So today is the four-month anniversary of my move from Maryland to SC.  And that amazes me.  Time is supposed to pass so slowly in the South--and it's true, in the sense that each day languidly flutters by.  But collectively, time whistles past.

Maybe all people my age feel that way, though, regardless of where they live.  I don't know.

Still, as quickly as time seems to have passed, it still feels like a long time ago that I was working as a reporter and living in Towson--perhaps because I wasn't a big fan of either of those things.

South Carolina living is nicer, living in a house is nicer than living in an apartment. The cats spend hours dozing in the sun on our patio. 

Neighbors are friendly.  Well, some of them are, anyway. And then there was that Saturday morning when there was a knock at the door at 7:30 AM.  My parents were visiting at the time, and both my mother and I stumbled from our respective rooms out to the living room to see what was going on.

I opened the door and saw a 20-something guy who looked normal enough but I was pretty sure was a stranger.  I expected him to be trying to either sell something or save my soul, but he just wanted a piece of aluminum foil.

He was helping his younger brother build a volcano, he said.

At 7:30 AM on a Saturday during the summer...?

Many questions came to mind.  But it was early and my mind was still fuddled, and I wasn't wearing my glasses, which would have made everything seem surreal, anyway. 

My mother chatted with the young man while I searched for the foil, but we didn't have any.  And so he went away.

Okay, so there's a 95% chance the dude wanted the foil for drugs.  But why did he choose my door to knock on?  Where did he come from?  Where did he go next?

Apparently, he went to my neighbors' place.  But there was no way those guys would get out of bed that early if they weren't working.  So after their place, who knows where he went.

No one since then has asked for any foil.  That's probably a good thing.

Since I've been working from home, I haven't met many people.  I do work, take walks, read, visit B at the cafe where he works.  That's about it. 

And I do most of the shopping, since my schedule is flexible.  The only grocery store that SC and MD have in common is Food Lion (and Wal-Mart). The closest store is the Piggly-Wiggly--and when I'd heard that name in movies and on TV, I thought it'd be more like a 7-11 (and there are no 7-11s here! and I'm a Slurpee addict!), but it's actually a nice and rather pricey supermarket.

The first time I went there was a warm spring day, probably in the low 80s or high 70s. As I was walking back to my car with my bags I heard a dog barking.  I saw the dog in a car with the windows cracked.

And I wasn't sure what to do. The heat wasn't blistering or anything, but it was definitely shorts and T-shirts weather, so I felt bad for the dog.  I paused, wondering whether I should write down the license plate number and take it inside to have the owner paged.  And then I saw a big, kind of biker-looking guy with a cart pause just a few feet away, also looking at the dog.

So, I though, okay, maybe this guy will report it.  After all, he was bigger. I waited for him to do something, but he continued standing there.  So I continued standing there.  And there we were.

Finally, I said, "Look at that.  That can't be good for the dog."

The guy gave me a blank look.

Uh oh.

So I said, "Is that your car?"

He said, "Yeah."

Shit. I squeaked out, "Sorry!" I wheeled around and booked across the parking lot, praying that he wouldn't follow.

And he didn't, but I did hear him grumble that I was a bitch.

Ah, making friends.

I've gotten a job for the fall teaching eighth grade English.  Everyone said it would be easy for me to get a teaching gig, but it took about five interviews for me to get offered anything.  And I took it because the stress of waiting was wearing me out. 

The school is about 40 minutes away, which is a drag, and I'd have rather taught high school, but this should be okay, I think.  And if it isn't, I'll transfer next year.  I'll just be happy to have benefits again and to be making steady money. Plus, it will be nice to interact with people regularly.  I need to make some friends.

And I need to get back into writing.  I've only written a couple blogs since I moved here, and even now I'm forcing myself to write this down (perhaps that is obvious).  I'm not sure what I want to be doing right now, but writing isn't it.  Reading is fun, though.  I think I'll go do that.

