While idly stumbling the Internet, I came across this project. How cool (and easy!) does that look? I decided to whip one of those suckers right up for Thanksgiving at my aunt's house. However, a new 9-5 and a few rainy weekends in a row prevented my journey to the maple tree area of Central Park before last weekend (my deadline).

Staying in because of more rain that Saturday, I rooted through my craft stuff for centerpiece supplies. My project monkey desperately needed to be fed. Astoundingly, among the ribbons and beads and fancy paper types and special scissors, I found a branch of silk maple leaves. Why and when I purchased such a thing? No idea. Sale at Michael's probably, but it was like fate telling me that the maple-leaf-rose centerpiece would bestow a predestined blessing upon our meal. There was one problem, though. The maple leaves looked a little too real, a little too declining and a little too, well, sad. Behold.



Photo courtesy of e e cummings.


But that was OK! I have paint. I'd paint them into pretty yet varied fall tones appropriate for roses. I'd have the chance to create leaves of a deeper individual and wider collective palette than I'm likely to get during any one trip to the park. Donika:1, Mother Nature: 0



Photo courtesy of Raphael and Thomas Hardy.


So things were going well, until a few painted leaves dried and I started testing them out. Something I should have tried before painting them, because it turns out the texture and cut of the silk leaves did not lend itself to folding.

That's when the thing that always happens happened-- the moment when all goes wrong with my crafts, when innocent items around my house become prone to smashing, and I might start digging through the trash. I decided I was going to have to make stuff out of other stuff, and let that be my guide.

I tell people I like to make crafts, and they either picture one of those lonely moms crying into their vats of nylon pigs dyeing in tea, or a Martha Stewart overachiever who isn't quite an artist but might secretly fancy herself one. While I'll admit that I can occasionally do cool things like reupholster a chair or sew a dress, most of my crafts are pretty crappy. Because I have no project plan. I have all the wrong materials-- just what's in my house that looks like it would like to be something else. I don't make crafts; I deal in reincarnation.

Nonetheless, this quiet little notion quickly blossomed into something that required an ironing board, hot glue gun, and polyester stuffing:





And several other supplementary measures, not even including leftover padding from my latest laptop packaging, cut-up sections of a cat food box, and the calculated consideration of rice as a filler.



A pattern I printed off the Internet to
cover the gift bag.



The obviously necessary vodka and cranberry.



My crafting hammer and screwdriver. They're
floral in case you can't tell. The screwdriver has
interchangable tips in two sizes and both
screwhead types. I just wanted to show them
because I love them.



The assembly area.

The proper writing thing to do here would be to build some anticipation. Talk about how I toiled, and measured, and ironed and sewed a pilgrim from scratch; discuss burning myself with hot glue and stabbing myself with a sewing needle; explain trying to figure out how to make glow-in-the-dark letters blend in with the autumn colors. But after reviewing both the precious personal artifacts and richness of scrappy chum that comprise this masterpiece, I think it's better just to show it.



TA-DA!


I can't stop looking at this and thinking about handing it to my aunt as a thirty-something adult with a sincere expression of gratitude on my face. How she'll overlook the pilgrim's depressed appearance and the obscuration of the pumpkin among the leaves and other fluff piled in there (a wee squirrel you probably can't see, and the pumpkin is inexplicably wearing a Christmas bow). She won't be faking it at all. She's my godmother, and she'll be so touched that I thought of her in advance that she'll place it proudly in the middle of the table, where my cousins will uncomfortably compliment me on what is obviously a silly piece of crap.

Thanks to my aunt, her love and my sublime artistic genius, we'll all participate in a polite fiction where we approve of everything each other does, and find each other neat, and hope that everything works out well for everyone. Yet, in being forced into that exercise, we'll realize it's not an act, just something we usually we forget to live. The words on the front of this atrocious centerpiece, by the way, are "Love, Family, Food." I know it's a little Eat, Pray, Love, but three words felt right and I was limited by the distribution of glow-in-the-dark letters I had on hand. It's as accurate a way to describe the holiday as any, or as least as much as one could ask from it. Thanks in advance, Aunt Peg (and family), for making this happen every year.


PS-- Not all my crafts suck. In another fit of making-stuff-out-of-other-stuff, I burned my sister the first season of 30 Rock (she was out of the country for much of last year), and made this container for it out of a shoebox.



Functional AND handsome.


It's cute, but has more practical charm than appears. The floral outside sleeve has a slide-in topless box in the same color as the title band, which holds everything together. Also, I apologize to Tina Fey for pirating her material, and I actually wanted to show this as an excuse to sing her praises. But I think I've already made myself tedious and she definitely deserves her own entry anyway. In short, mad girl crush on Tina Fey. Details to come.

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Recently I was forced (oh yes, forced! I'm the victim here!) to shoplift something I had the money to purchase. Though this is essentially a confession, it is also a condemnation of Rite Aid (a drug store, if they don't have them where you live). My best friend, E.M., has always hated Rite Aid, based on a tangle among Rite Aid, her brother, and her father about 20 years ago. Her brother, one of the sweetest most honest people you could ever hope to meet, rode his bike to Rite Aid to buy a new protractor for school. When he got home, he realized the protractor was cracked, and rode back to Rite Aid with his receipt to exchange it. Rite Aid refused his return, accusing him of breaking it himself and trying to scam the $1.59 cost of a stupid protractor. When he reported what happened to his dad, a mellow yet principled guy, Mr. E.M. would not tolerate the injustice. When Mr. E.M.'s demand that Rite Aid exchange the protractor was denied, he went through the store, found a replacement protractor, and held it up to the face of the cashier. "I AM TAKING THIS PROTRACTOR AND LEAVING THE BROKEN ONE. THAT IS THE EXCHANGE." After that, he stopped by a grocery store in the same shopping center, and exited the store greeted by a fleet of cop cars. The cops were pretty sympathetic given the silliness of the situation, but they did encourage him to pay Rite Aid for the second protractor just to avoid paperwork, problems, and prosecution. Ever since then, you can't mention Rite Aid around E.M.'s family without casting a dark cloud over the room.

