I Mean Khyber Pass

Wow. Now that was a dumb mistake.

But not as bad as hesitating in front of an escalator.

You're Not Crossing the Cyber Pass

Ooo -- I want to vent about something. I didn't want this blog to be mean-spirited but -- oh well, here goes.

This drives me crazier than anything in the world: when someone in front of me pauses before getting on an escalator. Even a slight hesitation irritates me, but people who actually stop, clutch the railing and watch the metal steps sweep slowly by as if catching one will be as tricky as leaping a fast-rushing stream -- come ON!

Normally I try to be tolerant of my fellow New Yorkers -- it's the only way to get through a day. If you're enraged by every lapse of sense or coordination you're confronted with, you'll spend the whole day fuming. It's best to practice a glassy, forgiving smile and to reiterate "excuse me" constantly lest someone mistake an innocent bump for aggression and the next thing you know you could be eating six inches of cold steel.

But the escalator thing. Nothing, I repeat, nothing is easier than getting on an escalator. There's no need to interrupt your stride for a split second or even to look down. Just step onto it. It's impossible to do anything wrong. The worst possible thing to happen would be if your foot happened to catch the edge of a rising stair but this is EASY to deal with, I swear -- EASY. Nothing could be EASIER than adjusting the placement of your foot. Nothing has interfered with your smooth, slow (if you won't walk -- another thing I could be moved to murder over) ascension on the moving staircase. Nothing ever WILL. Getting on an escalator must rank up there with purchasing a loaf of bread for dangerous activities.

Okay, I just needed to say that. Unfortunately, no one who needs to hear it will ever read it. Why? Well, because I have about 4 readers, for one thing, but also, because the people who read my blog have two brains to rub together! They aren't pausing in front of escalators before they get on them! Are you? I mean, if you are, we have to rethink this whole relationship.

The Empty Page

I couldn't write this morning. The will was there -- I dragged myself out of bed at 7:45, made coffee, got the old laptop out, did a prewriting exercise.

The prewriting exercises are supposed to send my mind to different areas than usual. So if I make a list title, Things That Are Blue by Nature, I have to start picturing hikes through the woods, ocean vacations, types of minerals I may dimly remember from natural history museums, etc. Then I make a list, Things People Make Blue, and I start picturing women's makeup, hotel drapes, medical equipment trimming, etc. (Things People Make Blue was a hard one).

Sometimes I write a page or two about a subject I might write about in the novel. Sometimes I write poems that are fanciful and meaning-free. I end up liking those the best. Today I wrote one about some dead swans.

But then I go over to my novel and I just sit there. Picturing blueberries and cornflowers and blue eyeshadow has been fun, but it hasn't been the key to unlocking the mysterious chamber somewhere deep inside of me called Clarity.

Oh so what? Is the world going to stop if one more novel isn't produced?

This is all dross, completely bogus. I actually had some reasonable ideas today, I just had them after I got to work -- actually I had them at the gym, where I usually get decent ideas.

I'm just complaining because it's my default mode -- because when things are good I quickly drag dark underbrush across them so they can't be seen or felt -- I open my mouth to share good feelings and black toads tumble out.

RIP Chris Penn

It's been ruled by doctors that Chris Penn's sad death was accidental, not deliberate.

The family may have wanted that detail known. They have kept all other details from the press, which Sean Penn famously despises.

I never thought Chris Penn's death was a suicide, but I do think he probably died from being Sean Penn's brother.

This is all conjecture on my part. I think it must have been really hard to be Sean Penn's little brother. Sean is really up there. He hangs out with Robert DeNiro, married Madonna and is now married to Robin Wright, often described as "the most beautiful woman in the world."

And there's something pretty cool about Sean Penn. (Even if the South Park guys think he's an idiot.) He doesn't do talk shows, he ignores the press, and he works seriously and well when he does work. I happen to love his acting even when he's in bloated, overblown messes like Mystic River. He nailed the role of Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, so brilliantly that he's still quoted to this day ("I just look at a wave and I say, 'let's party, man!'").

Then there's the fact that he's kind of the closest thing to James Dean we have. I don't mean he's young, incredibly beautiful and reckless. But he's got that impish, shit-eating-grin kind of charm. He's not phony, and he's flawed in ways women always fall for: he has a temper, he loves beautiful women and he smokes. (Oh, I know. But there's something alluring about the rebel figure and there always will be.)

Now, this has turned into a rhapsody about Sean Penn, not a consideration of Chris, which may illustrate my point. How could it have felt to be in the shadow of this reincarnation of Brando, Peter Falk and John Cassavetes all rolled into one? News reports have stated Chris Penn was on multiple medications at the time of his death. They could have been antidepressants, or they could have been barbituates, or both. The fact that he was taking a number of them suggests he was emotionally troubled. He may have been unable to avoid comparing himself to his famous brother, and used drugs to numb the pain.

I thought he was really good in Short Cuts, playing the husband to Jennifer Jason Leigh's young mother/phone-sex worker. He had the raw, unguarded quality his brother was able to tap, but with even more pathos, because he was less angry. In fact he didn't seem to be angry at all. It was Sean Penn, with all the esteem, the loving family, the awards and the money, who was angry.

