Story Idea: the ol' f ⊕ f

Quick story idea: a fantasy trilogy called "Fight or Flight." First book is "Fight," wherein, immediately, a crown prince type character is ambushed by a potential usurper. The rest of the book is a study of the culture in the grips of a civil war. Epic war fantasy type stuff, ala Game of Thrones. 

 Book 2 is "Flight." Same starting point, but instead of responding by raising his own army, the crown prince type goes on the run. Instead of the war fantasy, the operative mode is the thriller novel, with the prince one step ahead of his pursuers. This time around, though, I play with the readers' knowledge of the first book, confounding it in some places, allowing them to predict events in others, by using the same cast of characters, but to different effect. Also include some revelations that shed new light on motivations in book 1. Both books end, somewhat anticlimatically, for a fantasy book, in tragedy. 

The third book is "Or....?". There's a number of different approaches for this one. One would be to take literally, a number of different approaches, sketching out a plethora of alternatives for crown prince beyond those explored in the first two books, and using the readers' knowledge of the fictional world derived from the other two books to fill in the blanks. Or stretch out a single one, that deliberately incorporates parts of one and two. The real question is how far to make explicit the overall model in the last run. Should the narrator play coy about the repeated structure, or is that the point where they nod conspiratorially to the reader? Could the character be made aware of "the multiverse" without it feeling too hackneyed?

The idea of multiple time lines is pretty common in science fiction, and the retellings of such universes is pretty old hat--I mean, we've even got the "evil = beard" star trek cliche. I think it's a little more rare in fantasy. The closest is the "this story has many tellings" that you get through repeated variations on fairy tales and the like, or the approach where the fantasy world is deliberately constructed as a videogame, and is thus open to restarting and replaying with different approaches. (Vivian Van Velde's books are my childhood go-to for that sort of thing, though others have utilized it as well.) I guess Robert Jordan does it too, in some of the earlier Wheel of Time books, though not to this degree.  All right, so it's a hack idea. I still think it would be a fun exercise in plotting. The trick would be to engage the reader in such a way that the repetition is a feature, not a bug. 

Anyway, just an idea to toss out there. But it's mine, dammit, and if any of youse steals it... Well, then I'll have to think of a follow-up.

Later days.

Academics writing fiction: yea or nay?

I feel like taking a blog day--a day where I just write a bunch of posts, and feel like I achieved something creatively. Or something. At this point of the day, it's probably going to turn into just one post, so I'll shout out the idea for the others and hope I get back to them some day: A series of Book Triads to catch up on my book review backlog! A description of what I thought about Uncharted! A post on modular story telling in Dragon Age, vs. the more linear JRPG!

To get to this post,  I've noticed that when I get really into a book, my writing actually takes on a bit of the author's style; I start thinking of weird puns when I'm reading Spider Robinson, and really depressing fantasy situations when I read Stephen Donaldson, for example. Back when I was doing creative writing on a regular basis, that bothered me--how much of what I was writing was my own ideas, and how much was just me aping someone else's style. I imagine I go so far as to start thinking in that writing style, just a bit. In that sense, the whole thing can be explained away in terms of technics and epiphylogenesis, that we are changed by the tools we're using, and books are just another possible tool through which that change occurs. You could even push that idea further, and argue that

The reason I bring all that up is that I certainly feel as if, for the moment, I'm writing not another author's voice, but in a character's voice, the lead of Jo Walton's "Among Others"--very reserved, formal, and matter-of-fact, but with a clear passion for what she's (I'm?) talking about. I was certain going into the book that Walton was an academic sci/fi fantasy writer, and I had a whole section lined up where I'd discuss the role of the academic who writes fiction on the side, which it turns out is not the case at all. Well, I'm going to do that anyway, since that's what I want to talk about today. It's been in my mind for a while, going at least as far back to a recent announcement that a professor in my English department, has released her own fantasy book, The Stone Boatmen, by Sarah Tolmie. I haven't read it yet, to be honest, but from what I know about Tolmie's work, it'll certainly be a book full of ideas worth reading.

The English academic turned writer fits with a larger category of critics who try their hands at whatever thing they are criticizing. It happens often enough that it's a bit of a trope, and it leads to the stereotype that the critic is someone who failed at the art, and so criticizes others. I know of plenty of people who started blogs on comic books, then went on to write their own; plenty of game journalists who went on to write videogames. In fact, regarding games in particular, there's an enormous pressure for academics to not just write about games but to make their own--I should know, because I usually feel like I'm under it, being ground away.

The trick behind academics writing fiction is that it's a shift in audience. It's hard to go from writing to a select, jargon-heavy, elite (and we have gone to great lengths to make ourselves appear elite) specialization to writing for the mass market. There's a push to be innovative, to craft something that reflects our theories and revitalizes the genre, and sometimes, the big ideas get in the way of the story at hand. The best example I can think of is a YA fantasy book that I can't remember the title of, but remember it was written by a professor of linguistics, and showed it too, as the syntax was very different from the usual subject-predicate that English abides by. It was a neat idea, but since the thoughts and action were written in more straight forward English, I found myself skipping past the dialogue, which almost never happens under my particular reading style.

There's plenty of examples of doing it right as well, of course.The obvious Canadian example is Margaret Atwood, who has made quite a name and reputation of herself writing a brand of Canadian lit theory as well as sci-fi and other genres.My favorite example is China Mieville, though his PhD is in political studies (specifically, International Relations, with a dissertation on Marxism and international law); his fantasy writing is chock full of ideas that aren't really found anywhere else in fantasy (especially when he started writing), but are still good fantasy stories. And of course, there's a whole branch of English studies devoted to teaching writing, to mass market and otherwise. We call it "creative writing." That's not quite what I'm talking about though--rather than people who have spent their lives training themselves and others to write for any audience, I'm thinking of the professor who spent their life studying something like gender in the romance fiction genre, then woke up one day and thought "you know, I could do that."

I wish I could think of more examples of what I'm talking about. I know Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" is highly acclaimed, but I could never finish it; a parody of conspiracy theory thrillers turns into everything I hate about conspiracy theory thrillers very quickly, and I never had the time or patience to stick around and see if turned into anything else. I know Julia Kristeva has written detective fiction, and I occasionally search for a translated copy with a sort of fascinated terror. I know a lot of drama professors have written plays and star in other performances (I think it's much more of a requirement for them, and it might help my game-phobia to think of the pressure in game studies in the same light) and people like Tomson Highway have done a lot of great work in that regard, but that's again drifting from target.

