Elevator Eyes

In the past, when I wrote short stories during college, they invariably resulted from some sweaty panic induced by reading a real author. Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote a story titled, The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow, a story I read as a lonely, solitary hitchhiker stranded in Frankfurt, a story that compelled me to scribble my vestigial attempts at writing about love and loss in my hardback diary. I looked like a kid with a Trapper Keeper.

I finished The Hitchhiking Game by Milan Kundera, sitting on the bench that faces Rembrandt’s Nacht Wacht in the Rijksmuseum. I had always heard about how small the Mona Lisa was, but nobody every told me how enormous Night Watch would be. I looked every bit the part of the forlorn American, taking himself way too seriously, scratching notes onto the back of a museum map. I’ve got no problem admitting that even now, Milan Kundera writes far beyond my ability to read, but every now and then I would get something, and I had no choice but to imitate.

And I thought I understood Raymond Carver when I read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. I really didn’t, but still, inspired by those conversations, I wrote, like a carpenter’s child armed with a plastic hammer.

With the demands of work, fatherhood and booze, I find that I have little time to search for inspiring writing in the libraries. Two days ago I went to the local Barnes and Noble to buy a copy of the financial aid book I wrote, just to have a glimpse of what it must feel like to buy your own writing in a bookstore. I stood in awe of the thousands of writers who have produced magic, but overwhelmed, nonetheless, by all the words I would never read. Like the conversation married couples sometimes have about all the other beautiful men and women out there that they’ll never fuck. Reading can sometimes feel unfaithful, especially when you’ve limited your brief time to a few writers, a few genres, like narrowing down a mate by color, height or religion.

I don’t have time to carry on these affairs at the bookstore. So, conforming to every stereotype of the 21st century, I rely on the internest to get my fix. Here are just a few entries by people that have caused me to stop what I was doing and jot down ideas, ideas that once committed to the web should prove once and for all that nothing I do here is original.

Confessio Amantis
Nobody Else…
Over the Lookout
English Lessons
Write What You Know
360 Online Breaking News
…is not complex
Wednesday, April 13
Italian Espresso
Tuesday, June 21st