I was in Key West once, in 2005, for a destination wedding. I had just graduated from college. We groomsmen wore seafoam green guayaberas at the ceremony. Either to save money or because the main hotel rooms were already booked up, probably both, I stayed in a hotel on the far side of the island, away from other guests. Key West isn’t big, so I walked or took a cab to get from my lodgings to the various events over the weekend. On one walk I remember passing a used bookstore with an adorable cat hanging out in the stacks. On my first night, I met up with the wedding party and we wandered in to a random bar where a drag show commenced. The women and I thought this looked like fun, but drag made the other men in the group uncomfortable so we left. I related this sequence of events to my cab driver the next day as I headed to meet the wedding party once again. The driver, who gave off a beach bum bubba vibe, just shook his head and said, in a slow drawl, “Fu - ckin’ ho - mo - phobes.”
My days can sometimes look a little repetitive. (My reports of my days being repetitive no doubt can also look a little repetitive.) With the fragments of time I have to pursue all of what think of now as that Essential Other, I move more slowly to my goals than I would like. But I keep moving. I owe emails or documents to a few of you out there, reading this. In general, I am not forgetful of these—just an inefficient multi-tasker, stretched a little thin, putting a lot of amare into my amateurism. I jot down notes and drafts and, over time, they build, even if most of them go nowhere. Against monotony, I attempt to venture into the singular experiences, happening only once, reaching an extremity, where the last of the islands meets the expansive ocean.
This past month I’ve read a half-dozen books, all relatively slim—Kathleen Collins’ short story collection Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?; Eliot Weinberger’s essay collection An Elemental Thing; JL Carr’s comedic novel How Steeple Sinderby Won the F.A. Cup; Jon Fosse’s trio of novellas, Trilogy (acquired before he won the Nobel Prize, but read after; translated by May-Brit Akerholt); Ronald Johnson’s The Book of the Green Man (a poem cycle); and a classic piece of Chinese thought: about which, perhaps, more to come in the future, so I’ll keep it unnamed for now. I have been relatively satisfied with how much reading I’ve been able to fit in this year, but the next step is that I want to write and talk about what I’m reading in a little more depth, and with a little more regularity, than I already do. I also feel more and more drawn to forms of collage and repurposing, of melding fiction and nonfiction, or scholarly structures with creative play. Some of the aforementioned books number among the examples that point and light the way.
You've touched a key point of interest, for me, here: finding the balance between reading and writing. I perpetually struggle with it. I'm younger than you but I can't help but notice others who've managed to accomplish much more at an age much lower than mine (think Xavier Dolan). But there's also this dilemma of "qualification", right: I haven't written X amount of words which they all say you must as part of some sort of a prerequisite practice; I can't dive into writing right away as I haven't even read as much as I ought to; etc. And so you're stuck due to this stupid mental paralysis that doesn't allow you to pick up the pen and bleed your heart out on paper. Have you ever felt this? If yes, how does one overcome this state of paralysis? Is there any utility to the good old "Just do it, okay, just write; start wherever you feel like starting from and see where it goes because you'll learn by doing it" sort of advice?