The point I'm trying to make, and I'm less sure of now, since I don't really have a lot of evidence to back it up, is that fantasy and sci-fi academic authors have a bit of an easier time spinning out fiction that actually works as a story than other academic writers. I think it's because both genres are about the ideas over the characters a bit more than fiction traditionally tends to be, and lend themselves to weird expression in that regard. I also think that the traditional denigration of fantasy and sci-fi as lower forms of fiction work in their favor, in that there's less pressure to do something that's "high literature," and the respective writers feel more free to just tell a story of their liking.

Long time readers are free to call BS on that theory, given my own self-interest, that I've written my own fantasy novel that lingers on the digital shelf, to be revisited and starred at longingly once a year, then routinely rejected by agents and publishers alike without a reading. My own story isn't particularly academic or high concept fantasy--in fact, magic is barely involved at all, to the point where it's more a character study than anything else (much like Walton's book, come to think of it, albeit with a much more traditionally fantasy scope in turns of story progression). I like to think there's room, then, for the fantasy-based academic writer. In a way, the connection makes my relative failure in each seem somehow more acceptable.

My rationalizations are legion.

Later Days.

Space paths untaken

A friend forwarded an opportunity to me, recently.  It's a writer's retreat out of an organization called Sage Hill.  Specifically, she thought I might be interested in their weeklong science fiction writing workshop, headed by sci-fi writer Spider Robinson.  And I was.  First, Sage Hill is a great organization, and their Writing Experience has been career-altering for a number of friends of mine.  (If you're interested in that sort of thing yourself, I'd recommend checking them out: http://www.sagehillwriting.ca/.) Second, to work with Spider Robinson would be amazing.  He's probably my favorite science fiction writer (Category: fictionalized novels and/or living) and I would absolutely love to have some one-on-one time with him.  Finally, writing is a passion of mine, as you've hopefully guessed by now--you don't reach 600+ blogposts doing something you don't want to do.  A chance to move professionally with writing is a dream of mine, one that I've put away for the slightly (very slightly) more practical dream of the related passion of scholarship.  It's not just an opportunity; it's a huge opportunity.

I decided not to apply.

Twin Powers Prologue IV

Part I here.
Part II here.
Part III here.

Finally, it was Jon who decided the matter for him. His little brother trotted up to him, face red with exertion. He was so exhausted by his journey that it was several seconds before he was ready to speak. Honestly, thought Josen, now what was the point of that? He hurried as fast as he could so he could tell me what time it was, and now he’s so warn out he can't tell me a damned thing. If he didn't have the family nose, I'd swear Mother had been guilty of infidelity. "It's been five hours now, brother," Jon panted, finally. He sank to the floor, and prostrated himself, still breathing heavily.

Josen rolled his eyes. There went another shred of family pride. Jon might be young, but that was no excuse for deliberately making oneself lose face. It struck Josen as quintessentially unfair that he, the member of his family that actually deserved some modicum of respect, had been put in a situation where any course of action would make him look like an idiot, whereas his brother seemed to go out of his way to don a jester's—

And just like that, Josen's course of action was made clear. "Excellent work, Jon," he said. He put his hand out and helped Jon to his feet. "Please go in and inform Lord Aginor of that fact."

Jon was taken aback, but he knew better than to ask questions. "All—all right." He walked over the oak door, opening it with great effort. Josen averted his eyes and took a prudent step backward, remaining just outside the line of sight of anyone who just happened to be standing by the door. I'm sorry, milord, Jon must have misunderstood me. I couldn’t stop him. Youthful exuberance, I'm afraid. You understand.

"Lord Aginor?" Jon called, peering around the corner of the door. "Are you— Oh."

"What is it, Jon?" asked Josen sharply. Some sort of edge had come into Jon's voice, and it was an edge far sharper than just a boy who had stumbled in on a coupling.

"Oh. Oh. Oh." Jon stood still for a moment then let the door shut. He pushed past Josen and ran down the corridor, at a pace even greater than the one when he arrived. The boy never looked back.

"Jon! Get back here this instant!" Seeing that his brother had no intention of heeding him, Josen strode towards the door. He paused before opening the door, hesitating briefly. Oh, come on, he told himself. How bad can it possibly be?

As soon as he entered, Josen was instantly assaulted with that ridiculous perfume that Lady Caitlin, for some obscure reason, had decided was essential to the proper upkeep of a bedchamber. A woman must always smell like a woman, as she put it. Privately, Jon was certain she did it purely because she knew that prolonged exposure to the stench put him into a sneezing fit, and she enjoyed watching him suffer.

Really, even if they did hate each other, she and Aginor were, in many ways, very much alike.

After anticipating something horrible enough to justify his brother’s actions, the first sight that caught Josen’s rapidly watering eyes was so mundane he nearly laughed aloud. The kitchen cat was on the floor, lapping up a pool of wine that had been spilt. God only knew how it had gotten in, but Josen took silent consolation that even Aginor couldn’t control its peregrinations. The wretched thing was obviously enjoying itself, emitting a surprisingly loud purr as it continuously twitched its tail from side to side. He idly kicked it away and it darted out of the room, delivering a parting hiss as it went. Jon must have seen the wine and assumed it was blood, he reasoned. He bent down and put a finger into the spillage and frowned. It was too thick, and too warm. Dear God, it is blood. With that knowledge came another sudden realization that underneath the putrid perfume lay another scent, the peculiar mingling of freshly spilt blood and freshly spilt bowels that followed the recently dead. It was a smell that Josen had not experienced first hand in quite some time—outside of his nightmares, at least. He followed the pool of blood back to its source, and saw what really should have been the first thing he noticed when he entered the bedchamber. Lady Caitlin sat on a chair next to the window, her arms wrapped around the pummel of a sword that was plunged into her stomach, all the way up to the hilt. At her feet lay the lord Aginor, his head twisted at such a great angle that it was clear his neck had been broken.

For a long moment, Josen gaped at the corpses of his former lord and lady, his mind racing with possibilities. "Well," he said, finally.

"This changes everything."

And that's the prologue. If anyone wants to see the full thing, get in touch.

Later Days.

Twin Powers Prologue III

Part I here.
Part II here.

