Proscrazytination

Wife and kids are downstairs digging out Christmas crap... whistling cheerfully to each other, listening to Christmas music (I hear Greensleeves right now)... I informed them that I was going upstairs to write for a while. I've been up here for forty-five minutes, during which I have done the following:

- stared at the manuscript notes scattered across my desk
- opened up online poker and lost twenty thousand dollars and then won back twice that much
- read from half a dozen other writer's blogs... a new hobby of mine now... following the pathetic ramblings of other writers... all the while searching out ramblings more pathetic than mine
- finished the last few sips of a Mountain Dew I had no business drinking
- read every word of my own last few blog posts... why do I read my shit over and over again... It's like some kind of literary masturbation... I just don't know
- stared at the manuscript notes on my desk

The dog came running into my office a few minutes ago with a gigantic bow tied around her neck. She looked quite verklempt... God I love that word.

Why do I put myself through this? Why can't I just crack open the file, follow the notes, make the changes, move on... why can't I just do it? I know I will, eventually... I'll get it done before it's due... I always do. But why must I torture myself? Is it some kind of psychological yoyo string that must be wrapped around and around until I'm ready to be flung into the air? What is it? I know it has to be done... I know I must do it. I know I must get it done soon. I know this procrastination is unhealthy, that it only serves to make my heartbeat a little faster and increase my blood pressure... I know that it would be easier, physically and psychologically, to just crack open the file and do the fucking work. But I won't. I won't until I'm up against the wall, the gun to my head. And then I'll do it, and I'll do a good job... but why this torture? Why this tightening rock in the middle of my chest?

Here are some theories:

- I'm afraid to open the manuscript for fear that I will realize how fucked up a particular area of revision is
- I just don't want to do the fucking work
- It's all been going well, and I don't want to deal with something that isn't golden and sparkly
- I'm a pussy.
- It just doesn't feel like the time is right yet, I'm waiting for the right moment to strike, when the planets are aligned and my aura is a light shade of purple (translation - I'm a pussy and I'm full of shit...)
- I'm just really fucking tired and I don't want to do shit.

Once again.... once again.... once again.... bottom line... I know, I know, I know, I know... that this is part of the process, my process, the process, I know that this is what I have to do, what I must go through, the battle I have to fight with myself to get the thing done and out the door. I've learned to accept this (at least I think if I keep telling myself that, I'll feel better).

I've also learned that I'm a big pussy.

But I'd love to be an independently wealthy, fairly well-known pussy, and in order to reach that status, I guess I need to get this fucking manuscript out the door.

Honestly, I don't have to be an independently wealthy, fairly well-known pussy insasmuch as I'd like to just be a pussy who's able to pay the bills.

Oatmeal Soldiers

Loved the idea of little ranks of oatmeal-cookie soldiers preparing to (literally) throw themselves into the breach. Into the steaming, fetid jungle of Bill's maw.

The brave cookie soldiers know what sort of terrors await them in this godforsaken archipelago! They remember the cottage cheese/sunflower seeds massacre of '07. But they don't allow themselves to think about that. The land of Archway depends on them. They secure, with their sacrifice on the field of battle, the freedom of their cookie brothers and sisters back home.

I'm listening to streaming internet radio on my phone. It's MP3 quality sound; good reason to have a data package. And now I must get back to the steaming, fetid jungle that is my story.

Feet Up

Glad to hear you're right where you're supposed to be with your writing. Glad we've figured it out that all this psychotic bullshit is a necessary part of the game. Doesn't make it feel any better, but there is a sense of deep-rooted security... that we know this is part of the game, we've learned to expect it, to ride with it like a particularly bad skid on black ice... hanging on the steering wheel, breathing, remembering not to crank the wheel too hard because we've learned... learned in the past... learned that we just need to breathe and let the ice take us and hope for the best... that the worst thing we can do is try to fight the ice, try to turn the wheel...