Sadly, Rite Aid is pretty much the only real drug store option in my neighborhood, and consistent with the E.M. family's assessment, I hate my Rite Aid. The lines are absurdly long no matter what time of day; everything is overpriced; the floors, merchandise, and shelves are dirty; the product grouping and organization defies all reason; it never has what I need on the shelves. Which leads to the shoplifting... Though the shelves are always bare, the end of each aisle is blocked with stacks upon stacks of blue plastic containers filled with inventory to be shelved. When you ask an employee if an item that should be on the shelf might be in one of those containers, they act as though you've asked them to open Pandora's Box. On more than one occasion, I've been reprimanded for rooting through these boxes. On more than one occasion I've found what I needed in them. Anyway, my USB cable broke (who knew those could break?) and I figured it was a long shot that Rite Aid would carry a USB cable, but lo and behold! There was a predictably empty space on a rack with a tag reading, "USB Cable $9.99" As much as I should know better by now, I asked a worker if maybe there would be some in the blue bins. He just basically kept walking. I got ready to start rooting through them myself, when I noticed something else. Rite Aid had printers for sale. So in full view of the cameras, employees, fellow shoppers, and God, I took one off the shelf, put it on the floor in the middle of the aisle, and used my keys to cut through the tape. Then I dug out the USB cable, put it in my purse, and walked the fuck out. I left the opened printer on the floor and I don't feel bad about it.

As a side note, the printer I opened was already discounted for "open box" reasons. I like to think that someone else stole the ink cartridges from it because they weren't on the shelf for proper sale. With all this pilfering of the printer, maybe I'll go back and offer them $5 for it, then sell it on ebay.

Dear NYC Police, please don't come after me. I wanted to do the honest thing, but had an emergency USB situation and only resorted to larceny for lack of options. I assure you that I've more than made up the $9.99 cost of the cable to Rite Aid in overpriced nail polish, tampons, vitamins, and cat food. We're even, on the ledger, but I'm definitely ahead in karma.

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PhilaLawyer and I recently discussed an interesting point in an artist's career when they get too good, and are for some reason consequently panned by the Powers That Be. (We share suspicions that it stems from jealousy, class issues and possessiveness, but I'll let him elaborate in an upcoming post on his site.) While The Road is far from being panned, a lot of the criticism rings begrudgingly hollow and generally tells me more about the critic than the book.

So knock it off, you goofy critics (I'm looking in your general direction, Katie Roiphe). Yes, no work is perfect, but The Road comes as close to it as a book should be allowed to do. The whining about self indulgence, the bizarre application of agendas, the reduction to genre fiction, the accusations of plotlessness, sensationalism, machismo and gimmickry... they're inaccurate and make you look silly. Just stop with the nonsense. You're alive to witness the publication of one of the greatest works of literature ever, you lucky jerks. Shut up and celebrate that.

That's right, I said 'greatest works of literature ever'. To counter the petty bitterness that I keep detecting in discussion of this book, I'm going silly the other way and classing The Road alongside The Iliad, Ulysses, War and Peace, The Grapes of Wrath, Don Quixote, and The Waste Land, whatever title. You pick one; I'll argue it. I've missed the vantage point of a really high, elongated limb.

This book is not a poetically written epic, as has been much noted, but a perfectly classic and possibly intentionally executed epic poem. It shows common features with The Aeneid, Beowulf, and The Song of Roland at first glance, so let's just name some real quick: The Road could be more easily divided into movements than chapters (of which the book has none). It relies upon lyric and almost breezy language as often as repetition and metaphor. It constantly invokes God(s). It juxtaposes sharp tragedy and sustained tension with a heroic journey and feats of courage and cleverness. All of this placed within a wide, daunting setting and anointed with the notion of divine purpose.

I can understand if you object to the idea that The Road is not really a novel, but I invite you to meditate on the final paragraph. I cannot reproduce it here for fear that my keyboard will burst into flames from the beauty, but its arrangement and economy are staggeringly poetic. Or give this passage a whirl:

He woke whimpering in the night and the man held him. Shh, he said. Shh. It's okay.
I had a bad dream.
I know.
Should I tell you what it was?
If you want to.
I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers. And we were in that house that we used to live in and it came around the corner but nobody had wound it up and it was really scary.
Okay.
It was a lot scarier in the dream.
I know. Dreams can be really scary.
Why did I have that scary dream?
I don't know, but it's okay now. I'm going to put some wood on the fire. You go to sleep.
The boy didn't answer. Then he said: The winder wasn't turning.

Goddamn, that's pretty. You could slap a title on it and Poetry 101 kids would analyze it into a fine dust, as I hope they will the whole volume. The Road is more easily comparable to lasting works like the Promethean myth than to purportedly classic contemporaries like The Corrections. The achievements of The Road normally make critics salivate, but seem suddenly unpalatable once packaged cleanly enough for Oprah's audience. Has McCarthy become 'too good'?

Lobbing criticism at the few (so very few!) weaknesses of The Road is fair enough I guess, but there seems to be a little bit of sand kicking in literature's face when we could instead be joyfully volleying this book around in the sunshine. The widespread popularity of The Road is both well earned and humanistically encouraging. I'm sorry for the lit snobs that they're losing McCarthy to the world, but I'm not sorry for McCarthy or the world.

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It also allows opportunities to catch things like this:

See, at first it looked all cute-- smiling baseball guy, promoting what seems to me
to be literacy. But your consciousness is promptly seized by this:

That's quite an explicit editorial, yet it leaves so much to the imagination. Um, Marilyn, Doll,
Lousy Bitch... what's the story here? I've been told I should ask you.

After snapping those pictures with my phone, I strolled back down the subway corridor, approaching two neighborhood regulars staring over the platform edge and muttering, "It's just the head, man," and, "I think that's the tail..." I followed their eyelines to a rat face gaping back at me from beside the tracks. "Gross," I exhaled, "I've been wondering why they don't get run over more often." One guy pointed a few degrees to the left and remarked, "There's the tail. He thinks it's the spine, but rats don't have spines, right?"

I was so embarrassed for him I pretended not to know if rats are vertebrates. I couldn't even conceptualize answering him earnestly without the words 'you idiot'.

Anyway, not a good day in Sugar Hill. Apparently children are dying from neglect and rats are suddenly spineless. If we can't count on the rats, who can we count on?

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Upon hearing how bummed I was at Vonnegut's passing, my cousin laughed at me, "Are you kidding? The motherfucker lived to be 84, with all his marbles! He was just on the Daily Show, Donika... I mean, he was appreciated in his lifetime, no sorry, for the entirety of his career! What more could you ask for?" I capitulated, but began to dwell on some of Vonnegut's most unique qualities, now lost to humanity. "Oh, no doubt," he softened, "he was definitely a credit to the race, a real peace loving guy, and he endured the bombing of Dresden. His is a life to be celebrated, for sure, and fuck anyone who says otherwise."

As much as something two weeks ago told me to brace myself for Vonnegut's death, and as much as I have long agreed with my cousin, I'm still unready to properly commemorate him. A thread in his honor on the Rudius board is pretty precious in its remembrances, and something really jumps out from them. So many people cite junior high and high school as the age at which they discovered Vonnegut, and also cite how much he changed their perception of fancy writing. My first experience with him was through Great Books and "Harrison Bergeron." (Does anyone else remember Great Books?) "Harrison Bergeron" spoke tenderly to anyone who's ever felt at once isolated and invincible by the things that made them different.* Basically anyone who's ever been 14. According to the responses on the messageboard, and PhilaLawyer's tribute, this effect went a long way to hook people into reading.

