(Christopher's Restaurant, Mass. Ave. at Porter Square, Cambridge, MA) Friday, April 21, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Detention Journal, part five
I’m starting to fall right into their trap. They want this drab room to demoralize me . . . and it’s working. There’s a special kind of horribleness to it.
Part of it’s the lighting. In the regular classrooms, they have these same ugly fluorescent lights. They give off that weird, unnatural light, and they have this way of making this strange buzz that you can hear whenever things get really quiet. And things are supposed to be quiet in here, so it’s hard to miss that buzzzzzzzzzzz all day.
But at least in the other classrooms we also have windows so we can be reminded of the sun. And that reminds us of life. It’s the kind of light that first encouraged things to quiver to life in the primordial soup, after all.
But forget about it here. In here, they try to wipe out all hints of life-giving sunlight. They’ve actually painted over the glass! So not only are we denied the distraction of seeing the outside world, but we can’t even sense the sun. It could be nighttime out there. There might not even be an outside world anymore. We could be floating in space for all I know. I don’t have any evidence that the rest of the world is still there.
Some philosophies would say that it’s not there, because I’m not observing it anymore. Right now, those philosophies are very convincing. And not at all comforting.
You know, I’ve never played hooky before, and I end up here because I’ve been so damn good all my life. When I got home after the attendance office figured out our whole school-ditching scheme, I was ready for them. I know how to act contrite and play the good girl, but my parents must have been studying my book of tactics. So they go, “You want us to believe you’re an adult, so that’s the way we’re going to treat you. You make your decisions, you deal with the results.”
That’s why they didn’t even try to keep me out of detention. But otherwise they didn’t punish me at all. Instead, they just let me know that they now trust me just a little bit less. “If you want to regain our trust, you have to earn it,” my dad said. “We’re not going to punish you like a little kid.” Mom agreed. “You’re smart enough to understand that actions have consequences,” she said.
What do I do with that? I couldn’t even go off and feel angry and superior after all that. So I ended up just sitting in the dark in my room, listening to Fiona Apple sounding about as morose and hollow as I did. I think it was the creepiest, most subtle punishment I’ve ever had.
What’s worse, in my guilt I offered to cook dinner tomorrow night, so now there’s that joy to look forward to. Do you know how hard it is to feed former Midwesterners who no longer eat meat but still have a craving for all the horrible foods they grew up on? Fresh, light, and healthy foods are an insult to them. How much can you really do when your essential ingredients are potatoes, cheese, and cream of mushroom soup?
Whoa! News flash! It seems like I’ve made an ass out of “u” and “me”! Remember my new best friend, with the beads in her hair and the attitude and the humming? When we went to lunch, I got a chance to get a close look at her, and . . . she’s a guy! A total freak of a guy, sure, but definitely not female by nature. I have no idea where he got his personal sense of style, but I really think I can be forgiven for making a mistake.
Still, I don’t think things will ever be same between us. He led me on, and now he’s taken away my friend. All the humming games in the world can’t make up for it. But I still hope he’ll try.
Part of it’s the lighting. In the regular classrooms, they have these same ugly fluorescent lights. They give off that weird, unnatural light, and they have this way of making this strange buzz that you can hear whenever things get really quiet. And things are supposed to be quiet in here, so it’s hard to miss that buzzzzzzzzzzz all day.
But at least in the other classrooms we also have windows so we can be reminded of the sun. And that reminds us of life. It’s the kind of light that first encouraged things to quiver to life in the primordial soup, after all.
But forget about it here. In here, they try to wipe out all hints of life-giving sunlight. They’ve actually painted over the glass! So not only are we denied the distraction of seeing the outside world, but we can’t even sense the sun. It could be nighttime out there. There might not even be an outside world anymore. We could be floating in space for all I know. I don’t have any evidence that the rest of the world is still there.
Some philosophies would say that it’s not there, because I’m not observing it anymore. Right now, those philosophies are very convincing. And not at all comforting.
You know, I’ve never played hooky before, and I end up here because I’ve been so damn good all my life. When I got home after the attendance office figured out our whole school-ditching scheme, I was ready for them. I know how to act contrite and play the good girl, but my parents must have been studying my book of tactics. So they go, “You want us to believe you’re an adult, so that’s the way we’re going to treat you. You make your decisions, you deal with the results.”
