The Glory of Behaving Badly

I have to wear reading glasses a lot now.  I'm not in the habit of always carrying them with me, because this problem of defective eyesight is a new one.  So I squint a lot or ask people to read things for me.  I remember always being frustrated with my mother when she asked me to do this for her, as if somehow she should be completely in control of how the muscles and lenses in her eyes work.  It's the arrogance of youth and I'm paying for it with newly-acquired remorse.

Along with said remorse, I also seem to have a higher level of "curmudgeonliness."  Either that or people are getting more obnoxious.  Or they are the same level of obnoxious and are embracing it more.

Take the guy who developed an addiction to rummaging through John Updike's trash. I suppose on one hand it's John Updike's own fault for hauling his garbage to the curb.  But to me it seems really tacky for this stranger who starts off by semi-stalking Updike at church to then forage in Updike's trash for things he could sell for significant amounts of money because the trash used to belong to a well-known writer.

And even that isn't the worst part.  The worst part is he goes on to describe in detail the entire process, how bad he felt about it, speculating that perhaps it was wrong and then leverages the article for publication.

This comes on the heels of the author who didn't like a poor review she got for her book. She subsequently stalked the woman who wrote the review, then wrote a long article describing how she probably made a bad decision, but wow, wasn't it interesting enough to get the story published in The Guardian?

My son just came in and asked what I was writing and I read him the title of the post.  He snickered and said, "Oh, I wonder where you got THAT idea."  He assumed it was about him and his brother and their antics. He's eleven and his brother is eight.  Unfortunately, no, I'm writing about grown adults who feel perfectly fine bragging about their bad behavior and capitalizing on it.  (And probably acting surprised when people react negatively.)

But in a way it does remind me of my boys. We have a "no burping at the table" rule and periodically when one of them wants to be outlandish they will let a giant belch rip -- one loud enough to vibrate the silverware against the plates. And then they snicker when I make the "mom face" because they think it is hilarious. They act up because they like the reaction. We do this when we are 11.  We should probably stop doing that somewhere around puberty.

Anyone who has a small grasp of history understands that the pendulum of social culture swings across the decades. I love free speech, freedom in general.  I love the wild permissiveness that fosters creativity.  I hate that we mistake bad manners and an inability to control our human weakness for freedom of action.  I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back to the place where civility is the norm and tacky behavior is not applauded as fine entertainment.

It's probably just the beginning of the end for me.  Not only do I have the glasses perched on the end of my nose, but I have the pursed mouth below and the glaring stink-eye of old-lady judgmentalness peering out over the top.

It's the trifecta of cranky grandma-face.

Embracing the Hard

There is a funny mystique about writing.  When I think about writers I imagine the life as romantic -- a quiet place, a contemplative author, a message spilling forth from the abundant fountain of words the writer carries within.

I do it all the time even knowing, from personal experience, that it's a big bunch of hooey.

Writing is no easier, or beautiful, or magical than any other creative task.  And some days it's not any more romantic or wonderful than laying bricks.  Some days that's what it feels like, including getting hot and sweaty as you lay the words down in a line with kids in the background fighting over whose turn it is for the game station.

And if it's hard for me, I assume it's just ME.  There is something wrong with ME, because I'm certain that JK Rowling and Stephen King are just sitting around with umbrella drinks or fancy coffee typing 180wpm while listening to classical music and being caressed by a perfect spring breeze through open windows facing the beach or a mountain view.  Oh, and their first drafts are ALWAYS perfect.

I'm certain this is how it is for every writer except me.

And so every morning in the shower I whine pathetically to myself about how hard writing is because I have trouble plotting.  Plotting is my nemesis.  There are writers out there who could plot while disarming a nuclear bomb under heavy fire without breaking a sweat.  I'm not one of those.  For me, it's an uphill battle constantly.  I am in love with the imagery of writing, of building characters and animating them.  These are my strengths and these tasks come easy for me.  And probably because they do I get angry because the rest doesn't come easy. In my weak moments it smacks of unfairness and, yes, I complain.  (Although I generally try not to do it out loud. Sort of like what I'm doing at this very moment.)

