Dear Cassia, Part II
November 16th, 2005
Dear Cassia,
It’s raining very hard in Hyde Park right now—dark, cool breeze, maybe fifty degrees—and I just got soaked to the skin, right through my shirt and undershirt and jeans, even through my sneakers and into my socks. I was coming home from dinner with my good friends Sean and Seth, compadres brave & true, and I stepped off the train into the sort of driving rain that only comes down in New England. The rain on the train falls mainly in Ed’s brain: inhospitable stuff, a real downpour. Icepicks on the scalp and a clammy hand down the back of your shirt.
So I ran three blocks to my truck and jumped inside, cut the defroster on to clear the windshield, and hauled ass for...well, not home, because my family’s not here, but at least the house where I’m staying until Friday morning. And then I was sitting in the driveway, still catching my breath, when I realized that the goddamned garbage had to be put out, and that it was raining harder than ever. Yes, your father sat and blasphemed most foully, for a good while...and then, of course, ran back and forth in the rain humping the cans to the curb. Garbage, you understand, that wasn’t even his. Of such is his life this week.
If it weren’t for the fact that I just had a wonderful day at Harvard University I’d be slap out of my mind by now, what with the isolation and boredom and loneliness and wind-sucking karma and bone-freezing wetness of this idiot trip, but I got some wonderful writing done today and I got to see one mentor and, as I mentioned, two good friends. All of whom, incidentally, told me that I seem much less stressed out than last time they saw me. Go figure, since I had to root around all over the house to find my alarm clock while I was packing for this trip. And of course, that I live in a place where I can step out on the porch and squeeze off a round whenever circumstances warrant.
But getting back to it...first I sat in a coffee shop and wrote a short story about something that happened to me at a greasy spoon diner this morning—I was eavesdropping on two recovering addicts—and then I book-shopped until I discovered to my astonishment that Harvard Square is actually a shitty place to shop for books. You can get everything, but none of it is what you want at the moment. Which is odd, even for an old head like me.
I left book shopping for dead and stopped at another coffee shop—four or five cups by now, thrumming like a tuning fork—and worked on my new novel until three. I’ve got a good scene going where an aunt is throwing a birthday party for her live-in nephew, whose dad is a junkie, and when the dad shows up there’s a bunch of uncomfortable byplay. It’s a very hard scene to write; not only are there eight characters in it, but the setting and the mood and the prose and the symbolism all have to be mixed in and reflect each other, and I keep writing paragraphs and staring at them and then cutting them. And as you can tell from my use of the present tense, I’m still working on it.
I made a quick stop at a tobacconist, i.e., a peddler of Smoke-Weed, for a bitty of the aromatic stuff for a guy who’s taught me much about fly-fishing, Don Denney. I was confused and the clerk was helpful, as follows:
Me: “Um...I need some stuff, plain vanilla, for...ah...a friend.”
The Clerk: “A friend, mmm-hmm. What does your friend like?”
Me: “No, I know what that sounds like. Really, he’s a fly-fishing buddy.”
The Clerk (smiling): “It’s no big deal, man. What does he like?”
Me: “Uh. Plain vanilla. He likes cheap vanilla stuff he gets at the drug store.”
The Clerk: “We have this stuff, House Gold. It’s good, it’s vanilla. He’ll probably like it.”
Me: “Sure. “How does it...um...work?”
The Clerk: “Well, it’s pipe tobacco.”
Me: “No, I mean the prices. I don’t know how to relate to that.”
The Clerk (with great patience): “We sell it by the...ounce. OK?”
Me (lifting an eyebrow): “Ah...the ounce. I can relate to that. How much is in an ounce?”
The Clerk: “It’s about five bowls.”
Me (staring, slack-jawed): “Those are some big damn bowls.”
Right. At three-thirty I rang Chris Keane’s doorbell. He’s a capital-H-for-Hollywood capital-S-for-Screenwriter who plays golf with John Updike and has chilled in a hot tub, as it were, with Hunter Thompson. I respect the hell out of the guy; met him though another writer, Bill Martin, and I’ve kept in touch and even paid him to tutor me from time to time. Given his resume he may know whereof he speaketh when he tells me I’m a good writer. Not in the Updike/Thompson league, perhaps, but it’d be easy enough for him to tell me I suck since there’s not any money changing hands between us these days.
Yeah. We sat in the Harvard Hotel, a ritzy place that charged us six bucks for...you guessed it...more coffee, and shot the shit about the writing biz for an hour. He just finished a screenplay for Samuel Jackson and he’s working on one for Charlise Theron, or Charlize Theron, or Charlie’s Throne, or however you spell it. Remind me to get that cleared up when I’m a capital-H-for-Hollywood capital-S-for-Screenwriter myself.
Eventually I got up from the table, shook hands with him, and doo-daa’d over to 9 Tastes, a decent Thai place on a street named after a dead president, to meet my friends. I ate Golden Bags and Larb, hoping the dishes wouldn’t be what they sounded like, and they were what they sounded like, but not like what I was afraid of. Which may not make any more sense than that line about Harvard bookstores, I realize, so I ought to quit the Yogi Berra while I’m ahead. Don’t be frightened; it’s prose, and prose is only the skin on the soup.