 

So I'm reading Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay.  Millay was a poet and playwright, and she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer for poetry.  I'd never really read her work, but I first saw the bio in some bookstore years ago, and I read the inside cover and looked at all the black and white photos in the middle.  That's what I do with bios; I always look at the pictures.  I love the written word, and I wouldn't say that most photos are worth a thousand of them, but photographs are obviously more specific, more concrete.  And when you're reading a biography, you're looking for specific and concrete.  But photos have their limits, just as words do.  And there are some people and things that suffer from those limitations. 

Take old Edna, or, as her family and friends called her, Vincent.  She was a notorious man-killer, and woman-killer.  Pretty much everyone fell in love with her, often instantly.  But if you look at pictures of her, you wouldn't see why.  Her allure was in her voice and the way she carried herself and what she said and how she said it.  And being a brilliant poet didn't hurt, either.

So anyway, I kept seeing the book in different stores, and my interest grew stronger when I read the author's biography Zelda: A Biography, about F. Scott's wife.  I've also read bios of F. Scott himself, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, and others.  For some reason, I find the lives of early 20th century American writers fascinating.  And the publishing practices from that time are interesting as well. 

The two top bestsellers from 1937, according to the bio, were How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie and Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.  Both remain big sellers.  According to the author, "Self-help books and historical fiction swept an America eager to emerge from the Depression and escape from the turmoil in Europe." 

Rather foolishly, apparently, I had thought that self-help books were a fairly new phenomenon.  But I think the quotation is interesting, and true today if you make a few changes:  "Self-help books and historical fiction swept an America eager to emerge from depression and escape from the turmoil in the Middle East (and everywhere else)." 

It isn't particularly profound to say that the more things change the more they stay the same.  But I do find it interesting. 

Millay didn't like being called a woman poet.  For one thing, while she considered herself a feminist, she wasn't a big fan of women (outside of the bedroom, at least).  More importantly, of course, she simply wanted to be called a poet.  Which is also a big issue today--some artists want to be known as women writers or black writers or whatever because all of that whatever has a great deal to do with style, subject matter, and, well, politics, or just the desire or need to represent a certain group.  Others just want to be writers, artists.  Art should be judged by its artistry, regardless of its artist.  Of course, theoretical shoulds and wants are largely irrelevant in the practice of assigning labels.  If you're a minority that almost always becomes your label, whether or not you're happy about it.

And the thing is, while Millay's poetry was enjoyed by everyone, she is credited with writing a sort of anthem to or rallying cry for women, especially young women:

First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends ­
It gives a lovely light!

I like that one, partly because it's easy to remember, and I have trouble quoting anything; my memory for such things is shit.  But then, its surface simplicity is also a problem in the end.  Because that is the poem most people remember, just as "News Item" (Men seldom make passes/ At girls who wear glasses) is the poem of Dorothy Parker's that folks tend to quote.  Such poems nutshell a nuance of the essence of each writer, which is pretty amazing for such short pieces, but still, you'd want to be remembered for more than a nuance, wouldn't you?  Then again, being remembered at all beats being forgotten entirely, I guess.

It's interesting how much poetry changed during the twentieth century.  I'm not a poetry person; I don't really understand most of it.  But structurally, grammatically, and even topic-wise, poetry has really evolved.  After all, there are some people now that can't stand poetry that rhymes.  Rhyming seems old-fashioned and artificial.  Damn, though, when someone rhymes well, seemingly effortlessly, that's some good stuff. 

Taking a little tangent, prose seems to be changing, too.  Shorter and tighter is the rage.  Flash fiction.  I'm not always a fan, though, of stripping things down.  Raymond Carver had an editor that always cut his stories down, but that didn't always create a stronger story.  I have a friend who can't write a story shorter than 20 pages.  So I'm always telling her to cut them by half, or at least a quarter, if she wants to get them published.  You'd think that technology would create all this space.  Instead, it's inspired shorthand.

