the trucking life

Sometimes I wonder why the stars aligned to bring my father into my life. He has caused a lot of heartache in his time. A lot of it is derived from the sort of misunderstandings that sensitive people collect along the way, but some of it is downright dirty lashing out on his part.

I have never condoned the actions of my father; both present or past. To say that I understand them, that I can have empathy for the sort of pain he feels first, well that would be closer to it.

As he faces another incredible struggle with his health, one that amazes and astounds doctors at his stubbornness, his sheer will to survive, his ability to tolerate so much physical pain. He can do it because he has suffered so many pains in his heart and mind, the body is just a thing. His heart is a black hole of hate and desperation and profound and complicated love.

I worry for him. I love him. I feel guilty sometimes for doing so, but I can't help myself.

As I contemplated applying to Iowa again, I realized that my manuscript had to be material that was a bit more universal than a goth girl working in a liquor store on clark st (not that there's anything wrong with that...). As I sifted through some of my notes and half told stories, I found a beautiful piece I'd written to accompany a photograph my father gave me on one of my rare visits with him. The piece itself was ignored by my instructor at the time, a guy who writes light hearted fiction who thoroughly enjoyed the goth girl. I assumed that must mean the piece about my father wasn't very good.

Most of the time when I read things I've written all I can see is a terrible writer. I cringe at every awkward metaphor, each lengthy sentence, poor use of grammar, etc. This piece, despite flaws of those kind really still had a sense of life, a sense of awe, a sense of curiosity. I wanted to know more. I wanted to write more.

Has my father come into my life to give me the one thing I have always wanted? His stories of living the trucking life, traveling with a carnival, trying to make it big somehow, is this his gift to me? In my heart I know that what kept me journalling for so long was knowing he was there to read it. I always thought I got my sense of writing from my mom, but in a lot of ways, it's my dad that has nourished my writing.

Some things never change

[Forgive my absence. I can only say that it has been a long foul winter and I found myself in something of a rut or a routine and things were fairly pleasant for a while.]

Back with him. Back at the cafe. Back to zero.

He has let down his walls and we are truly together again. There seems to be nothing that can divide us, even recent bitter battles (which can be counted on one hand) had no major impact and maybe even showed us how much we do love each other. It's a relief, in a way, because I loved him so much and wanted it to work out. And it is. It's been over a year since we've been dating again and I've asked for nothing more than his good company and we've had good times.

The cafe. It is funny. In an act of financial desperation I returned to the easy thing I know. It is like riding a big bicycle with lots of gears. I am no longer babysitting for those I travelled to England with (it is a long complicated story for another entry) and with less than three dollars to my name, I agreed to return to the cafe. My first day was yesterday and it was exhausting but also familiar and comforting.

Iowa said no to my application. It is nice to know. I can't explain how every waking moment I had to push the wondering away with something else. I suppose that is why I lingered in routine, to keep myself busy while I waited. It is better to know than not know. I am glad they gave me word so quickly. I hadn't expected to get in, but I thought I had a good chance. Now I am not sure what to do next. At the very least, applying for that program got me writing on a regular and consistent basis, which I am grateful for. I sometimes write more now than I did in school. I have no idea what will happen next, but I feel it is likely I will work on stablizing some of my finances and perhaps going in a different direction (creative nonfiction?) and I will continue to write twice a week. I may also reapply for next year with a new manuscript.

I am not at all as disappointed as I thought I would be by this turn of events. I think I deny myself things that comfort me because it means I am not being strong enough or tough enough.

thirty days

Yesterday marked one month to the day that my application for the writer's workshop is due.

Given that all they care about is the writing I have to show them, then yeah, I'm doing okay. I've been working on some new stuff and I have some old work I can send them.

Otherwise, I am very behind. I haven't looked at the application for the school, taken the GRE, or looked at any other schools.

Considering that I do my best work when I"m pressed for time and in the throes of procrastination, I am hoping for the best.

I can't imagine not going there, to Iowa. It just feels like it will be the starting point of my career. I consider other schools as a back up plan but nothing has the same allure, the same compulsion. I want to go to Iowa and I will be working on all the things I must do.

I just can't believe that this year has passed by so quickly. I guess it is a good thing I was having so much fun...

helium head

maybe I just needed a day off. maybe it was last night's drinking combined with no dinner and four hours of sleep; no coffee consumed til four in the afternoon. useless, I was.

the only sense of accomplishment I feel is that I started reading a book today and it's nearly done. happened to me the other day too. usually that kind of consumption is something I regard with some suspicion, wondering if it means that I am holing up again, fighting off the urges to do the shit I've absolutely got to do.