That’s why they didn’t even try to keep me out of detention. But otherwise they didn’t punish me at all. Instead, they just let me know that they now trust me just a little bit less. “If you want to regain our trust, you have to earn it,” my dad said. “We’re not going to punish you like a little kid.” Mom agreed. “You’re smart enough to understand that actions have consequences,” she said.
What do I do with that? I couldn’t even go off and feel angry and superior after all that. So I ended up just sitting in the dark in my room, listening to Fiona Apple sounding about as morose and hollow as I did. I think it was the creepiest, most subtle punishment I’ve ever had.
What’s worse, in my guilt I offered to cook dinner tomorrow night, so now there’s that joy to look forward to. Do you know how hard it is to feed former Midwesterners who no longer eat meat but still have a craving for all the horrible foods they grew up on? Fresh, light, and healthy foods are an insult to them. How much can you really do when your essential ingredients are potatoes, cheese, and cream of mushroom soup?
Whoa! News flash! It seems like I’ve made an ass out of “u” and “me”! Remember my new best friend, with the beads in her hair and the attitude and the humming? When we went to lunch, I got a chance to get a close look at her, and . . . she’s a guy! A total freak of a guy, sure, but definitely not female by nature. I have no idea where he got his personal sense of style, but I really think I can be forgiven for making a mistake.
Still, I don’t think things will ever be same between us. He led me on, and now he’s taken away my friend. All the humming games in the world can’t make up for it. But I still hope he’ll try.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Pancakes Dunst Hears Voices
Pancakes could hear her parents arguing. If she had asked, she knew, they would have said they were “having a discussion.” But their discussions sounded a lot like arguments to her, even if they weren’t all that loud. In discussions, people didn’t keep saying opposite things. They agreed about things a lot more. And nobody ever talked with their mouths half-closed like they were trying not to yell.
The reason she could hear their discussion wasn’t because they were being loud. It was because she had discovered a few months earlier that if she crawled into the large storage closet around the corner from the master bedroom, she could make her way all the way to the back and hear everything that was going on in there. One of the heating ducts to the master bedroom ran through part of the closet, and as long as the heat wasn’t on, the duct picked up the room’s sound. The only trick was getting out of the closet and back down the hall to her bedroom when her parents came out of their room and went looking for her. She hadn’t been caught so far, although a couple of times she’d been in such a hurry that she banged into the closet door handle and bruised her shoulder.
Right now her parents were arguing about her, or rather something that she had been playing with. A few days earlier, she had discovered a big deck of colorful cards in the house library. The cards were larger than regular playing cards, and there were more of them than the usual fifty-two. They had a lot of strange pictures of people and creatures on them. She had taken the deck out of their box and spread them out on the floor, looking at all the pictures and trying to figure out what they were for. All the cards were different, and she liked looking at them and making up stories about what was going on in each one. Knights rode horses and ships sailed into the distance. Kings and queens stared out at her. There were townspeople and people who lived in castles and all kinds of animals. Later when her father found her there on the carpet in the library, he explained that they were tarot cards. He said that some people used them to tell fortunes.
Pancakes felt disappointed when her father admitted that he couldn’t tell the future himself. There was a small booklet of instructions, and he paged through it for a few minutes, but after a while he told her it was a little too involved. Pancakes didn’t know what that meant. Involved with what? So Emiliano explained that telling the future with the cards was complicated. Every card meant something different, and they also meant different things depending on how you arranged them. Most of all, he told her, using the cards meant you had to study lots and lots of rules. That was enough for her. Rules meant not doing what she wanted, and she didn’t see any point in that.
Still, the cards were interesting, and Pancakes thought she might be able to figure out how to work them if she just thought about it for a while. She too the deck to her playroom, and every so often she took them out of their box, ignored the instruction booklet, and started laying them out in different patterns. She liked the storybook people from the kingdoms in the cards, but she grew more interested in the stranger cards. A big tower with a lightning bolt hitting it and a guy falling out. Some magical man with a wand or a candle or something. Flying people, Egyptian people, floating cups, people with swords. Every card had its own story, and she liked trying to figure out what was going on in them. And she really, really liked all the animals. It reminded her of the trip her class had taken to the zoo. Too bad the cards didn’t have any monkeys, though.
