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This site is dedicated to sharing my writing, along with other random thoughts, pictures, life updates, and various funny or interesting stuff found on the Internet.
"All persons living and dead are purely coincidental, and should not be construed." - KV |
Tell me a story, she said. Her voice was sleepy and her eyes half-closed.
I began to tell a story.
In English, she said, as she did every night. I want to hear a story in English.
But you won’t understand.
It doesn’t matter. I want to listen to you tell me a story in English.
Very well, I said, as I did every night. Where shall our story begin?
***
Once there was a young man who grew up happy and loved, very much contented with the place that he called home, and the people he loved, his friends and his family. But like in the beginning of many stories, the young man reached a certain age and began to sense that something was missing, something he would not find at home.
And so it was that after much waiting, the young man bid farewell to his tearful family and friends, and promised to return once he’d found what he was missing.
After traveling many places, the young man eventually found himself in an incredibly beautiful place, far from his home. Everything about this place seemed quite perfect to the young man—the scent of the air, the way the clouds floated lazily in the sky, the radiant colors of the sunrises and sunsets, the lush landscape filled with majestic trees and rolling hillsides. Everything felt right about it, as if it was precisely the place he was looking for. The young man stayed in this wonderful place and came to know the people, their language and their culture, and felt himself very much at home.
Soon, he met a quiet young woman who smiled and looked away whenever he was near. Eventually the young man summoned the courage to talk to her, and soon they fell very much in love. She complimented him on his ability to speak her language, but each night she asked him to tell her a story in his own. She loved the way his voice sounded as he softly spoke words she would never understand. Each night the young man created a new story, but every story told of a young man and woman falling in love and growing old together.
The young man eventually began to wonder about his mother and father, as he had not been home for many years. He wanted to bring his lover to meet them, but before they could leave she became pregnant, and so they waited for the child. They had a son together, followed by two daughters, and their children grew up happy and loved, very much contented with the place they called home and the people who loved them, their family and friends. He thought often of returning home; first he was too ashamed to return because he’d waited so long, but in time the young man grew to become an old man, and he was too afraid because he thought his parents might be gone.
When the young man’s son reached a certain age, he began to sense that something was missing, something he would not find at home. He bid farewell to his tearful parents, promising to return when he found what he was looking for. The young man and young woman grew old together, each day missing their son more than the previous day, but grateful to have each other’s love as their source of hope that he would find what he was looking for.
***
Was it a happy story, she asks, as she does every night.
Yes, I answer. The young man finds what he was looking for.
this week’s writing experiment.
with apologies to Haruki Murakami
One beautiful August afternoon, at a food truck on some narrow side street in west LA, I ate the 100% perfect burrito.
Honestly, there was nothing about it that made it particularly delicious. It didn’t seem to have any special ingredients. The underside of the tortilla had been left on the grill slightly too long. It wasn’t especially appetizing. But still, I knew before I even took a bite: It was the 100% perfect burrito for me. The moment I smelled it, my tongue became moist with saliva, as I anticipated savoring its every bite.
Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of food—a pizza with crisp pepperonis, say, or a bacon-wrapped hot dog, perhaps. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I’ll catch myself staring at a plate at the next table to mine because something about a dish has captured my attention.
But no one can insist that his 100% perfect meal correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like tortillas, I can’t recall the texture of that burrito’s ground-corn wrapper. All I can remember for sure is that there was nothing especially gourmet about it. It’s weird.
“Yesterday on the street I ate the 100% perfect burrito,” I tell someone.
“Yeah?” he says. “Tasted delicious, eh?”
“Not really.”
“Your favorite restaurant, then?”
“No, I bought it from a food truck. I can’t seem to remember anything about it—the flavor of the meat or the texture of the melted cheese.”
“Strange.”
“Yeah. Strange.”
“So anyhow,” he says, already bored, “did you take down the name of the food truck? Are you going to follow them on twitter?”
“Nah. Just had the burrito and went on my way.”
The food truck drove from east to west, and I walked west to east. It was a really a wonderful August afternoon.
Wish I could have seen the person on the food truck prepare burritos. Twenty minutes would be plenty: just watch how they grilled the meat, how they folded the tortilla. Discover how the complexities of fate had wrapped perfection in a thin wrapper of wax paper and tin foil. The burrito had surely been peppered with mystical seasonings, ingredients from a time when children played happy and free on the corner lot, sand in their shoes and joy in their hearts.