I drank beer, not coffee. Coffee wakes you, whereupon you need beer to keep calm, whereafter you need more coffee to keep sober, et cetera. We talked at great length and then went for ice cream for Sean and Seth. I sat with them as they ate it, in a little steel-and-concrete room that used to be a bank vault, felt uncomfortably like a drunk tank, and was painted like...get this...a fishbowl, with waving seaweed, questionable seahorses, and goldfish out of a plastic diver’s nightmare. Pity the drunk who wakes up in a place like that.
We walked back to the Harvard subway stop and shook hands goodbye. But there was this guy at the stop twirling pairs of tennis balls on long strings, sort of a cross between yo-yos and nunchaku. Entertaining people. He was deft with them, artistic...spinning them around his head and torso and legs like tiny planets on tight orbits, and I figured he was getting a good workout because his arm muscles were rippling and his eyes had the faraway look of a man deep in concentration. But he kept spinning the balls into his own crotch every so often—whack!—and he’d flinch and lose his rhythm. He’d spin some more, get lost in his mind, and—whack!—lose it again. Whackity-whack-whack! Sean and Seth and I watched this for many minutes before losing interest, and for all I know the poor bastard is still standing there spinning those balls, with his member...er, I’ll explain what that is to you later, Cassia...with his member swollen up like a varicosed grapefruit.
OK, so then I rode the train home and drowned in the rain, and now you’re caught up with me. I’m sitting here wired from darting around hauling garbage in the rain—sizzling like 220 across a wet steel bar—and it’ll probably be a few more hours before I calm down enough to sleep.
Which give me time to tell you, dear Cassia, that there are many beautiful people in this world spinning around you like tiny planets on tight orbits. They thump their own crotches to entertain you, eat ice cream in fishbowls with you, praise your writing when you need it. They sell you strong fragrant Smoke-Weed and teach you to fly-fish. They serve you Golden Bags and breakfast, even if they’re battling a raging drug-hunger they can’t push down without confessing it every day to complete strangers, and they leave their garbage for you to carry in the rain so you’ll be able to stay awake, heart thumping, and write a letter to your own dear daughter. Beautiful, beautiful people, and I wouldn’t trade any of them for all the coffee and shitty bookstores in Harvard Square.
And I know when I take you to Boston and we go to Harvard Square together, someday, and I take your little hand and your Mom’s bigger hand in mine, that another guy...silver laptop on his table and too much caffeine singing in his blood, will think: hey, there go some beautiful people too.
I love you,
DA-DA
Dear Cassia,
It’s raining very hard in Hyde Park right now—dark, cool breeze, maybe fifty degrees—and I just got soaked to the skin, right through my shirt and undershirt and jeans, even through my sneakers and into my socks. I was coming home from dinner with my good friends Sean and Seth, compadres brave & true, and I stepped off the train into the sort of driving rain that only comes down in New England. The rain on the train falls mainly in Ed’s brain: inhospitable stuff, a real downpour. Icepicks on the scalp and a clammy hand down the back of your shirt.
So I ran three blocks to my truck and jumped inside, cut the defroster on to clear the windshield, and hauled ass for...well, not home, because my family’s not here, but at least the house where I’m staying until Friday morning. And then I was sitting in the driveway, still catching my breath, when I realized that the goddamned garbage had to be put out, and that it was raining harder than ever. Yes, your father sat and blasphemed most foully, for a good while...and then, of course, ran back and forth in the rain humping the cans to the curb. Garbage, you understand, that wasn’t even his. Of such is his life this week.
If it weren’t for the fact that I just had a wonderful day at Harvard University I’d be slap out of my mind by now, what with the isolation and boredom and loneliness and wind-sucking karma and bone-freezing wetness of this idiot trip, but I got some wonderful writing done today and I got to see one mentor and, as I mentioned, two good friends. All of whom, incidentally, told me that I seem much less stressed out than last time they saw me. Go figure, since I had to root around all over the house to find my alarm clock while I was packing for this trip. And of course, that I live in a place where I can step out on the porch and squeeze off a round whenever circumstances warrant.
But getting back to it...first I sat in a coffee shop and wrote a short story about something that happened to me at a greasy spoon diner this morning—I was eavesdropping on two recovering addicts—and then I book-shopped until I discovered to my astonishment that Harvard Square is actually a shitty place to shop for books. You can get everything, but none of it is what you want at the moment. Which is odd, even for an old head like me.
I left book shopping for dead and stopped at another coffee shop—four or five cups by now, thrumming like a tuning fork—and worked on my new novel until three. I’ve got a good scene going where an aunt is throwing a birthday party for her live-in nephew, whose dad is a junkie, and when the dad shows up there’s a bunch of uncomfortable byplay. It’s a very hard scene to write; not only are there eight characters in it, but the setting and the mood and the prose and the symbolism all have to be mixed in and reflect each other, and I keep writing paragraphs and staring at them and then cutting them. And as you can tell from my use of the present tense, I’m still working on it.
