We have just read Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and John Green’s A Fault in Our Stars. Aside from whatever brilliant insights my students will gather on their own, I wrote out some things these books make me want to talk about in regards to Young Adult fiction. I’ve traveled a long and winding road from when I first started writing YA, and I still have far to go. Feel free to chime in.

Let’s take a step back.

I think what strikes me about all of the books we’ve read so far in this class is a sense of fearlessness on the part of the writer. This is what we can all strive for as writers, no matter whose voice we’re speaking in, how strong our prose is, where our stories are going, or how fast or slow they get there. No matter what, you can be a fearless writer and you will stand out.

In regards to these authors, I’m talking about the courage to write importance from the perspective of someone who, in the real world, might seem unimportant. With John Green and Sherman Alexie, the importance they write comes in the form of things that will always seem profound over the span of human history and narrative: death, terminal illness, race, poverty, acceptance, love. But even in Georgia Nicholson’s perspective, who seems to care about seemingly trivial things in the span of a human’s life: appearance, her pet, avoiding embarrassment, etc.

What all of these have in common is the ability of the writers to measure or make a ratio of  impact in their characters’ life; the ability to create meaning based not on assumptions about what readers or they themselves would find meaningful, but the creation of a whole new scale based on their characters’ world. The creation of a whole new vocabulary.

“Death” means something to every reader. But “death” means something completely different from Junior’s perspective as it does from Hazel’s perspective as it does from Georgia’s perspective. The more complete the characters’ world, the more specific the meaning of each word, concept, and experience becomes to them. I’ve talked a bit about some of you “creating a void” for your characters’ desires. The more specific that void is shaped, the more beautifully their desires will fit right in once they attain them, or the more satisfying or surprising it will be when they realize that void was shaped like something different than what they thought.

I’d like to point out another thing in common with all three books we’ve read so far, and with most commercially successful YA books like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc:

A vocabulary.

How do you build a world, whether or realistic or not? You don’t just name things all around your character, you re-name things. You describe things in terms the reader can understand, and then label or categorize them in the character’s voice. You “estrange” them to the reader, and then you rename them.

The aesthetic notion of estrangement is actually a term from Russian Formalism and Brechtian performance theory, but the way I was introduced to it is through Viktor Shklovsky, a literary critic, in his book “Theory of Prose,” which is singlehandedly one of the most influential books to me as a writer and as a thinker. The term “Estrangement” is from “Art as Technique” (also translated as “Art as Device”) which comprised the first chapter of Theory of Prose, first published in 1925. He argued for the need to turn something that has become over-familiar, like a cliche in the literary canon, into something revitalized:

“The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.” (Shklovsky, “Art as Technique”, 12)

Most of this book is available online. I posted it on Moodle.

The artistic practice of estrangement is similar to what it traditionally means. What does it traditionally mean? To distance from, to make strange.

Its practice in film, for example, would be to take an object, like an apple, for example, and film it in such a way it is no longer recognizable as an apple. Maybe the filmmaker zooms in so much on it, all the viewer sees is red. So though the viewer is encountering an apple, they don’t know it. All they know is that someone, somewhere is keeping them from knowing what they are looking at. That is estrangement. The purpose, then, of estrangement comes in when the filmmaker zooms back out, and the viewer not only says, Oh, that was an apple, but they also recognize that the “zoom” technique was being used. They are taken for a moment out of the act of looking at apple, and acknowledging that someone is behind the way they see that apple.

How can you use this? When I talk about “complicating” your characters’ relationships, obstacles, traits, etc, this is a way to do that.

Here’s Wikipedia:

“By disclosing and making obvious the manipulative contrivances and “fictive” qualities of the medium (a made-up vocabulary, for example), an author can alienate the reader from any passive acceptance and enjoyment of the work as mere “entertainment.” Instead, the reader is forced into a critical, analytical frame of mind that serves to disabuse her of the notion that what she is watching is an inviolable, self-contained narrative. This effect of making the familiar strange serves a didactic function (the idea that art can be both entertaining and informative) insofar as it teaches the viewer not to take the style and content for granted, since the medium itself is highly constructed.”

But because your characters are sort of ‘authors’ of their own stories, I’m not asking you to force your readers into acknowledging YOUR technique in approaching their stories, I’m asking you to force your readers into acknowledging your characters’ techniques.

A vocabulary, for example, sort of serves the same purpose of zooming out, except instead of asking the viewer to acknowledge the filmmaker’s technique, a characters’ vocabulary (the re-naming of their world), serves to give that character authority over it. A vocabulary is a way to make clear to the reader that character’s technique in dealing with the world. So, for example, when Hazel says, “Cancer Perk,” we see the words she’s saying but we don’t know exactly what they mean to her. We know “cancer”, and we know “perk,” but why those together? We’re kind of zoomed in on the apple at this point, and all see is red. When she explains the term, we understand what we’re seeing, where meaning is derived.

What does Cancer Perk mean? What does that say about Hazel’s way of approaching the world?

Perks are rewards for being a dedicated customer or patron of something. So Hazel sees herself as a dedicated patron of cancer. Or she feels that’s how certain institutions see her. The longer you have cancer, the bigger perks you get! How funny and sad and intelligent is that? And by the end of this book, each word in that term, “cancer,” for example, gets extended and twisted and given such stakes and described in such physical detail, that by the end, we are distanced from what we think we know about “having cancer.” We are estranged from our presumed definition by Hazel’s perceptions, and by even more vocabulary words, etc etc. We are re-introduced to a seemingly classic obstacle, a inevitable truth.

All of that wrapped up in her “vocabulary,” in her “re-naming” process.

That’s some damn fine writing.

And it takes a lot of courage and dedication to re-name things. It’s a subtle balance between “writing what you know” and naming the unknown. Like having a flashlight in a dark cave.

And how important is this process for Young Adults? So important. Confused, eager to find their place, these books give them a structure that tells not only how important the desires and dreams and losses of young people are, but how specific and special these things are to each person. You have escapism and sweeping narratives and fantasy that can give a glossy sheen to the search for identity, and in my opinion, help young readers learn about identity without them realizing it, which is great and all. And attractive to them. So that works.

But then you have stories like Alexie’s, who approach the search for identity not only head-on, but with so much to lose. This is such refreshing courage. If you don’t like anything about any of these books, you have to give it the authors, and YA authors in general, for having chutzpah.

My journey with you guys, and with YA in general, has played a funny part in changing the way I approach literature and culture in general that is “for adults.” Like, the other night I watched a Noah Baumbach film called Mr. Jealousy, and I was like, is that all we do? Brood and brood? Maybe we take action once, in the form of a punch or a proposal, but a lot of that story specifically is creating tension based on the adult characters being emotionally stunted. Like, hell, look at Jane Austen or something. Look at Jonathan Franzen.

You gotta give it to YA authors for not being afraid to thrust their characters in the weirdest, hardest, most awkward situations ever, (like the brutal realism of Junior getting a boner as he’s learning about the death of his sister, or Hazel deciding to risk death from lack of oxygen to climb Anne Frank’s staircase and it being completely in character) and help them sincerely learn something tangible and useful. There are two things that seem to attract modern readers (emphasis on modern–as in, contemporary) to books in large numbers: a human’s ability to overcome the most terrible things imaginable, like rape, murder, war, or slavery, OR, a Young Adult narrative that places enough importance on the obstacles in that characters’ context that the profundity is built into the text itself.

Pretty awesome that we’re in one of those categories, huh?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shitting on contemporary literature or films or culture for adults, even those that have their characters sit in a bathtub all day and brood. Those are some of my favorite books. But I’m excited how much YA opens up and multiplies the possibilities of what books can do for people of all ages, and not only that, how this category makes very clear what those possibilities are. Purely from a career perspective, with something so financially perilous and fickle and subjective as writing, it’s a sturdy argument to keep going, no matter what.