After speaking with my friend, I felt I should have taken down the name of the truck, or at least made note of its appearance, or where and when I had seen it. Having failed on these counts, what recourse did I have? I could track down all of the food trucks on the west side, one at a time, sampling their wares. Ridiculous. I’d gain all sorts of weight, and who knows whether I would even be able to recognize another burrito as coming from the same truck.
Maybe the simple truth would do. “Good afternoon. I believe I once at the 100% perfect burrito; could it have been served at this truck?”
No, who would believe it? Or even if they did, they would probably not be able to recreate the experience for me. Sorry, the employee could say, we may have made the 100% perfect burrito for you, but we have since changed our produce suppliers and have not had the same luck with avocados that we once had. It could happen. And if I found myself in that situation, I’d probably be through with burritos. I’d never recover. I’m nearly thirty, and I know that losing touch with the flavors of youth is a simple fact of growing older.
I recall walking away with my burrito, as the truck’s ignition roared to life behind me, and they prepared to drive away. I walk a block further, slowly eating the burrito, and turn: the truck has already turned a corner as I am nearly halfway finished with my snack, the taste of sour cream and grilled onion lingering on my palate.
Last week’s submission for my fiction class. Enjoy.
As the time for him to walk onto the stage drew nearer, Philip’s deep sense of pride at having been chosen to read his essay at the town celebration became all the more completely eclipsed by his intense nervousness. This year was a big celebration—one hundred fortieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation—so everyone was talking about how the crowd would be the biggest one until, of course, the big one-five-oh. Among all the seventh graders in Hardin County, Kentucky—proud birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, only Philip had been ballsy enough to write an essay about the vast differences between what it meant to be a Republican in Lincoln’s time and what it means now.
Of course, he knew better than to submit that essay. The essay contest was judged by several prominent Republicans, so he submitted instead an essay about how proud Hardin County should be of having such an integral connection to the only United States President yet to have had a patent in his name. In the “ringer” essay, as Philip liked to call it, he wrote extensively about how shameful it was that the commercial boating industry of Lincoln’s time had failed to pick up on his ingenious ballast tanks, which would have worked wonders to help buoy ships over shoals. The essay judges fell for his trick, and now he was set to read his real essay in front of this large crowd.
As he waited in his seat, next to the podium on the rickety stage in the hot Autumn sun, Philip felt a drop of sweat dribble slowly from his knee down the side of his calf. He knew he shouldn’t have worn his favorite black corduroy pants. Would the man at the podium—an ass of a man with an ugly bowtie and a bushy moustache—ever just shut up and introduce him already? At least the white button-up shirt he’d worn wasn’t soaking up as much heat as his pants. He wondered if these Republicans knew his father was a die-hard Democrat; it would explain why they hadn’t given him a bottle of water, or anything at all to help with his parched throat. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
Finally, the bow-tied brustache man introduced Philip to the crowd and initiated a round of applause. Philip stood up slowly, clutching his essay tightly in his sweaty left hand while the brustache man overzealously shook the right one. He stepped up onto the small box they had provided for him behind the podium, set his papers down, and looked out at the crowd. Now standing, he could clearly make out the scent of funnel cakes and corn dogs, and he felt a drop of sweat form on his temple and roll slowly down his cheek.
“Republicans,” he said, not yet looking down at his paper. He had memorized the entire first paragraph. “Republicans are not today,” he said. He stared out at the crowd of people who had come to celebrate Lincoln’s birthplace, and he didn’t see a single person who wasn’t white. The edges of his field of vision, too, began to go white, and he felt the box below slip out from beneath him as he collapsed behind the podium.
Every week we’re supposed to write a short (250-500 words) piece of fiction, based on a list of experiment ideas. Last week I submitted this, based on the experiment “Chronicle,” which suggests trying mimic the style of writing used in newspaper articles. Naturally, I gravitated toward an “Onion” style piece. I will try posting my other experiments here, as well, in the weeks to come. Enjoy!
Area Man’s Attempt to Use The Secret to Remove Ants from His Bathroom Horrible Failure
Fresno (AP) – Local twenty-something Jack Jackson recently sought to employ techniques learned from reading the back cover of a recently popular self-help/spirituality book entitled The Secret, which suggests that readers can effect profound change in their lives through focused positive thinking.
