This, KTB, is the luck dragon.
As you can see, I, like Kim, enjoy a solid, serious writing notebook. It may not be "black" like Kim's, but what is black anyway? Is it not a large-eyed girl with giant diamond earrings and rainbow-stitched mittens hugging a blue-eyed polar bear beneath a pink and purple sky while being watched by a frozen puffin that died pondering what it was doing in the Arctic when its natural habitat is the rocky seacoasts of the North Atlantic?
If that weren't serious enough (and it is), there is both a multiplication table and a list of frequently misspelled words inside that somber cover. How else would I be able to properly type, "Dominant broccoli biscuits schedule separate sandwich salaries" or "Shining vacuums financially separate truly foreign potato mosquitoes?"
People often visibly react to the seriousness of my notebook when I take it out in public. Or are they wondering where my niece is and why I have her notebook?
And here are the goods: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dc8dd77d_2g8jknwd3&hl=en
I am currently 20 pages deep in a short story with no end in sight. That is, what I believe the kids call, fucking hopeless. And that is why I uploaded something totally unrelated. Specifically, a page of some creative non-fiction I started with the "I remember" exercise and ended abruptly, mid-thought.
I remember when there was no blog and no one knew about my Lisa Frank notebook. I remember. I remember. I remember.
1 comment:
As I explained in a much longer, truly brilliant comment now lost to the cyberdemons, (I prefer a metaphysical explanation over the pedestrian "Kim forgot to type the squiggly word"), we, in fact, have the identical notebooks. You have the daylight version. I have the Starless Night in the Igloo version.
The girl also wants you to know that she is an Inuit from Alaska, where puffins are common as pigeons. Ice pigeons.
I also wanted you to know that I loved the piece and wrote you a note about it at the end. Didn't know how you wanted us to handle that.
I was also thinking about this piece as I was reading about a series of interwoven monologues in a play on Broadway right now (there's a discussion in The New Yorker if it's lying around at work somewhere--maybe next to the Milk Duds?). I wonder.... (long, shallow thought)... Tom, when you try taking on someone's voice (it probably feels like you're exploring voices that are somehow in your inner range. Voices you've internalized.), does it tilt back into your own voice, or does it take on a life of its own? I just wondered if you'd like to mess around with letting an aunt have her say--not necessarily talking about the same thing, could be something unrelated. Can you hear that voice in your head? Does it ever make an argument or follow a train of thought that you find strangely (even if horribly, in some cases) compelling?
Just wondering. This piece is terrific, Tom. I think the question for you is how to deploy this wonderful sensibility in the world.
KG
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