Junior high through high school are key ages for determining whether or not one becomes a reader. This is widely acknowledged, but there is a dearth of books appropriate for kids that age. There's The Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, This Boy's Life, The Lord of the Rings... OK, so that's a pretty fun start, but when you consider the catalogue of accessible and appropriate books for people over 18 and under 12, you can't help but recognize that there's a gap in between. There's a reason the titles I listed are so fiercely beloved and defended by their devotees, and it's not just that the stories and styles resonated, but rather that they opened a whole world of reading to them. Most books for adolescents insult their intelligence with cutesiness or set off their bullshit detectors with a 'mature' intricacy that suggests importance, but that young people still have the purity of character to regard as vanity. The most human truths, you know at that age more than any other, are quite simple.

"Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what."
- Bruce Weigl, "The Impossible"

This is an aesthetic principle Vonnegut had clearly mastered. A few years after reading "Harrison Bergeron," I reacquainted myself with Vonnegut through Cat's Cradle. So cleanly written and approachable, it nonetheless quietly invoked my burgeoning scientific training, desanitized my academic perceptions of war, religion, and politics, and made me a little more comfortable with the subject of sex. That may be another part of his appeal to young people-- he's one of the few adults who strides over sex with no embarrassment, aside from the inherent silliness of our animal nature and human sentimentality splayed out in one fleshy moment. Not a bad way for a sixteen-year-old girl to start thinking about it. In that way, he was like the kindly uncle who always gave it to you straight and interacted with the complex, brooding parts of yourself everyone else explained away by hormones and social changes. In Jon Stewart's fawning Daily Show introduction he said of Vonnegut, "as an adolescent he made my life bearable." Young readers feel both respected and challenged by Vonnegut, a rare treatment for teenagers, so the tenacious loyalty is understandable. But they may also start to think, "Hey, maybe not all writers are these Moby Dick spouting assholes..." (or in my case, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner assholes." I dislike you, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I dislike you a lot.) If for nothing else, Vonnegut should be appreciated as an ambassador to writing at one of the most critical ages for wooing readers.

But I think this ignores the larger picture, which is that precisely because Vonnegut's so ubiquitous, he should be more closely examined. While the idea of the unappreciated artist is romantic, let's face it, many of our current classics were pop culture at one time. We know them because they were germane enough to the common ethic that they survived through generations and wars and relocations and plagues and such nonsense. Vonnegut stands to endure that same lasting influence, and has contributed in ways that do have a bit of intellectual cache. Aside from The Diary of Anne Frank, I really can't think of another first hand account of WWII as compelling, credible and candid as Slaughterhouse Five, and it involved time travel. Yeah, I know, there are quite a few books you could nominate, but to discount his as anything even slightly less than historically and artistically laudable would be plainly dishonest.

Not long before I graduated from college, Timequake was released, and in my persistent fiscally vegetative state, I checked it and Breakfast of Champions out of my local library. Revisiting Breakfast of Champions proved the elasticity of his work, how it bounces on notions that are silly at 17 and springs back on concepts that are taunting at 22. What was once dirty and giddy was now prescient and wise:

The girl with the greyhound was an assistant lighting director for a musical comedy about American history, and she kept her poor greyhound, who was named Lancer, in a one-room apartment fourteen feet wide and twenty-six feet long, and six flights of stairs above the street level. His entire life was devoted to unloading his excrement at the proper time and place. There were two proper places to put it: in the gutter outside the door seventy-two steps below, with the traffic whizzing by, or in a roasting pan his mistress kept in front of the Westinghouse refrigerator.

Lancer had a very small brain, but he must have suspected from time to time, just as Wayne Hoobler did, that some kind of terrible mistake had been made.

- Breakfast of Champions, Chapter 18

Five years earlier, I giggled at the beaver illustration in this book, but this time I thought I had just been handed the best advice I'd yet heard about the adult world ahead of me. Reading Timequake made me consider the same things my cousin expressed over the phone. How lovely for Vonnegut (almost ten years ago!) that he lived long enough to begin reconciling himself with his work, to have the luxury of wrapping up his illustrious career on his terms. How sensitive of him to free his characters, and how clear the depth of his personal investment in them, more than many people have with the real people in their lives. It made me think about how I wanted to direct my existence-- how much time I might really have to kill on Earth and what can be accomplished if it's used well. I decided to milk corporate America for a while, then move to NY, go back to school, give writing a go... the whole hipster deal. And hey, while I was in the state, maybe I'd find out where Vonnegut lives and stop by. To apologize for his lack of academic recognition, though I don't think it's something he'd much prize. Maybe just to thank him for making my adolescence bearable.

Kurt Vonnegut, I meant to stalk you, and am sorry that I never got around to it, even though I apparently knew two weeks ago you were going to die. Also, sorry for not giving you notice on that. Usually when someone like you dies, we lament how unappreciated they were, or how they went before their time, or how their addictions consumed them or their genius alienated them. Yet you managed to acquire just about the right amount of fame and fans, exercise just about the right combination of humility and responsibility to humanity, apply just the right commitment to gravity and folly, and extract just about the right number of years to fart around. What made you different saved you in life and stamped an almost impossible perfection on your death. You couldn't have written the narrative of Kurt Vonnegut better, and it's one I'm sure you would agree we should celebrate.

----------------

* We have a running joke at Rudius that we are the Island of Misfit Toys. Frighteningly, later the week that joke started I got this entry from PhilaLawyer.

** There's no reference to this footnote above, I just wanted to point out how Twain-like Vonnegut was in both his professional approach and personal demeanor. Thank you.

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You could never just do the expected
I was just an idea in a bog
But you sewed up your dream and we made quite a team
Jim and Kermit, a boy and his frog.

The Muppet legacy, Sesame Street, even Yoda-- Jim Henson was either the driving force or direct collaborator on those not-too-shabby projects among many others. All of that descended from his decision one day to act on this nagging puppet idea in the back of his head. He decided to hire that frog. "It's so crazy it might work..." I'm sure there are loftier sources (than none, ha) I can quote, but it's a notion well accepted yet seldom acted upon.

