I Can't Find My Shoes

I am waking up at 5:30 to take the GRE tomorrow. I am terrified.

I've gathered together all my standardized-test-taking accouterments: the ripped gallon Ziploc bag that still had my AP Student Test Packet and eight No. 2 pencils in it, a relic two years old; the faded and creased white "Splatter in D minor" shirt my brother got for me ages and ages ago; my secondhand black jacket with the breast pockets; my soccer sweats from sophomore year of high school that I need to roll twice at the waist to keep from trailing on the ground. But I can't find my shoes.

Good Lord. I can't find my shoes.

They're a pair of blue-black-grey patterned Vans I got in seventh grade, my first pair of not-tennis shoes. They've got holes in them nearly all the way around, but I've worn them to every single major exam I've taken since then--the AP's, the SAT's, the SAT II's, even college finals. But, holy crap, I'm taking the GRE tomorrow and I can't find my Vans.

Somewhere, future me is laughing at my priorities.

Endings

I really don't know what I'm writing anymore. Words get jumbled and disappear.

I've been thinking for a while about signing off of this thing, and now, I think it's time. As I've grown older, I've begun to cherish what privacy I can still call my own. That doesn't mean I'll stop writing. I've decided that nothing can ever stop that. Heaven knows I have enough empty notebooks lying about to guilt trip me into rambling over hill and dale with pen and paper.

I made this blog on a whim when I was a junior in high school. Looking back, I cringe at my skewed priorities and sentences-ending prepositions. Beyond the prose, however, I'm much more deeply ashamed of who I was--that scrawny little kid with an ego the size of the Milky Way. I'm still a bit like that, more than I would like to admit. In a way, I feel like blogging has become a bit of an ego-stroking activity--Hey, world! Check out what I did today! Here's a story about my childhood that I hope is funny and witty and super, super cool!

I've only ever shared this blog with a few friends, and that was at the very beginning. It was never meant to be anything big. I wasn't diving into the TMI world of social media to get attention. I just thought I'd like to have something I could scroll through when I'm old and the world runs out of trees for paper printing. In that sense, I think this blog has served its purpose. I really cherish my memories of high school, especially those of the relationships I had that now are gone. I get to look back on them with a mixture of fondness, regret, and no little self-loathing, which I suppose was part of the plan all along.

The bottom line, though, is that I'm tired. Although (nearly) daily blogging has forced me to write regularly, too much of it has been forced and falsified and glammed up for the likes of a strange, vaguely threatening public. That, I think, has been the worst of all, stifling my thoughts in a truly pathetic attempt at concealing private thoughts and stories that never should have been voiced at all. I'm trying to return focus to what I'm doing with my life, which ultimately is not my own. I need to slow down enough to grow and learn.

I'll be taking most of this blog down throughout the week, stripping it down to what I'd always hoped it would be: a focus on my writing.

It's been a good run, and I'm sad to see it come to an end. Like so many things, though, it's become an exercise in passing. That version of me has been dead some time now, and I believe it's about time to rise and shoulder the responsibility I've been given.

So it goes.

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!”

 ~C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

Ghostwalking

Face down, fixed, not on feet.

Wind blows, chill, darkened street.

Bright light, cold, draws you in.

Feet move, numb, where've you been?

Don't know, why, sorry, what?

Hold on, wait--

Fingers, hot, nimbly read.

Mountain, hill, not you, tree.

Noodles, ears, deafness choice.

Pleasure, love, taken, voice.

Move it, you; sorry there.

Missed you, just, cannot bear.

Clatter, hard, ground shatter.

My soul, stop, I do matter.

Pick up, life, brush it off.

Check now, slow, nothing lost.

Again, off, always on

line up, load, time-how-gone.

Ghostwalk, you, ghostwalking.

Neck bent, must, like, so much.

Before, gone, for a touch.

A touch! One, just the one.

The dead, you, crave the done.

Devour, more, always more.

Eaten, grave, yours is poor.

Writing, done, tapping in.

Refuse, walk, seeing, not.

Away, split, together, sit.

Apart, lands, consume plans.

Walk on, shell, fun'ral bell.

Silent, we, too many be.

Breathing, kill. Living, stilled.

Ghostwalk, you.

Ghostwalk, me.

Traitor

Cal leaned casually against the rail, one hand absently tracing the cold curls that twined down to the ground.

Through the haze of the room, he watched the crowd watch the lights and flowing scraps of cloth.

Cal realized that the fog machine had died a while ago, but the flashing lights hardly cut through the cloudy air, filtering through instead, struggling rays flickering once, twice, right in the eyes, before disappearing forever, rippling like ocean glare.

Cal bobbed his head along with the others, the bitter taste in his mouth matched by the pain in his stomach. His jeans rippled with the pulse of each beat, a heartbeat that rattled in his chest, kept him breathing. His ears had stopped ringing a while ago. They too, like the crowd, were hazy and muffled.