Jackson rents a single room in a condo located in the Fresno Townhouse Association of central Fresno. “I also have my own bathroom,” he stated in an interview, “and I can use the washer and dryer any time I want.”
Jackson claims that he has noticed ants in both his bedroom and bathroom before, and even occasionally an ant or two in the shared kitchen space. They have never really bothered him.
“They’ve never really bothered me. I just let them be, same as spiders,” Jackson mentioned, seeming overly proud of himself. “Sure, there have been times when I left a cereal bowl in my bedroom, and that’s my bad. But after the recent wet spell, the ants in my bathroom were out of control.”
Saundra Meyers, the woman who rents the bedroom to Jackson, verifies that he has, in fact, left food in his room. “He’s just like a teenager. Pizza boxes sit in his room for days, and you can see the trail of ants carrying away crumbs, but he doesn’t do anything about it.”
After scanning the back cover and first few pages of popular New Age spirituality book The Secret while waiting in line at Target one evening, Jackson began to think that maybe his best bet would be to use the “law of attraction” to “manifest” a bathroom free of ants.
“I don’t know if the mouthwash attracts them or what. I always put the lid back on tightly, but it doesn’t seem to matter, and I always feel bad when I smoosh [sic] the ants. So I tried envisioning a bathroom without ants, and really believing that it would become a reality.”
After three days of positive thinking, Jackson’s attempts to use The Secret failed. He then borrowed a can of Raid from Meyers, who gave him a vaguely disapproving “I-told-you-so” look.
I walked across the street for lunch with a couple coworkers, and on the way back we spotted these phones on the sidewalk. Any speculations about what might have happened?
 The replacement glasses It seems like I’ve posted less during my break from school than I did during the semester. What’s that about? Well, I guess I have been busy, for having been on break. I was back in Illinois for about a week and a half, but my mobility during this trip was a bit more limited than usual. This wasn’t all bad. I still managed to make it up to the Quad Cities for an evening, and spend a little bit of time with each of my siblings. Because I stayed most nights in Paxton, I got to hang out with Bob quite a bit, which was quite enjoyable. I even took him on a ride one morning, when we borrowed a truck from one of our uncles to go pick up some of my belongings that were still in Urbana.
 This calls for hibernation. So it snowed quite a bit while I was back, and stayed pretty cold, but we borrowed the truck to go to Urbana on the second of two relatively clear days. The road conditions were pretty good on Route 45 that day, and we cruised along at or near the speed limit most of the way. Just a mile or two south of Thomasboro, however, we suddenly found ourselves sliding out of control on a patch of ice. I had only enough time to let off the accelerator, hoping to regain traction soon, before we drifted into the left lane at an odd angle. We regained our traction at that bad angle, and the truck’s light back end and high center of gravity sent us back-over-front, first into the ditch, and then into the opposite side of the divided highway.
It all happened too fast for us to do much other than brace ourselves for impact, and the only thought going through my head was, “this is going to cause a lot of damage.” I’m still not entirely clear whether the damage I was anticipating was bodily or property. The truck slid to a stop on its passenger side, facing the opposite direction in the lane farthest from where we’d started. Bob and I checked with each other to make sure we were each okay, and as far as we could tell at the moment, we were. In order to get out, we had to climb out through the cab’s broken rear window, as we weren’t going to be able to open either door. I waited for Bob to climb out first, as I was suspended above him by my seatbelt and had to wait until he got out to be able to release my seat belt and find my way out of the car.
 That's where I was sitting. To look at pictures of the vehicle after the fact, I have to wonder how we made it out without any major injury. Some of the folks who stopped to help us after the accident mentioned something about me having blood on my forehead as I climbed out, so I worried about whether I’d sustained a blow to the head during the accident. With my previous experience of being ignorant as to the state of my own physical well-being due to a concussion, I suspected it would be best to get checked out at the hospital. I had some soreness in my left shoulder where the seatbelt had forcefully restrained me, but after the EMTs gave me a good once over, they verified that I didn’t seem to have any major injury. At the ER, they x-rayed my shoulder to make sure, and they said that I shouldn’t worry about a CAT scan unless I experienced any post-concussion symptoms in the next 48 hours or so.