It was quite a puzzle, and after the brief moment stretched into the first brief hour, Josen added to the puzzle his speculations on exactly what was going on behind the closed door. Eavesdropping, of course, was out of the question, as an action far below the position of a steward, and the oak door was too thick to hear anything through anyway. The obvious answer to what was going on was, well, obvious: a lord returning home to his admittedly still attractive wife after a long absence. That was certainly the assumption a majority of the manor's population was adopting, judging from first the snickers delivered by passer-bys, accompanied as time passed on, raised eyebrows on account of their lord's apparent prowess. Josen, for his part, snickered and raised his eyebrows right back, but inside he was seething. Idiots. They were all so stupid. One abrupt arrival and suddenly they were all willing to throw out everything they knew their rulers just so they could get in a few good chuckles and knowing nudges. And Josen had no choice to grin and nod. And wait.
It was all so humiliating. Josen had heard that in other castles, the lords purposefully told their stewards to wait outside the privies for them. The intent behind such an action was clear. The ruler was asserting his authority by impressing upon his servant the latter's utter lack of importance. In Josen's case, Aginor was sending him an message even more pointed: My wife is a vapid, foolish creature with limited use at best. I have spent years avoiding her, and she clearly means nothing to me. Now wait outside this door and do nothing while I fuck her. It didn’t matter that Josen himself was nearly certain that no fucking was actually taking place. What mattered was that everyone else thought there was. With one deliberate act, Aginor was wiping away every vestige of authority Josen ever had, removing every pretension of status Josen held in the eyes of the rest of the manor. And it was deliberate; there was no doubt about that. Sometimes Aginor's actions seemed petty, sometimes downright foolish, but they were always deliberate. If Aginor wanted Josen to stand outside while the rest of castle thought he was swiving his wife, then he had very definitely considered all the consequent events that would follow.
The question was, if Aginor wasn't bedding the Lady Caitlin, then what were they doing? If humiliating Josen was his sole concern, Josen had no illusions that Aginor could devise dozens of ways to do that without involving the woman the lord so studiously avoided. It had to be connected to their recent strange behavior, but beyond that, Josen couldn't fathom what it could be. Again, as he had several times in the past hours, he considered going in. After all, he argued mentally, he was the steward. If the two were discussing matters that were important enough to affect the entire manor, then he had a right, a responsibility, to be present. And if whatever they were discussing wasn't that important, well, then it didn't matter if he interrupted. Then he imagined Aginor's reaction to his intrusion. It would ultimately mean another damned reference that maybe Josen wasn't quite measuring up, that he was suffering from some sort of mental breakdown that rendered him incapable of serving as steward. By itself, the one transgression would be indicative of nothing, but they both knew that if some day caught Aginor's whim, he could trot out an entire list of bizzare actions on Josen's part, a catalog of strange acts more often or not prompted by Aginor's own manipulations, the combined sum of which would provide just enough justification to have him removed. Neither of them had ever explicitly made reference to this weight hovering over Josen, but they were both always aware of its presence—painfully aware, in Josen's case.
Besides, if he opened the door, he might walk in on them rutting.

Later Days.

Twin Powers Prologue II

Part I is here.

And as if his responsibilities as steward weren’t enough, Josen was also obliged to take over much of the more feminine upper crust duties, such as making sure the maids were properly doing their work. Such tasks were normally left to the lady of the house, but Lady Caitlin seemed disinclined to pursue such activities. Instead, she usually surrounded herself by those idiots that served as her ladies-in-waiting and idled away the days in sewing, or knitting, or some other useless activity. By all reports, the lady was almost completely silent during these sessions, remaining quiet while the women around her chatted endlessly. If someone who didn't know Lady Caitlin was to look at the situation, they might think she was pining for her long-absent husband—a belief that would last all of an instant once they learned of the true history behind the lord and lady of Aginor Manor.

It was no secret that Aginor and Caitlin were estranged; one needed to look no further than their courtship, an affair that brought the entire continent into conflict. Aginor had made arrangements with Caitlin’s father to marry her, but it seemed no one had bothered to ask the Lady Caitlin’s opinion of the betrothal. She ran off with the son of Lord Something-or-Other, and everything went rather downhill from there. The entire affair had ended only when Aginor almost literally wrenched Caitlin from the arms of her beloved, and, according to some accounts, wrenched the arms off as well. While Lady Caitlin never overtly displayed any sort of resentment towards Aginor, Josen thought it was impossible that she didn't feel some sort of hatred for the man who killed her first lover. And even putting aside the murder of one's true love, any affection Caitlin could foster for Aginor certainly wasn’t reciprocated. Aginor was not known as a caring individual, and for good reason. The idea that he could be warm and loving to anyone, even his wife, seemed as far-fetched a notion as meeting an affectionate mountain range. Their estrangement became even more pronounced after the birth of their children, the twin boys Trellis and Traenis. After that, Aginor seemed to hate being in the manor at all; that was when he began to ride in campaigns again, and rejoined the front lines. On his brief sojourns home, he and his wife avoided each other as much as possible.

An avoidance which made the current situation all the more peculiar. Josen had met Aginor's company, a small detachment that represented only a miniscule portion of Aginor’s entire force, at the manor gate. Josen was steadying himself to begin his report when Aginor brusquely told him to run ahead and tell Lady Caitlin he would meet with her in her bedchambers immediately after he had removed his riding gear, with the further instruction that Josen was to wait outside the door while they… talked. Well, that was what he said they'd be doing, at any rate. Lady Caitlin didn't seem the least bit surprised at her husband's sudden deviation from normal behavior; in fact she seemed almost—pleased at the prospect. While he was waiting for Aginor to finish with his horses—which had taken an exasperatingly long time—Josen took the opportunity to question both Caitlin's ladies-in-waiting and Aginor's soldiers. Both groups admitted that their respective masters had been acting strangely for the last month or so. In Aginor's case, this involved long hours of isolation from his men while conducting private meetings with strangers. In Caitlin's case, the newfound eccentricity was an almost manic increase in both appetite and energy, as if every experience was something new. It was probably no coincidence they both went through these changes at the same time, but how they managed to coordinate their transformations baffled Josen completely. Aginor had been on the battlefield the entire time, and nearly all communication between the castle and the outside world went directly through Josen. He knew without any doubt that no form of messages had passed between Caitlin and Aginor. So how did they manage to synchronize these changes from a distance of half a world?

Later Days.

Twin Powers Prologue I

We're going to try something a bit different. Recently, I mentioned to a friend of mine that I had a finished novel, and he asked if I'd send him a copy. So I dug through the archives, and blew off the electronic mothballs. And in doing so, I reminded myself that I'm still attached to this story. That I'm proud of it. That I've been thinking of it almost constantly for over a decade now. Thus, I thought, I should do something with it. And since I've got this public forum, I'd take it out, and run it through its paces. Over the next few days, then, I'll be posting the prologue of the story here on the blog--and maybe the first chapter, if there's any interest. I think I'll stick to about 500 word installments, to keep things manageable. If anyone wants to read more, contact me, and I'll hook you up with the full version. And if not... well, at least it got one more shot at the light of day.

Twin Powers

Prologue

1433

Spring

It was four hours now.