When her mother found Pancakes playing with the cards, however, she got upset. She took them away and asked where she’d gotten them. Pancakes had no idea why her mother was upset. Because of cards? It made her kind of mad, especially since Lorinda hadn’t been home all that long and she was already going around making rules as usual. “Dad let me,” she said. “I didn’t do anything.”
That had led to the present situation, with Emiliano and Lorinda “discussing” the matter in their bedroom while Pancakes listened from the closet.
“They’re just symbols, Lorinda. A bunch of pictures,” her father said. The sound was a little muffled. At first she though he’d said, “A bunch of pigtails.”
“Well, I know it sounds provincial, but I don’t like the fact that our daughter is dabbling in the occult,” her mother replied. Pancakes had a harder time with the end of that sentence. Something about a colt? Because there were horses on the cards? Horses weren’t bad. She knew some girls who even had their own horses, and no one got upset about that.
“She doesn’t even use any of the spreads or the interpretations,” her father said. “She just likes looking at the pictures.”
“And that’s fine,” her mother said. “But I don’t think she should be looking at some of those pictures. The devil? Death? She’s too young for those things, Emil.” Pancakes was surprised to hear this, and she wished she’d paid more attention to both of those cards. If she was too young for them, they must be a lot more interesting than she realized.
Emiliano sighed. Pancakes could tell it was his upset-sigh. He usually did that right before he told her that he’d had enough, and she always wished he had a sigh that meant he’d almost had enough so that she could stop whatever she was doing right before it was too late. “You’re coming in a little late for this kind of thing,” he said.
Lorinda paused. “What?” Pancakes recognized that “what” too. This discussion was getting a lot more arguey all of a sudden.
“For this level of parenting,” Emiliano said. “I’m not saying that you’re wrong about the tarot cards, but I never knew you felt that way.”
Now Lorinda sighed. It was a loud one. “Well, Pancakes hasn’t played with fortune-telling games before. Otherwise it might have come up.”
“But it wouldn’t have,” Emiliano said. “Because in all likelihood, you wouldn’t have been here to say anything about it. Pancakes could have been breathing the fumes in the cave of the Oracles for weeks at a time. Unless I called and told you, how the hell would you ever know?”
Pancakes didn’t realize the discussion was now over, but she knew it as soon as the bedroom door slammed shut and she heard her mother’s shoes clack angrily down the stairs. She really wished she hadn’t had her ear up to the duct at the time.
The reason she could hear their discussion wasn’t because they were being loud. It was because she had discovered a few months earlier that if she crawled into the large storage closet around the corner from the master bedroom, she could make her way all the way to the back and hear everything that was going on in there. One of the heating ducts to the master bedroom ran through part of the closet, and as long as the heat wasn’t on, the duct picked up the room’s sound. The only trick was getting out of the closet and back down the hall to her bedroom when her parents came out of their room and went looking for her. She hadn’t been caught so far, although a couple of times she’d been in such a hurry that she banged into the closet door handle and bruised her shoulder.
Right now her parents were arguing about her, or rather something that she had been playing with. A few days earlier, she had discovered a big deck of colorful cards in the house library. The cards were larger than regular playing cards, and there were more of them than the usual fifty-two. They had a lot of strange pictures of people and creatures on them. She had taken the deck out of their box and spread them out on the floor, looking at all the pictures and trying to figure out what they were for. All the cards were different, and she liked looking at them and making up stories about what was going on in each one. Knights rode horses and ships sailed into the distance. Kings and queens stared out at her. There were townspeople and people who lived in castles and all kinds of animals. Later when her father found her there on the carpet in the library, he explained that they were tarot cards. He said that some people used them to tell fortunes.
Pancakes felt disappointed when her father admitted that he couldn’t tell the future himself. There was a small booklet of instructions, and he paged through it for a few minutes, but after a while he told her it was a little too involved. Pancakes didn’t know what that meant. Involved with what? So Emiliano explained that telling the future with the cards was complicated. Every card meant something different, and they also meant different things depending on how you arranged them. Most of all, he told her, using the cards meant you had to study lots and lots of rules. That was enough for her. Rules meant not doing what she wanted, and she didn’t see any point in that.
