2016 in Writing
I haven't produced much content here lately, but I will have usual end of the year stuff as well as a review hopefully before January 1st. I'm reading a book I really hate, one I like due to the writing style, and one I love all at the same time, which as you can probably guess, is kind of weird. (Those books are Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski, The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher (and I just heard the news, which is difficult for me to believe that someone as feisty as Fisher could be taken), and Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy by Cassandra Clare and several other writers. You can guess which one goes into which category. It's a real mystery.) But before I get into books, films, and music I liked the most this year, it's time for a yearly review of my writing. It's positive this time!
I have received 6 rejections on the same short story so far! That means I only have 94 to go to meet my goal of 100 rejections. I'm serious about this - it brings me great joy to submit and receiving a rejection feels less and less personal and more like I'm in a universal experience that is shared by all writers. Plus another submission means another person just read my work. And I received a rather important rejection letter that told me my writing was very strong. I'm going to print that one out and frame it. To remind myself that there's something right going on in the process between my brain and my scribbling left hand.
I have two other ideas for novels as well. One is the story I've been talking about on here lately, In/Out Out/In (there are a few snippets of it beyond the cut) and the other is one I have to keep secret. For important reasons. I may not even go through with writing it, I'll have to see how I feel. And I didn't finish a first draft for M+I this year, but that gives me something to look forward to for next year!
Anyway, onto the snippets. This is all from 2016.
Beth Ortiz and her adventures through time
Beth should have told him, "Your mother will hate me." She should have told him, "I'm too old for you." She should have told him, "I am a failure and you are a shining star." Instead, she asked him, "You ever seen any Alejandro Jodorowsky films?"
---
Ernie loved Beth for these reasons:
-She watched cult films when she was younger.
-She owned a David Bowie shirt.
-She had a job.
-She shared her pot with him.
---
No pictures, Beth had insisted. Absolutely not pictures of her face were to appear on anyone of Ernie's online accounts. No showing off the girlfriend. No documenting the relationship. That was all Beth needed: physical evidence.
---
Ernie: Is Beth short for anything?
Beth: No. Just Beth Anne.
Ernie: Beth Anne . . .
Beth: Ortiz.
Ernie: Oh. You speak Spanish?
Beth: Nah.
---
This is how it was: Beth and Leigh, two years apart and yet, it was as if a millennium separated them. But when Perrey & Kinglsey played, it took them back to a time when the only difference between the sisters was hair length. Hopping about the living room, holding hands, spinning in circles together, dancing with reckless abandon.
In high school, they often danced together to the confusion of teens and adult alike. Beth, then with her short pixie cut, Leigh with long locks that glinted in the light with blonde strands nestled in her brown hair - how they would hop and sway, both leaders in a dance with no restraints.
Beyond clique and culture, they bumped into irritated couples with glee. It was the one childish aspect of their selves that had been retained beyond social conditioning, that wild romp to their father's music.
That they always were: two spooks in space.
---
Ernie: And your sister? Is Leigh short for anything?
Beth: Nope. Just Beth and Leigh Ortiz.
Ernie: My younger brother's name is Sebastian.
Beth: Oooh.
Ernie: Yeah. He's a shit-faced pestilence.
Someday I will finish writing you, M+I
Edouard Rhee, 6/12, ID
Malina Krakowski, 5/6, ID
Fritjof Lindquist, 11/22, ID
Madison Seema Rhee, 3/24, school ID
Oscar Deniro Krakowski, 3/24, school leave papers
Axle ---- Rhee, 10/31, adoption papers
Jae-Seul Park, 1/28, school ID
Alexander Fritjof Lindquist, 6/30, passport
---
Moon was dressed in a white button-down shirt, tucked neatly into a pair of black, wide-legged slacks held by a pair of suspenders. Slicked black hair, it gleaned in the light like his polished shoes. And when he grabbed his black jacket, he threw it over his shoulders, hands in pockets, elbows jutting out, giving his slender figure an angular shape as if he was a crow wearing a coat of feathers.
"You're staring," he said, blue eyes full in bloom.