We've learned... and the roller coaster goes up after it goes down... always...

Loved the note about parrying the thrusts of your would-be seductress. I'll say it again... I'm proud of you... if I were your wife I'd give you a night you wouldn't forget after showing such true bravery in front of the temptress (though I know and understand that your wife will never know of your triumph... if you shared your story, she'd still be pissed at you, regardless of how faithful you were... I know how that goes)

Did the sugar-free oatmeal cookies give you courage? Was it a Popeye thing? Was it a sexual thing? Part of me wishes you'd set up a little video camera. I imagine myself cheering as I watch those defenseless little cookies... marching in ranks from the back of the package... heads held high, waiting for the five-fingered army personnel carrier to drive them to the Iwo Jima beaches...

Great talking to you yesterday... like a shot in the arm, really... looking forward to seeing you today for coffee...

Feels Like Shit Alert

Suddenly the manuscript feels like shit. All in one moment, one misplaced word, one turn of phrase that struck me as particularly wooden, and I'm back to complete bewilderment.

However, I have an ace in the hole; I really don't give a shit anymore. This story has worn me out. I'm like the haggard parent standing in the aisle at the supermarket while his unwashed, sugar-crazed children smash jars of pickles on the floor.

Fuck this writing, man. I'm much better at software anyway.

Work Redux

Just an added note on my work post above, provided at Steve's request.

So, how did I handle the programmer coming on to me? What were the exact circumstances and strategies behind my, if you will, piece de resistance of fidelity?

Well, it goes like this. I was at a restaurant in Houston called Yao's, which is owned by the Rockets' all-star center and features appropriately tall doorways, large sinks and chairs, etc. The whole place is styled to be comfortable to a 7' 6" basketball player. This is the gimmick, but the food ain't bad, either.

So at a certain juncture in our large, after-work dinner, it was decided that we would adjourn to the bar area to watch some of the Rockets game. While there, my programmer began making her move. I was a bit flustered, a bit off my pins, I can tell you. Thrown for a loop. Not certain what to do.

So this is what I did: excused myself to make a phone call, got into my car, drove the the Kroger a few blocks away, purchased a package of Archway Sugar-Free Oatmeal cookies, and ate the entire package while sitting in the parking lot. Then, refreshed, my sanity restored, my gut distended, with the power of Archway behind me, I went back inside Yao's. For the remainder of the evening I handled myself with grace and aplomb, skillfully parrying the exploratory thrusts of my would-be seductress.

Work Today

Today at work:

1. One of the BAs (Business Analyst) told me about an affair she had with a man she really loved. She was ready to leave her husband. The other man was not ready to leave his wife. They were at an impasse but could not quit seeing one another. Then 911 happened and the BA, contemplating mortality as so many did back then, decided she did not want to die w/out having children. When she became pregnant the affair ended. Now she's happy with her husband and six years later no regrets.

2. A programmer told me she wanted to "get to know me" in "other dimensions than work".

3. I installed xplanner, a project planning software built with MySQL, Hiberante, Struts, Apache, etc...A cool tool but tomorrow I have to run four hours of project planning meetings with over twenty users (and two projects) and hope this damned thing does not break down on me.

4. I took the third step.

5. My grandmother rallied and made it through the night. God, I love that woman. She is so damned tough. Won't go before she's good and ready. If she lasts until spring I'm taking the baby son to visit her.

Grandmother

Got a call from my uncle. They don't think my grandmother is going to make it through the night.

What I remember about Grams is mints, leather upholstery, fast cars, tennis rackets, golf clubs, a golden-tinseled Christmas tree, her feet thrown up in laughter.

When I was growing up my parents were poor and we lived the relatively joyless and paranoid life of fundamental Christians everywhere. Grams was the antidote to that. Thank god I had her to show me that life can be an animal pursuit; it can be about a well-done club sandwich or a perfectly struck fairway wood. It's all right to live a little, now and then, that's it's okay to laugh instead of think. She tried to show me that.

