(no subject)
An exercise in writing shit down as it occurs to me. Inspired by frustration.
La mia frustrazione è la vostra frustrazione. And Rory's.
_________
Rory Gilmore could no more stick within a word limit than the man in the moon. Had the man in the moon been given a word limit, and rambled on to the point where he had to sit on his little moon crater for days on end and cut chunks out of his work while weeping along to classic power ballads. All By Myself. I hear you, Celine.
She blamed her mother. Don't we all. The words were their bonding agent, their communicatory glue. It didn't even matter what they were saying, half the time, but the soft, monotonous sounds reminded each other that they were not alone. It reminded the other people in the movie theaters and restaurants of chirping birds, but that is not important. She had never been to a war-torn country- not yet anyway- and seen war and famine and strife. She was the most babied woman in existence. Except for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' baby. And maybe royal heirs. She bet her mother would have loads to write about had she the inclination and attention span to sit down and do it. Even Luke could write about fishing, or food service, or flannel if he really wanted to. She knew nothing. All she had was a basic degree from a college that was not short on people waxing lyrical about it.
She envied people like Logan, who despite his continual protests against journalism when they were together, had caved and started writing small articles for one of his father's better newspapers.His writing was charming and sparkling, and funny, and when she read it, she remembered the way his eyes twinkled when he was telling a good story. It all came effortlessly to him, all down to magnetism and good genes, with a bite of wit that could one day allow him to be the next Wodehouse.
She had thought there was a book in that campaign trail- the travails of a lowly investigative reporter, or something like that, but-just her luck- she had to get the most extensively and intensively covered election of all time. Plus, it was really boring.
She envied Lane, who sat at home all day bored filling up sippy cups and turned pen to paper. Ger relationship with her mother may have relaxed. and she may have been maternal and content now, but her spirit was still feisty. Her songs about rebellion were getting picked up by the next-generation Avril Lavignes of the world and paying for the twins' college futures. Lane kept her artistic integrity by writing rocking, classic songs for Zach and allowing them to feature her non-ironically in Rolling Stone.
Rory sat at kitchen tables and coffee tables, at quiet desks and gazebo benches. In cramped enclosed spaces and open, airy places. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I am. She wrote average current affairs articles with no soul, and scathing columns with no heart, and advice columns with no sense. Everywhere she went, somebody had advice for her. "Try fiction," her father suggested. "Write what you know," her grandfather preaches. Liz quotes Hemingway ,which shouldn't come as a surprise but does anyway. "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." She tries it, really tries, but she can't do it. It is not a concise writer. She does not dole out words like they are the last cookies left on Sesame Street. She rambles, and babbles, like the Cookie Monster with a mountain of cookies, and then she has to hack away most of it. It is bloody work, but she thinks it would be worse to have no words at all.
She calls Jess, who has puts more weight on each word he writes than Hemingway himself. He is the quiet Leopold Bloom to her Molly Bloom's soliloquy. "Don't give me a cliche," she pleads to him. "Just tell me how you do it."
She can hear his slow, scratchy breathing over phone lines and states. It is too late, or perhaps even to early to be calling anyone, let alone him, but he doesn't mention that.
"i just let it build up," he says slowly. "The frustration. Everything. And the I write."
She thanks him and hangs up, regretful that he cannot give her anything real. He lived in his car, she reminds herself. He was abandoned by almost everyone he knew, and he abandoned everyone else in return. If that isn't something to write about , she doesn't know what is.
Of all of them, Jess has the least fame, the least money, the smallest body of work.
She tries to conjure up the emotions that she felt for him once upon a time, but it was an adolescent thing that cannot ever be replicated later on in life, like re-reading The Catcher in the Rye. Once he had been uncommunicative and stuck for words, but there along the road to California and back, and God know where else in between, he had figured it out. The frantically articulate boy who had arrived at her dorm scared the hell out of her, because she had learned to take Jess' words as weighty, and valuable, and rare, and here were all these emotional, heartbreaking proclamations spewing out of his chest like he had just learned the words. She considers sending her work to Jess, letting him chop away at the excess adverbs and waffle until only the truth is left, but she doesn't . He would change the weight of the words all around. It would be his writing then.
She envies Paris, who reports in between junior doctor rounds and scares politicians over health cuts. Paris cannot stand ramblers of any description- Kerouac is her antithesis- and she has no sympathy for Rory's predicaments. Paris is all straight edges and straight line with no blandness in between. The force of her writing shocks people, rather like she does on first meeting.
Emily clips out newspaper rectangles and frames them where other grandmothers would scrapbook. The newspapers are reputable. Solid. But Logan is bewitching the West Coast, and Paris just blew the lid off the insurance industry in Time, and Jess is writing New Yorker- worthy short stories in indie journals that make her breath still.
"Just wait," he tells her the second time she calls, her cheeks still sticky with thinned out mascara. He refuses to acknowledge her praise of his work. "You have it in you," He assures her. "Be patient." She thinks he really wants to say. "Calm the fuck down. Stop calling me." She is wrong.
She thinks his advice is stupid and hypocritical and it makes her angry. Her writing that comes from anger is better than her writing with no anger, but it is not sustainable and not good enough.
Her grandfather praises her style and syntax, her carefully crafted metaphors, and Liz takes her gently by the arm and leads her to a private corner to tell her that all she needs is some passion and she will be Great. Liz is all hands and self-empowerment. Rory insists she is not self-medicating, or hiding anything, or numbing herself.
"Everyone is protecting themselves from something," Liz dismisses her with a flick of her wrist and a knowing smile. She is very annoying. "We're all angry, and sad, and hurt, and we all build walls to hide it from even our own selves." It doesn't have to be from something big," she explains, like an adult explaining the mechanics of gravity to a heartbroken child watching a balloon float away. "Sometimes life just sucks. Sometimes you're angry because life isn't enough. But don't let that stop you writing. Make it the reason you write!"
Rory begins to think that Liz is the cleverest of them all. Then she sees her try to make caramel. Grenades have caused less collateral damage and flesh burns.
It is a Tuesday, and it is raining. Doose's has closed early for no obvious reason, and she really wants doritos, and her car is in the shop, and she is cold and wet and cross with Stars Hollow. She storms home, back to the couch in the living room that is her new bed because she gave her room to April. Suddenly this makes her furious. Her mother is shouting down the phone at her grandmother and Rory is sitting on the couch with her hair plastered to her neck and she seethes. Then she lies back and falls asleep.
It doesn't go away, this anger, and she kindles it like a small flame, the bluebird in her chest that wants to get out but she wont let it. She tries to hold on to it for her next opinion piece. It will be scathing and witty and will blow everybody off their feet. Or, it wont, because she finds herself crying into a pillow and writing a raw and unpolished short story. Shockingly, it gets published, and everyone is patting her on the back, and she thinks "what the hell? Is this how Jess always feels? That was crap." A treacherous thought: "I can do better next time."
Paris sends her a letter that says, in effect, that the writing was crap but that at least it had a bit of life in it for once. It was the least bland thing she had ever written, except for the ballerina. Her mother is proud of her, more proud than if she had written the next "Ulysses", because this is real.
Liz is winking at her from across the room and mouthing things like "passion" and "feelings" at her and she doesn't know if it is because of her story or because Jess is standing in front of her, resolutely ignoring his mother. He is drinking a scotch on the rocks, because he is a real writer now, and telling her, "I told you so," cocky as fuck.
"I think I can do it again," she tells him, and it feels like the bravest thing she has ever said.
He smirks, mouth curving against the rim of his tumblr. "Patience, grasshopper."
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