Josen knew precisely how long he had been standing in front of Lord Aginor's bedchambers, waiting. He knew because he had sent his little brother Jon to watch the grandfather clock in Aginor's study, and report to him every hour. Four hours, and Aginor's promise that he would return to his steward immediately "after a brief word with Lady Caitlin" was beginning to ring a little hollow. The stiffness in his legs made Josen again consider sending someone to fetch him a chair, or go for a brief walk, or leave entirely, and again he decided against any such course of action. He'd be damned if Aginor came out and saw him shirking his duty. Oh, the lord would never say anything, not over such a trivial matter, he’d just raise an eyebrow and give that irritating look of his, and an hour or so later make some sort of comment about Josen's duties perhaps being a little too hard on him. And Josen would grit his and offer some sort of congenial denial ignored by Aginor before it left his mouth. And the edges of Aginor’s own mouth would turn upward in the smallest way imaginable, a change so indiscernible that anyone who actually identified it as a smirk would be accused of being far too self-conscious, far too suspicious and—Josen was certain—completely right.

So instead, Josen remained rooted to the spot, grimly staring at the door in front of him. More than anyone else in the manor—with the possible exception of Lady Caitlin herself--he hated Aginor's sporadic visits home from the warfront. Aginor had chosen him to act as steward in his absence, under the official fiction that Josen was merely the advisor to his heir, Traenis Aginor the twenty-third. In reality, Traenis Aginor the twenty-third was four years old, occasionally burst into tears for no apparent reason, and had a tendency to walk into walls if he wasn't paying attention. For all intents and purposes, Josen ran Aginor Manor.

Or rather, he ran it while Aginor was away. Whenever the lord returned, he insisted on taking the reins of office for himself, usually staying just long enough to throw the order and state that Josen had so carefully crafted into chaos before whisking himself back to the battle against the rebels. And he always left one big mess behind for Josen to clean up. The simple truth was that Aginor had no skill in running a household. While he was generally known to be without peer when it came to strategy and tactics on the battlefield—or, at least, so he had been when he was younger; rumors trickling in from the frontline suggested that the lord was no longer quite as peerless as he used to be—years of experience in the art of warfare translated into a complete lack of understanding in all things domestic. Every time, without fail, he listened to Josen's report—his entire report, the man insisted on knowing every minute detail, from who was to be the new master-at-arms to how much seasoning the cooks were putting on the roast beef—and afterwards, he always insisted on making ridiculously minor changes that inevitably proved nearly impossible to implement, a failure that Josen would inevitably get blamed for at the next meeting. Josen had taken to getting roaring drunk after their little "household campaigns", as Aginor persisted in called them, and it was taking some serious will power on the steward's part to avoid imbibing beforehand as well.

Later Days.

My writing isn't constrained, it's tortuous.

This might wind up being a long 'un. To give you a taste of what you're in for, and let you judge whether you should bail now, here's some of the bullet points: blogging ethics, constrained writing, Christian Bök, installation art, the TV show Community, cliched sayings, consumer good vs. creative work, academia, and student projects. (Good God, am I writing a blog post or a dissertation chapter?)

Still here? Good. I had a conversation with two friends today about constrained writing, writing wherein the author deliberately puts some sort of restriction on the writing. And by "had a conversation" I mean, I walked in on them discussing the issue, and quickly picked a side. Our discussion went on for a bit, but it wasn't until I went for a run a little while later that what I should have said came to mind.

You may have noticed that I don't summarize conversations I had with friends very often here--or if I do, it's a deliberately one-sided account that minimizes everyone else's participation. That one-sidedness is only mostly because of my tremendous ego. The other part is that I feel that I don't have any right to speak for others, even in summary--at least, not in a public, semi-permanent forum like this blog. That puts me in a bit of a conundrum when I get into a discussion I want to blog about. If I was being really fair, I'd probably take these ideas back to the friends in question, we'd hash out some concept over a long discussion, agree to write the blog post together, and slowly let it collapse due to the difficulty in coordinating for such a length of time for such a minor result. Instead, I opted for expediency. I'm stretching my non-involvement of others rule to its limits here, and I acknowledge that, and apologize in advance for misrepresenting anyone. (It's also ironic, for reasons that will become apparent later, that I'm testing limits with this post. But more on that later.)

Constrained writing--and here's my first paraphrasing, since it was the term one of the friends came up with--is simply when an author places some sort of constraint on themselves in their writing. It could be that short story Carol Shields does where she doesn't use the letter "e." It could be something as simple as a poem where every other line rhymes. The best example, I think, is another one purloined from the original conversation: Christian Bök's Eunoia, a book of poetry wherein each of the five chapters is composed of poems whose words contain only one of the five vowels. So the "e" chapter has a lot of words like "eke" and "seen" and so forth. And Bök places other rules on himself("borrowed," this time, from Wikipedia):
Each of the chapters must refer to the art of writing.
Each of the chapters have "to describe a culinary banquet, a prurient debauch, a pastoral tableau and a nautical voyage."
All the sentences have to have an "accent internal rhyme through the use of syntactical parallelism."
The text has to include as many possible words in it as it can.
The text must avoid repeating words as much as possible.
The letter "Y" is to be avoided.

Bok's book is perfect, because it encapsulates both sides of the argument: the obvious challenge of the endeavor, and seeming pointlessness of it. And that, paraphrasing villainously, was my other friend's argument against constrained writing, one that I agreed with: at the end of the day, it seems to fail the question of "why bother?". You place all these rules and restrictions--albeit very interesting rules and restrictions--on the writing process, and the result is a subpar poem that doesn't make a lot of sense.

When I got thinking more and more about it, I realized that my issue with the constrained poetry was similar to my issue with nonrepresentational art, mostly in terms of installation art, but also abstract as well (and if the reference to abstract makes you think I'm basing this on the chapter from the W. J. T. Mitchell book I read a little while ago, you wouldn't be far off.). Namely, that even if the end result is interesting, and I'll fully acknowledge that installation art can come up with some pretty damn interesting end results, the original idea is more interesting to me than than those results. With Eunoia, for example, the poems are mildly amusing, but ultimately rather banal. It's the original idea and constraints that are worth talking about. Why bother, then, with the final product, if it's just a mediocre, pale instantiation? Why not leave an interesting thought experiment as an interesting thought experiment?

Well, you can't put a thought experiment in a gallery, for one thing--or show it on TV. I think that's one of the albatrosses that were weighing on the neck of the show formerly known as Community. It had clever ideas. It had more clever ideas than it knew what to do with (or, more importantly, than the audience knew what to do with). Create a flashback episode filled with flashbacks that never happened? Clever idea. Do an episode where there's a conspiracy theory about the class on conspiracy theory? Clever idea. Construct an episode around an elaborate mash-up of Pulp Fiction and My Dinner with Andre that uses Cougar Town as the basis of a discussion of what it means to be a genuine human? That's so clever you're going to need an extra bucket to mop up the cleverness that's slopping over the side. And that's the problem. The show is so busy with its high concepts sometimes that it forgets to put similar effort into the execution. (Compare it to Modern Family, which has the opposite problem--the high quality writing and cast performances have to do everything they can to distract the audience from the fact that the actual plots are derivative, utterly cliche, and tired.) And as much as I love this show--and I do love it, every Cougar Town bit of it--I have to admit that, sometimes, its big idea is the main attraction, and the episode itself should have stayed at home.

