Like, I was walking along earlier with Richard, trying to figure out the kickstarter campaign, and what you could charge at the door for events, and I brought up my last movie, About Cherry. I gave an example of a time when someone doubted a decision I made, so I went with them because they had more experience, and my original gut feeling turned out to be right. Then I followed with an example where my gut feeling had been wrong. Turns out it's fifty/fifty. The major difference being you don't regret following your gut, or your passions, or the person you love.

Why is that? When you follow your heart and you're wrong at least you followed your heart. What's that other saying: There's no fruit more bitter than a heart overruled. Obviously, I'm making these sayings up, but I think I like that one.

-- Stephen Elliott, in October 26, 2012 Daily Rumpus Email

"You're crazy."

I've heard this so many times that I've started to own it. "Yeah, I am," I'll respond. Daring you to find something wrong with this. Challenging you to explain why I shouldn't be like this.

Monday Required Reading. Notice I dropped the "Morning"? Yeah. I almost never get my act together enough to have one of these posted in the actual morning, so I am just admitting defeat. I picked up Rebecca Lee's short story collection Bobcat and Other Stories on a whim when I was in the bookstore. It's part of some sort of program Chapter's runs, so it was on a special shelf and I was sucked in by the Canadian author and the short story format and the first line of the first story: "It was the terrine that got to me." I took it with me on a flight to Edmonton the next day and had finished the entire collection by the time we landed. It is incredible. Her characters are so strikingly real, and I often felt as if she had taken some aspect of myself and put it down on the page. "Fialta" is the last story in the collection, and since the crucial action takes place at a Thanksgiving meal it felt appropriate to share it today. You'll probably see more from Lee on this blog, but for now, here is "Fialta":

From where I stand, on the bridge overlooking the Chicago River, the city looks like a strange but natural landscape, as it arises as surely and inevitably from the hands of life as does a field of harvest wheat or a stand of red firs. After all, the city was designed by country boys -- Mies van der Rohe, Rook and Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan -- all wild and dashing country boys, dreaming up the city in the soft thrum of the countryside. 

But the buildings that most reflect nature, at least Midwestern nature, in all its dark and hidden fertility, are those by Franklin Nostbakken, the so-called architect of the prairies, that great and troubled mess of a man I once knew.

Three years ago, when I was a senior at Northwestern, I sent Nostbakken a packet of drawings and a statement of purpose. Every year Nostbakken chooses five apprentices to come live with him on the famous grounds of Fialta, his sprawling workshop, itself an architectural dream rising and falling over the gentle hills of southwestern Wisconsin. My sketches were of skyscrapers, set down with a pencil on pale blue drafting paper. They'd been drawn late in the night, and I knew hardly anything about how to draw a building, except that it ought not to look beautiful; it ought to be spare and slightly inaccessible, its beauty only suggested, so that a good plan looked like a secret to be passed on and on, its true nature hidden away. 

Two months later I received back a letter of acceptance. At the bottom of the form letter there was a note from Nostbakken himself that read, in spite of your ambition, you hand seems humble and reasonable. I look forward to your arrival. 

I had been reading, off and on, that year, a biography of Nostbakken, and this moment when I read his handwriting was one of the most liberating in my life -- in fact, so much so it was almost haunting, as if a hand had leapt out of the world of art -- of books and dreams -- and pulled me in. 

[KEEP READING]

Ella is looking at her oddly.

"What's the matter, Morag?"

"I - don't know. Sometimes I get - well, scared. I don't feel all that normal."

Ella shrugs.

"So - who wants to be normal, anyhow?"

"I do," Morag says with passionate conviction. "Oh Ella, I do. I want to be able to talk to boys the way they want to be talked to. Only I can't seem to get the trick of it."

"Boys like that are schmucks," Ella says furiously. "But yeh, I know what you mean."

"You too?"

"Yeh. I went out with this guy a coupla weeks ago, and I thought Now this is It. Here is your opportunity, oh Ella bella. So what did Ella the schlemiel do? Did she tell him how masterful and handsome he was? Not she. Oh no. She began talking in her winsome way about Marx's theory of polarity. Why? Why? I'll never see him again."

"Well, then, why?" Morag is laughing, but not in mockery.

"I don't know," Ella says gloomily. "It just seemed so phoney, somehow, all that whole mutual flattery bit. And why should I pretend to be brainless? I'm not brainless."

"I know," Morag says. "And yet I envy girls like Susie Trevor so much that I damn near hate them. I want to be glamorous and adored and get married and have kids. I still try to kid myself that I don't want that. But I do. I want all that. As well. All I want is everything."

Ella strikes a theatrical wrist to her forehead. "Engrave it on my tombstone."

-- Margaret Laurence, The Diviners

She was the kind of girl who liked her coffee strong and black, and her chocolate dark and bitter.

Rule for my life: things will break at the worst possible moment. Pants will rip in public. Luggage will fall apart in the airport. Phones will be submerged in water while waiting for an important call. Computers will die while writing a paper. Nail clippers will snap six and a half fingers into a manicure. Blow driers will burst into flame while getting ready for a big event. Disaster is unavoidable. Become good at crisis management.

Instructions for Waiting for a Flight

Take a seat.
Grab the arm rests.
Grip them tightly
until your knuckles turn white.
Think long and hard
about the friends and family,
favourite places,
and countless memories
you are leaving behind.
Fight back tears.
Heave a sigh.

