Posts
4/16/2008
National Nonviolence Week
Please visit this site. If you have a MySpace page, consider joining the group.
3/23/2008
Happy Easter!
Catholic, Orthodox (Coptic, Greek, and Russian), and Lutheran views (which I've included for regional reasons and because Lutherism is one of the earliest--perhaps the earliest--of the Protestant denominations). If I've left out a doctrinal view you prefer, feel free to post it in a reply--I'd love to see some other beliefs.
3/20/2008
San Francisco and Pop Culture
As I did in New York, I decided to write blog entries about my conference in San Francisco, so my students can see what I'm up to at these conferences (this one over Spring Break no less!). But this time around, my conference hotel is not offering free wireless, so I'm having to write these offline and post them later. Still, I'm dating them retroactively, so they'll still reflect the intended date of the post.
Flying into San Francisco, I was more taken by the West Coast mountain-and-Bay scenery than I thought I would be, particularly with the sun high overhead but the Bay and low hills thick with gauzy fog. On the ground, I found the warm, breezy hills and meandering roads relaxing, the sight of all those thick evergreens and swaying palms oddly comforting, even as I realized that I was recognizing them only from film and television: I had been coddled and nursed by Hollywood, and now felt almost infantile in the presence of California. It was like the Chili Peppers song internalized, brought into an almost religious reality. Perhaps it was the BART subway train we rode from the airport to the hotel--it was hands-down the cleanest, most comfortable, most efficient rail system I’ve ridden so far; the seats are larger and softer than those on our plane from Madison!
Our hotel is downtown, in the center of a shopping and arts district that is home to what seem like hundreds of what my friend David Horsley calls “alleywalkers.” (I remain in the habit of calling them “homeless,” but in a personal essay titled “The Alleywalker,” Horsley argues that for many people who live on the street, a home is the least important of the things they are “less.” Therefore, he chooses to call them “alleywalkers,” a better descriptive of their lifestyles.) I’m used to encountering alleywalkers in my travels--I’ve become something of a magnet for them, often chatting with them for blocks as I walk to a restaurant or a reception or a bar and they follow, hoping without begging that I’ll hand them some change (which I often do, in exchange for the conversation). In Atlanta last spring, I actually followed a man more than a mile into the depths of back-alley Atlanta; he’d asked me to put him up for the night in a shelter, and rather than simply hand him the money, I chose to walk with him and see the shelter myself, in part out of curiosity, in part out of suspicion (I didn’t know what he’d really do with my money), and in part out of simple human companionship. He told me about his children in Florida, about his struggles to find work without a local permanent address, about his life on the street. When a gang of shadowy figures began crawling from beneath a distant overpass and making their way toward us, he stopped me and explained that we were entering a part of town dangerous for white people (he used the word “Caucasian”; he was African-American), and that on second thought, he’d feel better walking me back to my part of town. He didn’t ask for any money. I gave it to him anyway, along with my leftover Indian dinner, and he hugged me and offered again to walk me back, but I waved him off and wished him well.
Here in San Francisco, the alleywalkers are different, or at least, more open. I’ve seen more in just these several blocks than I have in all the other cities I’ve visited combined. Having so many in such close proximity, many camped out in front of the swanky downtown hotels and the pricey shopping centers hoping to catch wealthy tourists, I’ve had the opportunity to make some observations I had long assumed from pop-culture presentations of the homeless but had never fully encountered before. Here, many of the homeless have gathered into tight communities, small traveling congregations of friends and fellow beggars. Some of the lone wanderers carry signs and sit silent, as though in meditation or stoic repose; others try to sell trinkets made from found paper clips or woven bits of discarded thread, or hand out free community newspapers in hopes of a donation; others simply sleep, an empty Starbucks cup held loose in their hands. But the congregations conspire, they arrange themselves in lines to beg collectively or vote on representatives to follow shoppers and tourists, debate the amount to be begged and then allot the money they collect, like a church charity plate in reverse. As my wife and I walked down Market Street to the city’s public library--a regular pilgrimage in all new cities we visit--I overheard such a conversation, a stooped, bearded man in a dirty denim jacket explaining to his colleagues that he needed five dollars, the rest electing him to track down the money (and telling him he needed to get more than five dollars if he expected his share), at which point he tucked away the capless prescription bottle he’d been holding, stuck his long-reused plastic water bottle under one arm, and followed us across two streets and half a block, shuffling in a limp, rambling a barely coherent but clearly practiced narrative in hopes of getting our change.
I find such encounters difficult. The truth is, I often have some change to spare, and if I can do so safely, I’m always willing to offer a bit of help. But here, the alleywalker population is so dense that I can’t donate funds without revealing the money I have on hand, and--excuse though this may be--I worry about giving some money to some people while excluding the rest, and I certainly can’t afford to help out everyone. So I choose to help no one, often explaining--falsely--that I’d love to help out but I have no change. Everyone I’ve encountered seems to accept this, not as truth but as the code that it is: I have some change, but I don’t have enough, and I’m not going to give. No one has so far seemed offended. It’s just a part of the culture, a part of the dialogue of this place. It’s been an education for me.
