I just downloaded Cory Doctorow's latest novel, "Eastern Standard Tribe." On the page describing his book, Doctorow wrote this...
"...I am firmly afoot on a long road that stretches into the future: my future, science fiction's future [he's a science fiction author], publishing's future and the future of the world."
Yes, that's it. That's why I write instead of sleep. Not because I care about publishing—I can't imagine there are more than three people in the world that would bother reading about a fictional alternate political history of the Crimean peninsula (which, sadly, is what I've been working on). But throwing yourself into the future—making common cause with the world and its manifestations, all the stupidity and the incredible beauty—that's a concept I'm interested in.
I like to write because when I'm on a good roll, it makes me feel the way you do when you first get out of a theater after a good movie, one that makes you feel strange and awake, and gets you to notice the world a little more intensely for a while. When I'm on a roll I can feel myself paying more attention to things, making connections I might not have otherwise. Feeling awake. It's the closest thing I can get to actualization, these days at least.
Here's a bit I got on paper a while ago and have just finished playing with...
In San Francisco everyone had been on-line and looking good. The nights with Junko he'd spent in the Mission, the music and lights, and afterwards, the bitter taste of the pill, the upward rushing golden explosion in the chest that clarified so many things, for a while at least... She brought out the spiritual in him, made the experience more than just fun, made him believe that it could actually mean something. That ultraviolet and orange mandala he'd once imagined spinning in the center of the ceiling of the their little Divisadero apartment, the smiling girl-Buddha he imagined in its twisting purple-orange core—raining on him blessings, lotus petals and complexity, and something else, just hints of something deeper, revealing itself incompletely in the patterns of light and sensation, something that might have been the words that were lost. Sure, maybe it did mean something, for that moment. It was all good, in its time, yes... the craziness of those days. He had been soaking it all in, maybe even then recognizing its transience—riding the intensity of it, turning in time, turning at the cusp of the great Wheel. There had been moments when, unable to speak, he'd repeated his mantra of that time in his mind, and in those moments at least, it had literally been fulfilled... let it always be like this, let it always be like this, let it always be like this. Thomas throws his dying cigarette into red Crimean mud and kills the ember with his heel. He spits to keep himself from crying. He doesn't have time for that here. That life is gone now, he tells himself for the millionth time. All that is gone now. But fuck it's hard... So what, he's supposed to pretend that it wasn't important, because it all ended in mindfucking cruelty years later? He remembers Junko's short dark hair and expressive brown eyes... her body, tight and perfect, like a sine wave... and the way she could get lost in a moment, sensing the world turning in spirals around her... No. There had been something important there, but they'd burned it down. They'd both made a mockery of something so utterly beautiful, Thomas just as guilty as she of that real sin. He lights the last Berkut in his pack, inhales deeply and forces himself to concentrate on the moment. What do you have right now? he thinks. You have a cigarette. That's something. You have a cigarette and a job... Thomas is torn from his train of thought by engine noises approaching behind him. He turns and watches as Palach's brown UAZ rover rolls over the crest of the hill, squat and ugly, out of place in the strange hazy beauty of the winter landscape. No troubles with the Ukrainians, if Palach and his people are back already. Thomas rubs his eyes, puts his tough-guy journalist face back on and walks back towards the rover. He has work to do. |
Yes, beautiful indeed. And I ask myself the same worried questions as Sam does...
Posted by: Anna at March 12, 2004 02:17 PMThanks Sam, thanks Nadja... I'm fine. Little tired maybe. But whatever I manage to get out on the page means there's less of it where it came from. I guess anything anyone ever writes is always autobiographical, at least a little bit. But the relationship of fiction to reality is that nothing is ever as good as it seems and nothing is ever as bad as it seems. -Kisses and credit.
Posted by: Case at February 12, 2004 10:38 PMYes....write to breathe...when you are cursed with the talent, you have no other choice....to the point where it is now your social obligation.....and, yes, i know, this makes things such as sleep a problem....it has become a NY's resolution for me and i have failed at it miserably....functioning on 3 hours til i crash is a vicious cycle...but, with the words of advice that lie in the hands of the outsider...and a direct command from headquarters, ja...I BESEECH(?) you to get some rest! Keep writing...we all need it...
Das Vedanya,
Nadja
beautiful - but i sincerely hope that it's not autobiographical. are you happy pete? how long are you planning on living in copenhagen for? is it where you want to be? i worry about the forlorn lostness of you, about your tortured soul. just remember - the best is yet to come...keep writing. keep living. keep loving.
Posted by: sam at February 11, 2004 07:48 PM