Take a seat.
Tap your fingers.
Beat out a tattoo
until people start staring.
Think long and hard
about the new people,
new places,
and new memories
to meet and explore and make.
Grin ear-to-ear.
Laugh to yourself.


This piece is part of a larger project that I'm currently working on for a friend of mine. It's still in the pretty early stages of development, but from time to time you might see a piece pop up on here.

Have you ever tracked your unconscious body movements? You know, those little things your appendages do when they are left to their own devices, when your brain is busy focusing or thinking or has just checked out. I bite the scar on the inside of my lip when I'm thinking. I curl my toes when I'm really focused. I stretch out my fingers when I'm anticipating something. It's odd how your body acts seemingly of its own free will. Like small rebellions against order and control.

Monday Morning Required Reading. There are periods of time when it feel like my life gets in the way of my creativity. I get wrapped up in day-to-day things. My to-do list grows, constantly expanding with mundane things: laundry, vacuuming, dishes, grocery shopping, insurance calls, bank trips. And with all of this on my plate I wind up feeling sapped and empty, unable to even imagine writing anything. It's a strange mental space of exhaustion and blankness. When I hit these slumps, the best thing I can do is return to the comfort-food equivalent of reading for me: The Vinyl Cafe. Although, I must admit that these stories are perhaps best enjoyed by listening to Stuart read them himself. And so that is exactly what I am going to recommend you do. GO HERE and download the podcast in whatever form works best for you. Hopefully it works some of its magic on you as well.

It's no joke, beloved. But you can do it. Prepare yourself. Dedicate yourself to it. Love it.

Have the courage to dream a new dream if IT doesn't turn out the way you want it to.

IT almost never does by the way...

We need you. We need your voice. We need your truth. I look forward to meeting you someday soon out here. We will swap stories of survival and triumph. We'll tell of heartache and disappointement. But oh how much better we'll be for it all.

-- Leslie Odom, Jr., "We Are Not All Artists the Same"

How to Be a Young Adult


Miss your parents. Be struck with deep, heart-hollowing longing for them at the oddest of moments. Wish your mother was there when you are trying to decide whether a striped shirt should be washed with lights or darks. Feel the absence of your father when you watch a good documentary. Call them for no reason other than to tell them you bought some new storage containers and the grocery store didn't have any good avocados. Be annoyed when your mother does the same. Love when your father emails to tell you about a typo in the newspaper.

Long for home. Be confused about what that means. Fly back to your parents' house. Discover it feels small and cramped, like trying to squeeze back into the shell of your eighteen-year-old self. Return to your apartment. Discover that though you love it, sometimes it feels empty and lonely. Visit friends, family. Look at real estate. Freak out about the possibility of permanently settling somewhere. Freak out about not having roots. Try to find non-traditional manifestations of home. Claim your friends are your home. Have them move away. Move away yourself. Begin to think home is a ludicrous societal construction. Refuse to buy into it. Buy into it anyway.

Have questions. Wonder about things you have never considered before: how to file your taxes, how long before leftovers go bad, how to clean your couch, how to choose the best laundry detergent. Be too embarrassed to actually ask anyone. Research answers on the internet. Stand bewildered in grocery store aisles reading ingredient lists and nutritional information and price tags. Call your mother in tears when you get fruit flies and can't figure out how to get rid of them.

Feel lost. Wonder where your life is going. Panic about the future. Be at a loss for words when people ask what you are going to do with your life. Take up collecting maps and globes. Plot routes to places you have never been. Trace paths to lands that no longer exist. Wander into the self-help sections of bookstores. Look at books about budgeting and career planning. Buy poetry instead.

Dream. Stare out windows in classrooms, in the office, in coffee shops. Plan trips you can't afford. Apply for jobs you aren't qualified for. Write wishlists. Window shop at fancy stores. Create elaborate fantasies for yourself. Be heartbroken when reality slaps you across the face with a rejection letter or credit card bill. Decide there is no point to dreams. Write them off as childish. Swear you will be serious, grown-up, realistic. Find yourself daydreaming again.

Cry. Often. Well up at good news. Sob at bad news. Dissolve into tears when it turns out that life is hard and unfair and overwhelming. Wail when your dreams begin to feel impossible. Barely make it into your apartment, sliding down the door like a character in a movie. Sit down in the shower. Collapse in the midst of cleaning products scattered throughout the kitchen. Burrow under the bed covers. Force yourself to get up off the floor, crawl out of bed, wash your hair. Keep living your life.

-- Bree Keeler, 2012

Every time I leave this place, it gets harder.

I've always thought of myself as someone who is, by nature, transitory. I've never felt any particularly strong attachment to a location. When I think about the future - on those rare occasions that I allow myself to wander down that path which is equally likely to lead to despair and hopelessness as it is to happiness and excitement - my plans are not attached to any particular location. I don't know where I'm going to be in six months, never mind six years. And I am really okay with that.

Despite this, and without intending to do so, I seem to have put down roots out East. This is only problematic because I did so in a situation that is, by its very nature, temporary.

I know this, and yet, every time I leave this place, it gets harder.

Life lessons: The two most important words I've ever learned to use: yes and no. Yes to adventures, no matter what they are. No to things that aren't good for me, no matter how much I want to hang onto them. Learning both of these things has been harder for me than I would have liked, but I'm slowly figuring out when to dive in head-first and when to walk away.

So, I write poems to figure things out. Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go "Oh, that's what this is all about." And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.

-- Sarah Kay, from this incredible TED talk