Still, the cards were interesting, and Pancakes thought she might be able to figure out how to work them if she just thought about it for a while. She too the deck to her playroom, and every so often she took them out of their box, ignored the instruction booklet, and started laying them out in different patterns. She liked the storybook people from the kingdoms in the cards, but she grew more interested in the stranger cards. A big tower with a lightning bolt hitting it and a guy falling out. Some magical man with a wand or a candle or something. Flying people, Egyptian people, floating cups, people with swords. Every card had its own story, and she liked trying to figure out what was going on in them. And she really, really liked all the animals. It reminded her of the trip her class had taken to the zoo. Too bad the cards didn’t have any monkeys, though.
When her mother found Pancakes playing with the cards, however, she got upset. She took them away and asked where she’d gotten them. Pancakes had no idea why her mother was upset. Because of cards? It made her kind of mad, especially since Lorinda hadn’t been home all that long and she was already going around making rules as usual. “Dad let me,” she said. “I didn’t do anything.”
That had led to the present situation, with Emiliano and Lorinda “discussing” the matter in their bedroom while Pancakes listened from the closet.
“They’re just symbols, Lorinda. A bunch of pictures,” her father said. The sound was a little muffled. At first she though he’d said, “A bunch of pigtails.”
“Well, I know it sounds provincial, but I don’t like the fact that our daughter is dabbling in the occult,” her mother replied. Pancakes had a harder time with the end of that sentence. Something about a colt? Because there were horses on the cards? Horses weren’t bad. She knew some girls who even had their own horses, and no one got upset about that.
“She doesn’t even use any of the spreads or the interpretations,” her father said. “She just likes looking at the pictures.”
“And that’s fine,” her mother said. “But I don’t think she should be looking at some of those pictures. The devil? Death? She’s too young for those things, Emil.” Pancakes was surprised to hear this, and she wished she’d paid more attention to both of those cards. If she was too young for them, they must be a lot more interesting than she realized.
Emiliano sighed. Pancakes could tell it was his upset-sigh. He usually did that right before he told her that he’d had enough, and she always wished he had a sigh that meant he’d almost had enough so that she could stop whatever she was doing right before it was too late. “You’re coming in a little late for this kind of thing,” he said.
Lorinda paused. “What?” Pancakes recognized that “what” too. This discussion was getting a lot more arguey all of a sudden.
“For this level of parenting,” Emiliano said. “I’m not saying that you’re wrong about the tarot cards, but I never knew you felt that way.”
Now Lorinda sighed. It was a loud one. “Well, Pancakes hasn’t played with fortune-telling games before. Otherwise it might have come up.”
“But it wouldn’t have,” Emiliano said. “Because in all likelihood, you wouldn’t have been here to say anything about it. Pancakes could have been breathing the fumes in the cave of the Oracles for weeks at a time. Unless I called and told you, how the hell would you ever know?”
Pancakes didn’t realize the discussion was now over, but she knew it as soon as the bedroom door slammed shut and she heard her mother’s shoes clack angrily down the stairs. She really wished she hadn’t had her ear up to the duct at the time.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Monday, April 03, 2006
who speaks for the pigeons?
I have no idea what's going on here. I posted a pic of this sign back in mid-February, and now it seems to have become a favorite bulletin board for the activist-minded population of Cambridge. Which is to say Cambridge. These come from March 5 and March 21, respectively. Semioticians, please take note. There's a dissertation in there somewhere.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Behavior Unbecoming a Grade Schooler
Dear Mr. Dunst:
Please call me at your earliest convenience about arranging a meeting to discuss Pancakes's recent behavior in class. I don't mean to alarm you; she hasn't been misbehaving, exactly. But some of her responses of late have indicated that she may require a higher level of interactive teaching than we at Opal Anderson's Charter School for the Creatively Accelerated are prepared to give.
For instance, she has begun to incorporate what I believe some might interpret as performance art into her show-and-tell projects. Recently, the object she chose to share with the class involved a garish statuette of Bacchus that she had taken to various downtown office buildings and tried to get admitted for meetings with CEOs of major corporations. The photographs she took of baffled security guards and personal assistants confronting the ceramic figure were well executed, especially for an eight-year-old, but next to Billy Tompkinsonstein's new Tonka truck, her contribution seemed inappropriate and avant garde.