So the direction I appear to be flailing toward, then, is keep the idea and lose the product. But that equation is missing an important step, maybe the most step. To return to the original discussion, the pro-constraint friend argued that by placing such constraints on language, you push it to its limits, and it's at the limits that things get interesting. I agree with this wholeheartedly. When I've written under constraints, whether it's creative writing (thanks NaNoWriMo) or poetry or whatever, the process is infinitely rewarding. And I imagine it's the same for the constrained writers, the poets, the installation artists, all the way down to Community's noble cast and crew. The process is the most important part of a constrained work, or perhaps any work. Creation under such restrictive conditions becomes a process of personal revelation and amazement--at least, for the artist.

For the audience, the response can range from a similar fascination (especially if you're familiar with the artist, the idea, and the method), to a sort of confused boredom, to, at worst, a feeling that you're being excluded. There's nothing quite so unfunny as a joke you think might be on you. And that's a problem, one that goes all the way from modernist art to the Neilsen demographics: sometimes, the work of art seems like nothing but a joke that you're not in on. How good is a poem from Eunoia if you don't have the list of constraints he's operating from? To me, the most interesting part of these constrained, experimental practices isn't the final product, but the process and emotional responses that lead to it. I'd much rather watch a documentary on Jackson Pollock than go to one of his galleries.

For what it's worth, I think one of the best solutions, in the classroom, at least, to the process/product problem is the one routinely exercised by a professor I took a course from in the first year of my doctorate. He has his students do their final project, and encourages them to be creative and innovative--that is, baffling, as the end result often winds up being. But he also has them write an essay explaining both the project and the process of creating the project, and how both sprang from and contributed to an overarching idea. If po-mo artists had to stand next to their work and cite sources, I'd be a lot happier. (This method particularly fails when it comes to Community, I'll admit, unless you happen to be a viewer with Joel McHale on speed dial.)

But there's one more side of this process-product-constrained writing thing I want to consider. I'm sure everyone here's familiar with the saying "It's not the destination, it's the journey." The thing is, for most people, after a day's work, they don't give a brass monkey about the journey(ie. process); they want the destination (product), thanks. There's a whole heap of problems with this view, as you can sweep a lot of inhuman practices under the rug by ignoring how a product gets to the hands of the consumer. But in a mass production society, it's the product that matters. Two and Half Men is a terrible, terrible show, but it is what is says on the tin: it's a comedy. Make 22 episodes a year, run it until it becomes completely unprofitable, then milk it in syndication for another five years. Put it to pasture for a few more, and you can bring it back out--as retro nostalgia. A well marketed mass-produced television product never dies, it just temporarily depreciates.

And here, if anywhere, is the place to champion constrained writing and all its ilk and brethren. Because if there's anything constrained writing needs to be, it's unique. Once it's reached the point of convention, it ceases to be constraint at all and becomes another genre. Constrained writing's uniqueness, however, is not in the final product, as a perusal of my personal scapegoat Bok will tell you. It comes from the big idea, and it comes from the process of making that idea from something abstract to something tangible. The process is the best part, and it's where installation art meets folk art, where Community meets stand-up.

And that's not to say that my divisions are absolute either--there's usually at least a glimmer of interesting nuggets even in the most soulless of corporate products, and constrained writing fits into mass economy just like everything else. Sometimes I want a box of Kraft Dinner, and sometimes I want a meal I made from scratch (okay, with me personally, the weight's on the former's side, but the metaphor stands.) To grossly paraphrase my friend's early point, the interesting stuff is found when you push something to its limits, but the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

And as for constraints--I bet you didn't realize this, but I wrote a WHOLE POST WITHOUT USING FRENCH! It's true! Sacre bleu!

....Awwwwww nuts.

Later Days.

The Collection, of course, would be called "Good Grief."

Back when I was a starry-eyed MA with hopes and dreams a non-expanding waist line, I dabbled in creative writing. God help me, I dabbled in poetry. Particularly, I had an idea that I'd do a collection of poems that was based on reflections on the characters from Peanuts. I only finished two poems (sadly, the world will never hear the wonder of "I Am the Pig Pen.). One is titled "The Little Red-Haired Woman" and the other I'm going to share today. I'd like to put some heavy caveats in front: first, I really don't get poetry, generally, and I think this reflects that. Second, it really works better as a spoken poem, when I can add some inflection and emphasis. And third, I'm really very bad at poetry. And with that...


I Love Lucy
Lucy is a bad sister.
She berates her brothers’ blankets and knocks over their blocks.
She gives orders that Must Not Be Denied.
She plays the big sister card so often, it’s the only one in the deck.
Years from now, Lucy is the sister you only see at weddings and funerals.

Lucy is a bad friend.
She misses the catch, and makes excuses.
She takes your money, and gives bad advice.
She always pulls the ball away.
Lucy is the friend you can’t afford to trust.

Lucy is a bad person.
She kicks dogs and picks on children.
She is bossy and crabby and mean.
She is pride without humility.
Lucy is the devil before the fall.

But every day, after Lucy mocks her brothers,
after Lucy ridicules her friends,
after Lucy alienates herself,
She goes to a man with a piano and asks him to love her
more than his music.

And she knows.
She knows what the answer will be,
Better than she knows herself.
Every day, Lucy’s heart is broken.
And every day,
This creature of hate and anger and rage and fear
And jealousy and arrogance and human
goes home
and dreams of someone who will not dream of her.


It's sort of a clumsy ending, but... eh. Not the worst thing I've done.

Later Days.

At least we can always agree that Sam is, indeed, a "Stupid, fat hobbit."

I'm on campus today for a graduate students association meeting that's in an hour and a half. So rather than spend that time doing anything useful, I'm doing a blog post.

More specifically, I'm doing a blog post that continues a discussion my roommate and i had over the weekend. He was watching the extended edition of The Two Towers, the second Lord of the Rings movie. And I was watching it as well, since doing so beat getting angrier at the DS game 999 for my inability to find an ending wherein I am not hacked to death by a teenager. (And believe me, you don't know angry until you've yelled "Goddammit, we talked through your homicidal tendencies at Door 6!" at a fictional videogame character.) We discussed various elements of the narrative, including the plausibility of shield surfing and Sam's general surly attitude, but it was the character of Haldir that really proved to be the dividing ground. Haldir, for the Tolkien afficiandoes in the audience, is the elf who guides the Fellowship to Lorien. (It's technically Lórien, but I'll be mentioning it a few times, and the inclusion of accents in Bloggger is kind of iffy, so...) in book 1. In the movies, his role is expanded, as he also appears in the second film to lead a battalion of elves to their deaths at the battle of Helm's Deep. (Yes, spoiler, but it's been 9 years; I hardly think I'm to blame if you haven't seen it by this point.)