It feels okay because one of the things I've absolutely got to do is write my manuscript, and I can't write when I'm not reading something. It's an odd phenomenon, but my writing feels forced or trite when there's nothing I've been reading.

I can tell it's about time to begin my manuscript; I've been wanting to write here more often, I've been writing super duper eloquent text messages that I save with some sense of pride and I've been having dreams.

I'm sure I dream all the time, but I hardly remember them. Every so often I have transcribed the details of some dreams I remember online. I find it interesting that when I go into this kind of period, it is usually fall, which used to mean school, reading lots, I also tend to dream in a vividness that gives it some concreteness so that when I wake, I have strong recollections of what I was dreaming about.

Also, I have become agitated. I find the dullness I encounter from living day to day almost painful. I am bitter and bitter is bad.

this is what I know from watching others: do what you want and you will get what you deserve. wasting time not doing what you want is mind-numbing. doing what you want actually changes people from morose Eeyores to vibrant people who make a difference.

fuck. what am I doing here? my friend dan the man is thrilled that I want to go into the peace corps. maybe it's the right time to give myself away to a cause that's worth my time, my exhaustion, my sore feet, my cracked hands, my smiles, my tears, my heart.

at 24 I was pretty funny:

Thursday, April 26, 2001

Regrets:

Dropping out of school.
My estrangement with my various family members who should know who they are.
Letting my relationships get all taken for granted.
The way Vince and I got engaged the first time.
Passing on opportunity.
Not volunteering for a good cause when I should have.

Goals:
Graduate college by 2006.
Be a millionaire via intellectual property.
Be a generous millionaire.
Write a novel or two before I turn 30.
Volunteer and learn more about marine biology through Shedd Aquarium.
Become a mentor.
Become more involved in YCA.
See my nephew at least once a year.
Have the wedding that I dream of having.

Interestingly enough, the only goal I managed to make good on was graduating college by 2006. And even that is a little off, because my last day of school was December 18th, 2006. Of course, my regrets are the same and even have new offshoots of them, and my goals actually don't sound so bad, except for the wedding part. I almost left that out, but that and the millionaire part made me laugh.

I've been reading through a lot of my old journal entries trying to identify the "great writer" that Scotty's brother Tom claimed to remember from my bugs in amber days. It's been a while since I looked at those entries and to a large degree what I see is a person who is me but not me, my life is completely different now and everything I used to hate I have learned to embrace. A lot of what I wrote were highly amusing stories that took place at the coffeeshop:
liar, liar, garbage can on fire!
the jesse jackson of clark st
seven strikes you're out!

So did I see a great writer? I don't know. I wish I could say that going to school and spending sixty grand on a fancy education made me a better writer, but I think it made me a better person, so it's not such a loss. I think my journal writing hit a brilliant summit during the dating and exhilaration that was Mr Burnham (which can be viewed at the diaryland site).

Take them or leave them, online journals, blogs, chewed up bubble gum on the sidewalk, there's something to be said for being able to transport back in time with a few clicks on a keyboard.

love, daddy

Last night when I arrived home and opened my mailbox, I found a letter from my father inside. It surprised me since I had just sent out a card in the afternoon describing my worry of his absence from my life. Some of you regular readers may have noticed his phonetically spelled uber comments have petered out, which I assumed was due to his recent move but would return after he got settled in.

The occasional cards from my daddy have marked birthdays and holidays, but otherwise, I don't get letters from him. It's okay by me; I have always enjoyed his comments here and he sometimes sent emails. Ah, how our modern ways of communicating kept us in touch. I sent him a father's day card some time ago and heard nothing...not a phone call or text message and I knew he was without a computer, so I filed it away into that part of my brain that is devoted to the things I do not understand or know the reasons behind them and went on my merry way.

A couple weeks ago, I decided I wanted to send some real letters and got out a card set and sent some notes. He was included on the short list of people I don't see or speak with often enough. I sent him a photo from my graduation and my best wishes.

It turns out that his letter and my card were written just days apart.

He hasn't had a computer and mentioned he missed reading my silly chewed up bubble gum blog writing. Part of me wonders if part of the reason I haven't been writing here as much is because I knew he wasn't going to be reading. He's read nearly every blog I've written for the last five years or so. I was thinking that perhaps I ought to mail the entries to him; it might be a good reason to finally hook up that printer I got almost two months ago now.

I enjoy the idea of having a pen pal again, and I've been enjoying sending out cards again. It makes me feel like my words have some small value.

the pressure cooker's boiling

but there's nothing inside to cook.

