Sunday, March 15, 2009
My Feelings Exactly
My friend Chris Solomon recently wrote an essay for the New York Times, "Mountain Man," about moving from West to East....check it out. You know when you have a feeling, and then someone says it just so?
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Where Have I Been? [Part II]
Chinese New Year:
Big Couloir:
My dear friend Steph's wedding:
On top of the world (or, at least, NYC):
Little Cottonwood Canyon:
For more details, see "Where Have I Been?"
Big Couloir:
My dear friend Steph's wedding:
On top of the world (or, at least, NYC):
Little Cottonwood Canyon:
For more details, see "Where Have I Been?"
Where Have I Been?
Yeah, it's been a while since I wrote anything here. I'm not sure why. Maybe "Boulder to Brooklyn" has become less Boulder and more Brooklyn, thus rendering the novelty of my every day in slightly less vivid color. Maybe this semester has been way (way) busier than the last one, or maybe I'm becoming less efficient. Maybe nothing exciting has happened. OK, not true—since I last wrote, I've been able to ski in Montana and Utah; be in the wedding of one of my best and closest and most wonderful friends; see modern ballet; go through submissions for the Brooklyn Review; make connections, lose connections, get in touch, lose touch; eat Columbian food, eat local chocolate made with fleur de sel; start my writing workshop with Myla Goldberg; set the record for most mojitos consumed in an evening (personal record, that is); go see Stephen Colbert LIVE; go up the Empire State Building; get up early, stay up late; help a kid make a sculpture of a building out of tape and newspaper; hang out with my completely kick-ass-in-every-way roommate; take car services; forgo coffee because of a broken French press and a lack of motivation to a) buy a new one, b) buy filters, c) buy a cone, d) buy a cup of coffee; read books I've never heard of, like "Hope Leslie: Or, Early Times in the Massachusetts"; and read books I've always meant to read, like "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and Jonathan Lethem's "The Disappointment Artist."
A couple key lines from Lethem:
"That the writing workshop, the sort led by an established writer and populated by aspirants, is a site of human longing and despair is undeniable."
[Very true. We, my classmates and I, so long for success and approval...and, as it remains out of reach but ultimately possible, causes much despair.]
"In offering a critique, you must be honest and kind. To be dishonest is to be unkind. And, to be unkind is to be dishonest to yourself and your art."
[Also very true. Even though it's hard to take the honesty sometimes, it's nice to hear it straight.]
"No one approximately my own age will tell even his or her worst student that they are simply not a writer, that they ought to give it up. And every one of us feels a queasy guilt at this hesitation: Are we perhaps only leaving that job to be done by some subsequent disenchanter—an editor, or a series of rejection slips, a teacher braver than ourselves? Are we like bogus farmers, raising crops already scheduled to be destroyed in some government buyout?"
[I hope that I'm not a pathetic little crop waiting to be chopped by a combine, flattened and cooked, put in a box, and shoved back to the rear of the grocery shelves. Maybe those bogus farmers are farming in the hopes that one little plant will shine, or all of us will grow just a little bit more, and if said farmer never breaks the world record for Largest Pumpkin Ever (see Pumpkin Nook, 1,689 pounds), hopefully he or she will still be rewarded. And that I'll be rewarded too.]
Here's to human longing that's someday attained....
A couple key lines from Lethem:
"That the writing workshop, the sort led by an established writer and populated by aspirants, is a site of human longing and despair is undeniable."
[Very true. We, my classmates and I, so long for success and approval...and, as it remains out of reach but ultimately possible, causes much despair.]
"In offering a critique, you must be honest and kind. To be dishonest is to be unkind. And, to be unkind is to be dishonest to yourself and your art."
[Also very true. Even though it's hard to take the honesty sometimes, it's nice to hear it straight.]
"No one approximately my own age will tell even his or her worst student that they are simply not a writer, that they ought to give it up. And every one of us feels a queasy guilt at this hesitation: Are we perhaps only leaving that job to be done by some subsequent disenchanter—an editor, or a series of rejection slips, a teacher braver than ourselves? Are we like bogus farmers, raising crops already scheduled to be destroyed in some government buyout?"
[I hope that I'm not a pathetic little crop waiting to be chopped by a combine, flattened and cooked, put in a box, and shoved back to the rear of the grocery shelves. Maybe those bogus farmers are farming in the hopes that one little plant will shine, or all of us will grow just a little bit more, and if said farmer never breaks the world record for Largest Pumpkin Ever (see Pumpkin Nook, 1,689 pounds), hopefully he or she will still be rewarded. And that I'll be rewarded too.]
Here's to human longing that's someday attained....
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