The Passage

Maybe it was just that I was packing while I was listening.  I was gathering up my shirts and books and the compact discs and DVDs and cleaning out the drawers of my desk and placing them in boxes from Home Depot, and I was listening to The Passage, and it was depressing the hell out of me.  There is something inherently depressing about moving - it's the way a little piece of your life is ending, and you're leaving the good and the bad of it behind, and you're left there in an empty room and there's nothing sadder than an empty room that once had furniture and books and friends in it.  Or was it just the drone of the narrator's voice as he read Justin Cronin's book, whose inflections could not make up for the fact that I listened to almost the entire 36 hours in his voice, on those lonely headphones.

Not that it was a bad book.  If you are looking for a summer read and are the kind of person who likes sprawling epics, a little science fiction or fantasy, this one is pretty good.  But I don't recommend listening to it.  Listening to it this way flattens it out.  And if you are distracted, say by the woman bent nearly in half wobbling down the subway car and singing and rattling the change in her cup, you might miss the details of the book, and I think it's details that make literature.  Well, actually, I just kind of thought of that and I'm not sure its true, but I do love details, the really small, specific everyday details that connect me to the story and make it tangible.  I'm not really the sprawling epic sort of reader - I will never slog through another Tolkein book - but I thought this would be a good summer read (er, listen).  In most ways it was.  The story is compelling, and occasionally (just occasionally) surprising, and every now and then Cronin writes a sentence with unexpected grace.

I was almost an English major at Rice University, where Justin Cronin teaches, but after after two awful, stupid classes (not taught by Cronin) I decided that English was not for me.  I didn't have the tools at the time (there's a whole vocabulary you have to learn, and a way of thinking about these things), and I didn't have a voice. It turns out English is all about trying to figure out why some stuff works and other stuff doesn't, and what it means, and it's mostly just an educated guess. Cronin went to the Iowa Writer's Workshop, which everyone seems to agree is the best writing school in the country, and there are people who will claim he sold out, but I think is a lazy criticism at best.  Good writing is good writing, and you engage with what it is.

My point is that I don't regret reading The Passage, and I'd recommend it, but I do regret the audiobook, because I didn't really give it a fair chance.

Life is Weird

You're listening to an audio book, a book about vampires by Justin Cronin except there are no vampires yet even though you're in the third chapter.  There's something about the Polunksy Prison Unit in Texas and you think of the woman there you used to talk to when you had to arrange prison visits and then there is a mention of the Harris County public defender's office and you think to yourself - there is no public defender's office in Houston.  And then you think, it's weird that I know that, or maybe it's just strange that  you know stuff at all because it reminds you are now a person with his own history, a life with these singular experiences.  Maybe this is just another one of those realizations that you sometimes have that you are an adult, a person separate from other people in the world.

Or maybe it's just weird that you are walking down the street in New York listening to an audio book about vampires because you were never the kind of person who thought to yourself, one day I should live in New York.  There are lots of those kinds of people, just not you.

Then you think of the woman on the train, wearing a pink shirt and denim capri pants with big clear plastic beads on one wrist and a phone and an mp3 player strapped to the other wrist.  Around her neck there was this metallic snake-necklace that wrapped around itself and came halfway down her chest.  She was marking her book with a yellow crayon.  That was weird too.

Bionic Cat

I think we should talk about this, this bionic cat.  What does it mean that there is a bionic cat?  I tell my friend that somewhere out there is a cat walking on little bionic legs and he says that we're doomed (actually, he didn't say doomed, but this is a PG 13 blog).  Maybe that's true. There are plenty of problems in this world (starving children and global warming and oil in the gulf) and maimed pets does not seem to be at the top of the list, and yet here in America we value our pets as much as we value our children (or at least as much as we value other people's children).  But that was someone's cat, and can you really blame someone for loving their cat?

Or maybe my friend is afraid that this is the beginning of the end, that one day bionic cats with robot brains and laser eyes will take over the world.

