Fiction Friday #4
Because there is so much to do, time stretches and compresses. Moments are longer, simple tasks taking much more time than they ought. Days and weeks are shorter, leaving me with the feeling that I haven’t done enough. Not enough has been accomplished. Shouldn’t I have done more?
Five and a half weeks left until I drive up to Chicago and board a plane to Hong Kong. The earthbag office we’ve been working on for the last year is still unfinished. We’ve shoveled countless tonnes of dirt into sandbags, moved hundreds of sandbags to the building site, laid endless feet of barbed wire between the rows of bags, and the end is finally in sight. The last week has been spent with the green Makita chainsaw that I’ve grown to love so well. It’s familiar, feels like my chainsaw. We have a relationship, me and the Makita. It tells me how to cut, follows my lead. We work together. It’s more than a tool, now. It’s a friend.
I’d hoped to have the building done by now so that I could focus on the firewood. The family’s 45-acre plot has around 20 wooded acres and, in the woods, there are plenty of dead and damaged trees to fell, chainsaw into firewood lengths, and haul to the over-sized shed (I call it a barn, though I know it’s not). We’ll borrow our neighbor’s gas-powered wood splitter (25 tonnes of pressure in a single point at the end – the wood will split), then stack the firewood, leaving it to dry a little more for the last few weeks before it gets very cold and moisture no longer evaporates. It’s not enough time, but it’ll have to do.
The weather is already changing. This morning, the outdoor thermostat read 44 degrees (6.5 Celcius), cold enough to bring by good winter jacket back from its purgatory in my closet. My breath is visible. I can barely tell when to stop exhaling: when does the smoke end and the fog begin?
Because there’s so little time, and because time stretches, I’ve become progressively more confused about the days. Is today Tuesday? Friday? Sunday? It could be anything. Only the tasks matter. Firewood, and the earthbag office. Writing takes a back seat.
Today is Saturday, which makes this week’s Fiction Friday a day late. Not that I mind. The week has been full of progress, visible results: chainsaw-milled lumber fills the garage with a fresh pine scent (which smells nothing like the air fresheners, hallelujah) and I’ve started practicing writing more honestly to prepare for writing my four months in Hong Kong. Of course, I haven’t written a lick of fiction for the last week.
There is, however, another installment of World War Clown ready to be read.
After the break…
6 Weeks
Time has passed quickly. Time passes quickly. Anticipation, however, puts the future so far out of reach that my return to Hong Kong seems impossibly far away.
There’s so much to do before my departure, and I’m lovin’ it, feeling like a McDonald’s television advertisement for saying that I’m lovin’ it, and losing myself in the balancing act, tottering between anticipation and enjoying the time I have left in rural Indiana, where there’s real peace and quiet (never mind the insect orchestra screeching through the night, and the neighbor’s heavy excavation and farming machinery, and the offroading course a couple miles down the creek, and the sound of gunfire as deer season begins, and the sound of passing pickup trucks, and the Tom Waits grumbling of the 64cc Makita chainsaw that seems to dance through downed wood rather than simply cut).
I remind myself that, in not all too long, I’ll be back in a city, listening to passing cars and the ticking of pedestrian crossing lights, bathed in the light of neon signs and street lamps, feeling the pulse of the city that I thought I knew so well. I never explored much past the bars and waterfront, of course, because that’s where you find yourself when you’re a drunk with delusions of literary grandeur. The bars, the clubs, the 7-11′s – and, during my seven year career as a kid show clown, the chandeliered ballrooms of Hong Kong’s countless private, members only yacht and country clubs, rubbing shoulders with the rich.
Six weeks in the country. Rural Indiana, land of the Hoosiers (as in, “Hoosier Daddy?” or “Hoosier favorite football team?”), has been good to me. I’ve learned what neighbors are: part of a holy trinity of relationships, along with friends and family. The Buntons (Bill, who is a drunk) and the Reinharts (German Baptists, who are like the Amish but with mobile phones and heavy machinery) have become more than neighbors. They’re family friends.
The next six weeks will be spent in the woods, chainsaw running, stockpiling firewood to keep the family warm while I’m away. Once we’ve stockpiled enough wood, we’ll borrow a pickup truck to haul the wood to the shed. Then, we’ll borrow Bill’s big ol’ gas powered wood splitter.
Six weeks of living out in the country, removed from “civilization” – though folk out here seem a damn sight more civilized than the city folk I’ve met. There are exceptions, of course, but folk out here seem better, more alive, and less inclined to find themselves consumed with 21st century depression (not to mention the all-permeating presence of urban malaise).
I’ll miss it out here, just as I’ve missed the city. Not that I believe that one or the other is a greener pasture. They’re just different, and speak to me in different ways.
(Writing updates after the break.)
Fiction Friday #3
I often enjoy more lighthearted reading material. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Murakami and King and so on, but there’s nothing like a good pun fest. Bad jokes written well make for some of my favorite reading – and, hell, as fun as it is to read, it’s even more fun to write.
The biggest motivation in writing Zen Motherfuckers was the driving force of irreverence. There’s nothing so sacred that it can’t be mocked.
Don’t get me wrong. I have a healthy respect for holy places, holy moments – moments of peak experience. I’ve had more than my fair share of holy moments, even in the midst of the most mundane experiences. Washing dishes, sipping hot coffee (even made from big red tubs of pre-ground Folgers, even from truck stop fast food joints), smoking cigarettes, knocking back a glass of decent booze (less often these days), shoveling delicious food into my mouth and down my gullet (anything from ramen to a slab of slow roasted pork belly served on squash risotto), long walks down Logan Square streets in the middle of the night – and the list goes on. On drugs, off drugs. Drunk on bargain scotch and stone-cold sober. Natural highs can come at any time and in any situation.
But, then, there’s irreverence. The drive to mock everything. Satire? Maybe. Comedy? I suppose. Fucking with everything? Absolutely.
I write best when I keep these three reasons in mind:
Fuck with myself.
Fuck with my characters.
Fuck with my readers.
With that in mind, here’s the first installment of World War Clown, a piece of prose written for the sole purpose of spewing long strings of bad puns. Expect the next installment sometime in the middle of next week.