The other thing I’ve encountered here, not for the first time but in the most open ways and in the greatest numbers, has been vocal activism of various sorts. On our way to the library, my wife and I watched the set-up for an anti-war protest we’d heard announced on the previous night’s news. On our way back, we strolled through an open market of vegetables, baked goods, and falafel vendors, and we wandered into the United Nations Plaza, where I met a young Tibetan woman handing out flyers about the Olympic torch and it sole stop in the US (in San Francisco), a Free Tibet tote slung over her shoulder and a quiet sadness on her lips, in her eyes. (I thanked her when I took the flyer then, once I saw what the flyer was, I turned and said, “Thank you very much!” but she’d already gone, gently pushing flyers at the crowd behind us.) When we got closer to our hotel, we got stopped by a small crowd of people, many with their cameras and cell phones raised to snap pictures. I cast about, unsure what was happening, but then I remembered--it was the protest, quieter than I’d expected because it was less angry march and more guerrilla theatre. On one side of the small square, a group of people in fake fatigues held cardboard machine guns aimed at hooded “prisoners” like the ones we held at Abu Ghraib or that we currently hold at Guantanamo or other “secret” prisons. In another corner, a man in a fishing vest displayed a Ken-doll Bush hung in effigy from a flower-wrapped fishing pole; behind him, signs were arranged like a bouquet in a large white bucket, with a note to “Return signs here.” Across the street, arrayed in front of Bloomingdale’s as though protecting the shoppers, a line of twenty police officers sat on blue-and-black dirt bikes like a street gang or a motocross team. Down an alley half a block away was a large police bus prepared to cart away arrested protesters.
Flying into San Francisco, I was more taken by the West Coast mountain-and-Bay scenery than I thought I would be, particularly with the sun high overhead but the Bay and low hills thick with gauzy fog. On the ground, I found the warm, breezy hills and meandering roads relaxing, the sight of all those thick evergreens and swaying palms oddly comforting, even as I realized that I was recognizing them only from film and television: I had been coddled and nursed by Hollywood, and now felt almost infantile in the presence of California. It was like the Chili Peppers song internalized, brought into an almost religious reality. Perhaps it was the BART subway train we rode from the airport to the hotel--it was hands-down the cleanest, most comfortable, most efficient rail system I’ve ridden so far; the seats are larger and softer than those on our plane from Madison!
Our hotel is downtown, in the center of a shopping and arts district that is home to what seem like hundreds of what my friend David Horsley calls “alleywalkers.” (I remain in the habit of calling them “homeless,” but in a personal essay titled “The Alleywalker,” Horsley argues that for many people who live on the street, a home is the least important of the things they are “less.” Therefore, he chooses to call them “alleywalkers,” a better descriptive of their lifestyles.) I’m used to encountering alleywalkers in my travels--I’ve become something of a magnet for them, often chatting with them for blocks as I walk to a restaurant or a reception or a bar and they follow, hoping without begging that I’ll hand them some change (which I often do, in exchange for the conversation). In Atlanta last spring, I actually followed a man more than a mile into the depths of back-alley Atlanta; he’d asked me to put him up for the night in a shelter, and rather than simply hand him the money, I chose to walk with him and see the shelter myself, in part out of curiosity, in part out of suspicion (I didn’t know what he’d really do with my money), and in part out of simple human companionship. He told me about his children in Florida, about his struggles to find work without a local permanent address, about his life on the street. When a gang of shadowy figures began crawling from beneath a distant overpass and making their way toward us, he stopped me and explained that we were entering a part of town dangerous for white people (he used the word “Caucasian”; he was African-American), and that on second thought, he’d feel better walking me back to my part of town. He didn’t ask for any money. I gave it to him anyway, along with my leftover Indian dinner, and he hugged me and offered again to walk me back, but I waved him off and wished him well.