So, I don’t know. Keep going, no matter what!

Below is an initial version of my syllabus. Eventually it will be made more official, pared down, polished, etc. Feedback welcome.

Course: ENG 294-03 Topics of Writing: Young Adult

Instructor: Lara Avery

Time: T, Th 3:00-4:30 pm

Place: [redacted]

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to a class about Young Adults and what has been, can, and will be written for them. We will read and discuss some known works, mostly to supplement and inspire your writing. That said, if we examine a work in this class you have encountered in the past, I discourage you from casting it aside to rest on your prior knowledge. You are most likely a different person than when you read it before. Namely, now you are a writer. We will be looking at every story, both published and those of your peers, to determine their effectiveness as written works, not for their entertainment value.

I’ll say it again: in this class, you are a writer. You want to do it as a career. You might not want to get published, or sold, or whatever, but above all, you want to be read, somehow, some way. Contrary to the cement-like tone of that statement, if you truly believe it, it will free you. After you accept it, you don’t have to take yourself so seriously. For example, as an undergrad student, I often asked myself: Why the f*%# am I doing all this? And then I would cry and wonder if maybe I should be working on a small farm, instead. In this class, the answer will be simple: because I am a writer, that’s why. Some of you will go on to write for a living, some of you won’t. Regardless of your life path, it will be important that your ideas be understood. We will read, write, and workshop to make each other the most understood we can possibly be.

We will be writing for people who self-identify as the most misunderstood sub-sect of the world’s population. It’s a very important job, what we’re doing. Not only that, I’d like to think we’re going to be quite good at it because we remember identifying as misunderstood. Confused. Searching. Many of us still are. Which roads do we take to meet these young readers in the middle? Considering the projected interests of the Young Adults for which we are potentially writing, at least one route will be Online. Via Social Media. Networks, etc. Some in lofty circles would say the Internet represents the death of literature. Knowing as we do that the Internet is here to stay, we will attempt to prove them wrong. As an example to future generations, we will utilize the Internet as a tool, rather than a distraction.

My role will be to sit in the room and answer questions the best I can. I will also try to push you further down the rabbit-hole of fictional worlds you have created, and show up there whenever you need me, offering different options or exercises, like a less vague version of the smoking caterpillar.

Okay. Let’s get started.

COURSE POLICIES

Late Work

Deadlines are strict. The rhythm and progress of this course are reliant on your ability to fill these deadlines. However, since we will be submitting about half of our written work online, I will be considerate in the face of technical difficulties. No matter what, be communicative and find a way. The later you submit your work, the less time your peers and I have to read it and help you make it better.

Attendance

Pretty straightforward: come to class. Because we are wrangling with symbolic expressions of the human psyche, weird and magical things will happen every period. If you are indisposed, an email will suffice. Be aware, however, that I was recently a student and therefore well-versed in the art of bullsh**. I’d rather you come in a bad mood, asleep, hungry, etc, if only to hear a few morsels before you drift off. If you miss more than two classes, I will ask you to come talk to me.

ASSIGNED WORKS

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Excerpts from The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan, Runaway by Alice Munro

CLASS SCHEDULE

January 29th: Introductions, syllabus review.

In class: What is a Young Adult? (video/text examples) What is your favorite Young Adult book and why? Students will compose a quick book report and present to the class.

Assigned: Read Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.

January 31st: Writer-ing.

In class: Discussion of Catcher in the Rye alongside Young Adult as a category, rather than a genre, of literature. Then: So, you want to be a writer. Why on Earth would you want to do that? Why is writing for Young Adults important?

Assigned: Read “Young Adult Literature in the 21st Century: Moving Beyond Traditional Constraints and Conventions.” Based on the author’s last sentence (“For imagine, if you will, would Holden Caulfield have been a different person with a computer? I wonder.”), write 300-500 words of fiction in Holden Caulfield’s voice answering this question. It does not have to be a complete short story (beginning, middle, end), but more like a character sketch. If it helps, pick a particular passage to re-interpret. Due Sunday, February 3rd by midnight.

February 5th: Peer workshop.

February 7th: Blogging 101. **Bring your laptop!**

In-class: We will discuss the ins and outs of a blog, and what purpose it serves to young people, Internet people, and best of all, writers. We’ll also go over the blog set-up and what’s to come for your blog in this class.

Assigned: Read Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. Write the first post describing a day in the life of your character. Try to include these descriptors: what they look like, where they live, and what they want (big or small, philosophical or physical). 300-500 words. Due Tuesday, February 12th.

February 12: A, T, and FFS discussion.

Assigned: Read your classmates’ work and compose peer workshop comments.

February 14: Peer workshop.

Assigned: Second post: Write an embarrassing moment for your character. Include their reaction, the reaction of those around them, and how the moment informed their identity. Try to pin down if the moment confirmed something they already suspected about themselves, if it revealed something about themselves to them, and if they used it as motivation to change or continue on their same path. 500-600 words. Due Sunday, February 17 at Midnight. Before Tuesday, compose peer workshop comments for the first round.

February 19: Peer workshop first round.

Assigned: Compose peer workshop comments for second round.

February 21: Peer workshop second round.

Assigned: Read The Fault in Our Stars. Third post: Write about an unchangeable fact in your character’s life. It could be an actual, permanent truth (like a terminal illness or death of a parent), or one that your character simply perceives as permanent (like awkwardness or acne). Try to include how it affects your character now, as well their projections for how it will affect them in the future. Where does it place your character in their community, among a hierarchy, or in their understanding of the universe? Who are they doing better or worse than? 500-600 words. Due Tuesday, February 26.

February 26: Discussion of The Fault in Our Stars.

Assigned: Compose comments for first round.

February 28: Peer workshop first round.

Assigned: Compose comments for second round.

March 5: Peer workshop second round.

Assigned: Compose comments for third round.

March 7: Peer workshop third round.

Assigned: Read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Fourth post: Something good and something terrible happen to your character on the same day. A loss and a gain, a bright spot in a terrible situation or vice versa, etc. Use your past entries to inform the situation. Consider these questions: Does one cause the other, or do they have nothing to do with one another? Which does your character decide to focus on as they conclude their entry? 500-600 words. Due Tuesday, March 26.

March 12: Discussion of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. 

March 14: Field trip! Talk to Revolver editors. Food. Fun.

Assigned: In addition to your fourth post, go back and polish your current posts, keeping your classmates’ comments in mind.

Extra credit assignment: go back to each post and add a few sentences tracking a small progression in your characters’ world. Think of these as supplements to your character’s journey; post-scripts to illustrate the passage of time. For example, how their favorite sports team is doing,  the growth/deterioration of a pet or plant, a project in school/at home, or, if you haven’t included these already, a crush/an enemy.

March 16-24: Spring Break

March 26: Final projects, how to write a short story.

In class: We’ll discuss your options, timeline, and my expectations for your final project. Briefly, we’ll read and discuss Alice Munro’s _____ as an example of a short story.

Assigned: Compose comments for first round. Write a couple paragraphs for your final project proposal. Due Tuesday, April 9th.

March 28: Peer workshop first round.

Assigned: Compose comments for second round.

April 2: Peer workshop second round.

Assigned: Compose comments for third round.

April 4: Peer workshop third round.

Assigned: Read first half of Divergent by Veronica Roth.

April 9: Discussion of first half Divergent. Final project proposals read aloud, discussed with class. Office hours regarding final projects held all this week and next.