So now that I’m back in LA, some folks are calling me “Crash.” I think it might stick. Last week was the two-year anniversary of my motorcycle accident, followed shortly by the twelve-year anniversary of my decision to stop using drugs for recreational purposes. Incidentally, four years ago on MLK day I was pulled over on Route 45 (just a few miles south of where the latest accident took place), where I was given a ticket for speeding and informed that my license was suspended for parking tickets. This driving stuff is hard work.
On Thursday, I’ll get back into the classroom for the final course of my MA degree, a fiction workshop class. That and my thesis work will be how I spend just about all of my free time for the next four months, and then you should all be able to start calling me Master Crash. Meanwhile, back in the Midwest, Bob is on his way to St. Louis for the night, and tomorrow morning he’ll fly to San Diego to get started on his USMC career. Maybe it will work out so that we can attend each other’s graduations in May? We’ll see.
 Nagoya Castle Wednesday morning, I returned home from my trip to Nagoya to find a letter from the folks at the TA program, which informed me that I was not accepted for the coming year’s group of TAs. (They were very friendly about it, explaining how the constraints of a limited budget meant they had less to work with, etc, rather than just saying “suck it, loser.”) The good news: that means I’ll graduate in the Spring! (Provided, of course, I bust ass and get my thesis finished!)
The trip to Japan was simply wonderful. I’m still fantasizing about going over there to live. All of the food was delicious, and the people I was with went out of their way to make sure I had a nice 29th birthday. In less than a week I’ll head back to Central Illinois for about a week and a half… which at the moment seems like much more time than I’d like to spend there. Maybe I’ll hole up at my mom’s house and work on my thesis the whole time 
 I saw kids on the corner last Saturday night, wearing bags on their heads. Tomorrow morning I’m hopping on a plane for Nagoya, just shy of three years after getting engaged in Tokyo, and just over a week after breaking off that engagement near LAX. While I’m in Japan, I’ll enter my thirtieth year here on Earth, my final year of trustworthiness. I guess my hopes of making my first $10 million before 30 are shot. :-/
I had the pleasure of reading some of my work for the Graduate Reading Series at CSUN last weekend, and I think it went pretty well. I could barely resist pointing out to the audience that the piece I read is a work-in-progress, and that there’s probably going to be a lot more to it at some point. I refrained, however, from trying to apologize for myself. I’m still waiting to hear about the TA program, at which point I’ll know whether I’m finishing CSUN this spring or the next.
Finally, I’ll be flying back to Illinois on Christmas Eve to visit with friends and family, and to collect all the countless books I left in Urbana three years ago. I’m even planning to get my own place so I have somewhere to store them. But then, maybe if some gets me some Nook-e for Xmas, I won’t need as much room? Come on, Santa. I’ve been good.
 Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I just read this book for my Literatures in Translation class, and I have to say, it’s better than any world history book that claims to be such, without even claiming to be such. It contains an astounding amount of facts and information about world history, all presented in such a way that it effectively undermines the typical western historical narrative familiar to so many of us. I recommend it to all.
View all my reviews >>
 looking sharp and sharply looking So I went into the eye doctor a week and a half ago and discovered that I’m slightly nearsighted. While I’m inclined to blame this, in part, on the fact that I’ve been working a desk job sitting in front of a computer screen day-in, day-out for the last three years, I’m not sure that’s entirely the case. Tonight I went on what is becoming my regular evening walk around the neighborhood, and as I once again was marveling at the clarity with which I can now see distant objects (and particularly illuminated objects at night), I happened to look up at the stars overhead and notice the Pleiades. I was astounded by what I saw – I could pick out each of the individual stars! Even as a child I could not do that, which leads me to suspect that my nearsightedness, however slight it is, has been around for quite some time.
Everything else is good, for the most part. Yuka is coming out to Cali for Thanksgiving, and we’ll drive up to visit Tim, Yasu, and the boys. We’re also going to see Mary Poppins while she’s in town. Fairly soon I should be going in to interview for the TA program, which will play a major role in determining whether I’ll finish my MA in 2010 or 2011. With these new glasses, I’m thinking it might end up being 2011, but we’ll see. I’m going to be spending my 29th birthday in Nagoya, Japan. I can’t wait. I may even ride the Shinkansen this time. And I’ll be sure to eat lots of ramen.
Speaking of eating, I’m still working on being conscientious about my eating habits. I haven’t been using the Livestrong calorie counter thing lately, as it’s a bit of a hassle to update regularly. Instead, I’ve just been trying to keep track in my head each day. I’ll let you know how that works for me.
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