Here in San Francisco, the alleywalkers are different, or at least, more open. I’ve seen more in just these several blocks than I have in all the other cities I’ve visited combined. Having so many in such close proximity, many camped out in front of the swanky downtown hotels and the pricey shopping centers hoping to catch wealthy tourists, I’ve had the opportunity to make some observations I had long assumed from pop-culture presentations of the homeless but had never fully encountered before. Here, many of the homeless have gathered into tight communities, small traveling congregations of friends and fellow beggars. Some of the lone wanderers carry signs and sit silent, as though in meditation or stoic repose; others try to sell trinkets made from found paper clips or woven bits of discarded thread, or hand out free community newspapers in hopes of a donation; others simply sleep, an empty Starbucks cup held loose in their hands. But the congregations conspire, they arrange themselves in lines to beg collectively or vote on representatives to follow shoppers and tourists, debate the amount to be begged and then allot the money they collect, like a church charity plate in reverse. As my wife and I walked down Market Street to the city’s public library--a regular pilgrimage in all new cities we visit--I overheard such a conversation, a stooped, bearded man in a dirty denim jacket explaining to his colleagues that he needed five dollars, the rest electing him to track down the money (and telling him he needed to get more than five dollars if he expected his share), at which point he tucked away the capless prescription bottle he’d been holding, stuck his long-reused plastic water bottle under one arm, and followed us across two streets and half a block, shuffling in a limp, rambling a barely coherent but clearly practiced narrative in hopes of getting our change.
I find such encounters difficult. The truth is, I often have some change to spare, and if I can do so safely, I’m always willing to offer a bit of help. But here, the alleywalker population is so dense that I can’t donate funds without revealing the money I have on hand, and--excuse though this may be--I worry about giving some money to some people while excluding the rest, and I certainly can’t afford to help out everyone. So I choose to help no one, often explaining--falsely--that I’d love to help out but I have no change. Everyone I’ve encountered seems to accept this, not as truth but as the code that it is: I have some change, but I don’t have enough, and I’m not going to give. No one has so far seemed offended. It’s just a part of the culture, a part of the dialogue of this place. It’s been an education for me.
The other thing I’ve encountered here, not for the first time but in the most open ways and in the greatest numbers, has been vocal activism of various sorts. On our way to the library, my wife and I watched the set-up for an anti-war protest we’d heard announced on the previous night’s news. On our way back, we strolled through an open market of vegetables, baked goods, and falafel vendors, and we wandered into the United Nations Plaza, where I met a young Tibetan woman handing out flyers about the Olympic torch and it sole stop in the US (in San Francisco), a Free Tibet tote slung over her shoulder and a quiet sadness on her lips, in her eyes. (I thanked her when I took the flyer then, once I saw what the flyer was, I turned and said, “Thank you very much!” but she’d already gone, gently pushing flyers at the crowd behind us.) When we got closer to our hotel, we got stopped by a small crowd of people, many with their cameras and cell phones raised to snap pictures. I cast about, unsure what was happening, but then I remembered--it was the protest, quieter than I’d expected because it was less angry march and more guerrilla theatre. On one side of the small square, a group of people in fake fatigues held cardboard machine guns aimed at hooded “prisoners” like the ones we held at Abu Ghraib or that we currently hold at Guantanamo or other “secret” prisons. In another corner, a man in a fishing vest displayed a Ken-doll Bush hung in effigy from a flower-wrapped fishing pole; behind him, signs were arranged like a bouquet in a large white bucket, with a note to “Return signs here.” Across the street, arrayed in front of Bloomingdale’s as though protecting the shoppers, a line of twenty police officers sat on blue-and-black dirt bikes like a street gang or a motocross team. Down an alley half a block away was a large police bus prepared to cart away arrested protesters.
3/17/2008
3/15/2008
Tibet
I'm in Chicago, working on my novel and some short stories and preparing for my reading at PCA/ACA next week while my wife attends an important Intellectual Freedom committee meeting with ALA. I plan to post about my pop-culture conference in San Fransisco, so I had intended to spend this week posting a preview of sorts, writing about my revision process and what I am doing to prepare for my presentation.
Instead, I find myself in tears.
I don't like using this blog as a political platform, in part because I allow my students to read it and I don't like propagating my political beliefs via this blog any more than I would do in my classrooms; I believe both should be open and available to the free exchange of ideas, which requires if not my silence then at least some semblance of my neutrality.
But I can remain neither silent nor neutral on this issue, and I feel I must share my thoughts here as I did when writing about similar anti-protest crackdowns in Burma just a few months ago.
For those readers--especially my students--who are unfamiliar with this news I'm referring to, here are some links:
Yet I am dismayed that the situation in Tibet has reached this point. (Full disclosure: I am a practicing--if poor--Buddhist of the Tibetan Mahayana tradition, and, having attended teachings from His Holiness and intending to attend more this summer, I consider myself one of his millions of students.) His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, who is the exiled but beloved leader of the Tibetan people, has long called for what he calls the "Middle-Way approach," resisting these sorts of violent protests and insisting on dialogue and compromise. While the Chinese government has for years claimed the Dalai Lama is a "separatist" causing unrest in the interest of Tibetan independence, His Holiness has remained steadfast in his insistence that he only wants autonomy within and with cooperation with the broader Chinese government system, in the interest not of preserving Tibetan nationalism or Independence but of preserving Tibetan religious beliefs and Tibetan culture (which the Chinese are systematically trying to stamp out). In his speeches on the situation in Tibet, His Holiness has consistently called for patience and compassion, which has frustrated a lot of young Tibetans who find patience difficult and resent the Dalai Lama's "passive" (he would say "pacifist") approach, and these riots, I fear, are the result of those young Tibetans' pent-up frustrations bursting loose. This is not what the Dalai Lama wants, and it is not in the best interest of the Tibetan people.
