for the past several weeks, i have been unable to read much of anything besides novels. i have fallen in love with kamila shamsie, or rather, the way she writes, and specifically, every single one of her main female characters. i spent friday night reading kartography, falling in love, getting my heart broken. at some point, i grew tired of just getting my heart broken without the falling in love part, so find i can't read the nonfiction books that glare at me from my bookcase, from beside my futon mattress on the floor. i try to read the news, and i am reduced to reading with extended breaks between articles, usually paragraphs, but sometimes even lines, and it is an act of incredible strength sometimes just to get through the editorial page. yesterday, i was reduced to saying "blah blah blah. asswipe." or something very similar while reading a nyt editorial, and i could get into it, but i'm still recovering from the blatant hypocrisy and ridiculousness and sheer self-importance and "just how stupid do you think i am?" rage. so i read entertainment news and find it much more satisfying to read about celebrities and near celebrities than to read about people without access to that kind of stage. or, i sit and stare at the tv. and it's not on. it is my version of laurie anderson's commentary, "i'd rather be watching this on tv". and i think to myself that the title, "a million little pieces", may be the most honest that james frey gets in his memoir as he continues to expand his admissions of perhaps more than half-lies in his memoir, and i wonder if he came up with the title and hope he didn't because it is somehow more poetic to think that the truest thing about his life as he wanted to remember it was something that someone else came up with. and isn't that the way it is sometimes?
and i think i'd probably rather be writing something else, actually, but can't. what i really wish was that i was more of a storyteller, that i could write fiction that made you wonder how true it all was, that made me wonder how true it all was. and lately, i keep repeating to myself "just think of it as good writing material", because molly told me that once and it made me laugh through my tears, and i think it helps me cope through my days sometimes, through some really hard moments, and it may be true, but i think my hope chest is already full of material that i could spend a lifetime trying to create something from. and i'm not really crafty. still can't cut in a straight line. but i'm really really good at ironing. just so you know. and i wonder sometimes if things have really changed as much as i think they have. or if that's just the way it is and has been and i never really looked past my assumptions or what i wanted to see. either way, i'd rather be writing a fictionalized account and reading a fictionalized account of it all. it's easier to love and get your heart broken that way. the devastation is much more manageable and discrete and contained. so after nearly 4 years of not really reading fiction, it's all i can read. trying to gather up the million little pieces of reality into a convincing mosaic of performance art.
1 comment:
This is exciting. Now I don't feel so bad for owning all these nonfiction books that mostly only you have read. The problem is not ME, I see now - it's the books. They glare, they don't seduce you and make you fall in love. Thank you. Sometimes I suppose you can fall in love with real people and then want to read something about the context for your love, and it's like a discussion about something you thought about all day. I'm nowadays slipping back into reading facts once in awhile, small doses, and I get surprised by how helpful I find them, I'd swung so far the other way.
You sound so impatient with your process, or maybe just tired of being heartbroken. Or both. But it is absolutely clear to all of us watching you that things will be fine, that you'll do what you have in mind, and be glorious while you try. Watching you is, on a much grander scale, like being the baby in the next crib over watching you jab yourself in the eye while you try to get your thumb in your mouth. Love you.
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