Bassiouny, don't read this. This is stupid.

Third thing's first: Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You

Miranda July can make you laugh and cringe in the same sentence, which is a talent I truly admire. Her characters are painfully relatable and endearing, and often when we search within them we see something of ourselves, and it's usually pathetic.

If reading the book from cover-to-cover, her characters feel monochromatic; they are similarly awkward, socially inept, and desperate for, but incapable of meaningful connections with others. Often, they're alone with no real friends, and it's safe to assume that in high school they were all the weird kid. What's really interesting here, though, is that even if we weren't the weird kid we could always relate to them on a secret level that held more meaning than some of the other friendships we had; a level that made us feel guilty for existing in a way that highlighted the weird kid as weird. This is the feeling often created by July's characters, intentional or not.

Standing as individual stories, her work is poignant, endearing, frank, and sexually frustrated. As a collection they blur into a mess of awkwardness and basketcases who never really find what they're looking for, and who generally don't even know what it is exactly they're looking for in the first place. I found this problem when I tried to read Joyce Carol Oates' collection of short stories (Dear Husband). After the third story I found it difficult to believe in the voice as the character's own and not simply Oates' manner of writing--which is exactly what it was.

Things I'd like to discuss when there's food in my belly

1. Slaughterhouse-five: Good book, not the greatest, but possibly the most over-hyped.

2. Eating Animals: For those who have always been on the fence between omnivorism and vegetarianism, this book will push you into a new stage of indecision where you desperately crave a cheeseburger, but cannot get the image of cows being skinned and slaughtered alive out of your head. (And there are a lot of such images in this book.)

3. Miranda July: The problem with short story collections by a writer with a distinctive voice/style is that it's her only voice/style and the stories fail to stand together as a collection; they blur together as a train of awkward social situations and it really doesn't make a difference which character is which. Also, this is the sign of the times.

Let the sunshine in

Temperatures this week have soared over freezing (a whopping 40 something degrees) and the trickling sound of thawing snow indicates a light at the end of this dark, cold tunnel we all know and hate as winter.

I've been re-balancing myself. This includes: reading more, writing (or thinking about writing) more, and trying to glow. I've just about finished Slaughterhouse-Five (how did I not read that sooner?), and I've been working on a collection of prose that more or less uses geological phenomena as a metaphor for a relationship between the speaker and "you". Not sure where it's going yet, but it's different and I like that. You can read some of it here.

I've also been working on a collection of prose about PTSD, but that's proving to be a difficult thing to put into words, at least words that aren't so heavy-handed. This project is just a tad more personal than the geology one.


What else?

White it out white it out white it out

Nothing like a blizzard to lift your spirits and make you feel better about being surrounded by dead things. It's an old fashioned and unreliable sort of drawing board, but once a sufficient amount has fallen it serves as the great equalizer. When it melts you'll see mud and remember the things that were buried, but for the time being there are no worries in your heart or your head.

I know, I know.

All my favorite pens are dying. It's like losing friends. So sad.