Assigned: Read the second half of Divergent. Write the first draft of your final project. 6-8 pages, due Tuesday, April 16. Note: Bring laptops to next class!

April 11: *LAPTOPS IN CLASS* Discussion of second half of Divergent. Read excerpts from The Realm of Possibility. In-class writing exercise/conclusion of blog.

Assigned:Compose comments for first round of Final Project drafts.

April 16: Peer workshop first round.

Assigned: Compose comments for second round.

April 18: Peer workshop second round.

Assigned: Compose comments for third round.

April 23: Peer workshop third round.

Assigned: Compose comments for fourth round.

April 25: Peer workshop fourth round.

Assigned: Compose comments for fifth round.

April 30: Peer workshop fifth round.

Assigned: Compose comments for sixth round.

May 2: Peer workshop sixth round.

Assigned: Write your final project. 12-16 pages. Due May 13th.

May 7: Conclusion and fun.

Warning: Explicit content.

The universe begins to speak to you in the form of a giant, golden dragon staged placid in the center of a Chinese buffet. At first, you are not sure who is speaking and to whom. The words, NOW IS YOUR CHANCE FOR THE ANSWERS, descend over the dining room like a loudspeaker, but none of the other customers–a dirty blonde family in Old Navy tech vests and a wizened, mixed race couple–look up from their plates. An Eastern instrument whimpers in the background. You crane your neck, check your portable device for the trace of an accident, but nothing reveals itself. Until, that is, as they gleam with a dying fire of within, the dragon’s eyes meet yours. YES, it says, perched on the sneeze glass over a cackling tray of chicken.

The conclusions you make: the dragon is either an uncanny fact, or a hallucinatory part of your psyche. You have worked quite hard for several years  to tell the difference. You have stopped yourself from thinking everyone wants to fuck you. You have ceased the occasional use of prescription pills to improve your performance. You tread for several miles, unmoving, on a machine that simulates forward movement. When someone takes a digital photograph of you, you no longer ask to see your instant likeness on the screen. Signs of weakness, you’ve identified them, and in the recent months, when an objective two-part series of betrayal hung over you, like two-thirds of a triptych, you did not yell or break anything.

If you really were to look at the cheatings like photographs, they would contain two men to whom you were attached, two women you didn’t know, and the blank faces of all of them caught in the flash of the camera. Two beautiful photographs–unplanned, unposed, the raw feelings caught as clear as the contrast between their white bodies and the black night in which they shared a moment, a bed. The triptych would be titled, “I fucked up,” which is a phrase that magically–and a slice of life does not get more perfectly composed than this–both men used to start the apology, without any prior knowledge of the apologetic conversation preceding/following. Of course, you would have the urge to document the dialogue in its entirety somehow, the way you could not hear very well after the phrase “I fucked up,” for instance, or your inability to take your eyes off a certain intersection of branches in the tree outside your porch, but if you were really going to present this triptych to an audience, your verbal responses to the piece do not matter. An artists’ intentions never matter. The piece remains, however, unfinished. You would need to find a third, and you would. Until then, you were sitting at a Chinese buffet alone, and you could feel a wet heat on the right side of your body, which could either be steam from the dumplings or the patient presence of the dragon, waiting for your questions.

You debate. The dragon could bear a hopeful message, something like, WE’RE SORRY IT HAD TO BE YOU. WE HAVE A CUCKOLD QUOTA. Or, the dragon could be a sign that your brain is no longer interested in reality as you have previously known it. The dragon shifts, creaking like folds of the earth might creak before a quake, and hops down on the sauce-encrusted carpet.

Such is the Catch-22: if you bring yourself to ask something of the universe as a dragon in a Chinese buffet, a question like, WHY DID YOU ALWAYS TELL ME STORIES THAT WEREN’T TRUE, your acknowledgment of the dragon as a part of the world means the world has gone mad. If you ignore the dragon, you understand that it is only a vivid delusion, which means it is not the world that has changed, but rather you have. Rather, something is seriously wrong with you, something wrong enough that two men in a row have decided one of you wasn’t satisfying enough. You are tempted to ask the dragon, IS THERE A CLONE OF ME SOMEWHERE OUT THERE. And then, if there is, you can meet her and bring her to the next man you date. Here, you can say, offering her to them naked. When you get bored with me, fuck her. At least she is me.

The dragon paces, huffing around the table meant for four that you have inhabited. It smells hot and clean and metallic, like laundry between the washer and the dryer. TIME IS RUNNING OUT, ONE QUESTION, you hear from all around you, which makes you laugh, because the universe is made of the still expanse of time, is it not? The dragon warning you of time is like someone looking at their watch-less wrist to say they’re late, which is something you often do to make people laugh.

You notice the dragon is dissolving, looking very much like an Alka Seltzer tablet in water. MY QUESTION IS, you think as it rains in reverse, WHAT NOW. In answer, the universe has completely disappeared. Someone comes around to refill your Diet Coke, but you don’t need it because you are about to leave. After the tinkling door closes behind you, you inhale the cold and walk and watch for the third section of your triptych, if you were to make it–perhaps the clothed back of a girl laughing outside, who by her posture you can tell is not you and she is happy, even though you can’t see her face.

The author was keeping camp in a yellow room the color of illness spit located at the shallow side of a valley, surrounded by used lightbulbs and swaths of food-stained cloth she would occasionally don in desperation, filling the noses of those around her with a hampered, grandmother smell. As she passed, citizens of the valley were struck suddenly with the image of a rain-dampened cedar on the verge of death. The image was especially vivid to the volatile minds of infants and elementary children.

The author was using expensive squirrel blood for lipstick. When citizens of the valley went out to work or shop or go to school, the author would sneak into their houses to leave incomprehensible notes, neither threatening nor relevant. Don’t touch that button, one read. Indiana, New Mexico, and Delaware are all unexpected places, said another.

The last recorded exchange between citizens of the valley and the author:

Author: I’ll give you all my money for your dog.

Citizen 1: All right. Let’s see the money first.

The author produced a suitcase full of currency.

The citizen called the dog, a white mutt with intelligent eyes, covered in occasional dark slashes of fur.

Citizen 1: Here he is.

The author bent to put her face close to the mutt.

Author: He doesn’t love me. He loves you.

Citizen: He’ll get used to it. He’s yours for the money.

The author left without her suitcase and refused its return. The money was donated by the citizens to the valley council, and the council voted to use the money to airlift a statue of a horse down to the village square, as well as a picnic to celebrate its unveiling. On the day of the unveiling, however, the square was empty. The picnic was gradually eaten by birds, and the horse statue remains under a weathered tarp. No one in the valley is positive that the statue is, in fact, a horse.

The author had once been a self-appointed protector of the valley. She had walked tall with the aid of great blocks of wood attached to the soles of her boots by glue. She stomped around the square to make a daily inquiry on the happiness of each citizen, gauged by their interest in feathers, the detached tongues of soldiers, a small television looping jellyfish. On bad days she announced the presence of spirits by ringing a bell that hung outside her stilted cabin. This one is a doozy, she would call onto the street. I can feel him stalking down the slope. Everyone stay in their homes. For hours, sometimes days or months at a time, the author disappeared into the dense forest on the side of the mountain.

The author would return with news. From her, the citizens learned the forest was entirely made of plastic. The spirits took multiple fearful, seductive forms. A  diamond dough worm. A sweet basil-green cloud. A giant torso.

I’ve had a difficult couple days. Some bright spots have been Playing the Building, following the Night Vale podcast, and reading the poetry of David Berman. These are the scraps of a piece inspired by all of it. Image by Conor Harrington. 

Hi, readers. Hope you’re all well. A lot has happened since I last posted:

Anything But Ordinary, my first novel, has hit the shelves. That picture is my best friend and I at the launch!

