The pale boy was wandering about his shady room furtively, touching with his white fingers the edges of the scales studded with butterflies; then he stopped to listen. The pounding of Giovannino and Serenella’s hearts, which had died down, now got harder than ever. Perhaps it was the fear of a spell that hung over the villa and garden and over all these lovely, comfortable things, the residue of some injustice committed long ago. 
Very quietly, Giovannino and Serenella crept away. They went back along the same paths they had come, stepping fast but never at a run.
Tag Archives: writing process
Ice Friday: David Mamet’s “Oleanna”
Ah. (Pause) When I was young somebody told me, are you ready? The rich copulate less often than the poor. But when they do, they take more of their clothes off. 
Years. Years, mind you, I would compare experiences of my own to this dictum, saying, aha, this fits the norm, or ah, this is a variation from it. What did it mean? Nothing.
Missed Pitch #1: Alexander Salkind
(Paris, 1986) Curtis was a nice enough guy – even if he had been hitting on my girlfriend, calling her “his earth mother” – and was the personal assistant to the wife of film producer, Alexander Salkind. Mrs. Salkind, he said, wanted to produce an adaptation of Euripedes’ Medea, the Greek tragedy of a mother murdering her children.
I wrote a brief scene – Medea desperate on the rocks, blood on her hands – and headed over to the Salkind’s sprawling apartment for my afternoon appointment. Salkind’s wife wasn’t there, off having lunch with a Count and didn’t return until the evening, intoxicated, and acted out Medea’s anguish, crawling beneath the grand piano, for her husband.
Salkind hated the idea. “There are three things people never want to see in movies: suicide, AIDS and this.” And then he turned to me. “And what do you have to say?”
“Uh, well, I see your point, but…”
“Ah.” He waved me off and left the room.
His wife stayed under the piano, worn out from her performance, as I went into the kitchen and got drunk with Curtis. “You’re a sneaky rat bastard, that’s what you are.”
I didn’t understand why he kept saying that, but the tequila was good.
The Floating Principle
There are so many notes, too many to write down, through the layers, each idea scribbled for the one above, seeking to understand the depths, or just trigger that moment of happiness and stay in that. 
There was a drunken child wanting to fight everyone, and I kept him in my room before going back up through the city, floating above the crowds, not floating as much as striding, walking in flight, thinking someone would be confounded, and yet none of that happened.
And then I was at the rink, tightening my skates for the game, as I took notes, hoping I was in the right layer to remember that I was playing for the Leafs again. 
Ice Friday: Robert Hunter’s “Loser”
All that I am asking for is ten gold dollars
And I could pay you back with one good hand
You can look around about the wide world over
And you’ll never find another honest man. 
Everybody prayin’ and drinkin’ that wine
I can tell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines
Come to daddy on the inside straight,
Well I got no chance of losin’ this time
Waking Thoughts: I & Leafs
Ice Good Friday: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
My da had more wrong with him than my ma. There was nothing wrong with my ma except sometimes she was too busy. My da sometimes lost his temper and he liked it. He had black things across the top of his back, like black insects clinging to him. . He was useless at lots of things. He never finished games. he read newspapers. He coughed. He sat too much. 
Usually he was fair, and he listened when we were in trouble. He listened to me more that to Sinbad. There must have been a reason why he hated Ma. There must have been something wrong with her, at least one thing. I couldn’t see it. I wanted to. I wanted to understand. I wanted to be on both sides. He was my da.
Unsettled
Yes, I knew I was asleep, well, mostly anyway, but I didn’t understand why I would have ever taken another French class and not go to class, being only one credit short, and then forget to start my final project and put myself in a situation where her leg was across my shoulder, her breast peaking out. 
I mean, I was smart enough to get out of there, but I couldn’t get that muddle out of my head because she looked like someone I knew, even with my eyes open and the clock right there, and I had to pee, but I didn’t want to, needing sleep, so that I wouldn’t miss my french class again.
Ice Friday: Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby”
The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. 
Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination: they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.
Safe on the Island
I’ll write a book where people scavenge and socialize far from home and then, in the later hours, scurry back to their island. 
It’s going to be called Safe on the Island.