about critique

I have decided I was not going to be a workshop leader. I'd rather be the host of a dinner, or the usher at the theatre. I'm experiencing existential doubt: what is it, exactly, that I get from meeting with other writers? What is it that they get?

"Writers are rarely the social type, and may even resist joining a group, for what good would that be to them and their writing? I speculate that the benefit of attending a group meeting can only be measured by the motivation to write afterwards. How do we do that?"

Read more in this essay I wrote: critique.pdf

I'm more inclined to think that a writer wanting feedback should conduct his own workshop and expect every kind of response, laudatory as well as offensive. A writer who just wants to test the waters, i.e. to check if people fall asleep or look puzzled after a reading of his work, should be able to do that as well. It's more a matter of making it clear up front.

For a real workshop, one can check the local listings for classes. I see there's one at SFSU, for example.

Celebrity

a dialog exercise... Important to maintain point of view.

“Shouldn’t you pretend he’s just someone?”

“Do you think he’s noticed we’re checking him out?”

“I think these people are oblivious to their surroundings. It would drive them crazy to pay attention to stalkers like us.”

“We’re not stalking him.”

“OK, technically I guess we’d have to be hiding. We’re wannabees. We’re his loyal followers and admirers.”

“How can we take our minds away from him?”

“Why should we take our minds away from him? He’s good conversation, as long as we don’t degrade it into gossip.”

“Degrade?”

“You know what I mean. It would be nice to talk about the beautiful man at that table, about two tables away from us in a diagonal behind my right. You just made it obvious that you’re looking at him.”

“That woman behind you is really big.”

“We’ll have to trade places. We could pretend that we want to eat the second half of each other’s entrée.”

“We usually just reach with our forks.”

“I’d just feed you from my fork, honey.”

“OK, switch.”

“Oh, now I see.”

“Oh, now you see. Now I need a mirror, like in the movies.”

“So, apart from the fact that we’d have to convert him to homosexuality, how could we get him to pay attention to us?”

“As in: get him to our apartment? The bed isn’t made. One of us would need to go ahead and change the sheets while the other entertains him.”

“I was thinking about seducing him first.”

“Do you think the woman he’s with is just a cover?”

“Oh yeah. He’s one of us. Or he’s not interested in her at all.”

“What are they talking about?”

“I think he’s saying there are two guys he likes, at that table behind the large woman.”

“No kidding? He’s been looking at us?”

“Yeah, I think so. Don’t turn your head. Don’t!”

“The good old trick of dropping one’s fork. It always works. He’s not staring at us at all. Stop glancing in his direction. Look at me in the eyes.”

“What? Are you trying to seduce me?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“You just said your bed needs clean sheets. You’ve got work to do before you get me into your bed.”

“It’s also your bed, remember?”

“But if it’s not good enough for him, it isn’t good enough for me. Try harder.”

“OK, I’ll get new sheets while you sit in the living room by the fire.”

“Patiently staring at the wall…”

“No, because I will have massaged your shoulders to sink you into the velour of our couch, and your eyes will be closed.”

“Mmmh, I’m starting to like the idea.”

“I’ll be back to you after a few minutes, and my hands will start reaching through the openings in your clothes.”

“Will you be naked already?”

“Yeah, but your eyes will still be closed. I will keep them closed by kissing them as I peruse my lips to feel your face.”

“Is that you pulling my shirt off?”

“Yes, honey. You can pull me over from the back of the couch, if you have the strength.”

“I do. Why does taking shoes and pants and underwear off always feel like an intermission?”

“Because we haven’t gotten ourselves to wear skirts and dresses. But I’ll get you naked before you know it.”

“I like it when you suck under my ear.”

“I like leaving my mark on you.”

“Will you gentlemen want to see our dessert menu?”

“Oh, we were just talking about that.”

“Yeah, we’ll have dessert at home.”

“Yeah…”

Dreams on January 26, 2007

In my dream I am a married mother of two. I am dying of cancer. I have a wish to move to Santa Barbara. And to live alone. Jerry and Eliot are my friends. They, too, are moving to Santa Barbara. We find us a house in a deserted mall. It’s spooky. The groundskeeper is a Russian woman who has lost a huge amount of weight. You can see it in the way she walks. The house sits on a beach. There is a a small bedroom with a cot, a kitchen. Suddenly I insist that my sons live with me. Jerry tells me all the different names of the neighborhoods as we drive around. I like this place. I am going to die here. We go on. The house is simple. I have my peace, and when I do not desire it I turn on the TV or the radio. My husband knows not to ask me questions. There aren’t answers. This is how I wish to spend the rest of my days.

Another dream. I am in India. I don’t know why. I am very homesick. I think I am also dying in this dream. I see many colors. Every color. I can see the sun. The rain has stopped. That is good. Because it has rained for so many days.

Lux

Devil's Night is a name associated with October 30, the night before Halloween, particularly in Detroit, Michigan. … Property owners unable to sell in the rapidly declining Detroit city housing market would use this night as an excuse to burn down their homes to collect insurance money.
–Wikipedia


What strong slave – riddled she – of two stones born, woman-tended, warmly blesses if carefully fed.

A plane was rising overhead, full of hundreds whose journeys had come together this chill fall evening and will separate like firework sparks.

I don't know – my wit thudded off the pavement – bigfoot's shoes swinging from a power line in a logging town maybe.

We were walking to see an old skating buddy, whose occasional messages this year hinted at an almost monastic withdrawal devoted to sketching cats and hanging out at the homeless shelter.

