Layin' a little truth on ya, or Why You Should Hire Me

What's he up to now, you ask? Well, I'm basking in my Brooklyn backyard and... swatting mosquitos off my neck. Ick. I'm also sitting with a glass of wine and a sheet of paper with scribblings all over it, trying to decipher my scrawled on-the-go lettering and use these notes to update the ol' curriculum vitae.

If you know me, you know how I detest the rhetorical constraints of these things. It's all cookie-cutter equivocation, and it gives no sense of the person behind the formal words.

There's a fantastic book called Overqualified by Joey Comeau (of A Softer World fame) that is basically a series of cover letters written by an increasingly desperate person. It does exactly what I wish I could do - says 'screw you' to all that formality and offers something hilariously candid.

Unfortunately, I haven't quite the balls to write a cover letter that says how I really feel because sadly that is not how one gets hired. Instead, I'm going to vent a little frustration by comparing what the 'Summary' section of my resumé actually says to what it should say, sentence by sentence. God, I hope no future employers read this. Here goes:

What it says: 
"BA graduate with experience in Chinese Studies, office administration and research."
What it means: 
A college graduate with research experience. Sweet Jesus, who'd-a thunk it? I did exactly what was required me in college, and if I'm going to be honest it was kind of a special occasion if I did any more than that. I have exactly as much office administration experience as you'd expect from two 3-month internships; that is to say, heavy on the 'office' and light on the 'administration'. Oh, and the Chinese Studies bit? I took an equal amount of classes in Chinese and Japanese culture, and managed to get the diploma because my advisor basically said 'screw it, it's all Asia'. But hey, I can tell jiaozi from baozi, so I'm praying that gives me a much-needed edge.

What it says:
"A flexible worker with high attention to detail and the ability to work well under deadline constraints."
What it means:
Listen, guys. I want to prove myself. Frankly, I have some procrastination issues, and my long-term attention span could use some work. But at the same time, I'm not a fuck-up and I get the job done. My productivity curve might be a little steep, but if I need to I'll pull weekend hours and have nobody but myself to blame, and in the end the job'll be done on time. I work well under deadline constraints because that's often the only time I can shift my ass. I also have a high attention to detail because I'm kind of scatterbrained: I know this about myself, and I'm incredibly fastidious when it comes to never letting that be a problem with the important stuff. I had a few slipups back in secondary school that almost proved disastrous, and you'd better believe I learned from them.

What it says:
"Excellent interpersonal skills in both customer service and official liaison roles."
What it means:
I used to work in an office where I had to call the parents of child actors and tell them that their precious little bundle of sunshine and thespian prowess didn't make the cut. I firmly believe that this alone qualifies me for any customer service job on (in?) the market. If you - an eighteen-year-old intern whose sole job is to pass along the goddamned information - can handle an incensed adult demanding to know how such a thing could have happened, their little Timothy is such a wonderful actor, he was lead in his third grade play and everything, I demand and apology and your resignation! ... well, let's just say that schmoozing with provincial politicians from Pakistan is child's play in comparison.

What it says:
"A strong writer who is well-suited to editorial and proofreading tasks."
What it means:
Well, now I'm just bragging aren't I. Put it this way: I like writing, and I love reading. I've been reading anything I can get my hands on since I first learned how to tell 'cat' from 'mat'. I've read good books and I've read bad books. I've read masterpieces of literature and I've read Twilight. (Well, no, that's a lie. I couldn't get past the first five pages of Twilight). My point is, I know good from bad, and I like to think that I have enough of a self-critical eye to be able to tell the same when I'm the one doing the writing. I may not have a perfect grasp of MLA styles, but if you give me a block of text to read I can tell you what sounds awkward and I can spruce it up to make it sound purdy.

Phew. Okay. Well, now that's out of my system, maybe I can knuckle down and actually make these edits. Me and the mosquitos bid you goodnight, sweet blog.

I really fucked it up this time, didn't I my dear? 

Still Alive!

Well now... it's been another long while! The past two weeks have been absolutely insane. Three cities in one week, 12-hour workdays, and 159 PRC graduate students. I've met a ton of people, seen a ton of sights, and done a great many things. It's been a lot to fit into fourteen days, and today's been the first day in a very long time in which I've had the chance to take a breath, lie back, and let myself relax. Feels good.

So, not much today I'm afraid. Just a quick note to remind myself that, yes, I do have one of those bloggy things, don't I, and shouldn't I really think about putting something into it every now and then? Don't worry, dear bloggy thing, I've no intention of abandoning you. I just need to gather my wits a little.