Cal swirled the half-melted ice around in his little plastic cup of whiskey and ginger. Or was it ginger whiskey? Whiskey and gin? Gin and whiskey? Cal glared at the little black straw and frowned, breath traitorously rich and hot in his mouth. He took another drink, and the crowd grew hazier.

Someone on the floor blew a cloud of smoke into the air, and it floated, suspended, like a thought cloud over his head before the fog machine kicked in again and swallowed him whole.

Cal hated whiskey. He took another gulp, ice pressing up against his lips, big fish in a little pond. Someone else on the floor saluted the lights with a fairly large plastic cup that was also fairly empty.

Another thought cloud went up, was swallowed.

Cal traced the twisted rail again, tucking his head farther back into his hood, taking comfort in the weight of his leather jacket. He was tired of holding the whiskey. Or gin. So he took another drink.

He was only doing this to make her happy. Why did it always end up like this? They hardly ever talked and met up even less, but every time they did, Cal would leave smelling of thought clouds and whiskey.

Cal shifted against the rail. His foot had fallen asleep.

The lights flashed red and orange.

All the trumpets and the marching bands,

And the thunderclaps and trembling hands,

And the people stood up in the stands,

And I just felt so alone.

‘Cause the halos, the black rusted chains,

In the light

As we screamed

In the dark

“I just wanted to find a way home.”

Asimov

This past week, I've been slowly reading through Gold, Isaac Asimov's last anthology (and the first I've read). This man is hilarious.

Yesterday was also his birthday (or at least the day on which he chose to celebrate his birthday), so I thought I'd type up a few passages I found particularly entertaining.

On the Art of Writing

But what if you write and write and write and you don't seem to be getting any better and all you collect are printed rejection slips? Once again, it may be that you are not a writer and will have to settle for a lesser post such as that of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

On Ideas

Someone once asked Isaac Newton how he managed to reach solutions to problems that others found impenetrable. He answered, "By thinking and thinking about it."

I don't know what other answer people can possibly expect. There is the romantic notion that there is such a thing as "inspiration," that a heavenly Muse comes down and plunks her harp over your head and, presto, the job is done. Like all romantic notions, however, this is just a romantic notion.

On Women and Science Fiction

Prior to public recognition in the United States that babies are not brought by the stork, there was simply no sex in science fiction magazines [...] But if there's no sex, what do you do with female characters? They can't have passions and feelings. They can't participate on equal terms with male characters because that would introduce too many complications where some sort of sex might creep in. The best thing to do was to keep them around in the background, allowing them to scream in terror, to be caught and then rescued, and, at the end, to smile prettily at the hero. (It can be done safely then because THE END is the universal rescue.)

On Book Reviews

From my close observation of writers (almost all my friends are writers) they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review. 

I'm class one. Most of my friends aim at class two and don't quite make it and aren't quite aware that they don't make it.  

Unfortunately, there's no way in which one can get back at a reviewer. I have sometimes had the urge to do some fancy horse-whipping in the form of a mordant letter designed to flay the reptilian hide off the sub-moron involved; but, except in my very early days, I have always resisted. [...]  

Instead, then, I take to muttering derogatory comments about reviewing and reviewers in general. 

On The Struggle

Well, what goes for chemistry, goes for writing. I know all the miseries, but somewhere among them is happiness. I can't easily explain where it is or what it consists of, but it is there, I know the happiness and I experience it, and I will not stop writing while I live--and may I die if I would change places with the President of the United States. 

On Irony

Naturally, Socrates was not ignorant and the questions were not naive, and his method of procedure is known as "Socratic irony." You may well believe that those who suffered under his bland lash did not grow to love him, and I suspect he fully earned his final draught of hemlock.

On Prediction

There is a general myth among laymen that, somehow, the chief function of a science fiction writer is to make predictions that eventually come true. [...] I am asked with utter confidence, "Can you give us a few of your predictions that have come true?" 

I would love to be able to say, "Well, to name just a few: airplanes, radios, television, skyscrapers, and, in my early days, the wheel and fire." 

But I can't bring myself to do that. The interviewers might actually print it, and they might try to give me a medal for predicting fire.

On Continuing (a possibly Terrible) Series

In that case, anyone who says to him [the author], "You're turning out endless reams of this junk just to con the reader into buying your books," is likely to get a punch in the mouth if the writer is of the violent persuasion, or a sad look if the writer is as gentle and lovable as I am.

On Being a Best-Seller

Actually, I have no room for any feeling but that of astonishment. After publishing two hundred and sixty-one books without any hint of best-sellerdom, no matter how many of them might have been praised, I came to think of that as a law of nature. As for Foundation's Edge in particular, it has no sex in it, no violence, no sensationalism of any kind, and I had come to suppose that this was the perfect recipe for respectable non-best-sellerdom.

On Post-Best-Sellerdom

Well, Doubleday [his publisher] has informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I am condemned to write one novel after another for life, and that I am not permitted to consider dying. 

So I am working on another novel. [...] 

I'd complain, except that I love it.