I keep feeling this intense need to be doing something, until I realize there's nothing to do. Must be a holdover from school and feeling like there's always something to do. It's been interesting, because of course there's always something I could be doing, but nothing I absolutely have to do by next week, say, or tomorrow, but I just have this urgency about things that in reality, I have plenty of time to get done.

my small goals about my writing have been part of this effort, and as I did them I wondered if I was wasting my time, if I was just doing them to feel less guilty, but it turns out, the writer's workshop application is simple: 2 to 3 short stories, or less than a 100 pages of an excerpt from a novel. And my little goals are actually a means to that end. so all this lashing I've been enduring from guilt [you're not doing enough, you're not producing enough, you're not enough!] is actually the true waste of time.

and, the period to send applications is from November to January, so I've still got plenty of time.

I've been sharing my work more with friends, and what I like about it is that it forces me to look at my work anew. It forces me to wonder what they might think. It forces me to face the truth. What I've been writing is good, but it's still lacking some things: the anger that fuels my wanting to write about the working class lifestyle, the grittiness of that life, and the way it affects everything. In other words, the work is still superficial in a lot of ways, and sharing it with other people makes me realize there's still far more to add.

I had my first meeting of what I hope will someday be a thriving writer's group style thing, that was just me and a school friend reading our work to each other.

I have been reading the work of my friends and sending back my comments.

the more things I do that are writerly, the more I feel like one.

as I grapple with choosing between fiction and non-fiction, I am considering an internship again. It is so easy to get into that writer's body, and I feel like I've spent a long time preparing, like getting ready for a day at the beach, just to be exposed to the elements and the eyes, and I wonder when I'll be ready to bare it all.

this is the moment I live for

as I shuffled through a mix of gray, stomped down snow and sparkly white flakes, staring at the dusting left on trees and iron gates,

there, bubbling, in the [surprising] stillness of my mind, a sentence formed. my body kept moving along the sidewalks, but my brain went on a mental tangent. the sentence was spat out fully formed, followed by a viscous strand of continuing sentences and the background of the subject. it has been so long I feared my writing process had changed somehow. a sense of great relief rushed through me and I stopped in my tracks, like a moose frozen by a sound in the distance.

since school has taken over the reigns of my writing style, my ability to cull the grit of my life into pearls of prose seemed to have expired, either due to the efforts of the more rigorous procedure of homework [five pages a week?! impossible!] or the complete occupation of my mind to angst.

it remains intact, an oyster still, and the last two months of rest and lack of crafting fiction have not been a waste, for the mulling and turning over of material is still going on [always going on] and to my great delight, it has produced the next thing, the next step, beginning with that sentence.

I rejoiced that I knew I had a pen, struggled with my bag to search for some scrap of paper, even a receipt would do, and wrote down the sentence. I also wrote down what was left of its trail, which was slowly dissapating, and the little of it I got will do well to give me more ideas to consider.

I continued on my walk, dragging my feet through new snow that no one had walked through yet. and I was glad.

some book talking

my goal for the month of february: print out the three short stories that are part of my novel.

sounds easy, no? but just getting the damn things into one file was hard enough. they were a series of bits and pieces, five pages here, three there, and some parts are still missing.

but I figure if I can get it printed out, I can start editing. I can look at it in a way that I can't see things on the computer. I can look at it without flipping over to myspace or google from time to time for an "eye break,"

from time to time people ask me about how it (the novel they say, with emphasis) is going. I don't think anyone realized that last semester, I didn't have to take a writing class, but I knew it would be better for me if I did, that it would force me to write, and so I produced a good portion of the Tower story last semester.

I wrote the Tower part around an event, a birthday party. Then I realized the coffeeshop part is written around an event too. The liquor store stuff isn't, but I wonder if it should be.

I need a good reader, someone who doesn't know me or clark street, someone who has good feedback. I want it to be someone who doesn't know me because then I'll be more likely to take what they have to say as simply what they have to say.

I gave some of my liquor store stuff to my co-worker val and more than anything I wanted her to say it made her laugh. maybe I'm still too attached to my stuff, like it's some personal affront if the person doesn't get it immediately.

the interesting thing is, the more I talk about it (the novel) the more realistic it becomes, the more plausible it seems, and somehow, this excites me, that it is less of a thing that is in my head and more of a thing that actually exists in reality. maybe that's why printing it out in one big chunk is so important to me, because then it'll have a physical-ness that it lacks now...

some things to remember

it's time to eat crow. take out the feet that are stuck in my mouth. whatever else they say about apologizing for being an asshole.