Thanksgiving Thoughts Response

Hey Steve:

You made me laugh with that list: "I am your father-in-law, Luke. Come to the dark side."

We went to see the family in Georgia. I oscillated wildly between total serenity and complete, depraved insane rage. One moment I'd be basking in the joy of a family scene and the next I wanted to run howling into the woods where I could bury myself under a mound of pine straw and garrote small animals with a piece of dental floss.

Holidays! How do we possibly survive them? Next year (next year by god I promise) I'm going to take Jonathan, a huge supply of milk, a whole crate of diapers, some canned stew, and we're going to pitch a tent on the beach someplace and contemplate the waves for two days. Now that will be some gratitude (not to mention some serious cripplage rising from my fundament after a few cans of stew).

One last thought. I believe our buddy, Jerry Cleaver, is a recovering person. Check out page 84 where he talks about praying to a "power greater than myself." Nobody uses that lingo unless they've been in a few hundred meetings. You think?

Thanksgiving

I'm still going to post here. On the way back from Thanksgiving in Georgia I had two thoughts. Well, one is a thought (analysis of pattern) and the other is an observation (response to phenomena).

Thought: My wife loves to see her family. For her, the definition of "home" has something to do with socialization, a kind of mass data dump with her mother and siblings. They talk, they sing, they play games, they do familial things. She has this concept of "home" then that centers around her relationships with her family and community. I am quite different. Due to my strange upbringing, I learned (necessity being the mother of invention) how to derive my sense of identity from media. From particular books, from taking in data. My "home" is portable. I must be able to meet my spiritual and dietary needs, I must be able to have my books and other data around me, and I'm happy. Just interesting to see how different we are in this respect.

Observation: On the ride home from Thanksgiving the moon hung like a silver note in the black staff of the telephone wires.

I have a feeling that my descriptive sentence above is not particularly original; but then again, what is?

Solo

Looking down at my hairy gut-rolls, getting ready to put some more words on the page. It's all part of the process.

Yesterday I felt awful. Today I feel all right. I may never understand why. That idea would've really bothered me yesterday, when I felt awful. Today, it's easier to take. I'm a hopeful person who is always willing to believe that things are only getting better and better.

My gut-rolls return my hopeful gaze.

The Art of the Plot

Maybe, and I'm just thinking out loud here, maybe plotting (for me) is much like any other "problem" that I have in my life. Here are the steps I seem to take in confronting problems.

1. Identify it as a problem
2. Go after if full-bore, using everything at my disposal to solve it
3. If the problem proves to be tougher than anticipated, I have an emotional reaction. During this phase I'm angry. I start to "think out of the box." I repeat myself. I try to find angles.
4. It begins to dawn on me that the problem may be insoluble. Despair sets in. I can't imagine living with this problem forever. I try to shoehorn in one of the solutions from step 2.
5. Nothing works. Full of self-pity. End of the line. Life is meaningless.
6. I give up. Admit I can't solve the problem and that moreover it may not ever be solved.
7. The solution comes, usually something I missed between steps 1 and 2.

The above is just a rough outline of how problem-solving works for me. Some problems take years or even decades to bring me to 6 or 7. Some problems I'll probably be dead before I hit 7.

But, as it relates to my plot...It may be part of my personal process to exhaust myself mucking about with the particulars of the plot before I finally see how my original idea (or something close to it) was the best. That's the case with my current story. Glad to be there. Now just need some time to write it.

Wow

Ever have a week that hangs you upside-down by your ankles and spanks you like a newborn baby? That's how I feel this morning...like I'm just trying to come back into focus. Been a long stretch in meeting rooms, my friend. By my estimation I've been in meeting rooms for at least 36 hours so far, with one more day to go. This is probably similar to your schedule back in your days as a crackerjack technical trainer. Don't miss it. Don't bother missing it man. Not an easy thing to do sober.

