Sometimes it's this little niggling "I could write this," idea that's pervasive and aggravating. Go on, it says, put your life down on paper. Augusten Borroughs can do it. David Sedaris can do it. Make your life funny. This little idea, as I've discovered, is much like getting behind the wheel after a drink, only the drink is a long island and a few pages later you're looking at the smashed wreck that is your writing, adjectives smoking and descriptions twisted and warped like tortured metal. It happens every time. "I could write this!" And somebody should have stopped me and taken my keys, or at least my keyboard.
Other times, the writer is just too damn good at what they're doing. When I was young, I tried to read The Collector. It's a rather tormented novel by a rather tormented author named John Fowles, giving a firsthand look at the mental gymnastics that justify to a serial killer what he's doing. I was initially intrigued, as all teenagers are, by the morbidity. That this was another piece of my personal intrigue, I would be a young girl who has read this deep and terrifying book. Which teenagers love to do - they love to deepen their character, collecting hobbies and experiences and interests, read books and go places that adorn the walls of their psyche like a trendy accessory collection. I remember how I would gravitate to the other teens who had "been there" and "done that", who had an appreciation for taxidermy and Heidegger and smoked Pall Mall cigarettes, or on the other end of the spectrum, strong views on veganism and being eco-conscious and also happened to be bisexual. These made them deeper, more fascinating, and somehow, more like a real person. I tried to develop my mental display case as well. How would I define myself today? "This is Myjah, she's a martial artist who loves researching serial killers and word puzzles. She had a strong love for dogs, oldies, and soup." I think, in the time I would have been in high school, my brain was wearing black lipstick and pants with too many zippers on them.
This book, however, was written so well that Fowles had me. Had me, and my chest, in a death grip. He squeezed my lungs and my brain until I could feel the suffocation of being trapped, just like the antagonist of the story was, in his basement. I put the book down, conveniently lost it, and never saw it again.
Rather recently I had been lent a David Sedaris book by my friend Kevin. This was during the time an Earthquake had struck in the northwest region of Japan, and he had used it as a selling point for the book. "It's poignant. It ends with him being in Japan during a natural disaster. I mean, isn't that enough?" Kevin and I, both having family in Japan, bought into the meaningfulness of the story and dove into it, perhaps looking for Sedaris to hand us a key phrase or profound message of our situation. We use our lineage as a personal connection, maybe one of those things that deepens our character, especially in times when the two of us feel like we have nothing else to connect on. "Hey, you're half Japanese, and so'm I - remember watching Anpanman as a kid?"
What Kevin had neglected to mention, in his enthusiasm about the connection of the book to our Japanese-ness and the current times, was why Sedaris was in Japan in the first place.
He was quitting smoking.
As silly as this seems, it made me squirm. I quit smoking not more than two years ago, and still borderline wish I hadn't. There was a feeling associated to cigarettes, not of coolness or a nicotine buzz, but another deepening of character. How poetic it felt, to be alone listening to Nina Simone, head hanging over the edge of the bed, watching the smoke rise to the ceiling to mingle with the glow-in-the-dark star stickers there. Or to have a glass of scotch and an American Spirit, sitting on the deck of some friend's rich parents' house that overlooked the ravine, watching a sunset. When smoking, I felt like a girl Tom Waits would kiss, swoop into his arms, and disappear with into the upstairs bedroom, where hours later you would find us artfully disheveled, each of us with a cigarette dangling precariously between two fingers, staring at the ceiling with slightly glassy eyes. Yes, I miss smoking. I don't miss a single side-effect, but I'll be darned if I don't miss it, the actual action of it, and watching the end of the little death stick flare and crackle with each inhale.
And as Sedaris, in his fantastic authoreal way, described each drag on each fag, my lungs started to ache and I started to twitch. I couldn't keep reading the chapter. I put it down. I'm sure Kevin is wondering why I'm such a slow reader, what's taking me so long to finish this short and easily digested book, but after blazing through almost all of it, my stomach hit something that upset it enough that it's still sitting on the bedstand unfinished.
Maybe hating reading was a bad way to describe it. What I truly meant, maybe, is that it's difficult for me to read some books. Difficult, and sometimes dangerous, as I get overinspired. I have the worst tendency to have short, money-shot versions of inspiration. Seeing something, picking it up furiously for about a month or so, and then dropping it for something else, while the carcasses of my prior projects clutter my room in the most unattractive fashion. A Hobby Morgue, maybe.
So, in this small moment of inspiration, I'll have to see. Or else this blog will be another body, only tossed into the internet where I don't have to see it, unfinished and unlamented, cluttering the floor of my room.
