Who and what do you want to be in 2010 (but more importantly, why)?

Today is New Year’s Eve and like many people at this very moment, I’ve been thinking about my resolutions.  I’ve shunned this tradition the past couple years because for some reason – if I clearly stated I was going to do something – the likelihood of it not happening was even higher than if I had not said anything at all.

I enjoyed a pretty successful first year out of college but like many, the recession soon found me and my hopes for steady work and monetary stability were knifed in the face.  This year, I learned that “Freelancer” was just a glorified term for “Intermittently Unemployed.”  Naturally, this leant me quite a bit of time to sit on my couch and stew in my own thoughts.  It took awhile to boil down the carcass of my early twenty-something idealism, but at the end of 2009 I found myself with a rather flavorful confit of hope and aspirations.  Since I wasn’t sure where to start, I asked a handful of friends what their personal resolutions would be.  Most were pretty run-of-the-mill (you know, like “getting in shape” or “getting out of debt”) and I’m not really the biggest fan of run-of-the-mill.  I was also set on making my resolutions concrete and more specific (you know, like “double the income I had in 2009” instead of “earn more money” or “master the Arabic language” instead of “learn new stuff”).  My desire to prevent my resolution from being ill-defined was shot to death (wow, my writing is violent tonight) upon asking my friend Bryan what his resolution was going to be.

“I’m going to be more awesome.” Read more »

Bella was wandering through the forest, talking to herself as she went, till, on turning a sharp corner, she came upon two little men, so suddenly that she could not help starting back, but in another moment she recovered herself, feeling sure they that they must be real.

They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other’s neck, and though they had looked very nearly the same from far away, now that she was closer Bella could see that they were rather different indeed, for one of them very pale-skinned and had large, pointy teeth, and the other’s face was covered entirely in russet-coloured fur. “Oh, my!” Bella said to herself. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stranger-looking pair in all my life!”

The little man with the sharp teeth stood very still, and if it wasn’t for his twin distractedly scratching his own fur—”As though he has fleas!” Bella thought with a shudder—she would have quite forgot they were alive. She was just inching her way past the pair, doing her best to keep well away from the flea-ridden one, when she was startled by a voice coming from the little man with the very sharp teeth.

“My name is Edward. And this is Jacob. Who are you?” he said. “And would you tell me, please, why do you smell so very good?” Read more »

I’m suddenly fascinated with French novelist Marie Darrieussecq, not just for her work but also because of her unique approach to the writing process. In a recent talk for the Frieze Foundation (available as a free download for anyone interested), she borrowed ideas from biology, philosophy, anthropology, and astrophysics, among other seemingly unrelated disciplines, to explain the writer’s place on and in relation to the planet. While writing, she strives to achieve a state of absence in both mind and body so as to become purely a part of the earth and its processes. She says, “the earth writes through me…I really sound like a crazy person.”

Almost. But as artists, isn’t that what we do–drive ourselves crazy with our own thoughts? What so intrigued me about Darrieussecq was her extreme emphasis on awareness. She considers everything from the activities at the molecular level to the shape of the moon. They’re the sort of thoughts that tend to make a person feel very insignificant in the scheme of things. But I suppose that’s the point. Darrieussecq notes that we tend to forget we humans are merely animals, only exceptional in that we’ve reached a state of civilization wherein we have no more predators. However, she says, “in our archaic mind we are still those people in caves to escape the bears, and I also write not about that, but with that.” Word.

Darrieussecq also read from her short story “Ghost Flat (A Modern Couple),” a metaphysical and existential work which I enjoyed enormously and transcribed for you, below. She wrote the story at the request of two architects, Décosterd and Rahm, based on the “ghost apartment” they invented, an interesting space-efficient architectural design you can read more about here. The short story was published about a decade ago in Japan, and apparently isn’t available anywhere (that, or Google has failed me). After the jump, a transcript of Darrieussecq’s reading of “Ghost Flat (A Modern Couple).”

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I am utterly enthralled with Sam Shepard’s story “Four Days” in the new Paris Review. With a scene, specifically: a man is trapped inside a restaurant bathroom and is driven mad by the Shania Twain playing on the sound system all night. Despite the material being absolutely insane, it’s written quite well. And for both those reasons I wanted to share it. Excerpt after the jump. Read more »