Tag Archives: writing process

Airplane Window

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I was on a long flight, the in-flight movie about hapless criminals, depressing. King of Comedy pic 3I stared out of the window, the drone of the plane’s engines coming through the fabric walls, and tried to imagine the ocean below. IMAG2756I pictured the ice bobbing in the swells but had the smell of the plane in me, antiseptic, and nothing of that smell was in the ice, and opened my eyes, the interior lights off, and it came to me, that pristine crystalline moment of a thought, something from nothing, the genesis of a book – prostitutes driving across the United States in an 18-wheeler. trucker-naked-lady-tire-flapThat was it, prostitutes in an 18-wheeler. And west; they were going west. I knew that too. I had my book just like that, in the thin light, timeless, constant, an arctic summer, my hand down the plastic handle, on the plane over the stark Greenland mountains.*IMG_3423

*Extract from Buzz

The Generators: Excerpt from “The Ark”

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From the opening chapter of The Ark, Dee takes Apollo out for a walk after Hurricane Sandy:

I took Apollo out toward Broadway. A threatening row of generators, inert grey metal boxes the size of trucks, lined the streets, steel bars and locks, red electric bolts along the rusted edges, thick cables and tubes clumped out across the sidewalk, into doorways, droning fierce metal on metal. IMAG1702A misery came into me, a weighty nothing, the tininess in my head gone. I was worthless. I knew that. It wasn’t just death, the meaningless of that, my stupid realization of my impending deterioration, but the clear pathetic thud of utter meaninglessness. IMAG1579It was this street, this fleeting attempt against the waters taking everything back, the cables and machines, the buildings and walls, huddled in the sharp early light, waiting for the inevitable next. IMAG2357Apollo pulled hard to the garbage truck and pissed.

Kids with a Knife: scene for “my bad side”

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An excerpt of a new scene for my bad side, with Dee and Crystal as kids:

“You have to help me, okay?” Crystal pulled her shirt over her head and twisted her back to me. “You see that?”

“What?”

“That.” She pulled at the side of her ribs where there was a red smudge, scabbed and raw. “You see it?” mole“Your mole thing?”

“You have to cut it off.”

“Like…cut it?”

She handed me an X-Acto knife from the table. “Cut it off.” X-ACTO-knife“No way. I can’t do that.”

“You have to, Dee. I think’s cancer.”

“You should go to a doctor.”

“I’m not going to a doctor. I’m not.” She pressed the knife into my hand. “You owe me. I saved your life, right? Didn’t I?”

“Crystal, you have to go to a hospital or something.”

“I can’t reach it.” She looked crazy in the light coming from the floor, the shadow of her nose going up on her cheek into her eye. “I need you to do it.”eye-closeup“But I don’t know how.”

“Look.” She grabbed my fist in her hand and twisted it to her back. “You just cut around it. Make a cut down one side and then the other and then cut it from underneath, okay? It should take like a minute.”

I hunched over and stared, frozen. “I can’t.”

We’re only Carbon Neutral

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The Marquis de Sade writes in his controversial novel Justine that we, as a species, tend to exaggerate our relevance:The power of destruction is not in the gift of Man. He may, at the most, change the form of things but he does not have the power to annihilate.We're only Carbon NeutralOh, what does it matter to Nature’s eternal creation that the mass of flesh which today makes up a biped creature should be tomorrow reproduced as a thousand different insects? We're only Carbon NeutralI say this: all men, all animals, all plants that grow, feed and are destroyed, reproducing themselves by the same means, never truly die but merely undergo variation and modification.

Modest Mouse offers a similar sentiment in their 2004 song Parting of the Sensory. We're only Carbon NeutralI’d start at the dawn/Until the sun and fully stopped/Never walking away from/Just a way to pull apart/Dehydrate back into minerals/A lifelong walk to the same exact spot/Carbon’s anniversary/The parting of the sensory.

In other words, we’re just not that big a deal.