Additionally, she has been answering roll call by standing at attention by her desk, then offering up a quick aria. I congratulate you on her well-developed intelligence and fine singing voice, but I have to consider the disruptive effect such behavior has on the other children. It either baffles them entirely, or it spurs them to adopt such methods themselves. Melanie Grantalano answered a question about a story we were discussing with a few lines of gangsta rap last week. When I tried to admonish her for it (I should mention that the language she employed was entirely unsuitable for school-age children), Pancakes defended her by saying that she was merely “attempting to employ her skills across disciplines.”
These are just the most recent examples of what I'm afraid has become fairly regular and untenable behavior at this institution. I urge you to call me as soon as possible so that we may sit down to discuss better options for Pancakes's future than we here at this school are equipped to supply.
Sincerely,
Edna St. Vincent Carruthers Baxendale-on-Heath
Second Grade Instructor
Please call me at your earliest convenience about arranging a meeting to discuss Pancakes's recent behavior in class. I don't mean to alarm you; she hasn't been misbehaving, exactly. But some of her responses of late have indicated that she may require a higher level of interactive teaching than we at Opal Anderson's Charter School for the Creatively Accelerated are prepared to give.
For instance, she has begun to incorporate what I believe some might interpret as performance art into her show-and-tell projects. Recently, the object she chose to share with the class involved a garish statuette of Bacchus that she had taken to various downtown office buildings and tried to get admitted for meetings with CEOs of major corporations. The photographs she took of baffled security guards and personal assistants confronting the ceramic figure were well executed, especially for an eight-year-old, but next to Billy Tompkinsonstein's new Tonka truck, her contribution seemed inappropriate and avant garde.
Additionally, she has been answering roll call by standing at attention by her desk, then offering up a quick aria. I congratulate you on her well-developed intelligence and fine singing voice, but I have to consider the disruptive effect such behavior has on the other children. It either baffles them entirely, or it spurs them to adopt such methods themselves. Melanie Grantalano answered a question about a story we were discussing with a few lines of gangsta rap last week. When I tried to admonish her for it (I should mention that the language she employed was entirely unsuitable for school-age children), Pancakes defended her by saying that she was merely “attempting to employ her skills across disciplines.”
These are just the most recent examples of what I'm afraid has become fairly regular and untenable behavior at this institution. I urge you to call me as soon as possible so that we may sit down to discuss better options for Pancakes's future than we here at this school are equipped to supply.
Sincerely,
Edna St. Vincent Carruthers Baxendale-on-Heath
Second Grade Instructor
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Working Title, part 2
[previous chapter]
It’s early days yet. I know that. And if I didn’t know it, I’d certainly have to suspect it, because everybody around here keeps telling me that. “Just wait,” they say knowingly. “You’ll be busy soon enough. Then you’ll wish you had less to do.”
Very inspiring. These are the people I work with. My new colleagues. The people who are going to teach me all the basics about my chosen profession. And every single one of them has this barely-disguised malicious glee in their voices whenever they give me what I charitably call “advice.”
God, it’s not like I have nothing to do. I think what they mean is, “Pretty soon, you’ll be so swamped or worn down or apathetic that you won’t go asking questions, pointing out inconsistencies, or appearing to have something of a pleasant day.”
But seriously, there something not right here. Yeah, some people are seriously overworked. Take the scant junior-level staff. We young and wide-eyed few seem to be cranking on stuff much of the day. Karen may be in there sighing and sipping tea, but she’s getting stuff done almost every minute she’s here. And the couple of people working production never seem all that idle. They’re quietly working on repetitive-stress injuries and burning their retinas with impressions of their Mac screens.
But the editors? Half the freaking day on the phone! And not just to agents and authors, as they would have you believe. Not unless they’re throwing a lot of business toward people on their alma maters’ alumni committees. Or the to their significant others. Or to their doctors, friends, or credit card companies. Yeah, I realize I’m new to publishing, but I’m not new to this world.
It’s early days yet. I know that. And if I didn’t know it, I’d certainly have to suspect it, because everybody around here keeps telling me that. “Just wait,” they say knowingly. “You’ll be busy soon enough. Then you’ll wish you had less to do.”