A while back a very talented illustrator friend wrote to me, "I have this idea for a comic strip. It's a prairie dog who is also a competitive cycler. He goes around the world in different races, and has an almost Don Quixote approach to reality and catalogue of experiences. Does that sound crazy?" Knowing her vast art skills, depth of sensitivity, and sharp sense of humor, all I could think (and reply) was, "No crazier than a little idea a guy named Berkeley Breathed had one time." (I'm still waiting on her to start that project, so bitch, if you're reading this, get on it.) Or to use a more modern example, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. A short animation series about an order of french fries, a milkshake, and a wad of meat... who solve crime... and fight with (not against) aliens? Yet it not only works, but is fiercely beloved by its fans. Somehow, Frylock, Shake, and Meat Wad resonate. These ideas might not sound particularly crazy now that we see how they played out. Jim Henson's vision and brilliance are almost irrefutable in retrospect, but imagine you're his parents, and a young Jim tells you, "I was thinking I might like to do something with puppets. You see, I've got this frog character..." Worse, imagine you're him and find yourself investing everything in this.

Make no mistake, when you choose to pursue something like puppetry, magic, sculpture, competitive dance, strongman training, you are waging some stake on it, as any discipline requires a level of personal sacrifice and faith. That's why tons of mediocre ideas make it to the surface. They're low risk and have easily identified outcomes, but they're also treated and traded that way-- commodity intellectual trends with a shelf life. Many of the biggest ideas, the truly lasting and unassailable ones, have been sort of crackpot at the start. "The first quarter of this book will be told from the perspective of the retarded brother..." "I'm going to do a series of paintings saturated in blue for a while..." "Perhaps the Earth revolves around the sun instead..." "What if I could turn the lights on and off just by clapping my hands?" Within the art world, when it works, a crazy idea both shows us the world through a funhouse lens, and illuminates a basic shared humanity-- our ugliness, absurdity, humor, sorrow, and beauty. My friend's strip would be no more about prairie dogs than Aqua Teen Hunger Force is about fast food. As abstract summaries, those things sound silly and pointless, but they're really just the seed of the thing.

Cultivating a crazy idea might open a portal into something more, and it's rarely the risk it seems. Your execution very well could fail the first time, but a small part of it may inspire someone around you and open a mutually beneficial conversation, for which you're both the better. Or you might hit upon something that takes off on its own, and while you'll see your influence clearly in the first wave of response, there's a ripple effect beyond anything you can reckon in your lifetime. In either case, nothing lost and much gained in the trying. Jim Henson knew for sure that a lot of kids were a little smarter and a little happier because of his work, but he could have never predicted how deeply he inspired Tom Smith, a MarCon participant, as well as competent Kermit impressionist, that he composed one of the most moving eulogies I've ever heard (and I'm Irish). He could also never predict how that song would reach a 32-year-old woman via the Internet, weeping openly in her dimly lit New York apartment, remembering running in excited circles with her little brother when The Muppet Show got it started each Friday night, and then sitting down to write this post. And hopefully someone who reads this post will start investing in his frog-- ideally researching a patent on an alarm clock that wakes you up by rubbing your back and gradually lifting your blinds. It could change the world, I tell you.

***

In unrelated (and semi-hypocritical given the above) news, I saw The 300 this weekend and don't really understand why it was made. I'm not even going to bother avoiding spoilers here, because, come on, it's The 300.

My first problem with it was my fault. Somehow I got it in my head that it was a serious movie, and was initially having trouble adjusting to its mood and style. Are they going for a Clash of the Titans thing here? Do they know that's a goofy film? In the first battle, using a tactic known among most historians as the Shove-n-Stab, the 300 would quite literally shove the apparently tens of thousands of Persians back with their shields, simultaneously raise their shoulders, skewer the first row of Persians with their spears, and then climb over the bodies to shove the next line back, rinse, repeat. I laughed out loud, came to grips with the movie's intent, and the battle ended with the 300 and I in jaunty spirits. The next battle scene was at night, and the main thing I noticed was that their shields were about 2/3 the size of their original shields. It turned out to be the only scene with the small shields, so I must assume that the Spartans used mini-shields at night like women carry smaller evening purses. Another thing that stood out, and had from the start, was the attention demanding cgi effects, though you'll love them if you're a gay man with an ab fetish. After the sporty daytime battle and more formal evening competition, both of which the Spartans win, the rest of the movie pretty much goes: a lot of beheadings, several cool scenes involving arrows, a relentless onslaught of Persian attacks, and a handful of verbal faceoffs with Xerxes. Eventually the Spartans all die, but with honor. I guess.

As we left the theater I told my boyfriend that I thought it was pretty stupid, and he reminded me that it was based on a graphic novel. I knew that and would have been well served to keep it in mind. It made me more comfortable with certain details, such as the fact that the Persians had monsters, like actual monsters, fighting on their side. In that sense I have to give it up for The 300. The costumes and caricatures are great-- I enjoyed the polished metal masks and dark cloaks of the menacing Immortals, and Xerxes' vaguely homoerotic yet completely disco chainsuit and accessories were a treat. And I did appreciate that the long series of battles was a colorful pageant for the different Persian conquered cultures. Like It's a Small World with lots of blood, which if you think about it, is more honest. Still, there were some weird inconsistencies in this movie that I can't explain away by its graphic novel roots. The queen's role and authority were never clear, and the Captain exhibited two conflicting attitudes about sacrificing his son for Sparta with no explanation for the change. I voiced this to my boyfriend, who just gazed off into the horizon and sighed, "Yeah, but isn't that the internal struggle for any Spartan?"

Apparently this movie was deep for guys.

Not really, but I can see why he discouraged me from dissecting it. I'm guessing guys would rather savor the gore and move along. Personally, I think if you have a gaming console, you can see it for free at home. And as my dinner companion last night pointed out, at least at home you might win. This movie is getting a lot of play for being political, but I say that's a waste of intellectual energy. Maybe the book is (I at least hope it's more substantial), but just let this be what it is: a dumb movie. It's more enjoyable that way.

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Last night I sat at my station waiting, and a very large, very googly-eyed, very retarded black man came stumbling up to me.

"Hello!"

"Hi there."

"Mind if I join you?" He nodded toward the empty seat next to me.

"Sure, go ahead."

This is an aspect of my personality that concerns the people who care about me. I'll talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere-- tourists, old ladies, immigrants, students, coffee shop patrons, homeless guys, retarded people... actually, especially homeless guys and retarded people. Moreover, people seem to really like talking to me. If there's someone around with a story to tell, a grievance to air, or a piece of news to share, they somehow usually find me. "It's because you look like a victim," my mom has sternly cautioned, but I like to think of it more as having a friendly face. I know it's not particularly safe for me to engage strangers, but on the other hand I've been truly honored by some of the incredibly personal, brave, and unusual things people have shared with me over the years. I wasn't expecting much of a good story from this guy, but I have a standing policy of being nice to retarded people because... well, why not?

I'll tell you why not.

"My name is Tom!" Tom had some long-ass hair around his nostrils and deposits of filmy whiteness at the corners of his mouth. His oversized Jets jacket was covered in stains and I started to worry that he might smell.

"Hi, Tom, I'm Allison." I never use my real name with people I'm not likely to see again.

