For several years, I’ve tormented many of my friends, confidants, and co-conspirators with long reveries about how writing is a lot like walking. Each is a habit, an exercise that is practice and performance at the same time, a Zen meditation, an everyday struggle, and a source of daily joy in tiny doses.
Today’s writing assignment is on the theme of “halfway,” which brings to mind the pattern of landmarks that tell me how far I’ve come and how far I have to go in my daily Memorial Park regimen. So I thought I’d take a break from writing about thinking and thinking about writing to take my beloved readers on a walk at the park (from the indoor comfort of my writing chair, to whatever place you like to read). …more
My brother calls me a collaborator, a traitor—and worse. I ask him what he would do if he were the one responsible for our mother’s care. But he’s not responsible. What good are his principles when she is near starving and I don’t have the money to buy the medicine that might quiet her pain?
I take responsibility for the choices I have made. I accept the rations that they give me, although it is not enough for three of us. My brother lectures me on the subject of sacrifice. When he comes to visit us on a moonless night, he invokes the name of our father. I don’t need to be reminded of what was taken from both of us. I don’t want to hear …more
“It’s like the gay Super Bowl,” Gary said. He set the parking brake and checked his hair in the rear-view mirror.
“How is it like that?” I asked.
“All the men are gathered around yelling at the television set, and most of the women are hanging out in the kitchen,” he said. “Oscar Night is a very, very big deal for our people.”
I leaned in to grab the grocery bag from behind the passenger seat. I had to jump back to avoid the convertible top …more
He was in that state where you’re not quite asleep and not quite awake, where sometimes you wake yourself by shouting a word that isn’t quite a word. Then he sat upright in the bed and called out, “Sarah?” He remembered that she was gone. He struggled with the feeling that there was a dream he should be able to recall.
He stared at the glowing numerals on the alarm clock, fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table, then looked again, and a third time. He pulled out the drawer. Nothing there to explain this disquiet, but it was somewhere to place his attention.
He crossed the braided rug to the bathroom. He splashed water on his face, half-dried it on the crusty towel he’d left on the edge of the basin. When was that? Thursday? Times and days had become muddled as soon as he boarded the first trans-Atlantic flight.
Back in bed, it took him several minutes to remember that he’d taken off his glasses to wash his face.
Note: This is a fragment that I wrote in today’s Spectrum Center workshop, “10,000 First Drafts.” The exercise was to reuse something from an older piece of work. This began with the first sentence, which I salvaged from a story that never went anywhere beyond the first couple of paragraphs. I’m not sure where this is going next, but it felt like a good start.
It occurred to me today that I’m not as far along as I thought.
I remember a time when I dreamed of what I could do with an extra hundred years, or two hundred, or three. I would become the world’s foremost authority on nineteenth-century French literature. I would develop the patience to cook a soufflé. I would speak flawless Spanish with a perfect Castellaño accent…or with the accent of the aristocrats of Mexico City or Lima, or of the marketplace in San Juan.
I would learn to ski. I would win trophies at singles tennis—in my age bracket, of course, but that’s still a worthy accomplishment at 250.
Who was the man whose life ended last night beside the running trail? Was he a regular at the park? How often had I passed him going the opposite way? How many times did he lap me jogging as I walked the three-mile loop? Did we ever nod at one another, give some sign of recognition as fellow members of the community of park denizens? Would I have recognized his face were it not for the abrasions and the pallor of his skin? Will I recall him by some process of elimination as I scan faces in the coming weeks?
Did he feel any warning signs of the cardiac event or cerebral accident, or was he enjoying his run until the moment he was struck down?
I knew it was broken when she bolted upright and blinked a couple of times. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, looked at it, looked at me, and asked, “Who the hell are you?” Before I could answer, she shouted, “Goddamn! I have such a headache!”
I struggled to rise from my kneeling posture by her side. “Your highness, I come—”
“Is there nothing to eat around here? Can’t someone bring me something to eat?”
The servants I’d seen posed around the edges of the room …more
“I don’t know whether I would have made the choice to enter the treatment trial.” Listen to you! There’s that word again, always coming up. The idea of “choice” became a defining feature of our lives in the early years of the twenty-first century.
As medical knowledge—especially in the field of gerontology—moved forward in quantum leaps, we came to understand better the role that certain choices play in our destinies. To quit smoking, to enter a treatment program for addiction, to seek an optimal weight, to enroll in the clinical trial for a radical new anti-aging therapy…but I’m getting ahead of myself. These aren’t the choices I wanted to talk about.
At All Times, in All Seasons, the Earth Casts a Slim Wedge of Shadow into Space; When the Moon in Her Journey Passes Through that Umbra, Let Us Gather Under the Stars to Reflect, One to Another, That There Is No Charioteer Who Illuminates the Day, Nor Huntress Who Hides from the Sun’s Face, But Only Reason That Lights Our Understanding of What Nature Has Ordained
There will be a total lunar eclipse beginning at 9:01 p.m. Central Standard Time on Wednesday, February 20, 2008. My roommate and I have decided to make this astronomical treat the occasion for a party. If you’re reading my blog and you find yourself in the Houston area on February 20, if you’d like to join us.
Note: The prompt was to “create a working title that is the longest one you’ve ever written.” I’m not in the habit of giving working titles to any of my texts, so coming up with any title at all made for a challenging assignment. I like the idea of looking up at the ruddy, darkened moon and thinking of all the fanciful explanations that primitive people might have conceived for this lovely phenomenon. Giving myself permission to turn this exercise into a party invitation was the cherry on top.
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