Anyway.  My initial complaint with the bio was that it focused too completely on Millay's life and not enough on her craft.  Because while a biography focuses on a person's life, what that person does is a huge part of that life.  But as the book wears on, craft comes into play.  Millay would work out poems completely in her mind, quite a feat considering some were pages long, and then she'd write them down.  There was some tinkering afterward, but not much.  And as she gre older, writing would give her terrible headaches, and yet she kept on writing. 

That's what writers do, I guess.  Which is one reason why I identify myself more and more as a reader than a writer.  Writers have that drive, that compulsion, that discipline. 

I think people read bios of writers for the controversy and scandal, but writers read bios of writers also to make themselves feel better.  Say you adore the works of Hemingway.  After you read a bio, though, of his depression and his mother dressing him like a girl when he was a baby and all that other crap, would you really want to be Ernest Hemingway?  Fuck no.  Or you read about Millay, who had that craft, or someone else with some extraordinary gift.  Well, if you don't have any great gift, you can hardly feel bad about not being some genius.  Ordinary people can create works of seeming genius, I think, but I doubt it happens regularly.  Or, you read about someone who seems like you, and that gives you hope that while you haven't created anything worthwhile yet, you still might.  But few writers, few really good ones, are really in no way ordinary.  Creating something good gives weight to a life.  When you feel like a balloon, sometimes it's worthwhile to read about souls anchored to the earth through their work.

Millay ended up being like her candle.  She died at 58; fell down a flight of stairs and broke her neck.  I never heard much talk of her when I was in school, but, again, poetry was never my thing. 

I once wrote a poem that rhymes.  It's not good, although my non-rhyming poetry is little better.  I like the boundaries of rhyme, the streamline.

Projection

 

See the mime stuck in a box:

there are no bars; there are no locks.

And yet he's frozen in his space,

while mounting fear shows on his face.

And when the box begins to shrink,

we watch his hopes crumble and sink.

 

The mime is forced now to his knees,

and yet his lips emit no pleas.

Invisible forces drown his cries,

still his will, and blind his eyes.

Imagined horrors have control;

they sap his strength, steal his soul.

 

Words can never quite express

the length and breadth of his distress.

Yet no one thinks much of the mime;

his troubles are not worth our time.

Clowns and mimes, they're all the same:

they turn our fears into a game.

 

The lack of freedom in a cage;

the lack of strength to show our rage.

The vagueness of a gray situation;

the stark futility of our frustration.

These are the dregs from which we hide,

and thus the mime we won't abide.

See, I need to read more Millay.

You know how dreams, generally at least, are only interesting to the people that have them?  I know I've talked about that before. Well, last night I had a dream so boring and monotonous that I actually woke myself up to escape it.  Now that's a first.

It'd be cruel, then, to share it with you, but let me just sum it up: I was outside somewhere, and celebrities--primarily from Grey's Anatomy, oddly--were reading increasingly Jabberwockian poems inscribed on graves.  I grew increasingly more frustrated and guilty, trying to listen and trying to understand.  After all, I'm a somewhat literary person, even if poetry isn't my genre.  But finally, I thought fuck this, I'm done.  And I woke up.

So maybe the dream was more like a nightmare.  I've been reading a number of literary submissions for JMWW and The Baltimore Review lately, so that probably partly influenced the dream.  And I flipped past American Idol last night, which had a charity theme and lots of celebrity guest stars, so that probably settled into my subconscience as well.

More than any of that, though, is that lately I've felt perplexed and frustrated, like people don't make sense to me.  I guess most people have been feeling that way, for the last week or so at least.

Sometimes, the ugliness of the world--well, not of the world, but of people--is overpowering.  Right now, I can almost understand why the stoner in American Beauty thought an empty bag blowing in the wind is beautiful (because, come on, that movie isn't bad, I don't think, but that scene is eyeroll-inducing at best).  You gotta take your kicks where you can find them.