---
"You'll sign off each assignment as we go through it. We're going to start with the first daily task: mail." Oscar walked down to the back of the hall, assured to see Moon following with a slow pace. The wall was filled with slots, named off as K. Bublos, F. Auermann, N Nyurkyaite, C. Lelievre, O. Krakowski . . . soon there would be a M. Park slot - or would it be M-K Park? Oscar focused on the O of his mailbox.
---
The horror of sight. The horror of scent.
To have senses in a world that existed upon the fumes of humanity; a lady and her perfume powerful enough to cause asphyxiation, the young men and their cologne that smelled of pine burnt to a crisp, a man dressed in rags with a scraggly beard carrying the scent of fine aged urine.
The neon lights hid paint peeling off the walls, gravel that was in desperate need of repair. Foot traffic having scuffed sidewalks, the stairs leading into the subway marked with ghost footprints. Inanimate models showing the living how to inhabit their clothes in displays.
Eel was a lone star amid the abyss of chaos. And if he could have delved deep into the apartment he had been exiled to, he would have. But the crosswalk light had turned green and he was incapable of directing his feet anywhere else but forward.
---
Escape was always an option.
Run out the door, down the stairs, back to his apartment. Bury his head under sheets, forget the outside world and all the incessant cacophony for one minute. But his limbs were rigid. His body refusing to move. And Suhayl had returned with tea and the horrors of casual socializing.
It was the wrong place to be.
---
There was a twitch in Eel's hands, Madison noticed. And while his hands always had the propensity to shake, a new clue was in place: dirt under his nails. Had he been on an excavation of some kind? Searching for familiarity in the city? Digging his own grave?
All he had to do was ask. Madison would have helped him with that one. ---
Madison: What did you do, back in Seattle?
Eel: Not much.
Madison: You're full of non-answers. "Not much." "Not really." What did you do "much" and "really"?
Eel: School. (Pausing. Madison staring intently at him) I was in track for a total of two months. And I had a job for . . . three months.
Madison: Where?
Eel: A pizza place.
Madison: And they fired you? Or you quit?
Eel: Fired. Definitely.
Madison: Why?
Eel: I wasn't exactly the best employee.
---
"People like you don't usually live this long," was all Regina said.
---
The woman couldn't have been any older than Oscar. Dressed in rugged clothes he expected of a man, with shaggy blonde hair cut bluntly and glazed gray eyes, she held up the camera and pointed it directly at Oscar's face, ready to shoot. He couldn't sit still and his shoulders were held tightly. As the expected flash blinded his eyes, Oscar flinched.
"You okay?"
Bright spots dissipated, the woman's face infinitely closer than it ever had been.
"I'm fine."
He couldn't tell what she thought of him, and as she turned back to her work, he figured it didn't matter. "Is it Oscar with a c or a k?"
"Oscar with a c."
His ID stared back at him as the woman filled out his information. How much younger he had been at fifteen. Still in school, still living in the suburbs - the very thought of waking up to the sound of barking dogs and lawnmowers made him shiver. This was not the suburbs. A woman like this, with a rabbit tattooed on the back of her neck, would not live in the suburbs.
---
Fritjof: You're to stay home and get some rest.
Eel: Okay.
Fritjof: "Okay?"
Eel: What?
Fritjof: "Okay" or "I'll just ignore everything you said and do what I want anyway."
Eel: You've grown very suspicious, dad.
---
"What did your mother say you were here for?"
"Male bonding."
"And what do you think she meant by that?" Fritjof's tone had changed considerably. No longer was he the Fun Dad, trying to win his son's favor. There was a rigidity to his words that felt incredibly finite.
"I don't know. Reading Ernest Hemingway on a fishing trip? Learning how to mow a lawn?" Eel lacked the energy to be confrontational for too long. Already, his point had dimmed, sinking further into the couch.
"No." A word so adamant, it could strip the enamel off of Eel's teeth.
[Another moment in which I tried to rewrite a scene I thought wasn't as good, and then realized was better once I wrote this. Eel's too saucy in this and Fritjof a little too hard, which is outside of their character. I liked the enamel line, though.]
---
Jae-Seul: You're not even Korean. You're Japanese. So don't explain the subtle differences between culture to me.
Axle: I'm Okinawan, Holmes.
Jae-Seul: So?
Axle: So big difference!
Jae-Seul: How?
