maybe, at the end of all of that, maybe I'd have a manuscript that was halfway decent and salable.
Screw that. This is my declaration:
*I refuse to wait for my writing to simply happen.
*I refuse to twiddle my thumbs.
*I pledge to devote myself to my writing.
*I pledge to take my writing seriously while not taking myself too seriously.
*I do not need an MFA to make me into a writer.
*I already am a writer.
*I have enough tools and knowledge to start writing in earnest now, this very moment, this second, this moment in time. There is never a better time to start than now. There is never a more important sentence than the one I'm currently working on.
*I pledge to write new stories.
*I pledge to be honest in my writing.
*I pledge to only write about the things in which I believe.
*I pledge to not be cute.
*I pledge to kill my (literary) babies.
*I pledge I pledge I pledge I refuse I pledge, God damn it, from this moment on—writing Matters.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
JSF is an author and So Can You
Just got back from Jonathan Safran Foer reading... thoughts swirling... need to get this all down.
JSF is intensely devoted to his work. He is intensely literary. I don't know that I want to be that, necessarily, but what can I get from that? That this man puts all of himself behind his work. You get the idea he lives and breathes his work... that his work suffuses every atom of himself. When he interviews he's boring, when he talks he is slow and measured and heartbreakingly intellectual... and he is a man who writes. He gets stuff done. He wrote Everything Is Illuminated right after graduating (undergrad or grad?), and I'm thinking, God damn it, this guy believes in himself, he takes his own work seriously, he labors over it, believes in it, sees its potential.
Don't know if I want all of that. The believing part, though—I am, starting this very instant, going to do that more. Believe in my own work, see its potential, and work toward that potential. JSF is a great author who does great work... and I think it's because he believes so intensely in his own ability. I will, starting now, borrow that intensity of belief from him.
Thinking...books...could I write one? And what would it be? I'm thinking of this blog, I'm thinking of all these snippets of things. These moments in time. Short story collections don't sell. But The Things They Carried sells. Is TTTC a novel? To me, it's a collection of short stories... I guess you'd call it a series of interconnected stories. But, really, it's just a bunch of different attempts to get at some sort of truth. Attacking this thing called war from many different angles, different perspectives, different times... that, to me, is not daunting. That, to me, sounds fun. That is something I could do. What about? Subject matter... of course... the death of a mother. That, for me, is the heart. When I say that I think, Won't readers think, Oh great, another novel about a dead parent. That's my biggest hang-up about all this. Does anyone really want to read about that? About all of these depressing things? But isn't there beauty in it?
Tim O'Brien says that he dives into this huge pile of shit called War and tries to find some beauty in it. It's diving into this enormous mess and trying to salvage something. Couldn't I do that? Couldn't I dive into my mom's death and salvage things?
Wouldn't want it to be too sentimental. That's always my fear with this stuff—too sentimental, too this, too that—really, though, did that ever get anyone anywhere? Write your things, if it's too much cut back—but don't cut back before you've written the damn thing.
To me, that sounds like all sorts of heaven. Going at my mom's death from different angles. Tackling it with different pieces. Working around it, coming at it from under, the side, looking at it from up close, from far away.
Read TTTC and see how O'Brien does it? That could be good.
I also think of Vonnegut. Telling stories in these very small bite-sized chunks. Think Slaughterhouse-Five. Think any novel by Vonnegut. All these small chunks—that appeals to me, I think I can do that. These short little bursts of things... these short little bursts that, when you step back and look at them, are a Whole Thing.
And that's it. Wow those thoughts flew out of me, and I'm excited about these ideas. That maybe this blog-style writing isn't necessarily in vain. And I could have stories, and poems, and pictures, and I could have these what if things, like my What about an infinite telescope?
What if it was a boy's diary? What if I assume the character of a person trying to make sense out of all these things. A person who just throws all of these different things at this problem trying to make sense, trying to figure something out, trying to get something out of it.
Gets to the heart of: what am I interested in writing? What really captivates me? I love what if questions. I love bending reality. I love magical realism. I mean, we could tell false stories about what didn't happen. I love those, like in ELAIC at the end when Oskar talks about what it would be like if 9/11 played out in reverse, or when he invents things like the singing tea kettle, or the underground skyscraper that holds dead people. I love suffusing a text with those elements—it creates possibility. Best to do that early—show the reader the ropes—in my world, these are the possibilities, in my world, these things can happen, in my world, you have to be ready.
Read TTTC, read SH5, read ELAIC. That should be my spring break homework. Yes.
And let those ideas run.....~~~~
and run~~
and run~~~
JSF is intensely devoted to his work. He is intensely literary. I don't know that I want to be that, necessarily, but what can I get from that? That this man puts all of himself behind his work. You get the idea he lives and breathes his work... that his work suffuses every atom of himself. When he interviews he's boring, when he talks he is slow and measured and heartbreakingly intellectual... and he is a man who writes. He gets stuff done. He wrote Everything Is Illuminated right after graduating (undergrad or grad?), and I'm thinking, God damn it, this guy believes in himself, he takes his own work seriously, he labors over it, believes in it, sees its potential.
Don't know if I want all of that. The believing part, though—I am, starting this very instant, going to do that more. Believe in my own work, see its potential, and work toward that potential. JSF is a great author who does great work... and I think it's because he believes so intensely in his own ability. I will, starting now, borrow that intensity of belief from him.