I have quit almost every other job besides writing.

Barring, of course, my recent appointment as ‘Visiting Instructor’ at Macalester College. They won’t let me be a real professor because I don’t have something called a “Masters Degree.” Can anyone please tell me where I can get one of those?

All that aside, I have avoided writing in this thing because, like a shiny, leather-panted man I would try to woo, I have been worried about saying something stupid. Every time I sit down and bring up a new post, I feel pressure to tell you something adult (not, like, adult-adult). Professional. Useful. People searching my name because of the book will stumble on this and they’re supposed to get an impression of my never-ending triumphs and overall having-it-togetherness and determination to be a literary star. According to the minimal research I have conducted among my fellow Young Adult authors, as an owner and caretaker of a website, I am allowed to veer from book-related business on three fun topics: pets, children, and travel-related inconveniences.

Of the first two, I have none. For the sake of their well-being and my allergies, I do not think it’s a good idea to have another living thing in my care. That is, for over seven hours a day. As a part-time nanny, I am quite good with human babies in small increments.

Of the last one, I have many, but I find Internet updates about delayed planes and bad hotel food just as dull, if not more dull, than real life. Plus, I don’t have a book tour. I went to one author panel at Books of Wonder on a rainy night in New York. The audience, though kind, was full of the other authors’ friends. I signed fifty copies of Anything But Ordinary for stock and left to go eat falafel.

I began to be a writer because I was young and stupid enough to think my perspective was more interesting than everyone else’s. I think that’s one of the most important parts of writing. I may not want to admit it, but when I think about how small I am in the Universe, how my book is so tiny and square among all the millions of tiny other squares, I become paralyzed. I have to make myself dumb enough to think I should write another one. Because really, who are writers in the span of human history? People who wrote things down and then shoved those things in other people’s faces. Those who wrote incredible things and burned them or kept them locked up in a drawer, well. Odds are we don’t know about them. That, or they had a really good agent.

It hasn’t felt right to me, lately, that I haven’t shoved things in anyone’s face. Other than links to articles and reviews and whatever, I’ve kept the surreal clusterf*** of emotions of this whole business to myself. The urge to vomit my feelings on the Internet has diminished slightly from college, but I grew up on Facebook. I am comfortable with being on display, and when that happens, I prefer honesty. Or perhaps honesty is too strong a word. I prefer blanketing my documenting process in self-loathing, longing, and failure.

As a semi-public figure, or at least a person with the potential to have strangers and young readers come across my Internet presence, I wonder: Is this allowed? More and more, our digital profiles become our resume. Not to mention, in my case, the threat of mothers calling me up because I said I don’t like cats or went to a bar once and now their Young Adult is drunkenly skinning cats.

Truthfully, I don’t think this will happen. But over the last few months, I’ve been worried at the prospect of it happening. I imagine the FBI storming into Barnes & Noble and stripping my book of the shelves and tattooing “Bad Influence” on my forehead and cutting off my fingers so I could never type again.

Let this be a pledge, then, that even if the FBI did do that, I would hire a man with a chiseled torso and leather pants to transcribe my words into more novels. Because I care. I refuse to get any other job. I have borrowed too much money from my parents and eaten too much Ramen and had too many quarters thrown at me by Greek diner owners (one is enough) to go back now. But I promise, mothers, that your Young Adults are in safe hands. I may not be a tea-loving, pregnant cat-owner, but I am a local economy-stimulating, feminist half-professor, and I won’t lead them astray. Odds are, if they’re reading books, they’re good kids already.

As for the resume thing, BRB, I just have to go teach this class at one of the smartest schools in the country.

Really, though. If you are a young reader, an old reader, a librarian, a blogger, whoever, and you have questions or want me to come to a library and speak, or even if you want a free book or something, ask me. I  respond to every email. I love speaking engagements. I love students. I was a teacher with Saint Paul Public Schools for almost a year.

But that’s not every part of who I am. And I’m going to write about the other parts, too. No hard feelings.

Love,

Lara

P.S. Once I made an OKCupid profile. Okay? I just had to get that off my chest.

Below is an excerpt from an interview I did for a project out of the Washburn University English Department, called Map of Kansas Literature. It’s a nice supplement to what I’m currently working on, which is a story written from the perspective of my Great Aunt Margaret: born, educated, and then institutionalized in the Sunflower State for forty years. No one knows exactly why. Margaret was a brilliant young woman–sorority girl in a time when woman were scarce in colleges, a fashion buyer for what is now Macy’s, one of the first female graduates of Columbia University’s graduate programs. And then something went awry. Family rumor says she witnessed the death of her fiance, but there is no record of such an incident. What happened? Anyway, despite what you’ve heard in the news, the state of Kansas can produce magical people. But it can also drive you insane.

I’m probably somewhere in the middle. Either way, these answers come from the heart. And from a belly full of wheat products. 

Plus, if you follow the link above, there is a little bonus on my “author profile” page. A little treat from me to you. I won’t give it away, but it involves train tracks, sweat, and this. 

The following poems were written in scraps between my three jobs and various creative endeavors. I spent all my money in Europe so I have to work a lot lately, and as a result haven’t been able to sit down and enter the forest of dreams, as they say. Little scraps are all I have time for. I’m afraid to write the actual occurrences of my every day because they are painfully boring. (My three greatest fears are loss, looking stupid, and boredom. I’m not afraid of serial killers. There is no point in being afraid of something that will most likely kill you quickly, anyway. I am somewhat afraid of ghosts, but I understand them.) 

These aren’t really poetry. They are more like banana-grams of a Lifetime special. If you don’t like any of them, reader, that’s okay with me.

Dear Jess

When you smile

It makes a crackling sound

We were too bad

Two hearts

Who always seemed to hear footsteps behind us

The probability

of no one there in Manhattan

on a balmy weekday night

Is about the same as the probability of someone you got to know

Who had gotten into a cab

Shoving papers aside as the sun rose

The only traces on your neck

and their ten numbers on New Document

You do well

You stop talking in the middle of sentences

You step in and out of billboards

only seen in passing on the backs of buildings

seen from the elevated train

People like us, our age

We’re only leaders when we’re ahead of people on the sidewalk

I only found you because I knew where you’d be

You were walking while looking down

Reading something

And then you laughed to yourself

the sound of a needle crackling, floating out of an open window

A sound that means nothing

Until something else follows

Drum

Little brother stood in his diaper

hand on father’s knee for balance

bouncing as he played rhythm guitar

Above the rickety chords

My voice sounded out

muffled by cheek against peach velvet fabric

stretched on the back of a chair

What, Dad said

He didn’t hear me

I waited, lips still brushing the material

the drool made a wet circle

when I lifted my head

I had been meditating

while my fingers soaked up music from the vibrating furniture

And the question I’d asked

What was it

Almost mindless, forgotten

while my brother, still bouncing

to the guitar, a ruthless pop

that had to be finished no matter what

I stood up this time

Eyes fixed on the little pockets of flesh

above my baby brother’s knees

Did I do that, too? I asked, louder

No answer

I brought my fingernails alongside the chair

leaving clawed streaks of upturned velvet

put my hands on the strings

muting them, deading them

taking the noise from my brother’s ears

And when Dad tried another chord

It made a sound like clipping birds’ wings

I smiled at the silence

at my brother’s animal, two-toothed mouth

falling into a frown

Dad’s gaze turned on me, burnt me

Before I became ash

I finally asked

Did I dance like that, too

In my diaper

Did I dance like that, too

Poem for the Dead

Tucked in

next to mold that grew in the sink

there lay a noose-strangled mouse

The dead mouse was happy

Don’t worry

He went to high school

He lived in the janitor’s closet

His purpose was to find food

To run and to dive into the holes

in the space between the marble and lockers

He went to prom, danced with the water bugs

He learned equations from crumpled up homework

Until today, when

Some unhappy boy between fat and skinny

Mad at his dad

Mad at his teacher who made him do word searches

of Native American tribes after school

Found the mouse and caught him with a mason jar

In the second chemistry lab sink that no one uses

The boy was amused that the mouse was afraid of string

running to the edge of the jar whenever it came near

How could he know

The mouse had many fears

Deep-rooted and psychological in nature

He was never a quick mouse

He had his choice of many cheeses

American

Swiss

Provolone

In a tray in the cafeteria cooler

But he often feared he was missing out in something greater

something beyond the comprehension of a mouse

You can imagine his anger

when, paralyzed by the shock of being caught

doing nothing wrong

A string around his neck

(A string brought from the supply closet

to illustrate ionic bonds)