Axle: I don't know! You think I'm some kind of authority on Okinawanism?
Jae-Seul: I'd like to know the difference.
Axle: Look it up on your god damn phone! (Oscar trying not to laugh, fiddling with his phone) Japan is a set of islands. Okinawa is another set of islands. There.
Jae-Seul: Owned by Japan.
Oscar: Jae's just upset at you for breaking his tibula earlier, Axle.
Jae-Seul: My patela.
[This is directly after Oscar goads Jae-Seul into pulling a prank on Axle, which ends with Axle kicking Jae in the knee and biting down on Oscar's hand.]
---
Eel's gaze was locked on him then. He was silent for a long time before saying, in that dull, emotionless tone of his, "I'm sorry."
"SHUT UP."
The jacket slid back down over Eel's head, his white hair mussed, and Oscar thought he saw the slightest hint of a smile. "What the hell do you have to apologize for anyway? Get your shit, Webster, and get off my stoop."
---
"How can you blame the walls of this city for being the screens to your absurd projections, Axle?"
---
In his found jacket, found boots, and half-old worn smile, Axle greeted the taste of nicotine like an old friend. How long had he been parted from that lingering scent? Greeting nicotine lacked the passion, the need that he had harbored six months ago.
Found. Everything in Axle's life, found. He was a hoarder of sorts, collecting all the elements of life that most people were born into. A found family, found house, found clothes, found taste, found love . . . Lost. An ache burned in his chest, one that Axle doubted he could quell.
He had forgotten to take a photograph. Again.
---
To refer to Axle's grades as a "progress report" indicated that there had been progression in his academic career. Thus, his grades were referred to as a report card instead, which usually read as so:
D for demonstrating logical fallacies in algebra.
C for commiseration in physical education
Another C for committing crimes against the English language
And B for better than zoning out in electives.
Accompanied were the typical notes:
Aggressive with other students
Talks too much
Not applying self
Not up to college-prep standards
And everything else
If I don't know who the hell an author is, I'll probably pick it up.
This is how I peruse selections of books, like a scavenger rather than some magical adventure.
---
When I was interviewed at Urban Outfitters, one of the questions they asked me to determine whether I was of the right culture for their store was, "What person, living or dead, would you ask to lunch?" My answer was Federico Fellini. It was the right choice. I was of their kind.
Supposedly.
---
It's impossible to return to the conventional "normal" world once you've been uncovered. All their habits and functions, all their mannerisms and traditions seem so absurd.
---
Admission: I have no idea what to do with myself when I have free time. Even writing feels foreign to me. And yet, here I am. Writing. Because it's the one way I can express this mess of a mind to the outside world. You may see it as self-indulgent. I see it as self-preservation.
---
Zooey was a ball of contradictions, I was soon to learn. He was religious and believed very deeply in God and yet hated the majority of civilization. "I can't stand people some days," he told me once. "I can't stand them so much, I could kill myself. Trust me, I've tried." He wore an expression of indifference (perhaps his default expression) and acted as though nothing could harm him emotionally, but the slightest of comments could send him into a silent rage, denying people his company. Everyone I talked to seemed to insist that Zooey's behavior was of his own doing.
But I don't know how much of our choices can be of our own doing when the brain articulates itself in mysterious ways. I was of the same articulation as Zooey. I liked to think that we were rowing in the same ocean, only on different boats. His: bipolar disorder, of the aggressive, manic kind. Mine: depression, social anxiety. His: having struck him blind at the age of 19. Mine: persistent, life-long.
And yet, we both agreed that if we had to choose to live in a normal state of mind or what we knew, we would choose the disorder that we knew. Because these articulations had shaped us into the people that we were, that could draw us together on a note of mutual empathy.
---
[On the recent film "The Tale of Princess Kaguya"]
A profound sense of loss. Beauty is objectified rather than valued - Kaguya is expected to be beautiful, but invisible and domesticated. Kept in a vase. Wants to live - not be kept as a treasure.