But I don't think so.  I like to think that this bionic cat is a sign of hope.  I'm feeling kind of tired today and a little unsure about the future, but I feel better knowing that cat is out there and, thanks to the fact that we live in an age with portable videophones and a machine that can play jeopardy, that cat can walk  It can even jump on top of some toilet paper rolls.  I'm so happy for that cat.  And if we can make a cat's life better, then maybe we can one day clean up the oceans and cure cancer and reverse global warming and build time machines so we can finally see real dinosaurs.  I'm hopeful.  So very hopeful.

Can I help you?

"I'm not a divine father or anything, but I believe and stuff," this guy in a yellow t-shirt is telling me that he only wants to see a priest so he can say a prayer for his mother and it will only take a couple of minutes.  I do not suspect that he is lying.  "I know that all that matters anymore is money and that you used to be able to come and see a priest but it's not like that anymore, but can't I see a priest?  I mean, if he can't take the time to pray with me I would think that's almost sacrilegious."

I find a priest, and the guy in the yellow shirt asks him for money.

How can you answer the door in a city and not end up suspecting everyone of lying to you?

I read the other day that 75% of homeless people suffer from severe mental illness, and then there's the guy with 100 proof breathe and the drug addicts.  75% sounds about right.  I'm thinking of the guy who stood in the my office and stuck the brochure I gave him into his pocket, which was already full of papers and cardboard and maybe cigarettes and just stared at me for almost a minute before he responded to my question "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

No.  He stared into space for another minute with his bloodshot eyes then walked out the door, slowly.

70s Vampire

Black blazer and a striped shirt, black and white paisley handkerchief stuffed into the pocket, bleach blonde ponytail pulled back, aviator sunglasses, faded bell bottoms, and black pointy boots on the subway at 9 in the morning, playing some game on his iPod while he stands in front of the doors. There's a big chunk of silver around his ring finger.  

If I wrote fiction I'd make this guy into some kind of immortal being, probably a vampire, because that's how you make money nowadays.  He's been living in New York for about 60 years.  Before he bites his victims he likes to talk about how much he loved the 70s.  He goes on and on about the 70s, and his victims are like "Just bite me already and shut up about this disco stuff." 

Really, though, he's thinking about the end of the world.  He knows that immortality is impossible, that there is a finite amount of energy in the universe and it is spreading further and further out, that the sun will consume the earth, and he wonders what happens to him then. That's a ways away, though.  The seventies will have been over for eons, and maybe by then he'll be tired of drinking blood and wearing sunglasses inside.  For now, he'll distract himself with this game on his iPod where you fling little birds and try to knock stuff over.  He really loves this game.   

Pathos and Humor

I'm waiting for a slow little old lady to leave my office.  The sun is shining in the garden, but only briefly, before the skyscraper across the street obscures it.  A couple of people are circling the fountain, arguing.  Or maybe they're acting, practicing - they suddenly smile and laugh.

I told a friend of mine that I had to pause for laughs at my reading last week and she seems surprised.  "You write things that are funny?"

"It's a secret," I said.  (Actually, I didn't.  I don't remember what I said, so I made it up.  That's why it's "Creative" non-fiction.  Or, "It's composed" as one of my professors would say.)  Most of the stuff I write is somewhere between pathos and humor.  I can't seem to separate the two.

Anyway, my reading ended up being a kind of performance - something between an essay and a monologue and maybe a comedy routine.  My boss seemed to like it, and his friend who came with him said "like all good comedy, it was deadly serious."

What you are doing on Thursday

What are you doing on Thursday night?  You are going to watch me do a reading, that's what.  At a variety show!  Yes, a variety show.  Singers, dancers, a magician and me, an "essayist."  But I will be funny and charming (Did you know that I am funny and charming?  Most people who meet me do not suspect that I am either.) and I will knock 'em dead.  Knock. 'Em. Dead.  And even if I am awkward and trip over my own words (I have been known to do this before), it will be over quickly.  Don't worry though, I am going to practice.  Lots.  It will be way fun.  

So, if you are free, come and lend me your support.  Thursday, June 10th at 1 E. 29th St (the church with the garden between 5th and Madison).  Happy Hour at 7, show at 8.  $10 suggested donation which supports actors in need.  http://www.actorsguild.org/Events.html