cutting off the blood to his lungs and brain

He remembered once

as he was on his way to lunch

cutting through a science class

no more than a blurry black dot

in the corner of their eyes

The teacher was explaining evolution

She was saying, “Skeletons

come from a singular, ancient design

prevalent in most mammals

the fundamental way our bodies function

is not so different

from, say

A mouse!”

She had shrieked and pointed near the counter where the mouse stood

And he froze

feeling the gaze of the whole class

he felt himself grow ten times to their size

He was important to them

He was an example

If they wanted to know they would look to him

Until now, it might have happened again

he might have been the mouse they ask about the life of a mouse

It’s quiet, really

he would have said

I’m just happy to be here

But the lights started trickling into one another

And the boy let out a sound

Like a laugh, but not

He looked around to see if anyone was watching

and held fast to the mouse’s death

The boy let go at the sound of a voice

The mouse wasn’t breathing

“Richard,” the voice called from the hall

“It’s time to go home.”

Richard, the mouse thought before he died

And he decided one last thing:

That Richard

was his name

I tried to write the story about the lamb spit and the resurrected lamb, but I failed.

Then I got an idea for a story about a man who is in love with his golden retriever, Magda, who came to him after the German Shepard he had in college ran away during a storm. The man smokes in his apartment with the windows up and waits for theater companies to employ his only human friend, an overweight woman with glasses, to design their sets. Then his woman friend calls him to build her ideas and gives him half the pay. Magda goes with the man everywhere. She doesn’t wear a leash because she responds to the call of his voice.

One night the man and his human friend and Magda all have dinner together to celebrate the set they built for “Waiting for Godot”, throwing the scraps down to Magda. The human friend thinks it’s weird how obsessed the man is with Magda. During this dinner we learn all the above, and see the man and Magda’s past in scenes, including the storm when his first dog ran away, and when he tried to go on a human date. He made the woman on the date give him something of hers for Magda to smell before she came into his apartment. And when she came inside, Magda put trash on the date’s foot. The date thought it was funny, but he never called her again.

The man and his dog are in love, but times are tough. The overweight woman with glasses isn’t getting any work as a set designer, so the man’s money is running out. He and Magda split cans of tuna and buckets of KFC chicken. They go to pet stores where Magda likes to sit and stare at the plastic island where the birds with clipped wings live. The man stares at the puppies, flirting, but none of them are as beautiful to him as Magda. One night, after the man has smoked a cigarette in bed with Magda curled next to him, he falls asleep and begins to dream.

He is visited by the German Shepard who ran away from him, named Heinrich. Heinrich is standing on his body and Magda is gone. Heinrich leaps off the bed and looks back at the man, indicating that he should follow. The man follows Heinrich down a dark street to a doctor’s office waiting room. People start staring at the man and Heinrich as if they’re confused why he’s there. The man begins to think he is in a real doctor’s office waiting room, and that this isn’t a dream. He begins to panic, and Heinrich slips through the door when a nurse comes out to call someone’s name. He tries to follow Heinrich, but the nurse doesn’t allow him. He struggles with the nurse, but she won’t allow him through to follow Heinrich. “That’s my dog,” he keeps saying. “That’s my dog.” But she won’t let him through.

He wakes up breathing hard. He puts his hand in Magda’s long gold fur, and falls back asleep.

The next morning as he’s sitting in his apartment with Magda, smoking, splitting a can of beans, his human friend calls him. They have work, she says, and tells him to report to a children’s theater. He and Magda find their way out to the street and he tosses the bean can in a public trashcan and happily tells Magda to catch up.

At the theater, children are running around in old fashioned sailor and pirate costumes. Magda lies on the ground in the woodshop and watches the man and his human friend while they work to build the set for the kid version of “Pirates of Penzance.” An hour into working, Magda throws up on the floor. The kids gather round, expressing their disgust. The man brings Magda outside to get some air. The kids follow.

The man lights a cigarette in distress. The kids wave the smoke out of their faces. He doesn’t care. He pets Magda on the back while she lies down again. One pirate kid, older than all the others, bends down to pet Magda, too. He looks up at the man. “Her nose is dry,” he says. The man looks at the little boy sternly.

The man walks with Magda down the street, looking down at her in concern. He walks her into a veterinarian’s office with a waiting room that looks just like the waiting room in his dream, except no one looks at him and everyone’s holding birds and hamsters and cats. When they call Magda’s name, she leads the way past the nurse towards the examination rooms. The nurse lets the man pass.

Inside, the man is told Magda has lung cancer and will die soon. They had lived together for twenty years in the man’s apartment, and it was probably bad for her that he had smoked inside, almost a pack a day. “I should have given her more fresh air,” the man says.

“It’s hard to tell,” the doctor says politely.

The man interrupts him. “No, I  know I should have given her more fresh air. She’s an animal, I know that. She belongs out there more than she belongs with me. That’s probably why I kept her with me so much. When I look at her, I get a rush of purpose. Because I’m supposed to take care of her. Because she doesn’t know any better.”

“Dogs are incredibly perceptive,” the doctor says. “Especially golden retrievers. She might have known better, but chose to stay. She could have run away, and she didn’t.”

The man doesn’t respond for awhile. “But now I’ve killed her all the same.”

“I’m sorry,” the doctor says.

“I’m sorry, too,” the man echoes, looking at Magda.

That afternoon, they go home and the man tells Magda to go inside while he smokes a cigarette. Magda looks at him mournfully from the window. Then the man realizes that he is taking all the fresh air by being outside and not giving her any, so he goes inside and makes Magda stay outside.

“Don’t run away,” he tells her, and finishes his cigarette indoors, watching her look at him from the front stoop. Magda doesn’t run away.

The man puts the finishing touches on a fake boat for “Pirates of Penzance.” Children are singing in the background. His grown beard and haggard appearance indicates it is about a week later. His human friend approaches him, watching him paint. “Where’s Magda?” she asks. He doesn’t answer.

At home, Magda is starting to lose her sense of sight and smell. The man pours Purina dogfood into a pristine bowl and sets it on the floor. Magda doesn’t notice. The man snaps by the bowl, directing her toward it.

At the opening night performance of Pirates of Penzance, Magda has her own seat. She lies in it as the play carries on, her eyes drooping. At intermission, she sets her head on the man’s lap and whines. Somehow, he knows it’s time. “Can I borrow your car?” he asks his human friend.

“No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”

“Please,” he says, gesturing to Magda. “It’s an emergency.”

The overweight woman with glasses sighs. “Okay. I’ll drive it, though.”

When they get up from the chairs, the man finds Magda can barely walk. He picks her up in his arms, cradling her like a child. He rushes through the parents and kids crowded into the lobby at intermission. Teenage girls make “aw” noises as they pass, because they think him holding Magda in his arms is endearing.