---
The running joke in my family was that if you were a good human being, after you died you were reincarnated as a dog that my grandparents adopted. A kitchen scene in my past has my grandmother at the oven, handling one of her golden, flaky apple pies while my grandfather plays solitaire at the table, nibbling on his saltine crackers and tossing scraps of food to the ever-present dog under the table. For a while, it was an Alaskan Malumute named Dallas, previously owned by my cousin from New Mexico and when you saw how thick that dog's coat was, you knew why my grandparents took pity on Dallas and into their home.
I have received 6 rejections on the same short story so far! That means I only have 94 to go to meet my goal of 100 rejections. I'm serious about this - it brings me great joy to submit and receiving a rejection feels less and less personal and more like I'm in a universal experience that is shared by all writers. Plus another submission means another person just read my work. And I received a rather important rejection letter that told me my writing was very strong. I'm going to print that one out and frame it. To remind myself that there's something right going on in the process between my brain and my scribbling left hand.
I have two other ideas for novels as well. One is the story I've been talking about on here lately, In/Out Out/In (there are a few snippets of it beyond the cut) and the other is one I have to keep secret. For important reasons. I may not even go through with writing it, I'll have to see how I feel. And I didn't finish a first draft for M+I this year, but that gives me something to look forward to for next year!
Anyway, onto the snippets. This is all from 2016.
Beth Ortiz and her adventures through time
Beth should have told him, "Your mother will hate me." She should have told him, "I'm too old for you." She should have told him, "I am a failure and you are a shining star." Instead, she asked him, "You ever seen any Alejandro Jodorowsky films?"
---
Ernie loved Beth for these reasons:
-She watched cult films when she was younger.
-She owned a David Bowie shirt.
-She had a job.
-She shared her pot with him.
---
No pictures, Beth had insisted. Absolutely not pictures of her face were to appear on anyone of Ernie's online accounts. No showing off the girlfriend. No documenting the relationship. That was all Beth needed: physical evidence.
---
Ernie: Is Beth short for anything?
Beth: No. Just Beth Anne.
Ernie: Beth Anne . . .
Beth: Ortiz.
Ernie: Oh. You speak Spanish?
Beth: Nah.
---
This is how it was: Beth and Leigh, two years apart and yet, it was as if a millennium separated them. But when Perrey & Kinglsey played, it took them back to a time when the only difference between the sisters was hair length. Hopping about the living room, holding hands, spinning in circles together, dancing with reckless abandon.
In high school, they often danced together to the confusion of teens and adult alike. Beth, then with her short pixie cut, Leigh with long locks that glinted in the light with blonde strands nestled in her brown hair - how they would hop and sway, both leaders in a dance with no restraints.
Beyond clique and culture, they bumped into irritated couples with glee. It was the one childish aspect of their selves that had been retained beyond social conditioning, that wild romp to their father's music.
That they always were: two spooks in space.
---
Ernie: And your sister? Is Leigh short for anything?
Beth: Nope. Just Beth and Leigh Ortiz.
Ernie: My younger brother's name is Sebastian.
Beth: Oooh.
Ernie: Yeah. He's a shit-faced pestilence.
Someday I will finish writing you, M+I
Edouard Rhee, 6/12, ID
Malina Krakowski, 5/6, ID
Fritjof Lindquist, 11/22, ID
Madison Seema Rhee, 3/24, school ID
Oscar Deniro Krakowski, 3/24, school leave papers
Axle ---- Rhee, 10/31, adoption papers
Jae-Seul Park, 1/28, school ID
Alexander Fritjof Lindquist, 6/30, passport
---
Moon was dressed in a white button-down shirt, tucked neatly into a pair of black, wide-legged slacks held by a pair of suspenders. Slicked black hair, it gleaned in the light like his polished shoes. And when he grabbed his black jacket, he threw it over his shoulders, hands in pockets, elbows jutting out, giving his slender figure an angular shape as if he was a crow wearing a coat of feathers.
"You're staring," he said, blue eyes full in bloom.
---
"You'll sign off each assignment as we go through it. We're going to start with the first daily task: mail." Oscar walked down to the back of the hall, assured to see Moon following with a slow pace. The wall was filled with slots, named off as K. Bublos, F. Auermann, N Nyurkyaite, C. Lelievre, O. Krakowski . . . soon there would be a M. Park slot - or would it be M-K Park? Oscar focused on the O of his mailbox.
---
The horror of sight. The horror of scent.
