Radical Transparency

(in case the other blogs need a friend)

Folded Away

Started reading Ulysses last night. Because one of the writers I love most told me he'd started and said I should catch up quick. And because why not.

A sample sentence, describing memories, I think:

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.

Or maybe it's describing the imagined memories of a son's remembered mother.

Or maybe it's something else.

Regardless, on I'll read. Accepting uncertainty, as we all have to sometimes.

Another First Ever

My friend Tom is writing a novel, and, apparently, when you're writing a novel, you also do things like interview your friends about their early stage startup projects and send the results to the editors of socially responsible travel sites.

Late last night, Tom published the first ever article about The Carrot Project. 

And, speaking of first evers, in 2006, the same Tom invited me to make my first ever blog post.  And, still speaking of first evers, one year ago, the same Tom made the first ever comment on A More Perfect Market.

Hopefully, when the time comes, I can read fast enough to write him his first ever book review.

But Becharmed Anew

Life has been a little tougher without East of Eden these past couple of weeks.  As Tom and I discussed in August (while he was reading East of Eden, incidentally), it's tough to walk away from something that has truly grabbed you.

But read on we must.  And I'm trying.  With Melville.  Benito Cereno.

The beginning was a struggle.  But not so much anymore.  Not for the past 10 or so pages anyway. 

Something happened.  Something clicked.  And I suspect it had to do with one character wondering if another might be "of a piratical character."

Those were the first words I underlined.  I dug them.  Piratical.  A new word for me.  And a damn good one.

And, then, nine pages and much pen scratching later, I hit this:

Trying to break one charm, he was but becharmed anew.

40 Oz. to Little America

I had a little flashback tonight to the moment I first really listened to Sublime's 40 Oz. to Freedom. 

Tom and I were on the most intense of our many road trips together. 

We drove 41 hours straight between Oakland, CA and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The longest we stopped was for one hour.  In Custer, SD.  In search of an all you can eat salad bar.  We found one, but it was terrible.  Wet lettuce.  Pickled beans that had been there for months.  Black olives that stopped me, spoke to me, and told me it'd be smart not to eat them.

There were a few moments during the trip that we craved water.  Not to drink.  But showers or swims.  And, when one of those momentary cravings struck, we were in Wyoming, and we'd been seeing signs for miles and miles for Little America, which, apparently, is THE place to stay if you're long driving through Wyoming.  We hadn't the slightest plans to stay anywhere, but we realized, as we drew closer and closer, that, in the dead of summer, anywhere that's THE place to stay is damn well going to have a pool. 

So we took the exit, parked, put on our suits, grabbed towels, wandered through the parking lot and among the sections of the motel (Little America is enormous; I remember it feeling like 25 housing units all strung together into a motel metropolis), found the pool, opened the gate, put our towels down, jumped in, rinsed, felt reborn, walked back to the car, put on 40 Oz. to Freedom, and drove on.

I had heard the album before, but it was over that next hour that I realized that I LOVED Sublime.

And now I'm having a hard time choosing a song.  Waiting for My Ruca is the one most tightly connected to my memory from that day.  40 Oz. to Freedom is the one I find myself singing most often.  And 54-46 That's My Number / Ball And Chain is the one I've used to push people over the Sublime edge, from What I Got-level fans to Boss DJ-level fans.

Man.  Tough call.

How about we mix it up and go with the Grateful Dead cover? 

She had rings on her fingers and bells on her shoes
And I knew without asking she was into the blues

Scarlet Begonias is track 10 on 40 Oz. to Freedom.

(download)

Mice, Whales, and Swimming After the Boat

Recently back in touch with Modest Mouse.  Thanks to Tom and James for Night on the Sun.  And thanks to Heath for leaving We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank sitting on the mantel in Ocean Beach.  I didn't even know that album existed.  Guess that's what happens when you live in China for almost four years.

Anyway, I haven't been able to stop listening to Missed the Boat.

Our ideas held no water, but we used them like a dam.

And then there's that whole section in which a new vocal track jumps in and makes everything tiny.

I love it.

But.  And this is important.  I don't think I agree with all the nostalgic helplessness.  Boats come back.  And, if they don't, people can swim.  Sometimes we can even find a whale or a dolphin to give us a ride.

(download)

Night On the Sun

Ripple is the song James most loved to play.  This, according to Tom, might be the one to which he most loved to listen.

As Lombard morphed to highway, Tom restarted the track, turned up the volume, and explained himself:

Driving slowly is not the way this song is meant to be listened to.