Thinking...books...could I write one? And what would it be? I'm thinking of this blog, I'm thinking of all these snippets of things. These moments in time. Short story collections don't sell. But The Things They Carried sells. Is TTTC a novel? To me, it's a collection of short stories... I guess you'd call it a series of interconnected stories. But, really, it's just a bunch of different attempts to get at some sort of truth. Attacking this thing called war from many different angles, different perspectives, different times... that, to me, is not daunting. That, to me, sounds fun. That is something I could do. What about? Subject matter... of course... the death of a mother. That, for me, is the heart. When I say that I think, Won't readers think, Oh great, another novel about a dead parent. That's my biggest hang-up about all this. Does anyone really want to read about that? About all of these depressing things? But isn't there beauty in it?
Tim O'Brien says that he dives into this huge pile of shit called War and tries to find some beauty in it. It's diving into this enormous mess and trying to salvage something. Couldn't I do that? Couldn't I dive into my mom's death and salvage things?
Wouldn't want it to be too sentimental. That's always my fear with this stuff—too sentimental, too this, too that—really, though, did that ever get anyone anywhere? Write your things, if it's too much cut back—but don't cut back before you've written the damn thing.
To me, that sounds like all sorts of heaven. Going at my mom's death from different angles. Tackling it with different pieces. Working around it, coming at it from under, the side, looking at it from up close, from far away.
Read TTTC and see how O'Brien does it? That could be good.
I also think of Vonnegut. Telling stories in these very small bite-sized chunks. Think Slaughterhouse-Five. Think any novel by Vonnegut. All these small chunks—that appeals to me, I think I can do that. These short little bursts of things... these short little bursts that, when you step back and look at them, are a Whole Thing.
And that's it. Wow those thoughts flew out of me, and I'm excited about these ideas. That maybe this blog-style writing isn't necessarily in vain. And I could have stories, and poems, and pictures, and I could have these what if things, like my What about an infinite telescope?
What if it was a boy's diary? What if I assume the character of a person trying to make sense out of all these things. A person who just throws all of these different things at this problem trying to make sense, trying to figure something out, trying to get something out of it.
Gets to the heart of: what am I interested in writing? What really captivates me? I love what if questions. I love bending reality. I love magical realism. I mean, we could tell false stories about what didn't happen. I love those, like in ELAIC at the end when Oskar talks about what it would be like if 9/11 played out in reverse, or when he invents things like the singing tea kettle, or the underground skyscraper that holds dead people. I love suffusing a text with those elements—it creates possibility. Best to do that early—show the reader the ropes—in my world, these are the possibilities, in my world, these things can happen, in my world, you have to be ready.
Read TTTC, read SH5, read ELAIC. That should be my spring break homework. Yes.
And let those ideas run.....~~~~
and run~~
and run~~~
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Dust dust dust
I don't feel the rush to write today, that yummy energy that comes with juicy ideas . . . but I've got to do it anyway. I have ten minutes before I have to get ready for class and, damn it, I'm going to keep myself sharp . . . always keeping myself sharp.
Here are some thoughts.
Ash Wednesday is a funny day. I never know about it until I see people with greasy grey crosses etched in their foreheads. For a moment I almost say to them, Hey, you've got something just—there. I imagine rubbing it off with a singular, hard stroke of my thumb. Then I realize, and I think Oh, that's nice, that's pretty cool—And isn't it a great thing that your religion gives you this one day where everyone can do face paint?
I remember catching moths when I was young, until one day someone said to be careful. Be careful, they said. If you rub the dust off their wings they will no longer be able to fly. I imagined a magic, invisible powder coating the moth's papery pinions and when I caught them I was gentle. I would cup them in my hand and feel their fluttering little bodies dusting my palms and I would tell them to be still—don't rub it off, you won't be able to fly anymore.
I feel like I'm building images for later. Or for now. Who knows what they're for? And are they any good? And what are they worth? And how much could they really be worth, me sitting here ten minutes before class tossing them up lazily on the page in a few quick strokes. One day, I hope to be like Picasso. Once a woman asked Picasso for a sketch. He said, Sure, and after he had sketched something up he told her it would cost $10,000. The woman was astounded, said, But that didn't even take you five minutes! Isn't $10,000 too much for five minutes of work? And Picasso said, My friend, it took me thirty years to learn how to do that in five minutes.
One day I want to be like that. Which will take practice. Which will take effort. Which will take a lot of episodes of me sitting down to write when I don't want to for the sake of getting better.
Here are some thoughts.
Ash Wednesday is a funny day. I never know about it until I see people with greasy grey crosses etched in their foreheads. For a moment I almost say to them, Hey, you've got something just—there. I imagine rubbing it off with a singular, hard stroke of my thumb. Then I realize, and I think Oh, that's nice, that's pretty cool—And isn't it a great thing that your religion gives you this one day where everyone can do face paint?
I remember catching moths when I was young, until one day someone said to be careful. Be careful, they said. If you rub the dust off their wings they will no longer be able to fly. I imagined a magic, invisible powder coating the moth's papery pinions and when I caught them I was gentle. I would cup them in my hand and feel their fluttering little bodies dusting my palms and I would tell them to be still—don't rub it off, you won't be able to fly anymore.
I feel like I'm building images for later. Or for now. Who knows what they're for? And are they any good? And what are they worth? And how much could they really be worth, me sitting here ten minutes before class tossing them up lazily on the page in a few quick strokes. One day, I hope to be like Picasso. Once a woman asked Picasso for a sketch. He said, Sure, and after he had sketched something up he told her it would cost $10,000. The woman was astounded, said, But that didn't even take you five minutes! Isn't $10,000 too much for five minutes of work? And Picasso said, My friend, it took me thirty years to learn how to do that in five minutes.
One day I want to be like that. Which will take practice. Which will take effort. Which will take a lot of episodes of me sitting down to write when I don't want to for the sake of getting better.
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