Nevertheless, now that the violence has erupted, I think we need to make what good of it we can by calling attention to the frustrations of Tibetans and to the brutality of Chinese policy regarding Tibet. Through that, I hope, we can most quickly restore peace and begin the more productive process of restoring Tibetan autonomy and Tibetan cooperation with China. But to do this, we cannot relax our attention. So please, anyone reading this, try to stay on top of this story, these events, this long-standing political situation, and speak out--call or write our own government, which only several months ago awarded the Dalai Lama a special medal of recognition, and demand that we increase our pressure on China to show restraint in their dealings with Tibet and, ultimately, to work with the Dalai Lama to find the most beneficial compromise for everyone.
In the meantime, here is the official statement from His Holiness the Dalai Lama: http://www.tibet.net/en/ohhdl/statements/10march/2008.html.
Instead, I find myself in tears.
I don't like using this blog as a political platform, in part because I allow my students to read it and I don't like propagating my political beliefs via this blog any more than I would do in my classrooms; I believe both should be open and available to the free exchange of ideas, which requires if not my silence then at least some semblance of my neutrality.
But I can remain neither silent nor neutral on this issue, and I feel I must share my thoughts here as I did when writing about similar anti-protest crackdowns in Burma just a few months ago.
For those readers--especially my students--who are unfamiliar with this news I'm referring to, here are some links:
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23629811
- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338081,00.html
- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88251825
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7297911.stm
Yet I am dismayed that the situation in Tibet has reached this point. (Full disclosure: I am a practicing--if poor--Buddhist of the Tibetan Mahayana tradition, and, having attended teachings from His Holiness and intending to attend more this summer, I consider myself one of his millions of students.) His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, who is the exiled but beloved leader of the Tibetan people, has long called for what he calls the "Middle-Way approach," resisting these sorts of violent protests and insisting on dialogue and compromise. While the Chinese government has for years claimed the Dalai Lama is a "separatist" causing unrest in the interest of Tibetan independence, His Holiness has remained steadfast in his insistence that he only wants autonomy within and with cooperation with the broader Chinese government system, in the interest not of preserving Tibetan nationalism or Independence but of preserving Tibetan religious beliefs and Tibetan culture (which the Chinese are systematically trying to stamp out). In his speeches on the situation in Tibet, His Holiness has consistently called for patience and compassion, which has frustrated a lot of young Tibetans who find patience difficult and resent the Dalai Lama's "passive" (he would say "pacifist") approach, and these riots, I fear, are the result of those young Tibetans' pent-up frustrations bursting loose. This is not what the Dalai Lama wants, and it is not in the best interest of the Tibetan people.
Nevertheless, now that the violence has erupted, I think we need to make what good of it we can by calling attention to the frustrations of Tibetans and to the brutality of Chinese policy regarding Tibet. Through that, I hope, we can most quickly restore peace and begin the more productive process of restoring Tibetan autonomy and Tibetan cooperation with China. But to do this, we cannot relax our attention. So please, anyone reading this, try to stay on top of this story, these events, this long-standing political situation, and speak out--call or write our own government, which only several months ago awarded the Dalai Lama a special medal of recognition, and demand that we increase our pressure on China to show restraint in their dealings with Tibet and, ultimately, to work with the Dalai Lama to find the most beneficial compromise for everyone.
In the meantime, here is the official statement from His Holiness the Dalai Lama: http://www.tibet.net/en/ohhdl/statements/10march/2008.html.
2/04/2008
Good-bye, New York
Good-bye, Manhattan.
Good-bye, Hilton New York. Good-bye Best Western President.
Good-bye, Chrysler Building. Say hi to the others--I’ll catch them next time.
Good-bye, Broadway. Good-bye 5th Avenue. Good-bye 59th Street. Good-bye corner of Grove and Benton--what great Friends you made.
So long, Times Square. You’re a little flashy, but I like you anyway.
Good-bye, $5 silk pashminas, $5 hats, those wrinkled old paperbacks arranged on the folding table next to the old Dylan albums.
Good-bye, King-Kong-sized M&M. I loved how you aped that movie in your gargantuan ads. While I’m gone: no monkey business up there.
See you around, Radio City Music Hall, Ed Sullivan Theater, Museum of Modern Art, New York Public Library.
Good-bye, Patience and Fortitude.
Hey, Bryant Park: thanks for being so cool.
See you later, NY Giants. Good luck this afternoon.
Ciao, all you little pizza joints. Tell Starbucks to piss off.
Good-bye, New York cabbies, city buses, and grubby old subway trains. You have charms all your own, and you treated me well.