Had a dream last night that my brother had gone to this guru who told him how to fix his writing. The guru said that my brother must find a way to assault his writing, to eliminate all his bad works from the world through a kind of karmic cleansing. Only then, said the guru, would my brother find his true voice and be able to write purely and cleanly.

So my brother printed up thousands of his stories, purchased an old van, and then he went around the city slipping his stories, one at a time, under the windshield wipers or into the windows of parked cars. He would then follow the cars in his van and run them off the road, corner them, and smash them into crumpled, smoking wrecks.

After doing this for a year, my brother and his fiction acquired quite a reputation. He was put into prison. And given a book contract to tell his life story, which became an instant classic.

Norman Mailer

Was sitting in my hotel room in Houston and saw a Shaun Hannity/Norman Mailer head-to-head bit of ridiculousness. I could not take it. Mailer was talking about how Shakespeare enabled England to survive all its various ups and downs (royal scandals, empire-building, post-empirical downsizing, etc.). If nothing else, it was an interesting point. But Hannity with his incredible, preposterous, self-serious zealotry, kept turning it back George Bush. I turned it.

I never really liked Norman Mailer's writing. I always thought it was a little too raw; a little too self-serious in its own way. But I prefer him over Hannity anyday. And I like what you had to say about his commitment to writing.

I'm reading this book called "The Portable MFA." It's a compendium of all the techniques available to fiction writers, and it's no half-bad, but of course I let it get me all twisted. That is, I was reading along, following its discussion of plot, and thinking about my own book, and deciding to scrap the whole plot and start over...you know how it goes, I was into deep analysis/paralysis.

Then I turned the page and there was a sidebar that said, basically, "Don't think about any of this stuff while you're writing. Just write. Think about this stuff when you're revising."

Oh. Good point.

Norman Mailer

I won't pretend that I'm some Norman Mailer fan wearing a black armband, but I did appreciate a couple of quotes from an AP article I read.

"The Pulitzer-Prize winning Mailer, the eminent literary journalist, drama king and gentleman, eternal striver for the Great American Novel, seemed to embody in recent years not just one writer, but a generation for whom the printed word was a noble and endangered way of life."

Yes... I like that... eternal striver for the Great American Novel. I feel like some day I'll take the time (have the balls?) to really sit down and write a real novel... all the pieces of the puzzle together at once, every page, every paragraph...

"Some part of me knew that I had more emotion than most," Mailer, who married six times and stabbed one of his wives, once wrote. He cautioned himself not to "exhaust the emotions of others."

More emotion than most... wow... yeah... married six times... stabbed one of his wives... she probably made a suggestion after doing a first read... tried to off the bitch.... I can relate... cautioned himself not to exhaust the emotion of others... hmmm.... I can still relate...

...
"His hero was the authentic, autonomous man — the boxer, or graffiti artist, or maestro of jazz, or the "Norman Mailer" who starred in "The Armies of the Night" and other works of journalism. The bureaucratic mind was his enemy, from the military leaders of "The Naked and the Dead" to the Kleenex box-like skyscrapers that appalled him when looking out from his Brooklyn town house, to the processed presidency of Richard Nixon.
...
Again, I'm ashamed to admit that I couldn't name a Norman Mailer novel if you stuck a gun to my head, but I like what this writer said about Mailer's hero... authentic and autonomous... the bureaucractic mind being his enemy...

Sounds like he fought the fight... and sounds like he kept his butt in his seat, a lot... I betcha he had a good circle of writer friends who encouraged him to keep going with his thousand words a day... even if he'd occasionally try to stab them... betcha he knocked a few back with Hemingway, too...

Random Thoughts on an IT Consultant

24 year veteran of the consulting business, this guy, and his hand was still shaking with agitation at any difficult question. Which is a nutshell for why consulting will break you. You never get over the really bad customers. You get twitchy...jumpy...you're PTSDed and don't know it.
Only way to beat it is to come in at the top. And know exactly what the hell you're doing and know everything about all the minutiae of the system and the customer's environment. In other words, unless you're willing to do homework.