"I like your shoes. They look like ballerina shoes."

"Thanks. You're right, they do!"

"I like your socks, too. What's on them?"

I looked down and remembered my silly socks, "Oh, ha, those are dogs. See? A dalmatian and a greyhound and--"

"Can you wiggle your toes?"

"Sure," I wiggled a little, "These aren't really ballet slippers. The material is harder so you can't tell I'm wiggling." I bent down and pressed on the tips of my shoes to show him. "Can you wiggle your toes?"

"Sure!" He wiggled and through his soft sneakers I could see his big toe bopping around.

I giggled.

He giggled.

It was nice.

"Wiggle them again!" he commanded, bending over to get a closer look at my feet. I wiggled, and then he said, "Wiggle just that one!" pointing to my right foot. From there we engaged in a little game of Simon Says with me wiggling my right or left toes, foot on the ground, off the ground, one then the other, then both, and so on. Just as the train pulled up, he asked, "Can you cross your legs and just wiggle that foot?" Suddenly it dawned on me, Wait a second, what exactly are we doing here?

"Sorry, I have to go." Naturally, he followed me onto the train and sat right next to me, his eyes locked on my feet.

"Wiggle them again!"

"No, you wiggle yours." He did but then immediately demanded I get back to work. "What's so interesting about this to you?" I asked him, noting uncomfortably that he wasn't touching himself, but was using the bottom of his shirt to wrap his hands into tight balls. It suggested that he'd gotten in trouble in the past for touching himself and was exercising some restraint. "I don't know," he replied, "I just like it. Can you take your shoes off and do it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's not polite to take your shoes off in public... and it's too cold."

"It's warm in here. You can do it!"

"I don't want to. I'm not taking my shoes off."

"OK, then just wiggle your toes again?"

"No, I don't want to wiggle anymore."

For the first time since we boarded the train, he looked me in the face, "PLEASE," he begged with tears in his eyes, "You can't stop!" Now I was in a tough position. I sure as hell didn't want to gratify whatever his fetish is, but I also didn't relish being the girl who made the giant retarded guy on the subway cry. Not to mention, what if he flew into a retard rage? No way I could defend myself against that.

"Alright, listen, I'll wiggle my toes, but that's it. Both feet on the ground, no fancy stuff."

"OK!" he excitedly bent back down to focus on my feet.

"What is your stop?" I wondered how long I'd have to do this.

"42nd Street," he informed my feet. We were at 125th. Damnit.

Resigned, I took out my book and read while I wiggled. It was actually oddly peaceful. Once I started wiggling, he was quiet except for when I'd get lost in my book and forget what I was doing. "Wiggle!" he'd remind me. A half-sleeping Asian man across the aisle was watching by now, not even trying to conceal his confusion and disgust. You know you're involved in something severely perverse when an Asian dude is repulsed by your activities. He probably thinks I'm getting paid for this... Actually, I bet you CAN get paid for this, and here I am giving it away for free to a retarded guy. God I'm a sucker. A rush of people got on at 59th Street, and I started to become really embarrassed about the situation, "Listen, my feet are tired. I'm done wiggling."

"No! Come on!"

"Really, I'm done."

"Take off your shoes. The air will feel good."

"No, I told you I'm not taking them off."

"Then let me rub them!"

"Oh hell no."

"Come on," his stop was coming up and he was growing gravely anxious, "Just let me touch one. Just for a minute."

"You're not touching my feet."

"Do you paint your toenails?"

"Yes, but... listen, I'm done now, and you're not touching my feet."

"Take off your socks! Please? Just one! I want to see your nail polish."

"No... isn't this your stop?" The train was slowing down.

"Yes." He stared out the train window with a determined, furrowed brow, then turned back to my foot. "Come on, take one sock off. I just want to see before I go."

"No." I looked up at the Asian guy who clearly had zero sympathy for me and my dirty dealings.

"Please? Just one sock."

The train doors opened. "You better get going. You're going to miss your stop, Tom!"

And like that, he bolted off the train, hands wrapped in his shirt, running unsteadily, almost certainly rushing home to masturbate to the thought of my feet. While all of this makes me think I pretty much facilitated my own sexual assault, hey, at least someone finds my doggy socks sexy.

Later on, I picked up the piece I'd been editing, and had to verify some information in it by doing a Google search for "baby erection diaper" and "infant male erection." Ahhhh, back to normalcy.

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Danika - very sweet, but very long. Why not get yourself an editor? You might have skipped a couple of the classes that covered English grammar and you certainly missed the whole brevity is the sole of wit thing.

-Lily

Putting aside that this person misspells both my name and the word "soul" while picking on my grammar, OK... fair enough. I agree that the entry was way too long, but of itself the comment is not remarkable. What is interesting, though, is what came out when PhilaLawyer responded to her.

Philalawyer - I'm not sure what your point is. Is it that the inaugural post of the Managing Editor of the newly professional Rudius Media had a pretty major grammatical error and the level of detail that only friends and family could love is insignificant because well she's a girl and insecure and so the fact that she's writing at all is enough to require applause? Or is it that none of you Rudius writers can be expected to take a close look at her work, cause though you've got her back, you don't really take her writing seriously? Although it is sweet of you to defend her, wouldn't it be more generous to edit her?

Whoa... there are a lot of assumptions in there. Around these parts, insecurity is not gladly accommodated, so I'm not sure where she got the impression that I'm being humored. And who's asking anyone to take my writing seriously? It's here; read it or don't. I'm sure as hell not calling myself the next Faulkner. Please note, I still have no idea what grammatical error is driving her to pass judgement on me as a person, and frankly, I don't care.

People often claim that grammar mastery is useful so that you know when and where it's powerful to break the rules. I disagree, slightly. I think it's more that once you know something really well, you can grow beyond it. I don't downplay the importance of grammar, but if you're mired in those rules, you're essentially imprisoning yourself. Both from reaching your creative best and appreciating the creative best around you. (Oooo, see how that last sentence was nothing but a prepositional phrase? No governing subject OR predicate? Grammatically badass, and pissing off people like Lily along the way. Double win.) I can play the grammar game with the best of them, but overemphasis on it is generally the hallmark of the creatively stunted. I know, I've been there.

The impetus for this post was a comment I received yesterday, in response to my dissatisfaction with these entries, "Why wait? Why not delete these entries right now? -Beth" My boyfriend will confirm that I almost rejoiced over this, as it clarified a lot to me.

You bitches are jealous, plain and simple.