(download)

MQT

The second time I went to hang with Tom on Lake Superior, we drove.

We'd been on a couple of road trips together already, so we figured we'd make a few days of it.

We liked our plan. I'd fly from the East Coast to the Bay Area. We'd hang there for a day or two. Then we'd explore some Nevada, some Wyoming, a little South Dakota, and maybe some Minnesota or Wisconsin. And we'd roll into the Upper Peninsula with stories to tell.

I arrived at the Oakland airport at 9pm PST. Tom was waiting on the curb outside the baggage claim. I stepped into the car, closed the door, put on my seatbelt, and Tom told me his bags were packed. Should we leave right away, right then, from the airport? I'd been thinking the same thing.

So we left. We'd do the exploring another time.

41 hours straight.

Our longest stop was one hour, in Custer, SD, for an all you can eat buffet. The lettuce at the salad bar was soggy.

There were other stops. In a reservoir in Utah for a rinse. At a Little America motel pool in Wyoming for another. Gas stations. 24 hour stores to buy and microwave frozen burritos. Caffeine outlets. But we pretty much drove it straight through.

Ten hours of sleep. Total. Between the two of us. During a 41 hour stretch. Neither of us wanted the other to fall asleep at the wheel, so we kept each other company. Books on tape were not helpful. Ween, Sublime, Talking Heads, and Pain were.

We rolled up to the lakeshore at dinnertime. We'd left word with some friends to bring enough food to their cookout for us. Baked potatoes, baked beans, hamburger patties, and salad in a bag awaited.

We stayed up until 4am that night, sitting around a campfire and catching up with friends we hadn't seen in a year. We woke up at 8am the next day, jumped in Superior, met everyone for breakfast, planned a day of adventuring, hiked all day, partied until 4am again, and repeated. For a full week. No days off. No nights off. No more rest than was absolutely necessary. Not a moment to spare.

When I arrived at the airport to fly back east at the end of that trip, I gave Tom a hug, checked my bag, walked through security, sat down at the gate, and fell asleep in my chair. They had to wake me up to get me on the plane. The flight attendant closed the door behind me, and the plane started moving before I sat down. Good thing Marquette is tiny. Pretty sure they would have let me sleep in JFK or LAX.

I spent some time in that airport today.

This year's trip was significantly more tranquilo than that other one. We're a little older. A little smarter maybe. Less reckless. Less courageous. But I was still tired this morning. And I still craved a nap.

But I battled through. Tom flew two hours before I did, and he had half a cup of decaf left when they called him to board. That gave me a little boost. A subconscious taste placebo. I didn't fall asleep until I was safely on the plane.

Gotta love the vacations from which you need to recover.

Hopefully listening to a little Pain tonight will help.

(download)

Elevation

Tom asked me today what I do when a book that a don't want to end ends.

I told him I sometimes go back and read the beginning again. We always miss things in the beginning. Its fun to go back and see what they were.

He asked me what I do after that.

I said sometimes I read the end again, see if there's anything I missed there, anything else I should be thinking about as the story drifts from my mind.

What then, he asked.

I guess then I move on to the next book, I said.

Yeah, he said, that's what you have to do. It's a bummer, but you can't stay there forever.

He said that's one of the big things with which the main character in his book is struggling: the ability to walk away from those elevated moments, the ability to recognize when it's time to move on to the next thing, even if it's not at that same level, the ability to accept that it's ok that we don't always live like that, in those states, at those levels, that it's ok to come down and experience imperfection again. And not just ok. Good. Necessary. What makes it possible to elevate again, whenever that might be. 

Autobiographical Fiction and Complete Characters

I've been asking Tom heaps of questions about writing. And I think I might be getting out of control.

For example, I've been wondering about the idea of starting from autobiography and building to fiction. I've been asking things like this:

Let's say an author is creating a character the core of whom is born from a part of the author's real life character. And let's say that character overlap (the part of the author that character represents) is the key aspect of the fictional character. To what extent does the author have to intentionally fill the fictional character's excess character space? To what extent do authors think about doing things like filling character space vacated by partial character basing? And to what extent should or shouldn't they? Can characters survive (achieve greatness) only half imagined by authors? Or must authors imagine complete people (part author, part something else)? Or is it even remotely close to possible to imagine and write about complete people? Can we even communicate about ourselves as complete people? Do any of us ever know ourselves completely?

I'm pretty sure there don't exist straightforward answers. But, apparently, I continue bugging Tom. Poor guy.