TRAVERSING Z

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because this too is a theme.

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what i must never lose sight of: before i began this, i was flying yet again, perhaps from new york? or was it the UK? so many times back and forth now.  not glamorous, not fun, just necessity.  i think i was on jet blue, or some similar airbus thing with screens in the headrests.  it was the middle of the afternoon, and i was flipping through my little screen, and i came upon an abysmal movie called shooter.  and at some point it became very clear that the woman in this movie had been raped, violently raped, and in her trauma she shoots her rapist and then cowers next to marky mark.  and i was horrified.  children were watching this, people were watching this eating snack boxes, people were watching this absently while i wanted to weep and cringe as the woman was weeping and cringing.

not too long after, we saw a highly recommended, highly lauded, film at home: gran torino.  and then i started a book that was on the verge of becoming one of the most popular novels on the planet: the girl with the dragon tattoo.

can you see where i’m going with this?

when did this become the seeming shorthand for crazy evil guy? when did it become so, ugh, so quotidian? and what, exactly, is gained by putting it before us, moment by moment? at what point do we cross the line from acting as witness to tacit approval to even closet participant?

it is the 21st century and i am researching the 18th century and it feels like nothing much has changed.

and really, what i wanted to see was the woman turn around and keep shooting: marky mark, the rest of the shady guys, the writer, the producer.  and then give a few slaps to the slack-jawed passengers on the airplane as well.

when it suddenly becomes a little more real.

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i have to go to paris.

i know this is not the usual kind of oh-dear thing.  as i’ve started confessing this to people, i am getting a lot of stinkeye, oh poor you, you have to go to paris! and they are right.  this is, as a friend of mine would say, a first world worry.

but it is worrisome.  in fact, i would feel more comfortable if i was simply absconding with my better half’s credit card and storming off in a snit to indulge myself in a whirlwind of selfish excess.  because then, at least, i would have no reason to fear the questions afterwards: “whatever became of that selfish snit you were in, when you blew all that money on paris?” folks don’t ask that question.  they do, however, ask

“whatever happened to that thing you were writing, the one you went to paris to research?”

um, yes, that is a conversation starter.

until now i have been happily under the radar with this.  i’ve written all my life, so it raises no eyebrows when i tell folks i’ve been writing and there is no followup; no one expects anything of me anymore.  what little workshopping i have done has happened in a cloud of anonymity courtesy of a generic pen name. even this blog is written by “lsj”.

and all of a sudden i find myself with a reasonably linear, functional 250,000 word narrative and 100k of pieces of a second and i cannot sleep because this thing, however awkward and slow and massive, is alive inside me.

. . .

so once upon a time there was a Poor Little Writer.  and for years, for decades, this PLW watched as fellow students/writers/academics got “breaks”—publication, awards, fellowships, teaching jobs, spouses with incomes that meant they did not have to work.  to all of this, the PLW would complain: where was the institution/magazine/publisher who, instead of just saying  “you’ve got talent, hope you keep it up” or “this story is great, it’s just not for us” would actually put their freakin’ money where their mouth is?

no breaks for the pauvre PLW!

but odd things started happening these last two years.

first of all, the PLW received a muse.  it showed up one day, and after a few months of wordless banter, took up residence in the PLW’s house.

then, after a particularly bad project that had forced the PLW to work through every vacation for over a year, the PLW snapped and demanded a month off.

the PLW was given 3.

this, the PLW realized, was that rare species of life opportunity colloquially referred to as “a break.”

3 months later, there were about 300,000 scattered, rough, cheesy, but in some places rather decent words on the PLW’s hard drive, and the PLW had put on 8 pounds and was developing circulation issues, and the muse was pleasantly plump and well-groomed from an excess of worship.

and now there’s this paris thing.

. . .

the other night i was pouring over a map i had bought of paris in the 1740s, with google directions on the computer beside me, trying to somehow parse out distances and cursing haussmann for changing things so freakin’ much.  how long would it take a carriage to get from a to b? how narrow is that narrow-looking street?

and my better half, watching this convoluted process, finally asked: why don’t you just go there? wouldn’t that help?

i laughed outright.  after all, that’s the kind of thing successful people do, people who get breaks.  not PLWs with multiple loan payments due each month.

at which point my partner, my significant other—really my better half in many, many ways—looked at me very intently and said: i’m serious.  this is your art and you need to go.  it doesn’t matter if it gets published or not.  it’s not open for discussion.  you have to do this.

typical bossy scorpio.

our annual vacation is cancelled.  christmas will be minimal. the old car got a new radiator instead of being replaced entirely.

and all of a sudden i am faced with daunting questions of self-worth, the value of creative work, the point of creative work, and the frightening realization that i might have to close the door on that PLW chapter of my life, and all its sourpuss comforts, for good.

first principles, clarice.

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nothing like nano-writing to make synchronicities become glaring.  i take a break, i comment on a comment about doc holliday by recommending paul west, i go back to west and find a most anxious influence. that anxiety, considering the love/hate audience for west, may be a good thing . . . but it does not change the basic fact that i can open almost any book of his to almost any page, and get my literary swoon on.  there are worse writers to ape.

“It was never until he left his condign little hovel for the bright lights of the saloons and card rooms that Doc recognized how little padding there was in his days, that the miscellaneous noise of the rabble—shots fired into oil lamps, horses ridden into stores, fireworks let off like exclamation marks in the midst of the general outcry, screams of affront and howls of pain, long slithery sounds of throwing up, undisguised groans as hangovers bit home—all this kept him chipper, out of himself, away from the sullen recognition that most of his life he had lived against the odds, delighted usually to wake each morning, not much afraid to go to sleep, never in much need of company so long as he heard the racket of the mob, the untuned pianos, the strident fiddle, the click of gambling chips, the diminutive clatter of cup on saucer, the tiny suffocating ping of fork on plate, and could, with Wyatt say, stride out along Allen Street munching one of Pucette Romany’s redhot morning buns known to the local gentry as earps (or early acting roasted pussy).”

“A lost word came back to him, evoking fabulous scenes of chivalrous conduct and elaborate social finesse.  Gracegentry, he murmured.  Now what the hell was that? Was it even a word back then? Who said it, used it? Did it mean a true aristocrat reserved the right to shoot at anybody who appealed to him as a target? Droit de seigneur applied to last things? The answer would not come, but the word remained to torment and beguile him as he wondered at its sudden appearance, its aroma of excess.  Somewhere still, he thought, they use it, somewhere in Georgia or Alabama, where I will never go again, never see that greensward abounding.  He would never be a mountain man, nor a seafarer, a rustler, an Indian scout, a tracker, a shoesmith, an aviarist, a cavaliere servente, a balloonist, a governor or senator, a painter, a poet, a lawyer or a dentist.  It was a matter now of gathering up the various remnants of his being, even as his lungs turned to sludge, so as to have an entity with firm edges while awaiting the end, promised him long ago and not to be denied him.”

-Paul West, from O.K. The Corral, The Earps, and Doc Holliday: A Novel