My community is a dumping ground for unwanted pets.  Many of the little houses are set close together, so most people have small yards--B and I actually have a large one, because our yard flows into three other yards--but there are numerous patches of woods, and that's where the animals live, we assume.

Maybe I see more strays than most because I smoke outside--I'll be sitting on our small patio late in the evening, and a cat or dog will run up to me.  So I'll feed it and give it water.  B and I brought in a small gray kitten one night--at the least, we wanted to get it fixed--but after 10 minutes he started pitching a fit and we had to let him back out.  We haven't seen him since, but it's only been a week, so who knows.

We already have two cats.  We don't have room for more, really.  And we definitely couldn't fit a dog.  I've only seen one stray dog, and I'm not positive it was a stray but he was voraciously hungry and had a horrible cough.  He also wanted to play fetch with a dead squirrel, but that's another story.  But he came to the house late one night when B wasn't home, and I didn't know how I could get the dog into my car or where I could take him--and his cough and the squirrel scared me.  So I did nothing.  The dog hasn't come back.  But some people ignore leash laws here, so hopefully he does have a home.

The other night, B and I were coming back from a walk when we saw, far up ahead, a cat in the road.  A car honked at it and it ran, fortunately, but we walked up to investigate.  It was a little black and white cat that we'd seen before.  A few weeks ago, he'd come up to our front door a few times, and B's cat, Daisy, had hissed and gotten all pissed off.  And then we saw the cat in someone's driveway, being petted by a man and girl.  So we figured he was their pet.  And we hadn't seen him since.

But there he was again, only now his left eye is cloudy and infected.  And he's with a white and black sibling.  So we go up to the nearest house and knock to see if the cats belonged there.  No one answered.  So we decided to take the cats with us, to give them some food and call a vet; our house was just around the corner.

B goes ahead to get food out and look up a vet, and I'm trying to get the cats to follow me, which they do, but they also wander into the street.  A cop drives up and asks if the cats are mine.  I tell him the whole story, and he stops the car.  With B's help, they get the cats into the police car.  The cop says he'll take them to the local animal hospital.

Which is really nice, right?  I've never seen a cop do anything like that. 

We hoped that the animal hospital would fix the one cat's eye and keep both of them there until they could find homes.  So we call, and we're told that there's no room for the cats, so they'll have to go to the Humane Society.

 Well, we can't let that happen.  The cats will be killed there.  B tried to be philosophical and realistic and said, "Most of the cats there will die."  Which is true.  But, for one, I can't think about that.  And for two, those two cats might not have been in the street if I hadn't tried to get them to follow me--so if they are killed, it will be my fault.  And I can't have that. Living in the woods isn't ideal, but they were pretty happy, friendly cats; I don't think they minded.

So we're getting them back tomorrow, after they've had all their tests and all that.  We haven't the money or the room, but so it goes. We want to keep them, of course, but if we can find people we can trust to take them, I guess maybe we'll do that.  Apparently there's a program in which hurt pets are picked up and treated and then taken to the Humane Society.  But they aren't euthanized; if the society can't find a home, the hospital takes them back.  I don't know if that's a state program or what.

But I just don't understand how anyone could dump their pet.  And yet it happens all the time.  Or worse.  Back in college, a friend and I once got a puppy from a kid at a Burger King because the kid said his dad would drown it if he couldn't find a home for it.  A student once told me that her dad would throw puppies out the window on a highway.  And I've heard stories of people finding pets that way.  It's horrifying. 

I'm something of a hypocrite, though, because I eat meat, and meat factories are horrific, too, and somehow I can just ignore that.

I don't know.  Some people are just weak and lazy, I guess.  Those flaws can lead to cruelty.

Still, I don't understand how someone could toss their pet like they would litter (although I don't get littering, either).  And if I can't understand that, there's no freaking way I can understand someone massacring a group of people, whether they're at Virginia Tech, in Iraq, Darfur, or anywhere else. A crime of passion, I understand--I don't support it, but I understand it.  But the disconnect that must occur for slaughter to happen, and the sustainable rage, that eludes me.