Lately I have been reading The Long Walk by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman.)  And it's fascinating because the entire plot is "a big group of boys walk down the road as an endurance competition that only one can win and survive." That's it -- the entire book is a group of boys walking down a road. If you came up to me and told me to write a story about boys walking down the road, I'd assume you'd left out part of the instructions.  But King manages to create a grim, robust miracle out of that single idea.

This book made me think of other stories like it, with plots that are spare but stories that are fat, juicy.  Doris Lessing wrote a wonderful story ("Through the Tunnel") about a boy's efforts to swim through an underwater tunnel.  There is little more action to it than that and yet I read this story when I was a teenager and never forgot it.  Same with Ambrose Bierce's "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (spoiler alert) about a man's visions while dying. Then there is the fascinating and unforgettable "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien -- stories revealed by what Vietnam soldiers carried in action.

I'm sure there are more, but those ran through my mind as I pondered how such a big story can come from a small seed and how easy it is to make an excuse out of what you consider a shortcoming.  George R.R. Martin's Thrones series is amazing in scope, but it is no more wondrous than making a memorable, expansive story about boys walking down a road.

So what, plotting is uncomfortable for me.  So is being a runner with one leg and yet how many marathoners overcome that "little inconvenience."  The romance is not the writer sitting in a quiet, bookshelf lined study.  The romance is the sweaty writer who overcomes the challenge and gets the job done, who makes an amazing story out of nothing.  That's the magic.

Under the rain of the shower as I leaned my head against the cold tile I thought of Steinbeck and Atwood and King and Jackson and O. Henry and all the other authors I love and how they are allowed to be called writers because they didn't let "the hard" get in the way of revealing the story.  The statue doesn't come out of the stone unless you whack it with a hammer and reveal what's underneath.

But you have to keep whacking or else all you have is just a hunk of rock.

The Peripatetic Goat

Yesterday I was driving down the road and saw a guy on a four-wheeler with two baby goats in his lap.

I thought to myself, "Awww, how cute... a guy on a four-wheeler with two baby goats in his lap!"

Then I realized my first thought was not that there was anything at all strange about this sight.

* * *

Once I had a client who needed to sell her 2nd home.  I went there to show it to a buyer and when I walked through the privacy fence gate I was greeted by several goats.  I called her from my cell phone.

"You know there are goats at the house?"

"Yes," she said, nonchalantly.  "We've run out of weeds and trees for them to eat over here, so we moved them. The buyers don't have to take them.  They are negotiable."

* * *

A colleague of mine has had some surgery and his health is not the best. He is short on stamina and his wife worries about him taking care of the many acres of land they have.  He walked into my office recently and said, "We bought two goats. Baby goats."

"Why?"

"Well, I was thinking maybe they would eat all the weeds and stuff and that would be less mowing for me."

"Okay..."

"And when the season is over I think I can sell them to some Mexicans.  They eat a lot of goats."

* * *

There is an article on the Internet about why you should eat goats.  At this time in my life I am verging slowly toward going meatless.  It has nothing to do with anything you've read so far.

* * *

One of my favorite places to drive used to be way down Highway 16 West in the hard left-hand curve that is intersected by Eagle Road.  On the left side of the highway is a big open field that eventually rolls gently down to a no-undergrowth mini-forest that provides shade for hundreds and hundreds of tiny white goats.  In the field is a large herding dog sitting upright, surveying his charges.

The goats have a distinct personal space.  When one goat moves, the others around it move an equal distance in order to maintain a uniform open perimeter around themselves.  When I noticed this I pulled over to the side of the road to watch.  The behavior persisted, so it must be a goat thing.  Goats have a bubble.  Like me.

I asked someone why the man who owns this field has so many goats.  I was told it was because of Cinco de Mayo.  I drove over there last week and, coincidentally, there were no goats to be found.