At ease, mounted police. You did a great job.
All the best, NYFD. It was a pleasure abutting your firehouse. This city is proud as hell of you all, and it shows.
Good-bye, frail old black woman in the puffy pink coat who only wanted quarters for the bus. I hope it was enough, and God bless you too.
Good-bye, people singing out loud to the music on their iPods; good-bye street musicians; good-bye that guy in the subway who only knew one chord and just kept strumming it over and over like a mantra, like a prayer for spare change.
Great show, Hunting and Gathering; I have new respect for off-Broadway theatre.
Good seeing you, Isaac Byrne. Glad to reconnect--you’re one of the coolest freakin’ people I know.
So long, The Village. Nice to meet you, Four Faced Liar.
Good luck, pretzel vendors. It can’t be easy out there. (Watch out for those hot nuts carts--those people are crazy.)
Shalom, gang of somber Hasidim protesting against the state of Israel--I admire your discipline, but I admire your chutzpah even more.
Sorry I missed you, World Trade Center site. Hang in there--I hear you’re making a comeback.
I hadn’t heard from you in ages, Beastie Boys on the radio. Let’s stay in touch.
Good-bye, Lady Liberty. I’ll always love you from afar. (Don’t loose your head.)
Good-bye, Martin Amis, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose. Wish I’d gotten to know you better.
Good-bye Billy Collins, Beth Ann Fennelly, Tom Franklin, John Irving, Frank McCourt, Hannah Tinti--you’re an inspiration, all of you.
Good-bye, AWP. See you next year in Chicago.
Good-bye, Hilton New York. Good-bye Best Western President.
Good-bye, Chrysler Building. Say hi to the others--I’ll catch them next time.
Good-bye, Broadway. Good-bye 5th Avenue. Good-bye 59th Street. Good-bye corner of Grove and Benton--what great Friends you made.
So long, Times Square. You’re a little flashy, but I like you anyway.
Good-bye, $5 silk pashminas, $5 hats, those wrinkled old paperbacks arranged on the folding table next to the old Dylan albums.
Good-bye, King-Kong-sized M&M. I loved how you aped that movie in your gargantuan ads. While I’m gone: no monkey business up there.
See you around, Radio City Music Hall, Ed Sullivan Theater, Museum of Modern Art, New York Public Library.
Good-bye, Patience and Fortitude.
Hey, Bryant Park: thanks for being so cool.
See you later, NY Giants. Good luck this afternoon.
Ciao, all you little pizza joints. Tell Starbucks to piss off.
Good-bye, New York cabbies, city buses, and grubby old subway trains. You have charms all your own, and you treated me well.
At ease, mounted police. You did a great job.
All the best, NYFD. It was a pleasure abutting your firehouse. This city is proud as hell of you all, and it shows.
Good-bye, frail old black woman in the puffy pink coat who only wanted quarters for the bus. I hope it was enough, and God bless you too.
Good-bye, people singing out loud to the music on their iPods; good-bye street musicians; good-bye that guy in the subway who only knew one chord and just kept strumming it over and over like a mantra, like a prayer for spare change.
Great show, Hunting and Gathering; I have new respect for off-Broadway theatre.
Good seeing you, Isaac Byrne. Glad to reconnect--you’re one of the coolest freakin’ people I know.
So long, The Village. Nice to meet you, Four Faced Liar.
Good luck, pretzel vendors. It can’t be easy out there. (Watch out for those hot nuts carts--those people are crazy.)
Shalom, gang of somber Hasidim protesting against the state of Israel--I admire your discipline, but I admire your chutzpah even more.
Sorry I missed you, World Trade Center site. Hang in there--I hear you’re making a comeback.
I hadn’t heard from you in ages, Beastie Boys on the radio. Let’s stay in touch.
Good-bye, Lady Liberty. I’ll always love you from afar. (Don’t loose your head.)
Good-bye, Martin Amis, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose. Wish I’d gotten to know you better.
Good-bye Billy Collins, Beth Ann Fennelly, Tom Franklin, John Irving, Frank McCourt, Hannah Tinti--you’re an inspiration, all of you.
Good-bye, AWP. See you next year in Chicago.
2/03/2008
Three things: notes from yesterday
To try and catch up from yesterday, I'm sitting on the floor against an out-of-the-way pillar in the conference hotel, writing this over a tiny, cold, and weirdly tasteless portabella mushroom sandwich that cost $7.50. Anywhere else, this sandwich would have come from a vending machine and cost $1.25, but this is New York. When I called Isaac, my director friend, last night to arrange our evening plans, he asked if I had any place in mind. I said, "You tell me--you live here. I'm just looking for a beer cheaper than eight dollars." He said, "Oh, then you might be out of luck. This is New York, man." (Isaac, a born-again New Yorker who lives in Brooklyn and works in midtown Manhattan, spends a lot of his time in between, hanging out in The Village. He took me to his favorite bar, the Four Faced Liar, where he found me beer for only four dollars. What a great friend!)