I've been thinking in the meantime though, even if I haven't been writing! I have a few little outlines jotted down on my phone of all places... I really ought to get a nice little notebook and carry it around with me. I've also got a nice list of books that I would very much like to get a hold of. I'm currently reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle for the... fourth time, I think? One of my most beloved books, it blows me away each time I read it. I may have to write about it here sometime.

(Oh, side note: I think I mentioned Subway Love last time? Well the other day I was reading TWUBC on the F line, and the girl sitting next to me asked about it. Which was particularly great, since the pages I had open at the time were somewhat... *discrete cough*... steamy. So I told her that it was a magnificent novel by one of my favourite authors, and that she should definitely check it out if she got the chance. She smiled and thanked me, and then the train rolled up to Bergen Street and she stepped out of the train and out of my life with a little toss of her hair and another mouthed 'thank-you'. Leaving me sitting there thinking "Huh. So long then. Iloveyou.")

(Oh, double-sidenote, that actually gave me an idea for a story! Or a least a part of a story. I'll try and flesh it out here sometime!)

So anyhow, as fantastic as this book is, I'm looking for something new. Hence my list! I was in the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco (namedropper) and for some reason was really drawn to books about Film Noir. I think I still have The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler somewhere, but I'm buggered if I can remember where. So anyhow, I'll probably wind up on Amazon buying some of these books, because they actually struck me as great inspiration for a screenplay that I've been semi-working-on for a while now. I'd also love to start watching some of these classic old films, and those'd probably be a good place to get suggestions.

Enough disjointed rambling for now, time to send out some resumés. WILLPOWER!

I picture your face at the back of my eyes

Nothing to see here

I'm tapping this out while sitting on a crowded F-line train. Crowded! At 11 at night! Well, it is a Saturday, so I suppose that makes sense. 

Everyone around here is clearly on their way to or on their way back from a night out. Must be nice. I, on the other hand, am just returning from work. And I'll probably be pulling similar hours tomorrow. This whole week has been utterly insane because the big event in D.C. that we've been planning is next week, which explains my absence but doesn't excuse it. I swear to god, if I have to write another formal-ass, trite little email my head is going to explode. And the one thing worse than having to write trite little emails all day is your perfectionist boss demanding to proof-read each one to make sure they're conforming to Chicago MLA (?) style. 

So now I'm headed home and I have nothing really to say because I'm wiped and I'm edgy about this event and I'm annoyed that I have the strongest urge to go back through this and double-space after every full stop. Remember what I was saying earlier about an editorial eye? Yeah, this is one of those times when I'm perfectly happy to just pound something out, tappa-tappa-tappa, done. I've had quite enough of editing for one day, and I need to save my strength for tomorrow's epic 12-hour round.

So instead of introspection, have some people-watching! It's extrospection! 

-Everyone on this train has such a lovely tan. It must have been really nice out today.

-The girl in front of me is wearing a denim jacket that's only-just-too-small for her. and an oak-covered scarf with gold trim. She has shoulder-length chestnut brown hair, a huge navy Balenciga bag, and her ear lobes are chock-full of piercings! Oh… and then she turns her head and I see a close-cropped patch of hair above her ear, and under the downy stubble trails a flowery tattoo, and I instantly fall in stupid love. Subway love - it has to be the most powerful and most frustrating kind of love there is.

-Maybe all these people are heading to Coney Island. Wouldn't that be swell? Ferris Wheels and candy floss and the salt-and-oil scent of the boardwalk. Hot dogs and carnival curiosities all around! …okay, I'll admit, I have only the vaguest idea of what Coney Island is actually like.

-The man across the way has a very long, very thin head. It's balding on top: a perfect strip of bareness with a fertile patch of hair on either side, fencing it in, perched on his ears and clinging to the side of his head like a pair of fuzzy mountain goats. Actually, now that he turns his head, I see that the patches connect at the back. So imagine a tennis ball! It's kind of like that. He's wearing a pair of perfectly circular, perfectly twee glasses that are perched on his long nose - everything about him perches in some way, and his thin build makes him seem like he's going to topple apart at any moment - and he's reading some kind of pamphlet or booklet.  I can't see what it's about, but I'm imagining some delightfully, esoterically niche domestic subject like woodworking or lawnmower repair. 