The cats were napping at the corners though, and he offered me yerba mate with rare good cheer, while she had a shot of carrot juice colored with cochineal and saffron.

I went to the porch to decide if I wanted to smoke something.

People dressed like goblins, others in tall hats, scuttled up the little hill.

When I returned, I noticed her looking blankly past an incense burner.

You too, I said, and it was as if I was falling into the deepest of beds.

He knew, she said, that's why the cats left and the candles are lit.

I could barely turn the circle; as she prepared the oil, stars weaved slowly, like lazy clouds, like cars turning onto the bridge.

We woke in a small clearing, the sun a bright yellow lamp, words blown away like brown leaves.

For ages afterwards we refused to speak with him, because he wouldn't go to brunch; he insisted that his happiness would blow away at the sight of the converted locomotive's red plush, and that tinsel would corrupt the pure greediness of his claws.

Only Memories Are Alive

the first paragraph is my "something disgusting." The rest came up as a result of writing that paragraph.

Only Memories Are Alive

The blood no longer renewed, filtered, pumped through old veins, but still inside the closed system, coagulated. Soon maggots formed, disintegrating the skin and all protective layers of the long dead body. The soul had left the scene, and now the odor of the decomposing body attached itself to every molecule of air that had the misfortune of blowing by it. If only it could be discovered. By whom? Hikers in an expedition to the top of the hill? A lone boy scout, lost, his parents begging the Sheriff to spend the money to send a helicopter? There weren’t too many passersby, and one could argue that unwitnessed putrefaction simply amounted to a natural phenomenon. What if it weren’t buried, or burned? This body could rest in peace until it completely disintegrated into its surroundings, no longer a scene for the senses, perhaps remaining as a memory in someone’s lost mind, an unresolved case in the disappeared persons file. No murderer would be pursued, no grizzly bear moved to another location, until Habeas Corpus, and the maggots now took care of the evidence.

When asked if he had met anyone interesting recently, meaning if he was dating, John answered “no” but as it often happened to him, he remembered a guy he had seen at a social. It was one of those parties from which he always left without meeting anyone. At that party, nothing changed in the two, maybe three, hours during which he slowly walked around the mansion where it was held, looking at the rooms and the objects decorating them. There were guys talking loud in small groups, plastic cups in hand, perhaps a bit of food in a white plastic plate preventing them from gesturing. John tried once or twice to move near a group, to hear what they talked about and to make his presence felt so that the guy who had felt it would step aside and open the circle. It required extra sensorial perception to be the chosen one to let John into a group, so it rarely worked.

There was this guy, however, the one he remembered, also a loner apparently. Or so John had concluded, observing how the young man hugged the buffet table and stared at each plate as if discussing each one with an invisible friend. John had decided to approach him, for what better excuse could he invent than to seek a little hors d’oeuvre to break the ice and start a conversation. Another guy must have had the same idea at the same time, literally running to the table and practically barging in, reaching for the baby carrots with an arm too short, requiring an “excuse me” and shoulder contact. The intruder started a conversation, almost a monologue in John’s view, and dragged the man away to another room.

How could he even think that he, little John, could meet that beautiful man, now only the memory of a missed encounter? The man could be dead, for what John knew, and nobody would care. Such was the destiny of men like him, and he imagined that man to fit the same mold. At any minute of the day, therapists suggested men like them should go out and socialize, take risks, for what did they really fear? Rejection? Wasn’t it their current state of mind? They argued that if one encounter in a million led to a wonderful, lasting relationship, the risk was worth it.

In John’s view, he simply made it easier for others to win that lottery. By withdrawing from a certain loss, he made the odds better for those other guys. Yet, at the moment he was asked if he had any new dates in mind, the guy at the buffet came to mind. And if he came to mind, didn’t he exist? John imagined how their encounter could have gone, maybe now they would be thinking about moving together, maybe they would both be looking forward to a life of travel and leisure… Maybe their encounter, however brief it had been, would have changed something in their lives. Who knows, maybe that guy had been hit by a car crossing Market Street, and that wouldn’t have happened if he and John had spent five minutes together that night, shaking up all future events like dices thrown up in the air.

So it was, in John’s mind, but he stopped short of thinking he could have changed anyone’s life. These guys were a lot happier without him. They were alive and well.

National Paragraph Writing Month is almost over!

sorry for the late post...
from Pegasus books downtown Berkeley:

National Paragraph Writing Month is almost over! Email us your paragraph by Wednesday to be entered into our drawing for one of five $20 gift certificates.

http://www.pegasusbookstore.com

Creamy Never GOT Light Faster

winner of our single scene contest!

by Louis Anthes

So Creamy asks me, “You gonna finish that torta, Gloria?” She says this just as cigarette smokes comes rolling out between her lips. I give her a look for about two seconds. Skinny as all hell, Creamy smokes for lunch. She never brings her own lunch, she never has money for lunch, and ain’t nobody coming by to ask her out for lunch or nothing. She just smokes cigarettes, and hangs round me, ‘cause I rarely finish my lunches from El Farolito. It’s too much food, even the vegetarian stuff. But it’s so good that I gotta buy something over there almost everyday. I take it out, snack a bit and eat the rest on my afternoon break, when I’m really hungry, unless Creamy has nobody else to mooch from, then sometimes she finds me, and for those times I break on a diet soda cause I’m on a real diet. But I ain’t drinking a diet soda today for break. Nope. And Creamy ain’t getting my torta.

Read the rest: click here for the PDF file (prints landscape)