Lily, Beth, and Anyone Else Who Reads About a Moleskine and Gets Pissed Off, I have news for you: your problem is not with me. As I said, I've been there, so I know roughly what is going through your heads right now. You're reading this and thinking, "What the hell? This girl is borderline vapid, and she doesn't even know GRAMMAR. How did SHE become the editor in this operation?" What you're really wondering, though, is, "What the hell? I'm every bit as smart as she is, and much better at grammar. How come I'M not doing what she does?" I can't answer that question for you, but I can suggest some reading on the subject. There is a fantastic book called The War of Art, the first third of which is devoted to the concept of Resistance. It claims that anytime someone sets out to do something creative, the world fights them on it. It can be in the form of family obligations, self doubt, or naysayers, among other things. Naysayers root for failure because it makes them feel better about themselves; success in others shames their rationale for not trying. Right now I've neither succeeded nor failed, but I'm shocked how quickly resistance showed up on my doorstep. I haven't even done anything yet.

Howard Stern has been a huge influence in my life, and one of his classic sworn enemies was Kathie Lee Gifford. He had a stance on her that I find insightful. Though he despised her, he also described himself as her biggest fan, as he would watch, listen to, and read anything about her. It might have been out of hatred, but that sort of preoccupation with a person is also what characterizes a fan. On no level do I believe people who dislike me are fans-- at the very least I don't have enough of a presence for that-- but I do know this, for sure: they'll read this site with much more fervor than people who like me. And I appreciate that. Not their readership necessarily, but their inspiration. I've been too busy to post on here lately, yet Beth's comment got me typing almost immediately. PLEASE keep leaving me nasty remarks. I won't respond to them anymore, but I will approve and savor each one. They give me confidence that I'm on the right track, and remind me not to become that angry, frustrated person again. They might also help the naysayers work out some of their self loathing, so with an unburdened soul they can find their own happiness.

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From there writing in my journal became somewhat of an addiction-- not only something I did with idle time, but something I had an extreme urge to do in moments of particular stress. When worried about a friend, or during a nasty parental fight, or while sitting outside the dean's office, I would crave my journal, the way I now crave a glass of wine, to calm down. When I'd go back and read things that seemed so crucial to me at some point, I'd chuckle at how some time and space rendered them at once insignificant and priceless. I remember observing in my journal, "I'm really glad I've been writing this. If for nothing else than to document my life, to pay tribute to the fact that it happened." (Yes, I spoke like that in high school.) When I tried my first short story in there, my teacher, who by then was firmly established as My Favorite Teacher Ever, wrote after it, "Donika, I hope that you stick with writing, because you have the touch." You have the touch... those words promised nothing, but bestowed a lot. After then I felt an encompassing responsibility toward words in everything I did.

That first journal was tragically destroyed during college, when I forgot I stored some sentimental things in the basement of a house scheduled for demolition. While my habit has waxed and waned, somewhere along the line I stumbled upon the perfect notebook for journaling: the Moleskine. I love a servicable product, and this is one whose utility far outweighs its price. The pages are a smooth, durable paper, and the binding provides a flat, hard writing surface no matter where you are. It comes equipped with a bookmarker, an elastic strap to hold it closed, and a secret back pocket for storing clippings and other scraps. On Sunday I thumbed through mine looking for something to write about this week, and when I came up empty, I started rifling through the back pocket. I found a slip of paper I keep in there on purpose, because I always look in that pocket when I'm desperate.

My god, if that doesn't make you want to engage in the ongoing human conversation, I don't know what would. Eagerly, I resumed flipping through my notes, looking for something I could announce to the world. I guess there's some difference between desire and direction? The best I can offer is a silly paragraph I kept returning to and smiling:

It's Eric's birthday and a crisp November evening, so we're standing outside Pub X, sipping pints and grilling the bouncer about his workout routine. A stout, elderly Chinese woman shuffles her brown loafers down the sidewalk in front of us, her head bowed and swaddled in a scarf, her hands clutching her collar closed against the chill. Suddenly Eric's attention snaps to her and he shouts, "Hey, aren't you the lady who sells the porn?!" I glared at Eric to check his behavior, as the woman lifted her head, smiled wide, and cooed, "Yeeeesss." She then opened her DVD-lined coat, and negotiated a birthday special with Eric.

I don't know what I'll do with that scene, but I rather like it. Had I not written it down, it would have been filed into the vague half-memories I'm not sure happened to me or someone else. Instead, I relived, in precise detail, a very human sample of the funny, unexpected things that happen to us every day. It's not funny as written-- yet. It needs more windup, and a crisp, whiplash ending, but the important thing is that I captured the moment truthfully. It'll payoff later.

Here's another moment I'm glad I'll force myself to remember.

The D train* announcer today was out of control. When I got on at 34th he declared, "Our next stop ladies and gentlemen is 42nd street, the historic and now san-i-tized, Dis-ney-fied 42nd Street, where it is safe to bring your chil-dren. Pllllllleeeeeeaaaassse stand clear of the closing doors!" He wasn't announcing the stops, but peforming them. After his exuberant announcement of "Sizzeventh Ave" a black guy sitting across from me leaned into his girlfriend and commented, "Yo, white people hate that shit." I held the Autobiography of Malcolm X I was reading up a little higher to shame him. During the long, non-stop stretch between 59th Street and 125th Street, he did the usual announcements about watching your belongings and reporting suspicious behavior, but did them with his own little flair. Then he broke into an announcement I hadn't heard before, "Ladies and Gentlemen, again I would like to thank you for choosing MTA to move you around town today. We are not the brave police and firemen of this great city, but we are the eemmmM-Tee-Ayyy and we DO, AAAALLLLLLways have, and ALLLLLLways will, run New York." I wanted to stand up and applaud; the guy across from me leaned into his girlfriend again, "He's a good person." By 125th Street, "Home of the world, world, woooOOOoooOOOOooooorrrrrld famous Apollo Theater!" I agreed. It was nice to hear someone put so much heart into what I would imagine is a pretty routine job. Assuming he wasn't drunk, of course.

Based on the above, I considered doing this entry on the importance of finding inspiration everywhere, and approaching everything you do with enthusiasm. That would be insincere, though, as I'm lacking in both right now. Anyone reading would detect me trying to convince myself the most. So I was down to two anecdotes, no ideas, and a promise to myself to update this site once a week. The result, apparently, is pointless entries such as this.

A little trick in editing is to try chopping off the entire first paragraph of any story, chapter, or essay. Many times it makes the piece much crisper, as people tend to do a lot of foot shuffling in the beginning. It's usually superfluous, but just as often is a quick, candid view into the author's attitude toward his writing (Dave Eggers shuffled his feet so much it ascended to the level of a dance). I have a feeling that in a year or so, I'll wish I could lop off my first several entries here. I'll be honest: I have no idea what I want to do, nor what I am doing, with this blog, and for that reason owe an apology to anyone who reads it. I recognize that I'm shuffling my feet and therefore likely wasting your time. At this point you're like my English teacher, inside my skull, watching in real time as I figure out what I have to say. Hopefully, it'll payoff later.

