The Only Zen...

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."

-Robert Pirsig, from a recent interview I read somewhere.

Nooooooooooo!

Meg: our experiment. It didn't work! Could be the rilly bad page rank of this blog. Maybe we should try it again, someplace a bit more high-profile?

Have a great trip, dood.

Red and Green Haze

I'm on page 120 of Gravity's Rainbow, and liking it immensely more this time around. Why's that? I'm less adrift this time, I know which characters are bit players who aren't coming back, and which to pay attention to. I know that some of the routines are just routines, and I'm better able to enjoy them this time for what they are, not searching for Deeper Meanings all the time. (The Disgusting English Candy Drill, for example. The hilarity!) Oh, and the things that offended or grossed me out the first time through? It's harder to receive a shock the second time around. Or maybe I'm feeling more freewheelingly perverse, or at least less uptight these days? Meh, it's probably the former. I'm shaking my head like a mother with a trouble teenager, indulgent and also totally beat, saying, "Well! Pynchon will be Pynchon!! What're you going to do?!?"




All of which frees me up some to enjoy his language, which is vigorous, and weird, and sometimes really amazing. Maybe that's one of the reasons he's hard to read, that he almost never falls back on conventions for describing things (or even for WAYS of describing things?)? Also the colors are very intense. I feel as though I'm walking through a painting, where even the shades of waste and back-lot nothingness are rich, layered on lusciously with a palette knife. Vivid, we could just say, in all kinds of ways & leave it at that.

Anyway, the book's sitting over there, open, and I'm actually looking forward to picking it up and reading a little before bed, which is way better than I'd expected to feel about it.

Also Christmas is over. I like Christmas a lot but I've become such an adult about it, it's terrible. Distracted, blase. A nuclear-family Christmas in the country. Well, it was a good rest and I've never seen such a fine-looking tree. It was rainy and spitty and an indifferent temperature all day, cold-ish but not truly cold. So basically it was how I imagine England to have been, circa nuclear families sitting in their more or less isolated spots in the country, driving away the weather with fire and card games (we played bridge, not well but we liked it) and novels and cups of tea.

Yeah it was a pretty good life there for a few days. I call total bullcrap on having to go back to work tomorrow.

What a Ridonkulous Week!

It's too hot in the office. It's too hot inside my black turtleneck. There are exactly four people here (in the office, not in the turtleneck). I'm drinking a beer (well, it's FRIDAY) and I think that all this screen time has messed my eyes up.

Ever go through a phase where you really like music? I'm in one of those right now. I'm in awe at the perspicacity of le grand 'shuffle' setting on the iPod. I'm in love with tabbed browsing. I'm doing a lot of things at once, and digging it.

Shipped about thirty pounds of 400 Words orders today. Fixed the problem with the PayPal shopping cart. Sent two copies to this book editor (book editor!?!? whoa!) who's interested enough to have asked for them.

Last night I went to meet Gavin and some of his other friends at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark's (you know, the place where the bartender is elderly and grubby and Parkinsonian enough to break your heart and also make you hope he doesn't touch the straw in your drink, much). And as I was catching Gavin up on the news, he put his finger on a thing about New York: it's really easy to snap back between love and ambivalence with this place. Lately I've been walking around in an almost manic cloud of success on the project front, the coming holidays, who knows, but I catch myself wanting to shout "I love you!" to the dude at the deli, or after work I want to just walk and walk through the streets, making eye contact, checking out buildings, just taking it all in. And in this context it's hard to believe that just a month ago I was kind of like 'eh.' At least Gavin conffirms it's not just me. New York can be moloch or it can be a chorus line. And it seems that it's usually one or the other more than it's anything in between.

Anyway so I'm about to get on my overpriced but beloved Amtrak (note to Amtrak: do NOT make me regret having just called you beloved, please, say with hour-long delays or anything) and go home. I am really looking forward to having a few days to rest or "rest", and breathe fresh air in the country, and start thinking about next year.

Balls.

I am tired of tea. I wish that there were a drink that were like tea, but different.

I’m tired of the flavored-water-ness of it. Maybe I am just tired.

I’m listening to Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” album and feeling a little bit disappointed because, earlier today, I found out that although I was one of only two people in the final running for the cushiest freelance writing-related type gig I have ever heard of in my life, the powers that be decided to give it to the other person.

Not, perhaps, the most honorable gig. But certainly the cushiest. Sigh.

I know, for these next couple of months I gotta knuckle under and get this thesis into defensible shape. But after that…what’s going to happen to me? I’m ready to at least think about a change.

I want to do more writing and be more self-directed (but not lonely and unstructured—I’ve been there and done that, thank you). I have this lit mag I do. I have this idea for this book I’d like to write. I have another thing or two in the can.

It’s just not entirely clear how to arrange these pieces into a life that includes enough money and enough human companionship and just, you know, feels right. I guess I have some time to figure it out.

Time I won’t be spending working on the CUSHIEST WRITING-TYPE GIG EVER.

I will forthwith soothe myself with this adorable public-domain image of owls.

December: I'm Into It.

Thank goodness. Winter's here; it's cold and real and seasonally appropriate. The sunshine is hard and clean; the moon is bright like someone has gone at the sky with a paper towel dabbed in Windex.

And my cough is flaring up again, and I'm going to sleep.

Maybe I'll dream about foxes, owls, bears and elk. And mice and chipmunks. Or even some beavers or muskrats or plain ol' deer. For some reason not consciously available, I have been thinking about animals more than usual lately. Not any ideas in particular. Just...thinking of them.

I Wish That This Particular Sunday Would Go On Forever

...and instead, it's already over.

I also wish that the iceberg of mucus in my chest would hurry up and melt, or else solidify and kill me. The hoarse sexy voice phase of the cold was cool, the inadvertent guffaw-coughing stage I'm in right now has way less to recommend it.

The parties (400 Words launch on Wednesday, housewarming in the apartment last night) have left me feeling good. I like a party. I like a show. Yeah, it really feels like the holidays now. I even wrote a few Christmas cards today to prove it.

Day spent close to home, lounging in the sunny armchair, going to the grocery store, making up a big mess of coq au vin, doing some things that had to be done, spending some time just zoning out. I felt unusually mellow (perhaps it was the Robuitussin) and nostalgic around quarter of five in the late-afternoon light as I walked to the store (doubtless it was the classic late-fall weather), and my only complaint is that it went by too damn fast.

Challenge for the upcoming week includes: write to Cornell professors and the department secretary and figure out what, exactly, I need to accomplish before my thesis defense on February 6. I'm saying it here just to get it through my head: in a life with too many side projects, the thesis needs to wear the crown for the next couple of months. I think I will need to re-read Gravity's Rainbow, write five or so more pages, and then submit the document to the department in some kind of appropriately-formatted way. And then there's the issue of what kinds of questions the committee will lob at me during the I'm-not-sure-how-long-it-is-actually oral defense. Gulp.

I guess I will need to put poor 400 Words on auto-pilot for a while, and make peace with the idea of not getting serious about getting back in shape for a few more months, either.

Focus is a real goddammer, sometimes.