“Which way?” the overweight woman asks in the car. Magda is lying peacefully in the backseat. Her eyes are glazed but she is still breathing.

“That way,” the man points in a seemingly random direction, panicked.

After some time, the woman says. “This isn’t the way to an animal hospital.”

From the backseat, the man, stricken with grief, asks, “How would you know how to get to an animal hospital?”

She doesn’t respond, because she doesn’t know.

Soon, they’re on country roads. The sun is setting because this is late summer, and the sun doesn’t set until 9:30. The grass is getting taller and there are fences and cows. A dirt road appears in a fork off the highway, and the man suddenly says, “Turn here.”

They rumble down the country road. The grass is waist high on a person on either side of the road. Trees line the distance.

“Stop,” the man says. They get out of the car and the man puts Magda on the ground. She staggers for a little bit, sniffing the air. The man squats down, putting a hand on her blonde coat.

Together they walk a little bit up the road. Magda throws up one last time, and lies down. Crickets sing. The man puts her once again on her feet, and says, “Go on, Magda.”

Magda gets up shakily and walks a few steps with her head to the ground, her dry nose sniffing.

“She doesn’t know where she is,” the overweight woman with glasses calls to them.

Magda steps off the road into the tall grass.

“Yes she does,” the man calls back. “She knows where she is.”

Magda takes a few steps into the blades, and from where the woman stands at the car, disappears from sight.

Here are some odds and ends from my travel journal I thought it would be fun to share. Not fun like swimming in a tub full of jello fun, but fun like riding on a carousel when you’re a little too old to be riding on the carousel. Does that make sense? We’re doing this a little out of desire, a little out of nostalgia, a little out of obligation. Just go with it. Get a hot dog. Watch the spectacle. It’ll be fun.

Got to London and one of the first things I see coming up out of the Underground is a garden and a graveyard side by side. It’s definitely spring here. I probably smell bad.

Edinburgh: too many Americans, too many men with the top buttons of their shirts undone.

Christchurch Meadows in Oxford: 1/2 pastoral beauty, 1/2 lawn maintenance crews to keep up aforementioned beauty.

Here at Oxford. Mina’s been kind. I find it best to wander as much as possible. I’m sleeping on a rug on the floor. My head hurts. All my clothes smell like sweat and my period so I just bought a shirt with a sparkly lion on it and some zig zag harem pants for 25 pounds. Really bad decision rationally but it feels good and looks amazing.

I hate Americans. I don’t hate myself but I hate hearing them talk over here. Compared to the British accent, they all sound like Roseanne Barr.

You should see me right now. Don’t know what got into me yesterday. I bought the most garishly patterned pants. I don’t know. Maybe I was lonely. But I walk down the streets of Oxford wearing these pants and somehow feel better, as if people’s stares are my way of connecting with them, letting me know that if anything were to happen to me in any particular moment that they would help me, not because they are kind but because I cannot be ignored. I always exist wearing these pants. I have no fear of disappearing.

Bought a ham and egg sandwich and a small container full of berries from Tesco and had planned on consuming them in the bookstore while I finished Emerald City by Jennifer Egan so I wouldn’t have to buy it. But three bites in I was promptly told I had to leave if I wanted to finish my sandwich. “No food from outside sources,” the woman said, and pointed to a sign that said, “No food from outside sources.” So I wrapped up the sandwich and finished the book. Then I found a spot on the street next to a jazz guitar player and ate standing up while he played “Girl from Impanema” to all the Oxfordians walking in and out of the sunlight and rain.

I am starting to really despise Oxford. It’s like the Pleasantville of academia. You could only ever discover these people’s desires and dreams through rhetoric or prose and even then you would have to go through seven layers of wool and tweed. They’re all so perfect. The men have clipped, windswept haircuts and ruddy cheeks and pants that fit. The women are rarely above a size 6 with invisible product in their hair and the color coordination of an autumnal department store display. They’re just dying to be torn open, all of them. I want to rip them apart and bleed on their faces.  I liked Liverpool. I really did. The air there was different. Everyone in Oxford walks around in a blanket of their own self-congratulation. In Liverpool people are itching to get out. The youth don’t pretend like they have a place to go. They loiter. Their accents are thick; their makeup is thick.

Just spent four hours at the Tate Modern. Paid for all the of the exhibits. At first hated Kasuma–her first work was a room full of paintings that looked like little grains of rice glued to a five by five foot canvas but then the words ‘obsessive and simultaneously meditative’ came to me, and I understood. She was obsessed with small circles/shapes populating expansive spaces both because she grew up the daughter of Japanese seed farmers and, later in life, after I assume she had done tons of LSD, she began hallucinating dots everywhere. Her last installation was a maze of mirrors full of LED dots attempting to capture a feeling of infinity. The dots came from an invisible source. The viewer saw themselves over and over and over, surrounded by dots forever. There was no clear way out of the maze. The idea of infinity is disorienting, but what was even more disturbing was that Kasuma saw infinity this way. Or saw anything this way, frankly. It was breathtaking.

The other paid-for exhibit, Boetti, was impressive but pissed me off. It was a study in the various ways Boetti organized the world in terms time, people, and geography. I guess he decided the best way to do this was weaving them into tapestries. Maps, letters, numbers, symbols, rivers of the world, woven in to giant tapestries with ugly colors. It was not remotely visually striking, just intricate, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why he did it. There was just so much work and so little visual or conceptual innovation. I began to be immersed in the same feeling I used to get when I was a kid and my mom insisted on cleaning everything even when people weren’t coming over. Of course I understand it now–sometimes you just have have to do something to achieve peace of mind, but I think art only becomes important when what you have to do affects people’s ways of seeing. Apparently it had to do with Afghanistan in the 70s, but I saw little emotional/visual connection besides the fact that Boetti spent time there and paid Afghani women to weave all his ideas. See, that’s the thing! He didn’t even do all the dirty work. Like, Jesus.

Other highlights/lowlights of the Tate:

-Andy Warhol’s giant electric pink and yellow self portrait, seen below.

-Roy Lichtenstein

-nature films by Painlevé that involved 35 mm zoomed in on goeducks mating. Surprisingly sensual and beautiful. Also, he collaborated with Eisenstein, which is badass.

-Jenny Holzer‘s truisms in the hyper-stimulating form we’ve all adjusted ourselves to and, in a way, asked for.

-Cindy Sherman‘s art school work.

- Max Ernst, and the surrealist section in general. Here is my favorite, called “Forest and Dove.”

A lot of people were at the Tate Modern out of obligation and not because they like art.This is not meant to be a statement about high/low culture. I think art museums are for everyone, but they didn’t mean a whole lot to me until I learned about art history. Especially modern art. If you don’t like modern art, you will hate the Tate Modern. So don’t force yourself to pay for it, and then walk around complaining or talking about other things in loud voices. I didn’t go see any castles in the UK because I don’t give a shit about castles. I would just be there, taking up space, getting in the way of people that actually like castles. If you have the means and leisure time to be a tourist, you are one of the luckiest people in the world. Savor your time. Be selective. But also, don’t listen to me because I am a snobby bitch. And an old person, I guess. I just hate listening to people talk when I’m trying to enjoy someone’s work. People are the worst.

Onward.

As I crossed the Millenium Bridge, approaching the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, Lil’ Wayne’s “6′ 7″ began playing in my headphones. Coincidence? I think not. Time for new poets, Billy Boy. Real G’s move in silence like lasagna.

Also, only two food vendors were on this really long bridge, and both of them were selling the same thing: honey roasted nuts. Is there a rule of some sort?