Our argument centered around the elf's characterization: my roommate claims he is a badass, whereas I argue that he is, by and large, merely an asshole. (Yes, it's a heavily ass-oriented argument. The house is nothing but mid-twenties males, and our rhetoric reflects that demographic base.) He points to Haldir's heroic death, his daring in battle, his casual racism towards Gimli.

My evidence: His casual racism towards Gimli: "The Dwarf breathes so loud we could have shot him in the dark."
His ability to state the obvious: "(to Frodo) You bring great evil with you."
And, most of all, the way the other elves treat him. To whit:
By the time he appears at Helm's Deep, we've already seen that the rest of the Elves are packing up shop. Whether the Fellowship ultimately succeeds or not, they are not sticking around. Whether it's a World of Man or all-Sauron, all the time, they know they don't want to be a part of their trainwreck. So they're packing up their civilization, they're busting out their favorite traveling lanterns...



...and they're getting the hell out of Dodge.

Now, imagine you're gearing your entire civilization up for an extended ocean voyage. I'd imagine you'd have to be pretty careful about the travel arrangements. Sure, you want to be well-stocked with everything you need to restart society, and you want enough food to get you from point A to point B, but you'd also be careful about exactly who is going with you on your boat. You want to be mindful of people's personalities, about who is best suited to accompany whom, and who can't be seated with Aunt Margaret because of that thing she said three centuries ago about Our Sally dating a hobbit. And don't think that the Elves are above this sort of petty bickering; if Haldir's previous comments are any indication, immortality just means you have that much more time to really nurse those grudges. And at the same time, while you're thinking about who you don't want to sit next to, you also want to consider the ultimate party line-up. You want to get a place with your society's best story tellers, the greatest conversationalists, the funnest drinking buddies. It's all about priorities, really.

And where does Haldir rate on this complex social ranking? While everyone else is getting ready to move and picking ship buddies, he's sent with a small squadron of other undesirables to honor a hundred year old treaty with a group of people the Elves will never be associating with again by participating in a suicide mission.

I imagine the decision to send Haldir was the Elfish equivalent of picking sides for a baseball team. Once you've cycled through the good players, the argument focuses on who gets the weird kid.

"All right, fine, I'll take the guy with halitosis, but then you've got to get the elf with that bad gas."
"All right. Maybe we can balance him out with an oat diet. So who's left... uh..."
"Well, there's... Haldir."
"Oh, well, you... you can have Haldir. That's... that's my gift. To you."
"Yeah, thanks. How... generous. But I couldn't... couldn't possibly deprive you. Of his company. Which would be a deprivation."
"Oh, but I insist. And... um... I'll--I'll also throw in this dwarf mail. And a bit of hobbit pipe weed."
"Dude, there is not enough hobbit pipe weed in all of Middle Earth to make me let that guy's ass on my ship." (Elves too have an anal fixation. Little known fact.)
"Honestly, if he's there, is really even a Second Eden at all?"
"Ugh. I know. He does that... thing, when he talks. Smacks his lips. It's like a fish is trying to bob for apples, or some damn thing. Tell you what--why don't we send him on the... "special mission"?"
"Yes... the 'special mission.' And if he comes back..."
"If he comes back, fish-lips can swim his way west."

Haldir: a guy that's such a big asshole that his own people would rather send him on a suicide mission than be alone with him on a boat.

Later Days.

Plan B

Well, after the usual two posts, I guess it's time to address what I've seen, done, and had done to me during my hiatus. We'll start with the last: the oral defense of my primary comprehensive examination in multimedia. I went into the defense with a plan:

Despite months of preparation, I would would be unmistakably flustered during the defense. This defense would become increasingly noticeable to the examining professors, as my answers became more and more incoherent, unintelligible, and bizarrely critical of Canada's foreign policy. In the end, they would have no choice but to fail my defense. Under the University of Blank's English Department's policy, I would have five months to prepare for a second attempt. Though I study almost constantly, my confidence is shattered, and further fractured through a series of nervous breakdowns. The actual defense is even more disastrous than the first, as I descend into entirely undecipherable nonsense, except for one long passage in which I insult my examiner's credentials, values, and ancestorial lineage.

At this point, I will be asked to leave the program. After failing to find employment in the Ontario area, I move back to Saskatchewan. I return to the other half of my undergraduate double major, and enroll in the University of Somewhere Else's Mathematics grad program. However, due to my lack of confidence and over five years away from the discipline, I soon find the work load overwhelming, and drop out of a second graduate program. Realizing that my life is spiraling out of control, I take the advice of family and friends and enter into long sessions with a life guidance counselor. Working together, we investigate the roots of my self-destructive behavior, and forge a new direction for my career.

Following in the footsteps of my parents, I enroll in the University of Somewhere Else's education college. Though the entry interview is nearly disastrous, I pull through largely as a result of the college's strong need for male teachers; my dual English and mathematics background is also an asset. As a mature student, I pass quickly through the program and soon possess a Bachelor of Education. Given my rural upbringing, I apply to every municipal division I can, reasoning that there is less competition for these positions than the city postings, and that I would be able to adjust to the environment quickly. I find a post, and settle into my new job. I meet a woman at this town, and appeal to her through the joint benefits of her being over thirty and desperate, and me being someone she hasn't known since the day she was born. We marry, and though she wasn't what I had been looking for and I wasn't she was looking for, we quietly settle down into some sort of life.

Eight years later, she leaves me for a younger man. I return to my spiral of self-loathing and recrimination, and drop out of sight, eventually changing my name to Bryce Larkin, and no one ever hears from me again.

But I passed the defense, so I guess I'll have to go with Plan B.

Later Days.

Creative Writing

For reasons that I'll get into another time, I'm trying to get rid of my excess stuff. I'm a packrat--I generally don't have much attachment with material junk, but once I get it, I don't get rid of it easily. I blame this habit on my parents, and their boxes and boxes of things older than I am.

Anyway, my particular brand of packrat darts back and forth between unorganized messes and terrifyingly in-depth filing. The latter gave rise to the great archival endeavor of '08. See, at some point in my university career, I decided it would be a great idea to type out all my notes. Best case, it's a nice refresher to go over the material a week later. Worst case, you're looking at illegible handwriting two years after the fact and wondering what the hell a Grobner basis is. (And for the record, yes, I know that preserving a paper copy means more than just making it electronic.) This archiving reached its height in the summer of '08 when I was moving out east and didn't want to take the papers with me. In a period of a few weeks, I scanned hundreds of pages of notes on math, english, and history. Most of the stuff I didn't get to--like the Grobner basis notes--I tossed away. But the one group I couldn't bring myself to touch was the creative writing class notes.