Very inspiring. These are the people I work with. My new colleagues. The people who are going to teach me all the basics about my chosen profession. And every single one of them has this barely-disguised malicious glee in their voices whenever they give me what I charitably call “advice.”
God, it’s not like I have nothing to do. I think what they mean is, “Pretty soon, you’ll be so swamped or worn down or apathetic that you won’t go asking questions, pointing out inconsistencies, or appearing to have something of a pleasant day.”
But seriously, there something not right here. Yeah, some people are seriously overworked. Take the scant junior-level staff. We young and wide-eyed few seem to be cranking on stuff much of the day. Karen may be in there sighing and sipping tea, but she’s getting stuff done almost every minute she’s here. And the couple of people working production never seem all that idle. They’re quietly working on repetitive-stress injuries and burning their retinas with impressions of their Mac screens.
But the editors? Half the freaking day on the phone! And not just to agents and authors, as they would have you believe. Not unless they’re throwing a lot of business toward people on their alma maters’ alumni committees. Or the to their significant others. Or to their doctors, friends, or credit card companies. Yeah, I realize I’m new to publishing, but I’m not new to this world.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
p.s.p. (public service pancakes)
Again, I feel I must do something for those who seem to be stumbling around all the wrong places looking for something they suppose I can provide. Honestly, at this rate, I think I might take a shortcut to blog greatness by specializing in the myth, lore, and love of panfried bread. That's what people love, worldwide.
Fine, folks. There are your pancakes. A picture of pancakes. A photograph of perfectly cooked, overly buttered, and utterly inviting pancakes. I am the Batter Ambassador, bringing the world closer to itself through heavy breakfast carbs. Get an eyeful!
And you're welcome.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Working Title, part 1
I have a degree, I have a cubicle, and I have a very slow PC.
This is what I’ve worked toward for nearly a decade and a half. You can almost hear the angels singing on high, can’t you?
Karen has the cubicle next to me. I can hear her sigh at least every eight minutes or so. I think that may be how she punctuates the end of most of her tasks. Type up a letter. Sigh. Take a phone call. Sigh. Review a chapter of edited copy. Sigh. Process a payment request on a new book. Sigh. It seems to be how she measures out most of her day.
She also goes to make cups of tea about half a dozen times during the day. I don’t know if she sighs then, because what passes for a lunchroom around here is down the hallway, well out of hearing. But I hear her get up and tread down the hall away from me, and then I hear her tread back about five minutes later, her spoon tink-tink-tinking against the side of her mug as she stirs a dollop of honey into the herbal mixture. She sits. The earthenware mug clunks on top of her maple-veneer desk. Then she half-sighs, although during teatime it sounds almost like satisfaction rather than frustration. But only during teatime.
Not counting her internship, Karen has been in publishing for two years. I’m pretty sure, though I’m still learning, that she didn’t bring the sigh with her. I think she got that here. I’m scared that’s what’s in store for me.
More on all that later. There are four stacks of unsolicited manuscripts in the empty cubicle in the corner. Someone—I don’t know who—tacked up a strip of paper on the outside of the cubicle. Printed in 128-point type—what is it, Copperplate Gothic Bold?—are the words The Doldrums.
Oh, how right they are. Those four stacks are each about a Billy Barty high. And God knows how long they’ve been piling up. Now it’s my job to sort through them, log them, and respond to them. And that’s just one of my back-burner tasks. I have about a hundred and fifty other chores that take precedence. Meanwhile, the Billys just keep getting taller day by day.
So, to answer the question that I now imagine someone reading this might ask: No, I don’t really have time to be writing this kind of stuff on the side. But I really, really have to. I just have to carve out a little time for myself. Otherwise there’s a perpetual sigh out there waiting for me.
In the past I’ve always found this kind of outlet the best way to keep myself from, you know, jamming a fork into my eye at times. If I can just have a little creative outlet, I can probably deal with all the mind-numbing tasks they pile on me.
And, man, they’ve been piling them on. I thought I was the new guy! It’s been a month, and I’m already wondering how this little publishing company has limped along until now with all this stuff going undone. What kind of creaky, broken-down wagon have I hitched myself to?