-The woman sitting next to him looks incredibly edgy. She's staring at the list of upcoming stops like it'll determine her future, which I guess is right in a way. She looks to be in about her 50s, and she's clutching a plain black gym bag to her lap as though she's nervous of someone taking it. Her hair curls and explodes out from her head, which is probably making her look far more frazzled than she really feels. Her mouth is perpetually slightly open, like she's about to voice some protest against the world at large.

-Somewhere a toddler is howling. Howling! This kid is not best pleased with his situation! I can't hear too well from here because I've got my lovely headphones in and I'm listening to… well… ok. It's Evanescence right now. Don't judge me. You can't judge me, I quit! In any case, I can see him now - hid dad's calmed him down with something that looks crispy and sweet, so maybe that kid knows what he's doing. 

-Alright, Evanescence ended, now it's some so-no-koto traditional instrumental Japanese music. More classy, if no less nerdy. 

-Speaking of Asian music, I was listening to the Kung Fu Panda 2 soundtrack today. Now this is legit, because it was put together by Han Zimmer, and that man knows how to write great soundtracks. If him and John Williams get together and have a baby, that child will grow up to be some sort of compositional ubermensch. Like… the Kwisatz HaderBach. And now it's my stop, so good night and good luck!

The black will be grey and the white will be grey but the blues are still blue

Returns and Rushdie

I'm back from a perfectly lovely weekend in DC! It was hotter than the devil's asscrack and more fun than a ride at the fair. It's also the reason for my blogular absence these past few days, and for that I apologise to you, my dear blog. But it's okay, I have come back to you, back into your welcoming arms to hold you close and nuzzle your neck and whisper in your ear that it'll all be all right.

It'll all be all right.


And here I sit in a Brooklyn back yard, slowly broiling in the 73-degree nighttime heat (that's 23 degrees in Real Measurements), sipping a beer - I'll be exact, a Samuel Adams Summer Ale - and breathing in the scents of a suburban evening while Miles Davis rolls through a rendition of Bye Bye Blackbird; and life is pretty sweet.

Whenever I read a really good book - by a really good author with a really good voice - I usually find myself trying to mimic his or her style. Not parroting in any way... more like trying it on to see what fits. While taking a screenwriting class in Junior year I was concurrently working my way through the early seasons of The West Wing, and I found myself trying desperately to capture - however poorly, through however warped a lens! - some of that beautiful run-on style of Aaron Sorkin's, the way his conversations ebb and flow in a way that seems so beautifully crafted and yet so natural. It's certainly something to aspire to.

I mention this because I've literally just finished reading Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. It's utterly fantastic, like reading long-form poetry, and I highly recommend it. And the style, with its sense of narrative propriety that opens the door to all sorts of questions of reliability and truth and interpretation and objectivity, fits itself well to a blog. I'm trying to capture some sort of sense of that book's exactitude - the fastiduous attention to detail in a desperate attempt to nail down some larger truth that defies conventional explanation. It's really magnificent... reminded me of Murakami, the way Rushdie will not only explain a thing but also weave a gleaming narrative around it, cocooning the unknowable truth in fact and fiction until you can see the shape of it if not the substance.

And also the way he leaves you hanging - blunt explanations one minute, tantalising hints and glimpses and sensations the next. So in the spirit of fictional truth and factual stories, of substance and essence, and - above all - of long-winded brevity, I'll leave here some thoughts on what I want to make my next short story (short, but longer than most I've written lately!), jotted down on my phone during a long bus ride through twilit Delaware fields.

It will be about fish out of water and flannel jackets. It will be about pasts and presents and futures and fireflies. It will be about longing and hoping and the sweetness of disappointment. There will be running and hiding and seeking. There will be footnotes and police chases, and a certain detached, Morpokian, chicken-bashing style of humour. But most of all, it will be about how damnably, horribly easy it is to fall hopelessly in love on a stifling summer's night in America.

It might even be about letting go - about acceptance and peace. But I'm not sure about that quite yet... they say you should write what you know.

I'm not who I was last summer / Not who I was in the spring

An Explanation

There is a truism in New York City that you often hear repeated: city-dwellers are prettier in the summer than in the winter. We've seen the evidence in front of us here. Over the past few weeks, like daffodils springing up from the thawing earth, gorgeous women and hunky men have been appearing everywhere. Tentatively at first, in ones and twos, as if testing the waters... now they're out in droves, and everybody is very appreciative of this beautiful example of nature's bounty. 