Drew came with the sun and cleared the clouds. even in the first winter's snow. his ability to see past my facades is incredible, and just what I needed, a dose of uber-reality, a line of words that have nothing to do with anything but the truth.

what is the truth? it lies in the answer (which is more of a pun than you realize) to this question: Are you living a life you love?

and then when it is a no, all there is to do is to do something.

so here I sit, admitting to the people that there are things to admit to, causing, perpetuating, being responsible for, etc, etc, all the things that sound like they don't really matter, but in the end, what does really matter...

his line floated above all else, and it wasn't like I even wanted to be reminded that it really is this simple. I priggishly thanked him for his unsolicited advice. And then I took it.

anyway, the fog is lifting, the sky is visible, and all there is to do is regain the footing I once held. I always think it is more sure than it really is and it seems like it hardly takes anything to make me topple.

even if it always feels like I am failing, falling, a tremble of all things unfair in the world, there is something in me that is always pressing upwards to some surface to burst into breath and swallow gulpfuls of air. my eyes open and I wonder how I got to where I had been and I try to shake some sense into myself, I say, Self, it doesn't have to be so hard.

and somewhere, my Self smiles, and it is eerie, because I know there is destruction in that smile, there is my enemy, it is inside me, it is my undying need to be right, to be preserved as a righteous soul, a tortured victim, and defiant, hell that smile is all about defiance as it's best,

and I try not to cringe

while sorting out the messes that part of me has made.

I have renewed my quest to write everyday. And part of me longs for this stilted voice that is at once complicated and a mix of fucked up diction and syntax and all kinds of wrongness grammar-wise, so I am going to see how long I can stand writing this way. maybe you can't stand it either. I wish someone would tell me what they really think of my writing. sometimes I know it is not bad, but sometimes I wish someone would just say, you fucking suck, Christine, you ought to do something better with your time.

anyway, let me at least give you an image to fondle:

ennui: open mic night: a cafe crowded with tables and chairs and people sitting alone (unless, of course, you do not count laptops as a significant other--she sleeps in my bed and is the first thing I turn to when I come home), the smell of bread grilling is in the air, the walls are a putrid color of green that probably looked better on the paint card and now just looks like a deep mashed pea green, and I sit with my back to the first person at the open mic night (which is only three weeks old) who has been any good.

He has a harmonica, a guitar and a fucking passion beyond what his simple name conveys--how sad to simply be a Joe--and I feel bad for him, that he has the talent, and the fucking gumption, but he wears glasses and upon first glance, he's a bit of a nerd, and it was a little shocking when that first loud chord crashed out of his hands, and that first time his foot stomped in beat with the music (at times it created a sense of percussion, that stomping), and he was probably the only guy who has ever sweated from the simple aerobics of playing his stuff; the other open mic-ers simply sway and swoon in their mopiness...and I want to love Joe forever simply because he is the best of the worst and because he has surprised me. And because no matter what, Joe will never stop doing this and turn to the mope style even though it is far more popular and that makes me glad.

no one else can actually stand his stuff because it's a little bit loud and a little bit unexpected, and when someone surprises you, it's easier to gawk than express some kind of joy in another person's ability to do something better than you expected them to. Or maybe they simply don't approve of the harmonica, the loud guitar chords, the jubilance; after all, it is a coffeeshop and those mopers who sing of loves lost and glances missed, they know what they are talking about and they say it so sadly and simply. and they have so many more friends than Joe, who has come alone, and these friends are cheering and happy on the sidelines while they wait their turn to sing and and mope before the microphone. And part of me really wishes to go home, but the heat has been broken in my apartment since Friday and it isn't coming back on today.

yes, that is the kind of life I have now.

also; today I spent an hour with a three year old, which can probably be my new cure for the mopes. his little face was delighted to see mine. and we invented a new game, cross country stroller skiing, in which I push his stroller through all the snow and running, twist and turn the stroller while screaming with a false sense of panic and he has the kind of unrelentless laughter that is free from the affectations he's already developed as a three year old. And in classic little kid mania, he developed an unsatiable urge to cross country stroller ski over and over again, which is the only true compliment in life. I mean really. repetition of anything from a young, undiscerning, easily distracted person is how you know you're going in the right direction.

new post at chicago arts blog

check it out: chicago arts blog

when it surprises you.

My work got read aloud today in class (among others) and it was heavily recalled, and for the most part, I think people really got the point of the story, really got the feeling I was going for.

The triumph in that is it is probably the piece that is closest to my journal writing style, and yet it still has its own feeling apart from me. Also, it was a rare piece of mostly fiction (I tend to have about half real life instances and half made up scenarios), in which the characters I'd envisioned grew beyond what I'd seen for them, and the scene unfolded in a way I hadn't predicted.

Moreover, I was pleased with the subtle sense of extended metaphor in the piece, something I hadn't noticed I'd done til I read it through a couple times.

Or, as Steve Martin says in my favorite Steve Martin Movie, "Sometimes, I even amaze myself."

If you'd like to read the piece in question, send me an email and I'll send it to you.