All right. I really have to get to these response letters that Carrie wants me to write. She’s been dropping the query letters with her extensive Post-It Note comments in my inbox for the past couple of hours. I’m already learning to hate the sight of yellow squares of paper. They have yet to signify anything but drudgery for me.
Oh, and there goes Karen with the sighing again. Maybe I’ll join her this afternoon. Sighing in stereo. The editorial assistant anthem.
This is what I’ve worked toward for nearly a decade and a half. You can almost hear the angels singing on high, can’t you?
Karen has the cubicle next to me. I can hear her sigh at least every eight minutes or so. I think that may be how she punctuates the end of most of her tasks. Type up a letter. Sigh. Take a phone call. Sigh. Review a chapter of edited copy. Sigh. Process a payment request on a new book. Sigh. It seems to be how she measures out most of her day.
She also goes to make cups of tea about half a dozen times during the day. I don’t know if she sighs then, because what passes for a lunchroom around here is down the hallway, well out of hearing. But I hear her get up and tread down the hall away from me, and then I hear her tread back about five minutes later, her spoon tink-tink-tinking against the side of her mug as she stirs a dollop of honey into the herbal mixture. She sits. The earthenware mug clunks on top of her maple-veneer desk. Then she half-sighs, although during teatime it sounds almost like satisfaction rather than frustration. But only during teatime.
Not counting her internship, Karen has been in publishing for two years. I’m pretty sure, though I’m still learning, that she didn’t bring the sigh with her. I think she got that here. I’m scared that’s what’s in store for me.
More on all that later. There are four stacks of unsolicited manuscripts in the empty cubicle in the corner. Someone—I don’t know who—tacked up a strip of paper on the outside of the cubicle. Printed in 128-point type—what is it, Copperplate Gothic Bold?—are the words The Doldrums.
Oh, how right they are. Those four stacks are each about a Billy Barty high. And God knows how long they’ve been piling up. Now it’s my job to sort through them, log them, and respond to them. And that’s just one of my back-burner tasks. I have about a hundred and fifty other chores that take precedence. Meanwhile, the Billys just keep getting taller day by day.
So, to answer the question that I now imagine someone reading this might ask: No, I don’t really have time to be writing this kind of stuff on the side. But I really, really have to. I just have to carve out a little time for myself. Otherwise there’s a perpetual sigh out there waiting for me.
In the past I’ve always found this kind of outlet the best way to keep myself from, you know, jamming a fork into my eye at times. If I can just have a little creative outlet, I can probably deal with all the mind-numbing tasks they pile on me.
And, man, they’ve been piling them on. I thought I was the new guy! It’s been a month, and I’m already wondering how this little publishing company has limped along until now with all this stuff going undone. What kind of creaky, broken-down wagon have I hitched myself to?
All right. I really have to get to these response letters that Carrie wants me to write. She’s been dropping the query letters with her extensive Post-It Note comments in my inbox for the past couple of hours. I’m already learning to hate the sight of yellow squares of paper. They have yet to signify anything but drudgery for me.
Oh, and there goes Karen with the sighing again. Maybe I’ll join her this afternoon. Sighing in stereo. The editorial assistant anthem.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Monday, March 06, 2006
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Detention Journal, part four
My new best friend with the beads in her hair is still back there. She started this new game a little while ago where she hums some song really, really softly and then slowly gets louder and louder. The farther away you are from her, the longer it takes until the volume increases to where you can hear her. As soon as the teacher reacts to the sound, she stops. Then she waits a while and then starts all over again.
This is the third time she’s done it, and I’m just starting to pick up a little tune that’s very similar to a very “empowering” Avril Lavigne song about how she didn’t give it up to whatever mean boy she’s just been dumped by. Or that she’s dumped. Whatever. It can’t be easy being an angry hot girl.
Anyway, my friend’s humming and she’s humming and she’s … ah! Just stopped. The teacher’s been staring at us for almost two minutes, trying to figure out who’s messing with her. My new best friend’s beads make not a sound. She’s awesome.
The other notable person in the room is this weird nerdy guy sitting right up front. I can’t tell what kind of identity he’s going for. He wants to be a punk, but he wants to be hip-hop too. In truth he’s neither. He has really scraggly long hair and huge glasses and the kind of extremely unfortunate acne that hits some kids superhard once their hormones start messing with them. I think he’s trying on different things to see where he fits. I’m sure he’s not done trying yet.