I would stay up all night reading specs. I was a madman. So I knew what I was talking about but it took a toll on my health. You can't win in this life. You never get away with anything. In the Bible they say that whom God loveth he chasteneth...maybe that means God loves me.

But this guy, this installer, he had breath that could stop a truck and a stumpy, hemorrhoidal way of walking...when he took a coffee he threw it quickly toward his mouth, expanding his lips in a last-second attempt to adjust to the trajectory of the cup.

Everything was like that...as if there were certain parts of his body, his life, which operated against his best interest and independent of his will...and he was forced to constantly adjust to these rogue elements...the customers were just another manifestation of this adversarial fate

He was like a Picasso figure; an eye glaring out at you from yellow cube. One foot clad in brown leather, with a butterfly lace...a mouth in the forehead pursed in smug silence

I pitied him...I felt for him...I wanted desperately for him to succeed.

I took all the blame for everything on the first day. By the second day I realized that I had fallen prey to his schtick. Then I let him flop despite the pain it caused me.

As a final indignity, just as he was preparing to go, a huge banana or wolf spider (couldn't say which) crawled under his seat when he opened the door to his rental car. He screamed...a short, high burst, like the scream on the Rob Bass song, "It Takes Two." We could see just its legs, like two hairy fingers, poking out under the seat. I went inside and got some bug spray and doused the car. He was choking on the fumes (and still worried about the spider) as he drove away.

Cleaver, Chapter 12, p. 161

A USB cable is a fine toddler toy. Soft outside, crunchy copper strands within, rectangular connector to fill with spit, pretty necklace for the doggie. I think it works, and at least you're consistent in your hi-tech chew toy theme. Your boy is the younest Treo owner I've ever known. But I don't understand his text messages... they all read like ma-ma... dad-da.... doggie... You need to work with him on his IM abbreviations.

So... Jerry Cleaver, Chapter 12, p. 161 - The Ticking Clock

I know you're like me in that you need a good fifteen minutes or so of psychological foreplay and at least a solid hour of genuine quiet to write anything substantial. I know how it goes.

But Cleaver offers some good tips... and you're already following his first (and most important) - you're doing a little bit... even just that little blog entry is enough to keep the mind clicking, juices flowing, a placeholder in your subconcious that says I'm going to be writing during this time, so get that frame of mind stuck right here every day.

Here's some of the other stuff he talks about in that chapter (my highlights):
- p. 170 he talks about doing "some drudgery" after your five minutes (or ten or fifteen, or whatever you're able to tweak out of your crazy life)... I like this idea... plan to sort some laundry or mow the lawn or something work-related that requires grunt work but very little mental effort (you're saying, yeah... like what...) but the idea of putting that little bit of time in and then staying in that mental zone while you move on to some drudgery, allowing your mind to continue, allowing the subconscious to keep writing in the background (like a "terminate, but stay resident" application...yeah, I'm still a geek)... I like it... I've done it... usually just walking the dog.
- p. 171 - "Two old writing rules are relevant here. The first is "Gently but always." The other is "Not a day without a line." 'nuff said.
- p. 181 - "The worst thing you can do in all of this is to not write and not make meaningful contact with your writing for an extended or not so extended period."
- p. 182 (***** AND YOU TURNED ME ON TO THIS AND NOW IT HAS BECOME CRITICAL FOR ME ****) "Do your thinking on the page........"

- Now, here's the coolest part.... the goosebumps part. My plan was to write out the highlights for you here... talk you down from the roof of the Fine Arts building... and then go back full circle to the last part of your post... a gentle reminder that you're absolutely right to focus on that third step... cuz ultimately, that's what it's all about. And you've been on target with that lately.