Note: Now we enter the Continent, and as I review these scribbles from my perspective in the future, it might be said that alone-ness is taking its toll on my mental health. In a good way. 

Meandering around Marais, which is the only word for it: meander. Got my train ticket to Amsterdam bought, so I have very few worries. Sallem told me about Japanese tourists coming to Paris in huge numbers, and in huge numbers they become depressed and have psychological breakdowns because the city is so dissimilar to what they thought, and because of this phenomenon there is now a service in the Japanese embassy in Paris for the poor, sad tourists to help them cope with the loss of the Paris of their dreams. I think they should be taken to the Marais on a sunny day, where there is a jazz band playing on one end of a bridge over the Seine and an accordian player on the other end, and people are filling the cafe tables and chairs drinking light beer and espresso and chattering in French which, en masse, sounds like a fountain. Or, for bad days, there should be an experience they are taken on with a friendly French tour guide (this, I know, will be difficult to procure) wearing a striped shirt and a beret who takes them to get baguettes and cheese and wine and they sit at the Eiffel Tower park learning French phrases while they eat and drink. If they pay tons for little figurines, they will pay tons for that.

And the French “experience guide,” who is a handsome, poor student trying to work his way through Les Erbonne, will fall in love with one of the Japanese daughters and they will have a baby out of wedlock and have to live in a dirty studio and the girl will write in her journal one night, when the baby has gone to sleep and her husband took the bicycle out for bread three hours ago but is now smoking and having a drink alone just get out of the house, watching and hating all the women in tall heels that could spike his sneakered feet at any moment. “Now I really know what it is to be French,” she’ll write after describing her new life, and she meant to write a letter home to her family in Japan but now her hand is tired.

It might be elderly-Parisienne-trip-to-the-museum-day today, as I just travelled all the way to the other end of Paris to see Berthe Merisot at the Monet Museum only to be flanked on all sides by stern, small, old, old, women who are either whispering about something that had nothing to do with me and looking at me, or whispering about my dress or weird scarf or messy hair or whatever it is Paris disapproves about me which seems to be everything. I was in line, counting out Euros in coins, but I left almost immediately. Seeing Monet and Merisot would be an awful experience alongside elderly bitches in tailored pantsuits and Chanel No. 5. This art is for them, I’m sure they claim. This art is for their living rooms. Well, fuck you. Merisot is sensual and soft and eveloping and kind and powerful and I hope she suffocates you. This art is not for you. Someday I will rent out this museum for the whole day on a Friday even though I don’t need it that long and you can all just go back to your salons, dipping stale cookies in lukewarm tea and complaining, or whatever it is you rich fucks do.

I realize I am taking out my aggression on old people, but I can’t take it out on young people because I have to pretend my life is united with the lives of rich Paris youth, at least for a couple more nights until all the parties are over. Sallem’s friends are kind, but the people at bars, the people that come out at night; they are from another world. Why do I always put myself in situations where I am following around smaller, more beautiful people to fashionable parties? Everyone is scared of me at these little clubs. They give me five feet of buffer room wherever I am, like some big, glistening dancing dragon that is hulking around the cave they have gone to for shelter, spilling gin and tonic on their Top Shop tunics. I have the urge to stomp through them and shout I AM MASTADON. In fact, I think I drunkenly told someone that I was a DJ and my DJ name was Mastadon. They didn’t like it. You see, people like to surround themselves with tiny people. People like people they could, if the situation calls for it, pick apart and eat. It’s just natural selection.

You know what’s weird? How this park is full of nothing but old people. There is seriously not a person under 60 years old here. Most are nearing death. We are all sitting on benches in a circle around a gazebo on a beautiful day and it is really starting to creep me out. I should probably go to the Louvre. I wanted to go to the Picasso Museum but it’s closed for construction.

People outside the Louvre:

-Italian couple in matching khaki’s and blue shirts

-Obese teenager with t-shirt that reads “Failure is an option”

-Lots of people with jarring sunglasses/face ratio

-Scarves with people in them

-Policemen with bald heads

-Only a few people with babies inside of them, but quite a few with babies outside of them

-An old man reading a newspaper

I decided not to go into the Louvre. Instead I will walk to the Musee d’Orsay. I heard they have Degas.

Well I missed the hours for Musee d’Orsay. And I’m hungry. There is a man near the steps playing sad clarinet for my sorrows. I guess most of my trip to Paris will be a going to places and writing outside of them. So it goes.

Have also just realized I am wearing a scarf with the colors of the French flag on it. People must think that’s really special, especially as I have been taking pictures of national monuments.

A Dutch man just wandered in front of the cafe in Amsterdam where I was drinking and eating and he said, “Okay, okay, fire show,” and several other things in Dutch. Then he poured alcohol over two sticks and said, “Okay, here we go, here we go.” As he tried and failed many times to light the sticks, the theft alarm of the scooter next to him went off. He ignored it, still flicking bits of flame from a cigarette lighter to the sticks without any fire. When he finally lit them, he poured alcohol in his mouth and spit at the sticks, making giant bursts of flame towards the cafe with no regard for passersby. One guy on a bike definitely almost caught fire. Then, a Spaniard in a brand new Heineken Brewery jacket sauntered by and stopped dead, watching the Dutch man with furied intensity for some time. His friends called to him but he didn’t answer, watching. “Que es esto?” he muttered to himself. Then, in both alarm and fascination as another fire cloud ripped through the air, he whispered, “Plasma? Plasma. Es plasma.” His eyes were wide and full of pupils. I have reason to believe he was on mushrooms.

The Van Gogh museum was disappointing. Not to say Van Gogh was disappointing. The opposite of that. But what are you thinking putting his work in brightly colored, sun lit rooms? He is dead. He no longer needs optimism or asylum. It is obviously too late for that. The best part was the sort of hidden-in-the-basement exhibition of Symbolism, which started with the view of a courtyard full of rocks in the shape of Van Gogh’s “Wheatfields.” The exhibit was circular and mazelike and lit like twilight. The walls were purple tinged with blue. Certain Symbolist pieces,. like Arnold Bocklin’s “Isle of the Dead,” had musical pieces from composers of the time period accompanying them.

The entire Van Gogh collection–the brightly-lit, gold-framed paintings in a row collection–was paired with captions like “Van Gogh loved to be in nature. That’s why he painted these trees.” Bullshit. You are doing the man a disservice. Of course he is much more than his mental illness, but completely avoiding his way of seeing by acknowledging it in one sentence–”He was in a mental institution from this date to this date”–is glossing his raison d’etre, his driving force. His suicide is not romantic, but the reasons behind it are tied into his work, as all aspects of an artists’ life are. Why was he obsessed with peasant women and prostitutes? Can we at least speculate why his understanding of color exploded into little fragments? He was imitating Impressionists, yes, but for chrissakes. Van Gogh is no imitator. We don’t give him his own museum because “he loved nature.”

Little things, little songs from my commercial childhood are coming to me as I sit outside of a shopping center on Alexanderplatz, East Berlin. It is truly a city rebuilt in the 90s. I hear, “Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening, pizza at suppertime. When pizza’s on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime!” I like that the residents of Berlin wear “I HEART BERLIN” shirts. Little things, little morale boosters. Kids with mohawks.