To have senses in a world that existed upon the fumes of humanity; a lady and her perfume powerful enough to cause asphyxiation, the young men and their cologne that smelled of pine burnt to a crisp, a man dressed in rags with a scraggly beard carrying the scent of fine aged urine.
The neon lights hid paint peeling off the walls, gravel that was in desperate need of repair. Foot traffic having scuffed sidewalks, the stairs leading into the subway marked with ghost footprints. Inanimate models showing the living how to inhabit their clothes in displays.
Eel was a lone star amid the abyss of chaos. And if he could have delved deep into the apartment he had been exiled to, he would have. But the crosswalk light had turned green and he was incapable of directing his feet anywhere else but forward.
---
Escape was always an option.
Run out the door, down the stairs, back to his apartment. Bury his head under sheets, forget the outside world and all the incessant cacophony for one minute. But his limbs were rigid. His body refusing to move. And Suhayl had returned with tea and the horrors of casual socializing.
It was the wrong place to be.
---
There was a twitch in Eel's hands, Madison noticed. And while his hands always had the propensity to shake, a new clue was in place: dirt under his nails. Had he been on an excavation of some kind? Searching for familiarity in the city? Digging his own grave?
All he had to do was ask. Madison would have helped him with that one. ---
Madison: What did you do, back in Seattle?
Eel: Not much.
Madison: You're full of non-answers. "Not much." "Not really." What did you do "much" and "really"?
Eel: School. (Pausing. Madison staring intently at him) I was in track for a total of two months. And I had a job for . . . three months.
Madison: Where?
Eel: A pizza place.
Madison: And they fired you? Or you quit?
Eel: Fired. Definitely.
Madison: Why?
Eel: I wasn't exactly the best employee.
---
"People like you don't usually live this long," was all Regina said.
---
The woman couldn't have been any older than Oscar. Dressed in rugged clothes he expected of a man, with shaggy blonde hair cut bluntly and glazed gray eyes, she held up the camera and pointed it directly at Oscar's face, ready to shoot. He couldn't sit still and his shoulders were held tightly. As the expected flash blinded his eyes, Oscar flinched.
"You okay?"
Bright spots dissipated, the woman's face infinitely closer than it ever had been.
"I'm fine."
He couldn't tell what she thought of him, and as she turned back to her work, he figured it didn't matter. "Is it Oscar with a c or a k?"
"Oscar with a c."
His ID stared back at him as the woman filled out his information. How much younger he had been at fifteen. Still in school, still living in the suburbs - the very thought of waking up to the sound of barking dogs and lawnmowers made him shiver. This was not the suburbs. A woman like this, with a rabbit tattooed on the back of her neck, would not live in the suburbs.
---
Fritjof: You're to stay home and get some rest.
Eel: Okay.
Fritjof: "Okay?"
Eel: What?
Fritjof: "Okay" or "I'll just ignore everything you said and do what I want anyway."
Eel: You've grown very suspicious, dad.
---
"What did your mother say you were here for?"
"Male bonding."
"And what do you think she meant by that?" Fritjof's tone had changed considerably. No longer was he the Fun Dad, trying to win his son's favor. There was a rigidity to his words that felt incredibly finite.
"I don't know. Reading Ernest Hemingway on a fishing trip? Learning how to mow a lawn?" Eel lacked the energy to be confrontational for too long. Already, his point had dimmed, sinking further into the couch.
"No." A word so adamant, it could strip the enamel off of Eel's teeth.
[Another moment in which I tried to rewrite a scene I thought wasn't as good, and then realized was better once I wrote this. Eel's too saucy in this and Fritjof a little too hard, which is outside of their character. I liked the enamel line, though.]
---
Jae-Seul: You're not even Korean. You're Japanese. So don't explain the subtle differences between culture to me.
Axle: I'm Okinawan, Holmes.
Jae-Seul: So?
Axle: So big difference!
Jae-Seul: How?
Axle: I don't know! You think I'm some kind of authority on Okinawanism?
Jae-Seul: I'd like to know the difference.
Axle: Look it up on your god damn phone! (Oscar trying not to laugh, fiddling with his phone) Japan is a set of islands. Okinawa is another set of islands. There.