So here's the goosebumps... I'm thinking about what to write to wrap this up, and I look at the second to last page of that chapter, and God is right there, talking to us about the third step through Jerry Cleaver (little did he know)...


"What you can do is get in the way... The more you push it, the less you get, etc..... So, you don't train it. If anything, it trains you."

No Time to Write

I have two minutes until I take the boy to daycare. A software installer is in town from Boston. My wife is freaking out because of her job situation and requires constant emotional care. I keep telling myself that she'll settle down and become reasonable again soon. I just grabbed a camera away from my young son.

I have no time to write. This is it, right now. And I'm getting this time because I'm letting my son play with USB cord.

3rd step. 3rd step. Right?

I Love Tom Brady

He's very handsome.

Just write the story, just write the story.

And I love your hair...lush silvery waves...ah, it's very nice. I truly have remarked on its texture (to myself) before. This is sad but true. As a writer? I do these things..notice all details...deconstruct and reconstruct. Yesterday lying in bed I came up with a brilliant dream-sentence...something about pixels coalescing into globs, giving the whole picture an abstract look.

There is nothing better than a good haircut and nothing worse than a bad one (okay there's halitosis, death, taxes, un-lubricated trim, toothaches, warts, but other than that...). However, it's not always clear at first blush whether you've gotten a truly good cut. This only comes clear after about a week. If it ruled the first day but you think you need another one a week later, you got suckered. Mine looked absolutely horrible last week but is growing in nicely...a creeper cut.

Haircut

Got my haircut today... finally... I was starting to worry about catching on fire, the wisps of gray fluff that have become my hair are perfect tinder... a stray beam of sunlight magnified through a crack in the windshield resulting in a quiet spontaneous combustion on the highway... screams muffled by the droning AC and closed windows... smashing to a stop against the guardrail, unable to pat out the flames, running away from the car and across lanes of traffic, people wide-eyed and pointing, slowing down and rubbernecking to see the crazy old guy doing the "I'm Mr. Heat Miser..." dance in the middle of I-95.

The woman who cut my hair today was very nice (what is it about the people who cut my hair? why do they become such important parts of my life?) but she had a major, major acne problem. I'm talking zits on top of zits - volcanic formations, redness, swelling... her cheeks were like cavern ceilings, stalactites formed by millions of years of pus formations... bizarre... I found myself wondering why she doesn't do the Proactiv thing with Jessica Simpson... or God knows what... there has to be a solution... but I wonder if maybe she just doesn't give a shit. Bizarre... I noticed that she wasn't wearing a wedding ring (I always look, don't I...) and I couldn't help but wonder if she was happy. I don't think she is. Maybe I'm completely wrong and she's living a fine life, but I just don't think so... I think she's probably goes home and cracks open a lot of cans of gourmet kitty food... She's probably got some guy who lives downstairs who gets drunk enough every few weeks to knock on her door in the middle of the night and give her a quick and nasty boinking before passing out on her living room floor....

I just don't know... But I do know one thing... All zits aside, she gives good haircut.

Why Do I HateTom Brady?

Really, why do I hate the guy? He went to Michigan, after all, so I should love him. I like Charles Woodson just fine, and liked Desmond Howard (even when I was rooting against the Packers). I liked Jon Jansen and even Drew Henson, who took time off to play baseball and then came back and got worked by the Cowboys.

Point is, I like all these other ex-Michigan guys but I can't stand Tom Brady. Just jealousy, you say. Well, yes, but I'm jealous of everyone. I'm jealous of plenty of guys who don't have a chin-dimple and Giselle. So it's not as simple as that.

I think I'm just fatigued. I think I'm just tired of hearing about Brady and Bellicose...er, Bellichek. Can they please go away already? It's like Joe Montana; he was a great quarterback, but my god did I get tired of hearing about him after awhile. Remember when he was on the Kansas City Chiefs and he was doing all those advertisements, for like Isotoner gloves and Chunky Soup? Jesus...even now, just thinking about Joe Montana, my poor bruised consciousness rises up in anger to defend itself against yet another marketing onslaught.

