I've been reading Stephen Elliott's The Daily Rumpus newsletter for the past few weeks, and I love it, it's so intimate, so aptly random; very dreamlike, which these days is lifelike to me. My own dreams have been even more vivid than usual (medication); the other night I had a dream about buying some Entemann's from a deli with Stephen and another author, who scoffed at me for having recently paid someone to paint my apartment. I painted my own apartment more times than I can count, I think now, hours later and awake, and I want to go back and tell the author in the dream about all the places I painted. Me and Sebastian even faux finished the wall in the bedroom in my first place in Brooklyn, it took seven different layers -- primers, alkyds, oils, glazes, some of them applied with sea sponges, all of which took hours to dry between coats.
Speaking of faux finishes, "Sebastian," not his real name. But he's a real person, really exists. Really sends me emails: things going so well, corporate cars and trips; things actually going not so well, daughter in foster care, money tight. His dense, snaky blocks of text are dreamlike, wishlike, non-narrative, as they say, or as they also say, I'm not sure I see the arc here. It's kind of the same thing over and over, don't you think? Do you think you could add a little more personal growth?
Or, Can you make your mother a more likable character?
That's the challenge, isn't it. I thought you guys didn't want people to lie anymore. I don't want to lie anymore. I don't want to have to protect identities, especially my own. There is so much that I can't say. My throat is aching with it.
I just want to write in circles, if that's okay. I don't want it to have to be official. Like, I read Koren Zailckas' new book, Fury, and I was rapt when I was reading it and found it really salient, but I don't feel like writing a whole review-y thing about it. It was helpful to me, that's my review, as was the advance (because I am adfancy) copy of Stacy Pershall's Loud in the House of Myself, which I'll write about when it comes out in January, but for now I just want to say that I've thought about some of the things I've learned from it every day since I read it. I don't feel like going into what those things are.
Other: Bill and I went to San Antonio, just got back last night, feel like I'm still there, like it's right on the other side of town. Everything is right here.
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