Al Worden: Reflections in Lunar Orbit

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While fellow astronauts of Apollo 15 explored the lunar surface, Al Worden piloted the command module. His solo journey in lunar orbit lasted three days.Apollo_15_CSM_Endeavour_during_rendezvous I didn’t feel lonely or isolated. I was much more comfortable flying by myself than with others. In fact, I most enjoyed the back side of the moon, where Houston couldn’t get hold of me on the radio. 3770132559_43e9b4aec0_oThe moon looked enormous from such a low orbit. I glimpsed tall central peaks of craters before I saw the surrounding low rims. With no atmosphere to soften the view, every crater and boulder was sharp and crisp. Timocaris_Cr-sharpenedMountains cast long slashes of blackness across the landscape, and features stood out as if I had placed a flashlight against a rough stucco wall. The moon was overwhelmingly majestic, yet stark and mostly devoid of color. Earth riseEvery orbit, however, I was treated to the sight of the distant Earth rising over the lunar landscape. (Pages 188-92, Al Worden, Falling to Earth.)

Why We Will Never Make It (or Maybe Why We Will)

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“Face it. We’re all selfish bastards.” I punched my straw through the ice. “We donate and volunteer, but in the end it’s just to get what we want.”Phone 257

Val flipped her phone upside down on the bar. “The last thing this world needs is more people.”

“The problem with people–”

“Yes.” She smiled at that. “The problem with people.”  

“They lack self-awareness.”

“The weird thing is that we want these versions of ourselves, people who we think will understand us.”

IMAG1479

“Maybe even care.”

“Maybe.”

“Which means nothing.”

“The problem with people.” Val repeated it like a song lyric. “They say stupid things.”

IMAG3466I liked this topic too much. “And they actually believe they will be something good.”

“Good.” She checked for messages. “Whatever that means.”*

(*excerpt from The Ark)

Being Las Vegas – Extract from “my bad side”

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I wanted to lose all of my money and played craps.* I was Big Tyree. Everybody loved that. IMAG3375I watched the dice snap up against the wall, knowing they would be like that, not gambling, winning money, trying to win, but more of a story in my head, the numbers one after the other, each into the next – 4, 6, 12, 11, 3, 6, 8, 9, 4, 7, 7, 9, 8, 6, 5, 4, 9, 9, 7 – a sequence meaning something I didn’t know but wanted to see how it would turn out, and played each one and took my money and had a stack of chips, so many of them.IMAG3374 It was funny, but I had to get rid of a guy and went up to my room and thought about how I loved being in Vegas where it was just numbers and chips and money and nothing else but that. IMAG3376*extract from my bad side

 

My Mother – “Ark” Dream

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My mother was leaving me notes, slipping them under the door. Phone 128I waited in bed and then was back at the door and found them there. They were threats. I tried to wait in the hall, but they only came when I was back in bed, in the dark. It wasn’t only her, but they were in her hand-writing, even and clear, a long list of things against me, what I had done wrong, what was wrong with me.IMAG3342It was awful thinking of her out there, by my door, waiting for me to lie in my bed, thinking of what to write and sliding the next note, the next bit of torture, along the wood, leaving it there for me to endure.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

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September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. pirate__1221836287_8352It is a day that Uncle Ralph (from my bad side) would have loved.

Uncle Ralph’s had seats eight rows behind the Pirates dugout. “Herre we go!”

“Are you still doing that?”

“What arre you talking about therre?”7982284709_c13088c7a4_z

“Arr to you.” The sun had set behind the outfield, the light cold and yellow. The Pirates were ahead.

“You want a beerrr, picaroon?”

“Thanks.”

The cup bent in my hand, spilling in cool stickiness.pordb5orkg1azzo

“She got an ID?” The vendor demanded.

“She’s my niece, Willie. Back from college.”

“I need an ID.”

“She’s going to Desert Storm in a week. Is that enough for you?”

He trudged back up the stairs.

“Desert Storm?” I said. “Summer school is more like it.”

“You’re tough. Nobody messes with you.” He raised his beer. “Ray would have killed you.”

“What about mother?”

“I don’t  know. She would have been upset, but I think she would have taken your side. She was always family first.” He jumped out of his seat, yelling. “Come on, run it out! Arriba! Arriba! You’re a hell of a hitter, Van Slyke! But you’re lazy as a dog! Flojo! You’ll be in the nine spot if you don’t wake up! Come on, Andy!” andy-van-slykeWe watched Van Slyke jog back toward us, take his batting helmet off and lob it into the dugout. Uncle Ralph nodded at the next batter. “You know this guy? Parrish. He’s a Marooner from the Tigers. Probably his last season. He’s supposed to be helping out Van Slyke and Merced. Good luck on that.”

“What do you mean family first?”

“And he swings at the first pitch. Take the money and run, Lance. Take the money and run.”