At the Holocaust Memorial for Jewish citizens of Europe and I’m welling up a little. It’s not a wall with lights and names and statues. It’s a sculpture that takes up the entire area of a city square. No fence, no entrance or exit, just tiled granite for a floor and at first, at the borders, rows of coffin-shaped (rectangular, evocative of coffins or graves but not directly representational) concrete blocks rise out of the ground in perfect straight lines. Then, when you walk further into the rows, the aisles gradually narrow, the blocks become higher, and the ground slopes. Neither the slope or the growing height of blocks is visible from the street. Only when you walk towards the center do you realize you are descending into the ground. Then rectangular walls of concrete (the sides of the blocks) surround you. There many avenues of this perfectly straight grid to take, but only a crack of street is visible. You are in a city of blocks, of graves, with no block or avenue more distinguishable from the other. This “maze” is accessible to the public at all hours, and those go to the center can’t be seen from the sidewalks. Anything could happen in here. There are cigarette butts on the ground. High schoolers on spring break sit on the blocks and laugh with one another in different languages. Human life can and does happen here but only with the backdrop of blocked graves. Sitting on one of them, you can see people in dark coats emerge, head first, then torso, then legs out of the line. It is so quiet, yet unmissable. It is one of the most moving sculptures I’ve ever seen.

Met up with Jonathan, a good, old friend of mine from Topeka. He lives in Southeast Berlin in leftist, vegan cooperative. Haha. He’s not as radical as his cooperative mates, but he is an American Jewish vegan and that surprised the anti-capitalists so much they let him in for 150 Euro a month just so they could tell people at parties. We bought beers and walked with them along the canal, talking about how we used to only want to go back to school, that terrible panicky year where we were babies pushed out of the incubator, but we now we love life. We do. Look at us, strolling along a canal in East Berlin, the graffiti growing out of the bottoms of buildings like colorful weeds, drinking sweet, dark beer with enough money in our pockets and no particular place to go.

I want to live in Berlin more than I want to live in any other European city, but I’m afraid by the time I get there it will be overrun. My friend said sometimes people at parties will hear his accent and come over to him and slur in German that he is ruining this city. People like him who move here from America are ruining it, they say. I see their point. What if only English-speaking, plastic-looking condominiums go up? What if the very history that allows this city to be so free gets swallowed up by people seeking freedom, and they never bother to learn anything about it?

Last day in Berlin. We were mean to each other to make it easier to part. I am in love with this city like I would be in love with a large, handsome, ragged punk that hangs out on sidewalks and cheap bars that would never love me back but keep me around because I laugh at his jokes. He plays stand-up bass and dives innocently, unapologetically into leftist politics and horror movies. I’m at Mauerpark Flea Market. I bought a jean jacket to be like Roberto Belaño. I bought a sparkly ring, and two Lego people for the girls I babysit. A band is warming up. I’m drinking a Hefe Weissen. A homeless woman with a mullet is sitting next to me, speaking words of comfort to her small dog.

Might be out of money. Tried to buy a baguette and Diet Coke on the train but my card didn’t work. The clerks seemed to think it was the magnetic strip on the card, but as I stood there watching them clean it on their polyester uniforms, try it on other machines, put it in saran wrap, but I knew it was no use. A cloud of no money began to descend over me. In any case, I am forced to eat the remains of a bag of gummi bears for lunch and possibly dinner if I don’t have the time to get on the Internet and transfer some money. It has just occurred to me even if I had the time to transfer money, I have no money to pay an Internet cafe to do it. Do I regret the purchase of the jean jacket and the sparkly ring and the Lego men? The answer is probably yes. But there’s nothing I can do about it now.

Note: What follows is a page full of the phrase “I’m out of money” written in cursive.

It turns out I was not out of money, and the train workers were right. I actually spent less than I thought I did.

Getting the bus down Snelling and I’m pissed that no one’s here to welcome me home until a man gets on the bus with a shopping cart full of boxes and crates and pieces of scrap metal. He’s cheerful, doing his day’s work I guess. He has a women’s belt holding up his pants, and a class ring where a wedding ring would be. Just another day for him. So I have to melt into the bag on my back and remember my life’s not so bad. I haven’t showered in three days and I am really, truly hungry for a hot meal and I know people’s names a million miles away and my eyes are saturated with images. Things are actually wonderful.

The notebook basically ends here. Thank you for travelling with me. I’ll put up photos of the trip when I find a device that connects my camera to my computer. I imagine it’s some kind of wire. The pictures will make you want to go to Europe, I hope. But don’t buy a Eurail pass if you do. It’s a rip-off.

The last real entry is an idea for a short story where people have a lamb spit roast in their backyard at their house on the day before Easter Sunday, and they invite all their friends over to cook and eat the lamb and they have a party and a good time. Then when they wake up in the morning, on Easter, there’s a live lamb wandering around their backyard.

That’s it. That’s the story. Should be good. And on that note, a Happy Spring to you and yours! See you around.

Hi, everyone. I’m going to Europe next month! For the whole month. I’ve never been to Europe, except for a two hour layover in Brussels. And now that my book is almost out, I’ve got some extra time and some extra cash. $24.60 specifically. That should be enough, right? Don’t worry, I also have a backpack, suitable walking shoes, and 3 pounds of peanut-butter-lovers trail mix. God will take care of the rest. I’m especially excited to visit England, the birthplace of my ancestors, and more importantly, the birthplace of the four guys who I was raised to believe were my musically-talented, invisible brothers: the Beatles.

I’ve looked at some pictures of England, but what with Photoshop and all, you never can be sure. Better to go with words. Based on the memorable fictional accounts of England I’ve read and seen, here is what I expect it to look like:

1. In the cities, smoke and soot everywhere. Smoke embracing orphans, smoke curling fancy ladies’ hair. Soot in the cracks of century old buildings, in the lungs of chimney sweeps, palace guards, and shopkeepers. Bricks stacked on one another resembling buildings in a ragtag way, creaking signs hanging from their fronts. Narrow alleys. Clocks clanging. Large, empty churches. Waterfronts. Umbrellas.Trains and house music echoing from underground.

2. In the country, cold and wet and green. Rolling hills dotted by manors and servants of manors. Ladies denying themselves male temptation roaming the dirt roads, getting the hems of their skirts dirty. Rich riders, male and female, having trouble making conversation of the gallop of their horses’ hooves because they are thinking about the poor/less socially acceptable people they are in love with. Sheep dogs. Sheep. Lonely shepherds falling in love with sheep. Tucked away, futuristic houses with neon signs marking them, people wearing jumpsuits inside, sitting on balls suspended from the ceiling, surrounded by paintings of genitals. And then, ripping through the countryside, a muscle car full of ruffians looking to rob them.

3. As for people, my impressions are more varied, though there are a lot of the afore-mentioned ruffians. Some ruffians are wearing knickerbockers and newsie caps and scowls. Some are wearing cod pieces and bowler hats and eye make-up. Some are all girls, pale and sweaty with bright lipstick and platform military boots. Some just ride around clown-car style, silent but their faces expressive, miming sports in various fields. Or maybe that’s Paris. Also, men with top hats. Women with bouffants and go-go boots and thick eyeliner. Colin Firth. Spies with bad teeth. Frizzy haired prostitutes asking me to buy flowers. David Beckham. Stern-looking women in trench coats. Wizards. Gypsies. Angry young men of all kinds–skinny adolescents with shaved heads and leather jackets, tooth-lacking, drunken, rugby and football fans, scheming rich kids in blazers. Happy young men, too. Men with floppy haircuts running from screaming girls and hiding in red telephone booths.Tilda Swinton. David Bowie. Though perhaps, they are the same person.

Boy, I hope it’s okay that I can’t sing too well. From what I understand, there is a lot of singing. And if I run into Simon Cowell, don’t worry, I’ll tell him he’s such a mean judge and I’ll tell him you said so, too.

If fiction is anything like real life, which I’m pretty sure it is, this is going to be such a wacky vacation! If it isn’t, I expect I can tell everyone around me that I’m an American and they will do their best to make me happy however they can.