I made a quick stop at a tobacconist, i.e., a peddler of Smoke-Weed, for a bitty of the aromatic stuff for a guy who’s taught me much about fly-fishing, Don Denney. I was confused and the clerk was helpful, as follows:
Me: “Um...I need some stuff, plain vanilla, for...ah...a friend.”
The Clerk: “A friend, mmm-hmm. What does your friend like?”
Me: “No, I know what that sounds like. Really, he’s a fly-fishing buddy.”
The Clerk (smiling): “It’s no big deal, man. What does he like?”
Me: “Uh. Plain vanilla. He likes cheap vanilla stuff he gets at the drug store.”
The Clerk: “We have this stuff, House Gold. It’s good, it’s vanilla. He’ll probably like it.”
Me: “Sure. “How does it...um...work?”
The Clerk: “Well, it’s pipe tobacco.”
Me: “No, I mean the prices. I don’t know how to relate to that.”
The Clerk (with great patience): “We sell it by the...ounce. OK?”
Me (lifting an eyebrow): “Ah...the ounce. I can relate to that. How much is in an ounce?”
The Clerk: “It’s about five bowls.”
Me (staring, slack-jawed): “Those are some big damn bowls.”
Right. At three-thirty I rang Chris Keane’s doorbell. He’s a capital-H-for-Hollywood capital-S-for-Screenwriter who plays golf with John Updike and has chilled in a hot tub, as it were, with Hunter Thompson. I respect the hell out of the guy; met him though another writer, Bill Martin, and I’ve kept in touch and even paid him to tutor me from time to time. Given his resume he may know whereof he speaketh when he tells me I’m a good writer. Not in the Updike/Thompson league, perhaps, but it’d be easy enough for him to tell me I suck since there’s not any money changing hands between us these days.
Yeah. We sat in the Harvard Hotel, a ritzy place that charged us six bucks for...you guessed it...more coffee, and shot the shit about the writing biz for an hour. He just finished a screenplay for Samuel Jackson and he’s working on one for Charlise Theron, or Charlize Theron, or Charlie’s Throne, or however you spell it. Remind me to get that cleared up when I’m a capital-H-for-Hollywood capital-S-for-Screenwriter myself.
Eventually I got up from the table, shook hands with him, and doo-daa’d over to 9 Tastes, a decent Thai place on a street named after a dead president, to meet my friends. I ate Golden Bags and Larb, hoping the dishes wouldn’t be what they sounded like, and they were what they sounded like, but not like what I was afraid of. Which may not make any more sense than that line about Harvard bookstores, I realize, so I ought to quit the Yogi Berra while I’m ahead. Don’t be frightened; it’s prose, and prose is only the skin on the soup.
I drank beer, not coffee. Coffee wakes you, whereupon you need beer to keep calm, whereafter you need more coffee to keep sober, et cetera. We talked at great length and then went for ice cream for Sean and Seth. I sat with them as they ate it, in a little steel-and-concrete room that used to be a bank vault, felt uncomfortably like a drunk tank, and was painted like...get this...a fishbowl, with waving seaweed, questionable seahorses, and goldfish out of a plastic diver’s nightmare. Pity the drunk who wakes up in a place like that.
We walked back to the Harvard subway stop and shook hands goodbye. But there was this guy at the stop twirling pairs of tennis balls on long strings, sort of a cross between yo-yos and nunchaku. Entertaining people. He was deft with them, artistic...spinning them around his head and torso and legs like tiny planets on tight orbits, and I figured he was getting a good workout because his arm muscles were rippling and his eyes had the faraway look of a man deep in concentration. But he kept spinning the balls into his own crotch every so often—whack!—and he’d flinch and lose his rhythm. He’d spin some more, get lost in his mind, and—whack!—lose it again. Whackity-whack-whack! Sean and Seth and I watched this for many minutes before losing interest, and for all I know the poor bastard is still standing there spinning those balls, with his member...er, I’ll explain what that is to you later, Cassia...with his member swollen up like a varicosed grapefruit.
OK, so then I rode the train home and drowned in the rain, and now you’re caught up with me. I’m sitting here wired from darting around hauling garbage in the rain—sizzling like 220 across a wet steel bar—and it’ll probably be a few more hours before I calm down enough to sleep.
Which give me time to tell you, dear Cassia, that there are many beautiful people in this world spinning around you like tiny planets on tight orbits. They thump their own crotches to entertain you, eat ice cream in fishbowls with you, praise your writing when you need it. They sell you strong fragrant Smoke-Weed and teach you to fly-fish. They serve you Golden Bags and breakfast, even if they’re battling a raging drug-hunger they can’t push down without confessing it every day to complete strangers, and they leave their garbage for you to carry in the rain so you’ll be able to stay awake, heart thumping, and write a letter to your own dear daughter. Beautiful, beautiful people, and I wouldn’t trade any of them for all the coffee and shitty bookstores in Harvard Square.
And I know when I take you to Boston and we go to Harvard Square together, someday, and I take your little hand and your Mom’s bigger hand in mine, that another guy...silver laptop on his table and too much caffeine singing in his blood, will think: hey, there go some beautiful people too.
I love you,
DA-DA
posted by GratefulEd | 9:15 AM
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