And so I come to the answer. I don't hate Brady, per se. I'm sure that if I were ever allowed to share a limo with him and his hot chicks I'd exit thinking he was the coolest guy ever. No, I'm sick of the media. I'm done with it. Over it. I'm going to try something, a grand experiment, to see if I can recover my childhood love affair with football.

I'm going to boycott all non-statistical information. That is, I'm going to watch the games with the sound turned off and I'm not going to read any more football websites or newspaper articles aside from the box scores. I'm going to de-hype myself. Go on a hype fast. What is left should be pure sport. And maybe then I'll find myself, god knows, even liking Brady.

The Deep Deep Silence of the Blogosphere

I just wanted to talk for a moment about a kid I know. His name is Trevor, although I always forget his name whenever I talk to his mother, and so I resort to asking about "her son".

He's a senior in High School this year and is quite interested in all things software/computer. He even has a web page explaining some of the simpler Java concepts. One night when I was in another major city on business, Trevor's mother asked if I'd go out to dinner with him and share some of my experiences in the software business with her tech-obsessed son.

We ate in this little downtown bistro that featured the large open space with the track lighting and various boutique colors such as "avocado" and "chinchilla" on the walls, floor and tableware, all subtly matching/clashing with the abstract art on display.

Trevor explained to me his ambition: it was quite simple. He was going to get great grades, get into MIT, get his bachelor's degree in Computer Science, and then go to work for Google (or its future equivalent). The more I talked to him, the more I could see it. The more I could see his life flowing smoothly along on this perfect track to technical superstardom. I had no trouble believing it would happen.

As the meal went on I encouraged Trevor and related various experiences which I thought might be useful to him, but mostly I listened to him talk and admired his focus. I had this idea then, listening to him, that the hardest part of anyone's life is figuring out what you want. And that once you have that, the rest is really just a formality.

After dinner we went for dessert to this hip little candy shop with glass racks full of delectables and a full L-shaped ice cream bar complete with gleaming soda taps and hot young oriental chicks perched on the art-deco stools. I chose some chocolate-covered pretzels. My young charge and his mother both ordered ice cream. We sat down to check out a jazz trio that had wedged itself in the corner was busy thrumming and honking to the vague accompaniment of the traffic on the other side of the glass.

I pointed out the cute Asian girls to Trevor. He replied that he'd never had a girlfriend. He did not seem particularly proud of this; it seemed to perplex and upset him. It was then I realized that he was really only 17 and that life had lots of curves left to throw him. And I realized that it takes more than knowing what you want out of life; it takes luck, too. Luck with women (or men, of course), luck with health, luck with your friends and enemies. luck with the things in your own mind. Life has a funny way of testing us all.

I didn't say any of this to Trevor, of course, and it's just as well. He wouldn't have understood. His emotional vocabulary has no definition for disappointment, perplexity, mystification, crushing. And it's just as well. He'll learn all of that soon enough. For now, he can go on eating his chocolate and watching the jazz trio.

Florida in Winter

From the far side of the lake my house was clearly visible even in the darkness, this towering blue box; its blueness leeched the color from everything around it. Palm trees were silent brown explosions on the gray canvas of the sky. Everything had been laid out for me by some delicate surrealist, all the components moving in harmony; trees slid in front of the houses while the houses inched in front of the clouds while the clouds drifted past the fixed bright stars. Disconnected shadows, going the wrong direction, floated in the lake. The wind was so cool and steady it could only be mechanical. None of it was real.

"In the summer," I said to my wife, and then stopped, unable to finish.
"In the summer it seethes," my wife said.
"And now it's fine," I said. We walked some more. The dog stopped and tinkled a round glittering stream onto the scales of a palm tree. "I think we went crazy again this summer," I said.
"I think so, too."