According to my archives, (see? They come in handy) the creative writing class happened during the third year of my undergraduate in 2005. It was a limited number, submission-based class, so I was pretty happy just to get in. It was taught by Guy Vanderhaeghe, (he said, shamelessly name-dropping) a Saskatchewan-based writer whose work I hadn't actually read at the time, and whose name I never spelt the same way twice. (I did read his stuff later; probably best I didn't have it read at the time--it would have intimidated me. I mean, intimidated me more.) The process was my first experience of the round-table seminar-type class: each week, twelve students would critique two stories from two different students. And throughout the term, you'd submit two stories to be critiqued. That meant you had to have the story written a week in advance, and print out thirteen copies, one for the instructor, 12 for the rest of the class. And then be subjected to an hour long flogging over what they thought.

The process was utterly terrifying. My thesis defense was less stressful than these critiques. After all, it was four times the number of questioners, and it's a different kettle of fish when it's colleagues critiquing your creative piece than when it's professionals evaluating your essay writing. But I survived and thrived, and here I am now. Specifically, here I am now with the pile of 13 critiqued papers that I couldn't ever bring myself to get rid of. The archiving process I hit on for these is that I'd type up their comments onto the electronic copy of the essay. And today, I finally got around to doing it.

The disadvantages of this method are readily apparent. First, after a half dozen or so rounds of comments, the paper starts to look like a copy of a prestige edition of a 17th century text, with more marginal comments than actual text. Second, there's the cringeworthy chance you might actually read some of the original text. Normally, I'm someone who can barely stand to read his essays through once an hour after they're written, so this was a special kind of torture. The story in question was "Shelf Space." It's very different from my usual creative writing-- no sci-fi, no fantasy, just an episode from the life of Stanley, the story's main character. The idea was that Stanley, a gifted but awkward 12 year old has had a very vivid, very happy dream, and he wants to recreate the feeling in his everyday life. Problems ensue. The funny part of the story is that Stanley is clearly very close to have Asperger's Syndrome, about four years before I'd have any idea what that is. And yes, for the smartasses in the audience, he is based on me--or at least, my memories at age 21 of age 12, which is something different entirely--but only loosely. He's kind of a caricature of some of a lot of the traits about myself I liked least at the time.

There are parts of it that hold up really well, and parts that really, really don't. But of the latter, they fall into two camps: first, there's a lot of words I accidentally left out. A lot a lot. And once the sixth person has pointed such an error out, words can no longer describe your mortification, even at a few year's distance. Ironically, the missing words are missing because, five years ago, I couldn't bring myself to edit the damn thing properly. It's a bad habit, folks. The other failing, years later, is more problematic, but understandable: reading from five years later, I find myself wincing at how heavy-handed certain aspects of the plot and tone are. Hopefully, five years of pretty intense reading and writing has upped my sophistication somewhat, so it's understandable I'd look back on previous work as a little amateurish.

At the same time--and this is by far the best aspect of looking back on this now--I've got evidence that I'm being a little too hard on myself. People liked the story. Some classmates felt a connection to Stanley, and some felt a connection to his parents, as they could relate to the problems of raising an emotionally distant but brilliant kid. (Okay, one guy felt Stanley was utterly unlikeable, and had no interest in the supposed conflict of a character who had things pretty easy, but you can't please everyone.) There has to be something worthwhile to the story if it reaches people. And not for nothing, but Vanderheaghe liked it too--he thought it was a "charming story" with the feeling of a fable, and that was what I was actually going for, so... Boffo. (It got an 84%--not great, perhaps, but a marked improvement over the 80% on my first attempt.)

The whole experience of typing these comments out has been very strange--a time warp rolled in a retrospective. But it reminded me that there's something in creative writing that I want to explore--once I have the chance. Maybe the summer project?

Later Days.

Random Thoughts Day

This is one of those occasions where I felt like doing a post, but didn't have any topic that really jumped out at me. So: Random Thoughts Day.
--The spacebar on my home computer has decided to start a new employment era were it only works part time. Soallmysentenceslooklikethisnow.It'sreallyveryannoying.Onthehand,
itdoesbringout
someinterestingwordassocations:
'thinking'and'thin''king',forexample--whichoneamIreallyreferingto?Nooneknows...
But experimental writing aside, it's probably time to get a new keyboard. I am resistant to this. I'm exactly the sort of person who holds on to antiquated, half-broken technology forever (just ask my bike)--not because I fear technology or change, specifically, but because on some fundamental level, I believe that a failure in the objects I own translates into a failure on my part. "What kind of a man can't take proper care of his possessions?" Etc. (You can fill in the rest of the "poor little white man" speech as you see fit.)

--Building on that vein of misogyny, I came up with a line on Tuesday that I'd like to work into a story or some other creative endeavour at some point: "If Woolfe has taught us anything, it's to be wary of women who fill their pockets with stones." I like the phrase, but I can't decide whether it's more pretentious or profound--I can use it in a story either way, but the context would have to be very different.

--Just finished the second week of my graduate classes: one is on art & persuasion (the connection between art and rhetorical activism), and the other is a gender & postcolonial, with an emphasis on travel narratives. In a perfect world, I'd do a paper on Dr Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog for the first one, and a paper on the presentation of colonization in the Civilization computer game series in the other one. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to settle on something less interesting in both cases.

--Along the same time I was making light of the tragic suicide of a great writer, I got the idea that I wanted to write a shortstory about someone who could tell the future. That's it, that's as far as I went. Then I started thinking about what kind of life such a person would live, and the etymology of the word clairvoyent--really, it breaks down into "clear" and "voyage". And suddenly the purpose of my story was set: I wanted to write about the clarity of the voyeur, and what it is gained and lost when you choose to set yourself apart. (The future telling bit's there to draw in the sci-fi crowd.)

--As I discovered writing this post, I apparently have trouble with the difference between etymology and entymology. Everyone take a moment to appreciate the irony in having difficulty in remembering a word that basically means remembering what words meant.

I think that satisfying my blogging crave for the moment.

Later Days.

Things Come Together and Simultaneously Fall Apart

Good news and bad news. The good news is that the draft of the query letter is ready. All that's left is to choose the excerpt from the novel. So if there's anyone reading this who's had the pleasure of reading the novel too, I encourage you to send me an email and tell me what section you think I should choose.

The new commitment to my exercise regime is also going well. I've managed to get a run in two whole days in a row, which is still not that impressive given other years, but a positive step to build on for now.

