;)
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 It's the time of year when "Things to Be Thankful For" lists make the rounds. I've already seen one that kinda kicked me in the throat. I have so much to be thankful for as 2009 closes itself that I'd rather wait until the winter holidays have fully released their stranglehold on my sickness-fogged brain to write that list.
Instead, as I just AIM'd to my friend Jill:
Sunday, November 22, 2009 My first New York winter is wrecking hell on me, emotionally. I don't do well surrounded by flickering greys that smear into blackness by 5 P.M. every night. As a teenager, I used to romanticise Seasonal Affective Disorder. A lot of this has to do with the fact that my first girlfriend, the girl who was my first kiss and my first sexual experience and my first experience with loving someone being like a brick through a window constantly, would look into the distance in that way that only high school girls can (which is to say looking at absolutely nothing but making a 15 year old boy heart will with the feeling that she's staring into the future and has it all in her hands) and whisper shit like "winter's coming..." only to trail off.
(Again-only something that a teenage girl can get away with, because as women get older, their eyes lose the ability to mask truth.)
Now, though,
Friday, November 20, 2009 I was on the train this morning, reading AMYNY or METRO NY or THE SUBWAY TIMEZ or whatever free paper it was someone at the stairs to the station pushed into my hands (paper-pushers, indeed), and the giant pull-out Tiger Beat-esque interview with Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob Black in the film version of Stephenie Meyer's New Moon, turned my stomach.
Thursday, November 19, 2009 Last night at I read from the first time from my fictionalized autobiographical collection of stories We Give Ourselves Habits In Order To Live. In reading aloud from these for the first time, I realized two things:
1) Apparently the Joan Didion reference embedded not-so-subtly in my title (I am pretty much blatently ripping off her quote "We tell ourselves stories in order to live.") is not so blazingly obvious that I need worry about a lawsuit.
2)The last piece I read, "New York Interlude II", will eventually be where the collection ends. I need to revisit it, edit it again (and again, and again, ad infinitum) with this newfound knowledge, but it's sort of thrilling: I have a beginning, and an end, to this set of stories that are stupidly close to my heart.
This, then, is where that story stands now, before the revisions and scissors and night-time and knives and blood and glitter all come out to play.
Monday, November 16, 2009 I have been dabbling at the form of self-expression known as "actually fucking writing" for what basically amounts to a minute and change at this point, and the long-form results are slowly becoming, twisting, evolving (so, yes, becoming) into a collection of mostly-true but equally-fabricated stories about a young male growing up over-educated and over-eager to experience every fucking thing in life that I am calling We Give Ourselves Habits In Order To Live.
I am reading from this as-yet-unacquired little tome of darkness and (hopefully) light this Wednesday, Nov the 18 at a reading series hosted by Writers House's Michael Mejias at Kettle Of Fish in NYC.
This is sort of eating away at my ability to blog properly. And I am trying, really, to get back that-I never thought I'd see the day where I write about music more than I write about myself.
I don't know what it is about suddenly both allowing myself the fallibility of the facade of fiction, but suddenly the last thing in the world I want to talk about is...me.
What IS that? Why is personal blogging the most difficult thing in the world right now?
Not sure. I'm sure I'll check in after Wednesday.