Jae-Seul: Owned by Japan.
Oscar: Jae's just upset at you for breaking his tibula earlier, Axle.
Jae-Seul: My patela.
[This is directly after Oscar goads Jae-Seul into pulling a prank on Axle, which ends with Axle kicking Jae in the knee and biting down on Oscar's hand.]
---
Eel's gaze was locked on him then. He was silent for a long time before saying, in that dull, emotionless tone of his, "I'm sorry."
"SHUT UP."
The jacket slid back down over Eel's head, his white hair mussed, and Oscar thought he saw the slightest hint of a smile. "What the hell do you have to apologize for anyway? Get your shit, Webster, and get off my stoop."
---
"How can you blame the walls of this city for being the screens to your absurd projections, Axle?"
---
In his found jacket, found boots, and half-old worn smile, Axle greeted the taste of nicotine like an old friend. How long had he been parted from that lingering scent? Greeting nicotine lacked the passion, the need that he had harbored six months ago.
Found. Everything in Axle's life, found. He was a hoarder of sorts, collecting all the elements of life that most people were born into. A found family, found house, found clothes, found taste, found love . . . Lost. An ache burned in his chest, one that Axle doubted he could quell.
He had forgotten to take a photograph. Again.
---
To refer to Axle's grades as a "progress report" indicated that there had been progression in his academic career. Thus, his grades were referred to as a report card instead, which usually read as so:
D for demonstrating logical fallacies in algebra.
C for commiseration in physical education
Another C for committing crimes against the English language
And B for better than zoning out in electives.
Accompanied were the typical notes:
Aggressive with other students
Talks too much
Not applying self
Not up to college-prep standards
And everything else
If I don't know who the hell an author is, I'll probably pick it up.
This is how I peruse selections of books, like a scavenger rather than some magical adventure.
---
When I was interviewed at Urban Outfitters, one of the questions they asked me to determine whether I was of the right culture for their store was, "What person, living or dead, would you ask to lunch?" My answer was Federico Fellini. It was the right choice. I was of their kind.
Supposedly.
---
It's impossible to return to the conventional "normal" world once you've been uncovered. All their habits and functions, all their mannerisms and traditions seem so absurd.
---
Admission: I have no idea what to do with myself when I have free time. Even writing feels foreign to me. And yet, here I am. Writing. Because it's the one way I can express this mess of a mind to the outside world. You may see it as self-indulgent. I see it as self-preservation.
---
Zooey was a ball of contradictions, I was soon to learn. He was religious and believed very deeply in God and yet hated the majority of civilization. "I can't stand people some days," he told me once. "I can't stand them so much, I could kill myself. Trust me, I've tried." He wore an expression of indifference (perhaps his default expression) and acted as though nothing could harm him emotionally, but the slightest of comments could send him into a silent rage, denying people his company. Everyone I talked to seemed to insist that Zooey's behavior was of his own doing.
But I don't know how much of our choices can be of our own doing when the brain articulates itself in mysterious ways. I was of the same articulation as Zooey. I liked to think that we were rowing in the same ocean, only on different boats. His: bipolar disorder, of the aggressive, manic kind. Mine: depression, social anxiety. His: having struck him blind at the age of 19. Mine: persistent, life-long.
And yet, we both agreed that if we had to choose to live in a normal state of mind or what we knew, we would choose the disorder that we knew. Because these articulations had shaped us into the people that we were, that could draw us together on a note of mutual empathy.
---
[On the recent film "The Tale of Princess Kaguya"]
A profound sense of loss. Beauty is objectified rather than valued - Kaguya is expected to be beautiful, but invisible and domesticated. Kept in a vase. Wants to live - not be kept as a treasure.
---
The running joke in my family was that if you were a good human being, after you died you were reincarnated as a dog that my grandparents adopted. A kitchen scene in my past has my grandmother at the oven, handling one of her golden, flaky apple pies while my grandfather plays solitaire at the table, nibbling on his saltine crackers and tossing scraps of food to the ever-present dog under the table. For a while, it was an Alaskan Malumute named Dallas, previously owned by my cousin from New Mexico and when you saw how thick that dog's coat was, you knew why my grandparents took pity on Dallas and into their home.