The explanation you usually hear is that it's simply a selection bias. Your eye is more drawn to the Pretty People, so of course they're the ones you notice. In the cold winter months these callipygian figures are all bundled up against the cold, hiding their assets from the world; as cherry blossoms come out, so do the booty shorts - oh, the booty shorts! - and tank tops, dragging our eyes and attention to the supple delights contained within. 

This explanation is false. 

What actually happens is far more elegant. You see, New York's population is actually entirely migratory. Overcrowding has been such an issue that six months out of the year, half of us city-dwellers are whisked away and relocated to a small city about an hour outside of Brisbane, Australia. It's a massive undertaking that's performed with the utmost professionalism and discretion by many thousands of volunteers and government workers. The Pretty People are sent off to spend summers in Oz and return to the States in April - in trickles at first, but quickly turning into a flood so intense you can't turn your head on Broadway without some selfish, nubile young thing leaving nothing to the imagination. 

The uggoes get winters. Sorry, homely denizens... you need to keep that shit wrapped up. 

My point, you ask? My point is, it's May, and here I am. Draw your own conclusions. Oi, eyes up here. 

Hello sucker, we like your money just as well as anybody else's here

A Man Chooses, A Slave Obeys

I'm always telling people lately that I need to feel like a 'real person'. Now seems as good a time as any to explain that!

So I recently moved to New York. I'd say it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but really it was more of a sieze-the-opportunity thing. A short notice employment offer and a long-running desire to get back out here meant that in the space of 10 days I went from having no prospects to standing bleary-eyed in Times Square, dragging along a suitcase and hauling a backpack and wondering murderously how anybody could get around in this goddamned place when the train lines have numbers instead of names.

Since then I've been incredibly lucky. I'm settling into a job, I found a place to live within a week, and I've got the most wonderful network of friends and family. But here's the thing... it's been so damn hectic that I've had no real time to do anything much more than work, eat, drink and sleep. Usually in that order.

In the past couple of years I've found myself craving structure more and more in my life. It's like a game of Minecraft; get some wood, make some planks, build a pickaxe, dig a cave, make a home. One thing after the other, and you can't skip a step. That's how it is with me these days. Before I can be productive, I need my things in order. Before I can put my things in order I need to be settled. Before I can be settled I need my own space. And so on.

Now, back in London, I had time to settle. And once I moved into my sister's old room, I was able to put my things in order. And once I had my things in order, I started being productive. And once I got used to being productive, I was able to step back and appreciate things. I got into this fantastic space where not only was I working, I was happy to be working. It made me feel good about myself, and this gave me the confidence and general affability to start considering my own projects.

So I gardened a bit. I went from dreading the early Friday mornings to actually looking forward to them. I wanted to learn to do more for myself, and actually got pretty proud of the stuff I'd worked on! I'd talk to my buddy Ben about what we could work on in the future. Assuming I was still around, we made plans to make a project out of renovating the back deck at my place over the summer. We'd work and pause for beer and work some more, and at the end of the day just appreciate a good job done... well, if not well, then at least competently!

Then I came out here. And while I'm so happy to be back, while it's been such a fantastic opportunity and experience, I do miss being in that space. It's a space that I associate with pride in accomplishment... with making something, and being proud of the job you've done. It's why I've started this blog! I'm trying to do something - even if it's just masturbatory musings and idle scribblings - that I can call my own.

So that's what I mean by being a 'real person'. It's been like a mantra in my head lately, riffing off the Bioshock quote in the title: "A Man Creates, A Slave Consumes". I've been doing far too much of the former, and it's time to do some of the latter.

Feels good, man.

I can see it in your eyes, when the fire dies, you think it's over but it's just begun

Back to the Drawing Board

Hello there. Let's try this again.

I made a blog by this name back in 2009. It was supposed to be a place where I could post thoughts, sketches, story ideas and creative writing snippets.

It lasted for two posts. Separated by months.

But now I figure I'm a little older, a little wiser, and a little more disciplined! And if nothing else, maybe this will help me become so. Lately I've been feeling the strongest urge to start writing again, to find a style or a voice or even just to write something worthwhile!

I want to be someone who writes. Maybe not a writer, but I want to be a person who has thoughts worth expressing and knows how to express them. In the course of things I'm sure I'll wind up sounding like an utter ass more often than not, but I'll try to work through that.

So! Round two. Back to the drawing board.

...god, it's like I've been setting that one up for 2 years.

Stranger, baby, always keep me in your sweet memory