At least in dreams it makes sense to feel confused.  I just have little patience for that now.

So this is the last blog I'll be writing from Towson.  A week from now I'll be gone, I'll have packed it all up, hit the road.  I'll be in Carolina--South, to be precise--not just in mind but in body as well.

(Can't you see the sunshine?  Can't you just feel the moonshine?)

I've long had a hankering to move south.  It's warmer there, and life, I've been told, moves slower there, which has a certain, sleepy-eyed appeal.

So B and I and our two cats are moving to the Myrtle Beach area.  He'd lived there for several years, went to college there, and he thought it'd be fun to move back.  And living near the ocean sounded good to me, so.... 

 Of course, it's more complicated than that.  We're too old to be completely capricious, to just pack our shit and take off, looking for adventure. 

For him, I think, there's a desire to return to a place where he felt most at peace.  For me, there's a need to try something (or some place) new with someone safe. 

Neither of us has jobs yet.  And that's why I have to continually explain to people why we are moving.  Most people, it seems, move either for a job or to be close to family. 

I'll probably return to teaching, which probably sounds odd, since I've written here how teaching is anathema to me.  It's like a step backwards career-wise.  But I've learned that I shouldn't have a job writing; since I've been working as a reporter, I haven't written for fun at all, and I really miss that.  Plus, reporting pays nothing, but teachers make decent money in SC.  And I've always enjoyed the theory of teaching.  The practice has, for me, been deplorable thus far, but that could change.  More importantly, teaching would allow me to visit my family regularly.

When I moved to California in '01, I wasn't yet 30.  My parents weren't yet 60; my grandmothers weren't yet 80.  Now we're all older; I feel more obligated to stay nearby--which is totally unfounded.  There are tons of people who have never lived near their grandparents and who haven't lived near their parents since they graduated from high school.  But I'm used to living near everyone, and I worry that someone will die and I won't be here to say goodbye. 

I mean, if you think about it, when you move away with someone, you're kind of choosing that person over everyone else.  You're choosing yourself, too, of course, but you're essentially saying, "It is more important that I'm near this one person than that I'm near anyone else."

Which is... a pretty big statement.  At least for me.  But that isn't really what the statement is.  There probably isn't any one big statement.  It's more like paragraph.  And it is big, but it's not like it's written in stone.  Still, it's very public.  Like a billboard.  Because the wagons, they are hitched.

B and I have been living together for about six months, and it's gone pretty well.  But this is my first time living with someone who isn't a family member or a girl friend.  Aside from college, this is the only time I've ever shared a bedroom.  And it's an adjustment.  I have no space that is my own. 

I don't mind that.  I like sharing.  But cohabiting is different.  It's a transition.  And even good transitions are hard. 

But he moved in my place, where I'd already been living for two years.  So while we have been sharing the apartment, it feels more mine than his.  He's like a permanent guest--or a permanent addition.  He's like Cousin Oliver, except of legal age.  Insta-family.

It's weird.  I've always spent so much time alone, particularly while I was out of work.  Now I'm hardly ever alone.  It's sort of exhausting, in a good way (but not a dirty way).

I used to assume that the reason friends disappeared when they got married or moved in together was because they wanted to spend all their free time canoodling with their significant other.  I found that pretty nauseating.

But now I know that, while maybe that is why my friends disappeared, it's only part of the reason why I've disappeared.  The other part is that I feel like I'm social enough as it is.  Between working and living with someone, I'm surrounded by people all the time.  It's not that I don't want to see other people or that I'm not interested in what's happening in their lives.  It's just that being around people constantly is new to me, and I'm still adjusting. 

That's what life is about, I know, always adjusting to whatever changes you invite or have thrust upon you.  But I've generally been better at observing life than living it, I sometimes think, and while I'm pretty bright I'm also a slow processor. 