There's no way to know what happened. And there's nothing to be done. And I might be wrong about all of this. RIP, Chris Penn.

The Golden Rule

Balance is the key.

Do You Ever Feel Like This?

Celebrate Good Times. Come On!

Happy V.D., everyone.

Valentine's Day used to strike me as the dorkiest holiday. Not when I was little and I made valentines out of construction paper, doilies and paste. I loved the heart shapes, the color red, the thrill of presenting them to secret crushes or my family.

No, later. When I was single for many years in a row and Valentine's Day seemed like a conspiracy to exacerbate lonely peoples' feelings of loneliness. If you were in a weepy mood, a simple trip to Duane Reade could trigger the tear ducts as displays of chocolates, racks of cards, animated stuffed Valentine animals, etc. all announced: We're here for the lucky ones! But not for you!

Negative emotions seem to have more impact on me than positive ones. So I remember that bitter sense of exclusion more vividly than I gratefully experience its absence, and a reason to celebrate Valentine's Day.

Shouldn't there be another holiday, one that honors those who struggle along alone? The color scheme could be different, but the idea would be the same -- give chocolates, cards and gifts to your favorite single people because they are there, they're decent and good, they just don't happen to have someone to love. They are more plentiful than you imagine, and on this day, they feel very lonely.

OMG

Ralph Fiennes has split from longtime girlfriend someone-or-other, who --

But the real new is, her age is given as 61!

Ralph, a reported 43, has been dating a woman who is now 61.

It's exciting to hear that 61-year-olds can date the likes of Ralph Fiennes.

I think she looks great, in the photo. She doesn't look 61, or maybe she looks the way 61 looks now.

61 is the new 37.

There's a chance it was a typo. Or maybe Ralph maliciously gave her name as 61, when she's really 42. Oh. That would be super-nasty. Especially since it's he who apparently had the affair (according to the AP article).

I guess the main thing I'm excited about is that a large difference in ages, especially with the woman being older, isn't so uncommon and is often because the man can't find anyone smart enough, in that ditzy 20-59-year-old range.

They Have More Money

I reread The Sun Also Rises recently for inspiration for my novel. I wanted to study it like a scientist to discern its artistic secrets.

I had remembered the plot as fairly simple: a bunch of hard-drinking expatriates go on a trip to Spain where they fall apart in various ways during a bullfigting fiesta. But it's not simple at all. Hemingway was smart and he'd been a journalist -- he has a startling gift for introducing vivid dynamics early on. So in the first 30 pages or so you meet Robert Cohn, the outsider, whose wife is aging, jealous and doomed and he wants to leave her. You meet Jake Barnes and learn he's impotent from a war wound, and that he's in love with the beautiful Englishwoman Brett Ashley, who loves him too but won't be with him because she needs sex. She's a self-destructive drunk; Jake is a passive, patient drunk; various people arriving from elsewhere are much more serious drunks, and Robert Cohn never gets drunk but is restless and needy.

I'd forgotten that H-way (as I like to call him) sketched in these dramatic dynamics from the beginning. It's what we called, when I was a script reader, "high stakes" plotting. It's a good lesson how involving this is because it's an easy trap in writing, one I often fall into, to dance around your hottest material with an endless warm-up. 'The good part is coming,' you think to yourself, while writing scenes you can tell are boring and you'd be bored reading. 'Just wait till we get to the cool part.'

I took a fiction class with the great Sam Lipsyte (Venus Drive, The Subject Steve), who kept telling us: "Never write a sentence thinking, 'this is boring but I have a really neat thing to say in a minute.'" He advocated ruthless cutting, and under his tutelage I became a minimalist. I felt uneasy writing like that, because it was counter to my natural instinct, which is to tell, tell, tell. But I liked him so much I just wanted his praise. I hacked away at my writing till it was as lean and taut as a Raymond Carver haiku. It felt totally unnatural to me -- I didn't recognize myself in it -- but I realized it was technically better than my usual stuff. It was good to trim the fat.

I tried an actual H-way style imitation and it was amazingly fun. Choosing just a few details to drop in, trusting the reader will connect the dots.

Anyway, The Sun Also Rises is a structural and stylistic jewel, but its antisemitism is extremely pervasive. Robert Cohn is portrayed as a klutzy outsider because of his Jewishness. The other men are flawed and alcoholic, but they have a savvy Cohn lacks. The scorn they direct his way is chilling, as is H-way's own attitude to the character, evident through his fictional counterparts.

What did I learn from studying TSAR? For one thing, that the rich make amusing character studies. Too bad, because I don't know the rich so I can't write about them. But other useful things: convey personality through speech and action, don't describe people's traits. Have some major-ass things going on. Try to depict a time and a place as these things are interesting to future readers (and matter anyway -- the socio-political backdrop informs the mindset and actions of the characters).

I hope some of you are trying to write a novel. Otherwise these posts are going to seem awfully boring.