* If you know me, I fully encourage using "D Train" as my nickname.

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"Come on," he chuckled, "This is Tucker we're talking about. You think he doesn't already have five copies sitting in his apartment?"

"Good point," I conceded, but really I was kind of disappointed. I had this idea in my head that we'd gather, crack open a fresh copy of the Times, and pore through the article together, soaking in the praise, cringing over each misstatement. Sort of like the cast of a play stays awake together waiting for the first reviews, but maybe that was just the editor in me, searching for the perfect moment.

***

When I was growing up, my mom always taped some sort of reading material on the bathroom mirror, to give my siblings and I something to think about while we brushed our teeth. I remember little Buddhist meditations, poems about seasonal events, and inspirational aphorisms. The one I remember most, though, was a liquor ad. It showed a grizzled old man playing the trumpet with the caption, "Do what you love, the rest comes naturally..." underneath. And like the relentlessly naive person I am, I believed it.

I believed it, but had a hard time carrying it out. Even as a kid, I was what most people would call a serious person. I was bookish and industrious, and didn't do a lot of stuff that little kids do for fun. Riding bikes? Who needs bikes when there are books? Hanging out at the mall? How about a job at the mall instead? In fact, when I think back on my adolescence, I remember my jobs more than anything. Working was a big deal to me. The money gave me a measure of independence, but more than that I liked contributing to an endeavor. I started working young, lied about my age, and took pride in doing whatever job well. Whether it was serving food or lifeguarding, it gratified me to contribute to the overall good.

So you can imagine how picking a college major, and therefore (in my mind at the time) a career, weighed heavily on me. Science was always my strong academic suit. Well, second to English, but I barely considered that a subject. Reading and writing, I thought, isn't that something anyone should be able to do? What's the specialty there? I showed up at college with most of the classics under my belt, and didn't see a reason to major in something I could already do. Plus, science appealed to my need to contribute. Inventing vaccines and developing insect resistant vegetables-- that's how you make the world a better place.

But I took lots of English classes, because it allowed me to read beyond textbooks and I did hold an admiration for writing as a craft. Also, because I hated my science classes. Gone was the wonder and insight of high school Biology, now replaced with weed-out courses, depressed professors, and type A classmates. I kept changing majors, comically-- Microbiology to Molecular and Cell Biology, Molecular and Cell Biology to Biochemistry, Biochemistry to Genetics-- as though I'd find one of those hyper-specialties more satisfying than another. Worse, I started going to class less and less, and my grades dipped and stayed below a 2.0. Finally, I took some time off from school to get my head straight.

I started, of course, by getting a job. My mom had heard that TV Guide was looking for editors and encouraged me to apply. It required a college degree and a resume, neither of which I had. She pointed out that there was a screening test involved, and reminded me that I test well. She turned out to be right. I did so well on the test that they didn't even notice there was no degree listed on my hastily-thrown-together resume. I was genuinely excited. I had a real job with a desk and benefits and responsibilities that let me use my head. Or so I thought. The reality of office life sank in after about six months, and I became increasingly incredulous that people lived that way. The work itself was utterly unchallenging, and the tedium of sitting in the same place, with the same people, doing the same nonsense for 40 years was almost indicative of mental illness to me. Only a crazy person would live like this, I thought. Though I was disappointed in myself for dropping out of school, I'd sit in the office looking at my coworkers and become overwhelmed with gratitude that I had school to return to. My life at TV Guide was not it for me. I started taking classes at night, now even more wacked out under the pressure of deciding what I wanted to do with my life. Predictably, I dropped out again after flipping among several different majors.

What happened in between that and my third college is not important. What is important is that I sent for my transcripts, and looking at them, something immediately jumped out at me. Through two schools, countless majors, and wavering grades, I had straight A's in all my English classes. More, I realized that I had never skipped one single English class, a major feat for me since I always found class attendance kind of unimportant. I had no idea what one did with an English degree, but in the back of my head I heard something whisper Do what you love, the rest comes naturally.

I ripped it UP as an English major. For the first time I was working from true inspiration, not from what I thought I was supposed to do. I loved my classes, loved my classmates, and loved my professors, some of whom I still keep in touch with. One night while working on an assignment for a creative writing class, I let myself think about something I'd repressed for a long time: becoming a writer. I remembered when I was in seventh grade, going to my mom, and timidly telling her that I thought I wanted write when I grew up. I expected her to scoff at the idea, and tell me to do something more secure, to use harder skills like science. But I'll never forget what she really said, "That's good, because writers change the world." She went on to talk about The Jungle and what it did for both workers and consumers. I mentally kicked myself for not listening to her, and started writing a book, sending poetry to magazines (with no success) and collaborating with other writers and creative types. I also thought about working on a PhD or becoming a teacher after graduation-- jobs I thought would align with writing.

Like many recent college graduates, I was taken by the face, turned upside down, and violated in ways I don't want to describe by student loans. I needed a real job for at least a year until I figured out grad school. I took a job at a dotcom, which really wasn't bad in the beginning. You could bring your dog to work; it was a cubicle free environment; we drank at work on Fridays. The work itself was even somewhat satisfying. New companies like that encourage and even require that you work autonomously and creatively. Most importantly, though, it came with a regular salary, and I was delusional enough to think it would support me AND pay off my student loans in a year.

Three years later I was still at that job, inches from being clubbed to death by adulthood. Terrified of more student loans, I never applied to grad school. My paycheck was barely covering my living expenses, and the company I worked for succeeded to the point that it became totally corporate. My desk job had sapped the inspiration from me, and my long term writing partner and I had 'broken up.' Severely mentally constipated, I kept working on a novel in fits and starts, but it was bad. I simply had nothing to say. The WoW-obsessed computer geek sitting next to me had a richer and more interesting life. Worst of all, though, I felt completely trapped. The best parts of me were dying, I was dependent on a system I hated, and I had no idea how to get out without becoming homeless. I was drowning and I knew it.

The Internet became my salvation. On any given day I could learn about something new, read about someone interesting, or interact with people who had cooler experiences than I did. Somewhere in there, I stumbled upon the Tard Blog. After laughing myself retarded, I looked around the site, wondering who was hosting such a thing. That turned out to be Tucker. I laughed myself retarded again reading his site, and showed it to a friend. "This is what you should be doing," she observed. "Don't be silly," I brushed it off, "This is essentially self-publishing. No one takes that seriously. Editors exist for a reason." But in my heart of hearts, I knew she was right. I went back and read Tucker's site again, looking for holes in his approach. I couldn't push one thought from my mind, though. This guy is going to be famous... and I want in on the ground floor.