He tried to sit in the back of the room at first, but we all got rearranged as soon as the bell rang, and it was his dumb luck to get put in the very front. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s always the kind of luck he has, dumb and unfortunate.
I don’t mean that in a mean way. That’s just the impression he gives. Like the way his whole body has an uncomfortable, burdened look. His shoulders are hunched over like he has a huge weight across them. And he sits so awkwardly that it makes you think he’s never sat any way that wasn’t awkward. He’s all sprawled out, slouched way down in his seat to where his butt’s almost completely off the desk and he’s practically sitting on his back.
He’s wearing dirty, torn jeans and a cheap, oversized sports jacket, the kind of jacket a young b-boy might get if he asked his grandparents for it for Christmas. It has some brand name sprawled across it in hard-to-read lettering, and that’s because it’s supposed to look like a name you’ve heard of, but it really isn’t. There’s something very thin and vinyl and bargain-store about the jacket. Plus, it’s dirty enough that you can tell he wears it all the time.
I don’t think the guy’s done any homework the whole time we’ve been in here. He just sits there and draws pictures that look kind of like his best pen-and-ink renderings of acid trips. There’s so much ink on the pages of his notebook that the paper’s kind of crinkly and heavy. And he’s got these smears of blue ballpoint pen ink on the sides of his hands from where they’ve rubbed the pictures while he’s painstakingly coloring in all the blobs and explosions he’s drawing. But he hasn’t stopped drawing for even a second unless he’s been shaking down the ink in his pen or turning a page. He just draws and draws. Maybe that’s the way the world looks to him. Who am I to say he’s wrong?
This is the third time she’s done it, and I’m just starting to pick up a little tune that’s very similar to a very “empowering” Avril Lavigne song about how she didn’t give it up to whatever mean boy she’s just been dumped by. Or that she’s dumped. Whatever. It can’t be easy being an angry hot girl.
Anyway, my friend’s humming and she’s humming and she’s … ah! Just stopped. The teacher’s been staring at us for almost two minutes, trying to figure out who’s messing with her. My new best friend’s beads make not a sound. She’s awesome.
The other notable person in the room is this weird nerdy guy sitting right up front. I can’t tell what kind of identity he’s going for. He wants to be a punk, but he wants to be hip-hop too. In truth he’s neither. He has really scraggly long hair and huge glasses and the kind of extremely unfortunate acne that hits some kids superhard once their hormones start messing with them. I think he’s trying on different things to see where he fits. I’m sure he’s not done trying yet.
He tried to sit in the back of the room at first, but we all got rearranged as soon as the bell rang, and it was his dumb luck to get put in the very front. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s always the kind of luck he has, dumb and unfortunate.
I don’t mean that in a mean way. That’s just the impression he gives. Like the way his whole body has an uncomfortable, burdened look. His shoulders are hunched over like he has a huge weight across them. And he sits so awkwardly that it makes you think he’s never sat any way that wasn’t awkward. He’s all sprawled out, slouched way down in his seat to where his butt’s almost completely off the desk and he’s practically sitting on his back.
He’s wearing dirty, torn jeans and a cheap, oversized sports jacket, the kind of jacket a young b-boy might get if he asked his grandparents for it for Christmas. It has some brand name sprawled across it in hard-to-read lettering, and that’s because it’s supposed to look like a name you’ve heard of, but it really isn’t. There’s something very thin and vinyl and bargain-store about the jacket. Plus, it’s dirty enough that you can tell he wears it all the time.
I don’t think the guy’s done any homework the whole time we’ve been in here. He just sits there and draws pictures that look kind of like his best pen-and-ink renderings of acid trips. There’s so much ink on the pages of his notebook that the paper’s kind of crinkly and heavy. And he’s got these smears of blue ballpoint pen ink on the sides of his hands from where they’ve rubbed the pictures while he’s painstakingly coloring in all the blobs and explosions he’s drawing. But he hasn’t stopped drawing for even a second unless he’s been shaking down the ink in his pen or turning a page. He just draws and draws. Maybe that’s the way the world looks to him. Who am I to say he’s wrong?
Thursday, March 02, 2006
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