Among the events of yesterday--the conference panels I attended, including some ideas for teaching creative writing to children and teenagers and a discussion of the difficult transition from writing short stories to writing a novel--three stand out.
The first, and most absurd, of the three was the fire alarm.
Anyway, aside from its purpose of commemorating One Story's 100th issue, the set-up of the panel was a typical reading, in which various writers who've appeared in the magazine stood to read their fiction aloud. (For my students: this is exactly what I'll be doing at my Pop Culture conference in March.) The authors were terrific, a little funny without being goofy or loosing the seriousness of their work, and clearly practiced in performance reading (though one reader was awfully quiet at first). The second reader, Nicole Kelby, was particularly hilarious, giving a bombastic and rich delivery of her story about two hapless middle-agers, both unattractive, both married to different spouses, about to fumble their way through their first experiment with adultery. And then, as though ignited by the sexual friction of those two characters rubbing desperately on each other, a blaring fire alarm erupted throughout the hotel. Everyone turned momentarily in our seats, but--lovers of fiction that we all were--no one got up and, perturbed but undaunted, the author just read louder.
After a few moments of brilliant fiction out-voicing the grating whine of the alarm, the tone and pitch changed to a low grit like the wrong-answer buzz from a game show cranked up to maximum volume. Nicole Kelby paused, we all chuckled nervously, and then Kelby shouted at the alarm on the back wall, "Shut up! We're trying to talk about sex in here!" When several people impulsively grabbed their bags and headed for the door (some claimed they were only going to check the situation, though I admit, even I stood up, just in case we all needed to run), the author shouted again: "Come back! We have sex!" Now everyone looked torn, anxious about the situation out in the hotel but also caught up in the inferno of sex and now enjoying the jokes Kelby was making on the fire's behalf.
Then an announcer came over a loud speaker (loud speaker may be giving it too much credit; it sounded more like an amplified drive-thru speaker at Wendy's) and told us all what we already knew: "An alarm has been received."
He went on to explain the hotel's heroic response to this potential disaster: "We are trying to determine the cause of the alarm."
And then, as though to put our minds at ease, he said, "As soon as a cause is know we will inform you of the cause."
He would not, apparently, tell us what to do if the cause was a fire.
Still, this seemed to settle the matter for those in the room--we wanted to get back to the sex, and now that the alarm had ceased, leaving us only the lasciviously winking strobe of the emergency light, Kelby raised her voice and plunged us all back into bed. But--appropriately for a story about the awkwardness of illicit sex--she kept getting interrupted. The inane announcer, whom Kelby later dubbed "Inspector Clouseau," returned again and again to repeat his message about investigating the alarm. Finally, after Kelby had made several comical attempts to get the story back on track, Inspector Clouseau gave us an update: "The cause of the alarm has been determined. The alarm is determined to have been false. Thank you for your patience."
"You're welcome!" Kelby shouted.
And then, because the people in the Starbucks one storey down and across the four-lane street hadn't heard him the first time, Inspector Clouseau returned: "The cause of the alarm has been determined."
"Oh God," Kelby said, and I couldn't tell if she had given up making jokes about her frustration, or if one of the characters in the story had just orgasmed.
Now Isaac is living in New York, where he has worked his way up from acting in small parts on stage and in indie films to co-founding a production company and directing critically acclaimed and award-winning off-off Broadway theatre (Isaac won the 2006 Innovative Theater award for Best Director, and his company's productions picked up five other IT awards; IT is like the Tonys for off-off Broadway theatre).
He met me just to grab a few beers on his way to the theater (I drank; Isaac is getting over a cold and stuck to water). He's working as assistant director for an off-Broadway play called Hunting and Gathering. (For those of you who don't know, off-off Broadway and off-Broadway are technical distinctions in the theatre industry, and they form a ranking of prestige leading up to, of course, Broadway. This gig Isaac has now, though thankless and only a small-print item in the playbill, is actually an important step up for Isaac.) Because Isaac is cool as hell, he invited me to join him, and when we got to the theater, he managed to get me in for free.
The play details the migratory apartment-hunting that consumes so many New Yorkers' lives and, blended into that structure, the interwoven narratives of four people: A divorced English professor and his seductive, predatory student (played by Meryl Streep's daughter!), the professor's ex-girlfriend (whom he had an affair with while still married), and the professor's nomadic, neo-hippy Buddhist half-brother (who is best friends with--but also in love with--the professor's ex-girlfriend).