I sent Tucker an e-mail offering pretty much the only thing I had to offer the world at that point: editing skills. He responded in typical Tucker fashion, as though he was doing me a favor, and agreed to let me edit his stuff on a trial basis. He was happy with my work, so we continued on as he created new material, built his following, and turned his site into his livelihood. For myself, I bounced from unfulfilling job to unfulfilling job, often with Tucker's work as the only thing I cared about or looked forward to.

Tucker visited Philadelphia shortly before his book came out, and again in typical Tucker fashion, he came equipped with a lecture for me. We stood in a crowded bar, and while repeatedly jabbing me in the throat with his finger to accentuate his points, he basically shouted at me, "YOU NEED TO START WRITING. IT'S RIDICULOUS FOR YOU TO JUST BE SITTING THERE NOT DOING WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. HAVE YOU LEARNED ANYTHING FROM ME? LIVE THE WAY YOU WANT TO LIVE, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" I stared back, wishing he'd stop poking me, and translated all of that to Do what you love, the rest comes naturally. Then he said something that really caught my attention, "I MEAN IN THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I SEPARATED OUT FOUR PEOPLE: BUNNY, PWJ, NILS, AND YOU. DO YOU THINK I WOULD DO THAT FOR SOMEONE WITH NO TALENT?"

"Wait, you mentioned me in your book?"

"OF COURSE I DID. I ASKED IF I COULD USE YOUR REAL NAME, DUMMY."

"I thought I would just be in a list or something... gosh, that's really sweet. Thanks."

"SWEET? BABY, I DON'T DO ANYTHING TO BE SWEET. IF YOU'RE IN THERE IT'S BECAUSE YOU EARNED IT AND IT'S TIME YOU STARTED ACTING THAT WAY."

That night I cracked open a pre-release copy of Tucker's book, and there was my name, in bold! I was so overwhelmed and vaguely embarrassed that I actually had to peek at it a few times before I could bring myself to read my blurb. It was a very kind paragraph crediting me, but the words were almost unimportant. I was in someone's book! Had I known then that he'd hit the NYT list, I might have passed out. Somehow, being mentioned in someone's book made my dreams feel a little more real to me. Certainly if I could help someone that much with their book, I could write my own. Right?

And I did start writing again. Some fundamentals came back to me. Write every day. It doesn't matter if it's good, just get it down. Imitate a passage by another writer if you have writer's block. Go out and eavesdrop, then write a story around what you heard. But I couldn't shake the idea that I sucked. In college, while reading true masters of the craft, I believed I could be as good or better than them. I think my confidence sprang from doing excellent work in school; it made me feel powerful and capable. Years of working in an office had laid that feeling completely dormant. So I wrote and hid it like a dirty little secret (and I swear to you that as I write this right now, all I can think is, "Who the hell wants to read this shit?"). In the meantime, Tucker was getting more and more attention, and making noise about starting a company.

From my perspective, he HAD to start a company. I was working for IBM and flying to Richmond, VA every week to do absolutely nothing. It was wearing on me. Staying in hotels with censored cable, missing my life at home, and being continually unchallenged was driving me to literally drink. Had the hotel not been attached to a bar, therefore ensuring a daily, energyless hangover, I'm not sure I wouldn't have assaulted my boss. I was still writing, but had less and less to say. Again. I knew for sure was that I did not belong in an office, and while I acknowledged this consciously, my subconscious hijacked me.

One week, I made my hotel reservations, packed my bags, and then simply did not leave. It was a Monday, and I kept telling myself that maybe I'd go to the airport that afternoon. Claim flight delays to my boss. The day ticked by and I told myself I'd fake a cold, go in Tuesday instead. But I woke up Tuesday still completely incapable of getting in my car and driving to the airport. I knew it was over, so I called the hotel and cancelled my reservations so they wouldn't charge me, then IBM, then our client, at a significant markup at each turn. Around noon my phone rang. It was my boss. I was too scared to answer. What would I say? "Sorry, I'm crazy. I'm calling out crazy this week." About half an hour later it rang again, my boss's boss. And later my boss again. Finally a beloved co-worker called and I worked up the courage to listen to my messages, starting with my boss's:

Hi Donika, it's Mary. Listen, could you meet me up in Jeanette's office in about 15 minutes? I want you two to discuss the data you need.

HOLY SHIT! It was a full day later and they still didn't realize I wasn't there! If I ever doubted that my work was unimportant and unnecessary, that message removed all doubt. (And if you are the client in Richmond and reading this, it should remove any doubt that IBM is ripping you off.) The next message was the obligatory we're-so-worried-about-you call, followed by an angry message indicating that they understood I was not showing up... ever. The final message, from my co-worker, I could barely make out because he was laughing so hard, "Donika... please... please call Mary and Karen... they, hahahahaha, they... oh fuck it, I know you're not going to talk to them. Give me a call later." I became completely calm, because at that moment, I knew for sure that I was never, NEVER going back to an office again.

***

A month later, I was in New York celebrating Easter with my family. My mother was disgusted with me. I'd left a secure job with a good company and no backup plan. Worse, I was running around with Tucker, a persona non grata in her mind. So getting the night away to read the NYT piece was a very welcome relief. When TheGC and I got to his apartment, Tucker was sitting on the couch with his hand down his basketball shorts. He and TheGC started talking about sports, and I sat on the edge of the couch ready to smack someone. Why weren't we talking about the article? What the hell was in it? Was it bad? Good? It wasn't just that I wanted the best for Tucker, but that the piece was somewhat of a turning point for him and anyone he'd collected to work with him over the years. A positive article would command the attention of producers and publishers, and put us all in a good position to start a company with a shot at success. Finally Tucker dropped the Style section in my lap, "Here... you wanna see this?" I looked down at a huge photo of him on the front.

The article was good. Tucker had interacted well with the author, and the author in turn genuinely tried to get what he was doing with his career and represent it fairly. I guess he was over it by that time though, as he launched into planning before I could fully finish reading. A Rudius author once told me that talking to Tucker in person was like chasing lightning, and he was right. Within fifteen minutes, he had laid out a comprehensive and sound business plan that put all emphasis on nurturing talent. As I listened and reformulated the information in my head, the same feeling came back to me as when I found his site, but this time it included me. My scalp tingled and my skin felt like velvet, We're going to be famous, and I'm in on the ground floor.

Being famous was never my objective, nor is it now, but discovering new writers, giving authors power over their work, and exposing good writing to an audience... that was a job I'd be proud to do and could throw my soul into. I thought about the last ten years of my life, the stumbling, the confusion, the loss of hope, and the very good luck I had in meeting up with Tucker. Lucky though I am, I know that really what brought me here was doing what I loved. No matter what else was going on in my life at the time, being active in the writing world sustained me and delivered me to a good place. And who knows? Maybe someday I'll have a book's worth of things to say about it.

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