So really, while I might seem to be complaining or rationalizing--about something most people at some point go through, I more think of all this as my way of waiting for the pendulum to swing back again.

Our new place is a ten-minute walk from the ocean.  I'll be able to walk there every day.  I can write there or maybe go back to keeping an oral journal.  And I'll have time to write, and hopefully the desire.  And with that, I think, my desire to communicate with others will increase.  And I'll have the money to afford socializing. 

In any case, James Taylor is right: signs that might be omens say I'm going. 

Say nice things about me.

It was Sunday night that I realized, without a doubt, that I have become an old lady.  I understand that most people (over 18, anyway) don't consider 34 to be all that old, but I'm not talking about age here.  I'm talking about mindset. 

A few years ago when I was in grad school, while I had acquaintances of all ages, I mostly hung out with people in their mid- to late-20s.  Our lifestyles were more similar.  I lived alone, had no job, no pets, nothing to tie me down.  Aside from being in financial debt, I was free.  And for the most part, I really enjoyed that.  It felt a little weird being comparatively old and yet so unrestrained, but mostly I saw that as a little gift, largely because I knew it wouldn't last.

But now things are different.  There are little strings tying me to this and that, which also feels weird (and occasionally stifling), after years of freedom, but also comforting.  I feel pretty grounded, which I figure is a good thing, most of the time.  It's a big change, though, and transitions are rarely easy for me. 

Anyway, Sunday night--Monday morning, actually, at 2 AM--some of my neighbors were having a party.  Which is understandable.  After all, most of them probably didn't have to work the next day because of MLK's birthday, and the ones that did were probably young enough that they would still be able to function with only two hours of sleep and a vicious hangover.

But I need as much sleep as I can get.  And I had to work in the morning.  Usually, I can sleep through almost anything, but it sounded like the party was outside.  And people were screaming.  I heard various neighbors yelling out their windows, "Shut up!"  "Be quiet!"  To be fair, I think somehow the noise was amplified, and it's not like drunk people can tell how noisy they are.

Still.  It was late.  And they were being rude.  Finally, I'd had enough.  I jumped out of bed and said to B, "I'm calling the police."

He said, "Someone should."

So I did.  I spoke to a nice lady who took down the address and asked if I wanted to talk to the officer when he/she arrived.

"No!" I said.  "I don't want to be involved.  I just want them to be quiet."

I hung up the phone, and B said, "You just called the police."  His tone was a mixture of: "Duuuude" and "Haha, you're old."

And I laughed and said, "I know!"

I knew I'd turned a page.  Not a chapter, and not even necessarily the last page of a chapter--maybe the first page of a new chapter.  It's the little things, the small moments, that we remember, I think.  Or at least it's true for me.  Because even if the little thing is utterly insignificant on paper or in a conversation, it's the feeling that sticks. That moment of recognition. Feelings are often stronger than actions, I think.  Actions can be forgotten, and when we remember them, it might be simply because they make remembered feeings explicable.

I actually have mixed feelings about the police.  I generally interact with a cop a few times a month.  I have to go to a precinct to look at the criminal files so I can write the Police Beat for the paper--you know, it's the part that describes local crimes and names the offenders.  And I hate it.  Why do I have to publicize that some fool got busted smoking weed outside a club?  What about that "crime" is newsworthy?  And I've said to my editor that I really feel that Police Beat is really an invasion of privacy, particularly since the alleged offenders haven't been found guilty, but no dice.   

I also had to deal with cops back in October when my '93 Honda Accord was stolen from in front of my apartment.  It was a policeman that told me that old cars are stolen more often than new ones, because old ones are easier to steal.  And it was a policeman that called to tell me my car had been found, two weeks after my insurance company had closed the claim and paid me for the car and I had purchased a new one.  My car had been ditched in a no parking zone, of course, and because the department that gives out parking tickets is not part of the police department, it didn't have access to the database that listed my car as stolen, so I was saddled with three tickets (which I didn't end up having to pay, but it was a pain in the ass going through the process to clear the charges).