And now the bad. First, the minor malignant: even though it's now -11, yesterday morning, it was about +7 out, and pouring rain. It's also the day of my cyberpunk course, which is at a different location from my other classes. More importantly, about 10-20 minutes further than my other classes. And, as Murphy's Law clearly dictates, this is the day my umbrella decides that the whole "prevent water from passing through" thing is really just optional. In the course of the walk, it developed three completely different terminal flaws: The shaft holding the umbrella snaps in two pieces, one of the tongs caves in under the force of the wind and also snaps, and another section develops a big ol' hole in the fabric.

Clearly, I need a new umbrella. I don't think I've ever had to to do this before. Where do you even get an umbrella? Are they available at the local drugstore? The local Superstore? I guess I'll have to make an expedition. Dollars to donuts that it'll start raining whatever day I pick, though.

But this isn't a big deal, as annoying as it was at the time. Despite some people's experience, it does not rain all the time. The Major Malignant at the moment is the perennial favorite, my bicy---nope! Not this time! My computer. Attempting to download a wmv convertor, I accidently downloaded a trojan virus instead--a very quickly self-replicating one, to boot. Through judicial application of the Safe Mode and AVG, I managed to reduce the symptoms to the point where the computer could still actually function, which is a plus, but there's still clearly something terribly wrong with the Internet access. I'm continually running AVG, but since it takes 3 hours at least to do a full scan, I'm not even sure it can keep up with the thing.

So I'm over at the university to do today's work. (Well, technically, to procrastinate on today's work, since I'm typing this right now.) What really bugs me is how guilty I feel over my computer's virus-addled state. I mean, yes, it is my fault, in that I should be more careful what I download and I would have been able to fix if I had set a proper system restore point, but surely I've got more useful things in my life to feel bad about. But no, all I've got is a lingering feeling that if I was a nicer person, my computer would work right now. There's zero logic behind such sentiment, but there it is.

Still, let's end on a positive. Novel's moving forward, and I'll send the first first queries out on Monday. I'm ahead on my classes, I've got my health, and I've got a good life.
..There, that wasn't so hard.

Later Days.

But how does using a frozen hotdog as a phallic comic prop make you FEEL?

Man, that's going to be another title that'll direct some really weird searches.

Anyway, I was at a party last night, and I had consumed a fair bit of alcohol. (It was the first time in a long time I'd drank heavily for two consecutive nights, since the night before that was my brothers' roommate's going-away party. And yet, the day after, in both cases: no hangover. Truly, I live a blessed life.) Often, when I'm drinking at a party, I get the urge to either work out math equations, or write down story ideas. This time, the muse that struck me belonged to the latter group. I hunted down a pen, and an available writing surface--a piece of discarded wrapping paper was the fist thing I found.

Sadly, looking at what I wrote in the light of day suggests that these inspirational works will not be among my best. The first thing written is "find a way to pun 'chronic' and 'chronicles.'" The second sounds like the voiceover for a movie trailer:

Every Doom has its Day.
Every Day has its Night.
Every Knight has its Fall.
Stories end.

Lucky for me, the important part at the moment is what happens after. A friend saw the writing (without being able to read it, and thus couldn't assess the quality of the writing) and commented, in a friendly manner, that observing people at parties must serve as good fodder for writing for me. I tried to deny this, since at the very least, it suggested a quality to what I had just written that even then I was pretty sure it did not have, but I think she's got a point. To paraphrase, I like to observe.

Don't get me wrong. Participating is great, and it's what all the cool kids are doing. I love a good conversation, and I'll take up any sort of endeavor that strikes me in the right way. But there's a part of me that really likes to take a step back, think about things, and reflect. (There's a connection between this and the post a few days ago about nocturnal walking, but I don't feel like teasing it out at the moment. Or bothering to link it. User unfriendly!) And a party's an ideal opportunity for this. People who are more honest than kind may suggest that this reflection comes from a lifetime of sitting by myself at parties in my formative years (and they'd be wrong. In my formative years, I stayed home. So there.), but I don't think it's a bad thing, not anymore. Like I said, I enjoy the interaction stuff. But there's a lot to be learned by thinking not just about what people are doing, but why.

I think I'll end this meandering with a quotation from Margaret Atwood, from her short story "Happy Endings," as to why it's important for a writer to spend time on the "why" as compared to the "whats:" and "wheres." This is Atwood, so it's slightly more cynical than it needs to be, but it gets the point across:

"You'll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don't be deluded by any other endings, they're all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality.

"The only authentic ending is the one provided here:
John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.

"So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with.

"That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.

Now try How and Why."

I love trying How and Why. Aren't they fun?

Later Days.

The Prodigal Son Returns Home...

Nothing drives home the "life-long student" status like calling a university campus "home." But honestly, when I made a brief sojourn to the University of Somewhere Else today, it felt like going home. Honestly, it's as much as a home to me as anywhere else. It's been almost a decade since I left Where Else, Blank is still too new, and I never stayed at any of my actual homes in Somewhere Else long enough to really make them feel like a "home." (Ok, the previous sentence makes absolutely no sense unless you know where Where Else, Blank, and Somewhere Else refer to. Oh, the price paid for anonymity.)

So anyway, the university campus gets a "home" designation. I went over to campus today to have lunch with some old English grad friends--which was great--and to take out some books via the national library agreement, which was less great, but also less of a hassle than I was fearing. I also took the opportunity to just walk around campus a bit, which was tres weird--like I was tourist looking at scenes of my past. I wrote about this more extensively in a short piece called "the Couple" ("Person of Consequence! You can't put in a plug for an unpublished work! " "Oh, can't I? That sounds like a challenge to me!" "No, I mean, there's no point... you know what? Never mind."), but it's amazing how much a person's life--by which I mean this Person's life-- can be influenced by the people they run into on a daily basis. I don't even mean friends and family; I mean just the people you see on a regular basis, and never talk to, never approach, and never really know at all. These people become a part of my personal context; just by being there, they contribute to my sense of familiarity. It's like a nice warm blanket of sameness.

Sadly, this being December, most of the actual students are busy studying, so they weren't around to contribute to my personal people-blanket. (Very selfish of them.) The people at the library provided enough scraps to make a few quilt patches, the students who were present provided the design, and, as always, my friends were the threads that bind the whole thing together. (Awwwww.)

Arts and crafts aside, it was fun to return to the alma mater, and I think that the books I found finally gave me a solid approach to my paper. But here's hoping that future ventures in the next week feature more of the friend side of the equation than the work side.

Later D--
Oooh! Almost forgot. No trip down nostalgia lane would be complete without a brisk trot through lunch at the campus restaurant. And however much anything else has changed, their student bargain-priced grilled cheese is EXACTLY how I remember. If the campus is a quilt, then that restaurant is definitely a... signature stitching form? A matching throw-pillow? A ketchup stain in the upper right corner that draws the eye?

...I think think this metaphor has gotten away from me.

Later Days.