The script feels short, though the production comes in at 90 minutes, and the text is still a bit rough in a few places (it developed in a workshop not unlike the workshops I lead my students through, though of course professional and much more intense), but the writing is witty, efficient, and surprisingly complex, dropping innocent lines that turn out to be important set-ups for more revealing scenes later and pulling the characters apart and remixing them in new relationships in such an organic flow it was like dropping liquid mercury on the floor watching it break into little silver balls and run around on its own until reforming into new shapes.
The production was also impressive; I especially liked the city skyline created, symbolically, out of blank brown moving boxes and which opened in various places to reveal refrigerators, linen closets, and couches as we shifted from one apartment to another. The actors, too, were terrific; I loved Ruth, the ex-girlfriend (she had both an honesty and an intensity that projected her character all the way up into the last row of seats, where I sat even though I felt like I was on stage with her), and Astor, the Buddhist couch-surfer, who reminded me of a blend of Jack Black in School of Rock and "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski and who delivered his comedic lines with a pitch-perfect high-on-meditation drawl while also demonstrating an explosive emotional range during serious scenes.
But regardless how much I enjoyed the play, it wasn't really the highlight of the evening. The best part was simply seeing an old friend, chatting and hanging out and running around the city together. It made the city seem smaller, if you could imagine that of Manhattan, much less of New York. It made it seem familiar, more livable, less a metropolis and more a home.
Among the events of yesterday--the conference panels I attended, including some ideas for teaching creative writing to children and teenagers and a discussion of the difficult transition from writing short stories to writing a novel--three stand out.
The first, and most absurd, of the three was the fire alarm.
1.
It happened during a reading for my current favorite literary magazine, One Story, a brilliant little publication that takes the unusual approach of publishing and distributing only one story at a time, which you can then collect into "box sets"--they even sell a box to put them in. It's a tiresome, hectic, and largely selfless endeavor--they're actually a non-profit now--that I appreciate more for its ambition than for its novelty. The editors also have remarkable taste in short fiction (which may be why they keep politely rejecting me); the fiction they've published has gone on to appear in every major anthology and prize series available to short fiction, and the magazine has gotten mention in New York magazine and in O, Oprah's magazine. Also, I love Hannah Tinti, one of the cofounders, who is always polite and chatty at these conferences and who does an amazing job representing the magazine and nurturing their writers.Anyway, aside from its purpose of commemorating One Story's 100th issue, the set-up of the panel was a typical reading, in which various writers who've appeared in the magazine stood to read their fiction aloud. (For my students: this is exactly what I'll be doing at my Pop Culture conference in March.) The authors were terrific, a little funny without being goofy or loosing the seriousness of their work, and clearly practiced in performance reading (though one reader was awfully quiet at first). The second reader, Nicole Kelby, was particularly hilarious, giving a bombastic and rich delivery of her story about two hapless middle-agers, both unattractive, both married to different spouses, about to fumble their way through their first experiment with adultery. And then, as though ignited by the sexual friction of those two characters rubbing desperately on each other, a blaring fire alarm erupted throughout the hotel. Everyone turned momentarily in our seats, but--lovers of fiction that we all were--no one got up and, perturbed but undaunted, the author just read louder.
After a few moments of brilliant fiction out-voicing the grating whine of the alarm, the tone and pitch changed to a low grit like the wrong-answer buzz from a game show cranked up to maximum volume. Nicole Kelby paused, we all chuckled nervously, and then Kelby shouted at the alarm on the back wall, "Shut up! We're trying to talk about sex in here!" When several people impulsively grabbed their bags and headed for the door (some claimed they were only going to check the situation, though I admit, even I stood up, just in case we all needed to run), the author shouted again: "Come back! We have sex!" Now everyone looked torn, anxious about the situation out in the hotel but also caught up in the inferno of sex and now enjoying the jokes Kelby was making on the fire's behalf.
Then an announcer came over a loud speaker (loud speaker may be giving it too much credit; it sounded more like an amplified drive-thru speaker at Wendy's) and told us all what we already knew: "An alarm has been received."
He went on to explain the hotel's heroic response to this potential disaster: "We are trying to determine the cause of the alarm."
And then, as though to put our minds at ease, he said, "As soon as a cause is know we will inform you of the cause."
He would not, apparently, tell us what to do if the cause was a fire.
Still, this seemed to settle the matter for those in the room--we wanted to get back to the sex, and now that the alarm had ceased, leaving us only the lasciviously winking strobe of the emergency light, Kelby raised her voice and plunged us all back into bed. But--appropriately for a story about the awkwardness of illicit sex--she kept getting interrupted. The inane announcer, whom Kelby later dubbed "Inspector Clouseau," returned again and again to repeat his message about investigating the alarm. Finally, after Kelby had made several comical attempts to get the story back on track, Inspector Clouseau gave us an update: "The cause of the alarm has been determined. The alarm is determined to have been false. Thank you for your patience."
"You're welcome!" Kelby shouted.
And then, because the people in the Starbucks one storey down and across the four-lane street hadn't heard him the first time, Inspector Clouseau returned: "The cause of the alarm has been determined."
