December 11, 2006

• The Beginning

  Some readings make you want to pee your pants, just so something interesting can happen.

  Now I’m not talking about Readings: events where people like David Sedaris rant hilariously at great length about butt boils before reading a selection from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim; or where Margaret Atwood, before reading a painfully honest section from Cats Eye, explains that when she told people she wanted to be a writer, their eyes glazed over and she could see them mentally retrieving a pre-formed image of her as a housewife from the back of their mind and injecting a dusty type writer into the scene, as if writing were something to keep her occupied while the children napped, a hobby, like knitting.

  Nay. I’m talking about readings. Lower case. Not so hot. In fact, there is nothing worse than hearing 20 minutes worth of some shitty story about a warrior described with repressed homoerotic savor (“the leather straps of his battle gear chaffed his sweaty, ham-like pectorals vigorously”) saving maiden princesses from robots from the future. (If you are wondering, this actually happened at my first and last visit to the Twilight Tales reading series at the Red Lion pub in Chicago.)

  Even though I use Sedaris, Atwood, and Robot Warrior Boy as examples, the difference between a reading and a Reading has little to do with how big of a name the author is. In Chicago, I loved going to Bookslut readings at Hopleaf, and the writers who read there were a range of first-timers and established authors.

  What really makes the difference between a reading and a Reading is how well organized they are. Is seating well provided for? Are there sufficient breaks to socialize? Does the pub serve food? How is the atmosphere? How is the sound? Do you really need that mic? Has the work been pre-screened to ensure quality? And most importantly: do the authors reading respect the time limit?

  The reading organized by fellow students of Shaun’s graduate program at The Liquid Ship last night was a Reading. Capital R. The private room was intimate enough while providing seating for all. The room was light almost entirely by candles, creating a warm, happy glow. Food was avalible to order and was great. The company was lovely. And best of all, the work was amazing. Two women read brilliant poems (I rolled with laughter at one bittersweet poem called Love & Drudgery which contains this delicious line: “beat the rugs, beat the child, boil the kettle, boil the baby”), one man read a fabulously funny vingette from a series he’s doing about psychics, and at the end of the evening, two women even sang songs (one being a really funny Christmas song about giving the gift of lice). It was a great event.

  While he reads aloud in school all the time (the program he’s in is workshop-based), before last night I’d never heard Shaun read his work before. He read a piece that he wrote during our first few [tearful, difficult] months of marriage. It’s about Adam and Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden. The story is beautiful, touching, and is one of my favorite stories of all time.

  Alone with Adam and Eve in the void of the desert, the reader is thrown into the complex logic of their coupledom; the ways that they blame and scowl and surprise each other with tenderness, with bad timing, with good timing. By moonrise, they fall into forgiveness, accepting that what makes them sin and what tempts them is intrinsically tied to what makes them love and be loved. Darkness co-exists with light, inseparable and unmistakably human. The writing is intimate and honest and really, really good.

  When Shaun first told me he wanted to be a writer, we were teenagers sharing a banana split in a brown vinyl booth at a cafe called The Village Place in our hometown. Shaun was 18, weeks away from graduating high school at the top of his class, and needing ice cream to recover from the embarrassment of having articles about him in local newspapers for having never missed a day of school (since kindergarten!). While Shaun was just as good at Physics and Calculus as he was English and Theater, he loved the creative stuff more. But he’d told his arts-weary parents that he was going to study business at college.

  As for me, I was a pixie-haired, combat boot clad 16-year old theater fanatic with a sketch book bursting with drawings, sheet music, half finished scripts, stories and poems; I was unabashedly convinced that fame was probably just around the corner.

  Anyway, so we’re two oddball teenagers at The Village Place. Shaun leans across our ice cream with such an odd, serious look on his face that I thought he was going to break up with me.

  “I need to tell you something,” he began. He paused. He held his breath. He winced. “I don’t want to study business.”
  “You’d be a horrible business man,” I said.
  “I know. And I don’t want to be a teacher.”
  “You hate talking. That’s what they do. All day long.”
  “I know. I want to be a writer.”
  “Good. Then you’ll be a famous one.”
  He smiled. “Do you think I can?”
  “Why not? Just think of all that you read in a day–someone’s go to write all of it. And you’re good at it. And you like it. Why be bored your whole life? Do it. And do it big.”
  He laughed. But then his face grew quiet again, “but don’t tell anyone, okay? Don’t tell my mom.”

  The journey from then to now has been both slow and fast. I am a daydreamer of the future, gatherer of our histories, and happy in this minute all at once.
  ___________________________________________________________

  What have you seen the beginning of?

  ::Random Tangent::
  I wouldn’t have missed yesterday for the world. And I mean that because I went even though I spent all day Sunday in bed, with a million pound head full of snot and a body racked with chills, fever, and a painful, chest-seizing cough. But I nothing could keep me from seeing the Reading. It was too important. I peeled myself out of bed at 6 pm, put on some makeup and a cute outfit, threw a box of Kleenex in my purse, and braved the dark rain. And once at the Reading, I tried to sit as far away from others as possible, keeping my coughing as quiet as I could manage.

  I’ve been sick all week, but Saturday, just as I was starting to feel much better, we went to Edinburgh where I stupidly over did it and paid dearly on Sunday. Today I called off work (apparently most of my department did the same; we’re all suffering from the hellish cold/flu that my boss brought back from the design expo in Hong Kong) and am spending another day in bed, haphazardly blogging, surrounded by tissues and medicine, and half-sleeping through rented movies. I haven’t been this knockdown sick in years.

  I’m feeling a bit better, but I really need to baby myself today, as I have two out-of-town all day meetings later this week. And those who I’m meeting certainly don’t deserve to get sick. (If only those who were in Hong Kong and came into the office and coughed all over everything cared shared my concern!)

  I hope you, dear reader, are feeling fit and healthy this December.

  • 7:21 am
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