I don't know.  In the end, I guess, my attitude toward the police is somewhat akin to my attitude toward god.  When in a jam, I really want to believe in them--and the older I get, the more true that becomes. 

It's a crazyass world out there. And I'm too old and cranky for its shit.

Yesterday, I heard Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried, speak at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) Essex Campus. The book is sort of a memoir/novel/short story collection mix about the Vietnam War. I've only read the title story--it can be found in most short story anthologies--but I got the book for free at the beginning of the semester because all three CCBC campuses have been studying the book and the Vietnam War all semester as part of a community connection program. I didn't teach the book to my class, however, because I had already put in my book order when I found out about the program.

But I'd read the story a few years ago and had liked it. As you can guess, the story is about the tangible things soldiers carried, such as weaponry and supplies, as well as the intangible, such as fear, a loss of innocence. Also, while things like dry socks and ammunition are considered "essentials," each soldier has something else, something personal that he carries, that is far more personal.

O'Brien read aloud bits of the book and he told other stories as well. His basic message seemed to be that, for him at least, what was most horrifying about war wasn't so much the weapons or killing as it was what he called "the muck" beneath it: the small incidents of inhumanity and depravity that CNN and FOX would never bother to report.

He said that it was in Vietnam that he realized he wanted to be a writer. One day, he and his squad entered a village and found an old blind man. One of the soldiers threw milk in the man's face, and of course the man had no idea what it was--and had had no idea that it was coming. And O'Brien didn't do anything to stop it.

Compared to other stories he told yesterday, this one was pretty tame. The soldier was an asshole, but he didn't actually harm the man.

But regardless of how small the cruelty might be, any cruelty is unnecessary--and dehumanizing, for the perpetrator and victim.

O'Brien was ashamed of his silence, his decision that it was better not to rock the boat. And that's when he decided to become a writer.

He encouraged people to be aware of what "war" really means, what it can do to people. He said that just as weapons can kill enemies, it can also create enemies. He talked about the "thousand yard stare" that he first witnessed in a childhood friend that wanted to nail his sister to a cross but then saw regularly in Vietnam. That stare was the sign that someone had become unhinged.

He described a soldier who, after his best friend was killed, took out his rage on a baby water buffalo, shooting it again and again, wanting to inflict pain. Actually, he read that from his book, and it's one of the most brutal passages I've ever heard. And I don't tend to shy away from serious books that are violent or sad, but reading them is different from being in a audience listening to them. When I read, I can stop if I want to, and I'm usually alone, so I can respond however I want. But crying in front of strangers is not something I like to do, so for a few minutes I thought I might have to walk out.

I found myself wondering what the students thought of the reading. Most of the ones near me seemed impassive; some were hardly paying attention at all and I'm sure they were only there because their instructors required it.

The thing is, art is really our only window into the unknown. A painting, a song, a vivid passage. For someone to tell you a story and have you really feel it, the story has to be told right. And that's art.

But the person also has to have a little distance from the event, a little perspective.

At JMWW, we're received some creative nonfiction essays that have really good plots--you can tell that the events that inspired them could make amazing stories. But usually the essays suck, no matter how interesting the ideas are. The writers are too close to the material, so the writing is often really flat and the writer has no idea what details are necessary. The writer is still so overwhelmed that the writing has no pacing, no flow, no structure. And so, while it might have been therapeutic for the writer to write it, it isn't literary, and we can't use it. I feel a little bad when I reject those essays--it seems callous to say (as nicely as possible) that the story is great but the style is lacking when the person is writing about his/her tragic life.

Anyway, Tim O'Brien might be worth checking out. His work seems particularly timely now.

The online journal I volunteer with is having a launch party in Fells Point on Saturday to celebrate its first print anthology:

JMWW Launch Party

The anthology is pretty decent, if I do say so myself.  City Paper agrees:

City Paper review

So if you're local, come on out.  :)