"Oh God," Kelby said, and I couldn't tell if she had given up making jokes about her frustration, or if one of the characters in the story had just orgasmed.
2.
The second, and bravest, event yesterday was my trip on the New York subway. Though the complexity of the routes and the stations was a bit intimidating (this is the largest subway system in the world), the subway itself wasn't nearly as frightening as popular conception has built it up to be. True, the cars were older, dirtier, and less recently maintained than the trains I've ridden in Atlanta or Chicago. And the stations are quite murky, the walls brushed dark gray in dust and grime like shavings from a wet pencil lead. Staring into the black, tarry-floored rails between platforms, and then up and the dim tiled platforms themselves, I couldn't help but think of the movies and TV shows and novels in which some unfortunate character trips, or jumps, or gets pushed into the train as it comes marauding into the station. For the first time in my limited metro-rail experience, I got the definite impression that I wouldn't come away from a late-night excursion unscathed. Still, the cars weren't nearly as crowded as I'd expected, and though one frightened girl seemed to think I was following her and kept inching away from me (how did I become the scary one?), everyone else was quite polite. The rail rode fast, the tide of passengers ebbed and flowed smoothly, and in just a few short moments, I'd made it from midtown to the Village, where I embarked on the third, and best, of the events yesterday.3.
When Isaac Byrne and I were in college together, he was probably the strongest actor on our small campus. I saw him in almost every play he did those few years, and I even went to some of his community-theater shows. Then, because that college's theater department was extremely supportive despite how absurdly tiny and underfunded it was, Isaac managed to direct a few plays, and he proved at least as good in the chair as he was on the stage. He not only had an actor's understanding of the performance process, and therefore was able to coax impressive performances from even unskilled actors, but he also had a fantastic eye for scene-setting and lighting--even in a theater the size of our living room, he managed to create an immediate mood and invested the audience easily in the reality of the play. He may not know this, but excepting my then-fiancee/now-wife, he and our playwright/screenwriter pal Justin Cooper were among my strongest friends back then. (And given the knack I had for stirring up trouble through our school newspaper, of which I was editor, I needed all the friends I could get.)Now Isaac is living in New York, where he has worked his way up from acting in small parts on stage and in indie films to co-founding a production company and directing critically acclaimed and award-winning off-off Broadway theatre (Isaac won the 2006 Innovative Theater award for Best Director, and his company's productions picked up five other IT awards; IT is like the Tonys for off-off Broadway theatre).
He met me just to grab a few beers on his way to the theater (I drank; Isaac is getting over a cold and stuck to water). He's working as assistant director for an off-Broadway play called Hunting and Gathering. (For those of you who don't know, off-off Broadway and off-Broadway are technical distinctions in the theatre industry, and they form a ranking of prestige leading up to, of course, Broadway. This gig Isaac has now, though thankless and only a small-print item in the playbill, is actually an important step up for Isaac.) Because Isaac is cool as hell, he invited me to join him, and when we got to the theater, he managed to get me in for free.
The play details the migratory apartment-hunting that consumes so many New Yorkers' lives and, blended into that structure, the interwoven narratives of four people: A divorced English professor and his seductive, predatory student (played by Meryl Streep's daughter!), the professor's ex-girlfriend (whom he had an affair with while still married), and the professor's nomadic, neo-hippy Buddhist half-brother (who is best friends with--but also in love with--the professor's ex-girlfriend).
The script feels short, though the production comes in at 90 minutes, and the text is still a bit rough in a few places (it developed in a workshop not unlike the workshops I lead my students through, though of course professional and much more intense), but the writing is witty, efficient, and surprisingly complex, dropping innocent lines that turn out to be important set-ups for more revealing scenes later and pulling the characters apart and remixing them in new relationships in such an organic flow it was like dropping liquid mercury on the floor watching it break into little silver balls and run around on its own until reforming into new shapes.
The production was also impressive; I especially liked the city skyline created, symbolically, out of blank brown moving boxes and which opened in various places to reveal refrigerators, linen closets, and couches as we shifted from one apartment to another. The actors, too, were terrific; I loved Ruth, the ex-girlfriend (she had both an honesty and an intensity that projected her character all the way up into the last row of seats, where I sat even though I felt like I was on stage with her), and Astor, the Buddhist couch-surfer, who reminded me of a blend of Jack Black in School of Rock and "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski and who delivered his comedic lines with a pitch-perfect high-on-meditation drawl while also demonstrating an explosive emotional range during serious scenes.
But regardless how much I enjoyed the play, it wasn't really the highlight of the evening. The best part was simply seeing an old friend, chatting and hanging out and running around the city together. It made the city seem smaller, if you could imagine that of Manhattan, much less of New York. It made it seem familiar, more livable, less a metropolis and more a home.
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