summer vacations, trips away

When I was a kid, it was torturous lengthy road trips with the folks including trying to share motel rooms with my loudly snoring dad and nonstop bickering. Then there was a middle time of being too young to drive myself but taking off with shady local characters, friends of friends, the older guy from the record store etc. to Lollapaloozas and furtive, highly secret trips to visit big cities or once, a very special boy.
Finally I had my own car, a big lavender boat-of-car, which I steered to beaches, mountain aeries, boys' houses in general, past the giant peach and everywhere.

This summer I've been here mostly. The last two summers too, but I suppose I was working and going to rooftops and didn't notice so much. Last weekend jenslinky & I took off on the open road and I got to drive a lot and it was lovely, it was nice like flying and freedom and all the other things we know it's like.

Next weekend too, we're going to drive by falling-down farmhouses and eat popsicles and splash around in rivers.
But tomorrow I have to go see about a job.

critique

I've started reading manuscripts for a literary agency. It's becoming a routine, lying in bed with the loose pages propped up on my knees, the fan ruffling the edges of the pile. Making notes not on the page but on a piece of scrap, trying not to get iced tea on the pages which will probably be resent to another agency where another person like me will reread them and think of some diplomatic comments.

Every time I sit down to write my reports, I have to physically weigh the pages in my hands and imagine how long it would take to dream them up in order to temper my tendency to snipe.

The last story I wrote was three years ago, for an indifferent college seminar. I'm not sure that's a bad thing -- I recognized some of my paralysis-as-meaning problems in the last manuscript I read, by a guy only two years older than me who obviously really really wants to be a writer, like Kerouac.

Writing hurts like exercising, editing feels good like trimming your hair.

(no subject)

Oh caffeine. I have taken you intimately into my life. You are the first thing in the morning and what sustains me in the evening. Yet you punish me with headaches when I neglect you. I suppose it is the dark side of the coin we deal in.