Leave Me Alone

Hello there from Poland.

The other day, one of the neighbor’s kids flashed me the peace sign as we passed one another on the street, and it had me wondering if it was his go-to greeting or just something he saved for me as an American.

Because I know people see me differently here than they did, say, a few months ago. In fact, anti-Americanism seems to be growing in Europe, and I wish I could say that they don’t have a point. It’s a tad disheartening.

But do you know what’s not disheartening, my friends? This week’s newsletter.

At least, I hope it’s not. We’ll see.

What We Have Can’t Possibly Exist in Sunlight

One of the things about writing is that I can access memories and feelings that I might otherwise forget about. My first book, Empty Rooms Lonely Countries, collected some of the nonfiction stories I wrote between 1997 and 2007, but a lot didn’t make the cut.

With the clocks changing this week in Europe, I’m reminded of two unpublished stories — “Bigger Turtles” and “Such a Thing as Happiness” — which covered one long evening in 1999. If they were to appear in ERLC, they would be slotted right before “Muted Porn” (page 53).

If you’ve read “Muted Porn,” you’ll know of Melinda, who was an old drinking buddy of mine. She was the one I drank with while the Columbine shooting was unfolding on TV, back when such a tragedy was considered an anomaly in the US.

“Bigger Turtles” and “Such a Thing as Happiness” took place a couple of weeks before “Muted Porn” on April 3, 1999 — the night before we moved the clocks forward. For context, at this point, I’m two years out of college and about a month away from taking a “real job” that will uproot me out of Tampa and put me on the road for the next two years. I’m writing and getting work regularly published, but I honestly don’t have a clue what I’m doing with my life. So, my free time is front-loaded with a lot of alcohol.

Melinda had picked me up from my apartment so we could drink at a nearby bar with a cool jukebox. After too many drinks, we left for another bar at around midnight. On the way, she decided we should have some beers at her place first:

I left about 30 minutes later. Melinda said good night and closed the door behind me. I could hear her locking the door. I walked about three steps and realized I didn’t know how to get home. I turned back around. Maybe I could crash on the floor instead? Or snuggle with the strange man on the couch? I knocked and rang the doorbell. Nothing. When I looked through the window next to the front door, I could see all the lights on inside the apartment, and Melinda was passed out at the bottom of the stairs.

There was a well-known university bar a couple of blocks away. Without a plan, I decided to have more beer. It was already past one in the morning. I had to be at work at nine, but eight hours — especially at night — felt like a lifetime back then.

At the bar, I ended up chatting up a group of students, two men and two women. They promised to take me home but wanted to go to the beach first. Sure, why not? On the way to the beach, one of them passes out.

[A lot of my twenties is conversations like this with strangers. Do you ever stop to wonder about the person you become with strangers? Especially those you only see for a moment in time? I remember having this all-night conversation with an Australian woman at a hotel bar in London in 1997 and now I own this snapshot of who she was at that moment, and in turn, she owns one of me. And the distance between who we were then and who we are in the real world would take us into the darkness beyond Pluto.]

When the sun came up, I was sitting on the beach and drinking the last of the wine with strangers. The water of Old Tampa Bay was calm and stretched the sky into an impossible abyss. I remember how it felt like these people were my best friends, but I knew I’d never see them again. We were only meant for this moment. What we have can’t possibly exist in sunlight. We laughed and told stories. It was a new day, but it all felt like an ending. When you’re 24 and out of college, everything feels like an ending.

Later, in “Such a Thing as Happiness,” I’d write: “Tonight, I will lose another hour, but it feels as if I am going to lose something far more precious and beloved than sixty minutes.”

They dropped me off at my apartment a little after eight in the morning. I had just enough time to shower and change my clothes before leaving for a 12-hour shift. It was easy back then because I was stupid and drunk and immortal.

Every year, when the clocks move forward, I think about that night and how time was folded in on itself — there was no time and all the time in the world. I think about those four strangers who took me to the edge of the world and home again. I think about how they made me laugh. I think about that hour we lose and gain every year, back and forth like an old trading card.

There’s a lifetime hidden inside those sixty minutes.

I hope you got to live it.

If Bees are Few

When I was growing up, most of my father’s books were kept in a bookshelf hidden inside a closet near the front of the house. I’m guessing this was due to how small our house was. You’d have to push the jackets hanging in the closet to the right to see the books properly. There was something about how the books were hidden in the darkness that made this library feel forbidden.

This is one of the few books I managed to steal from that secret library.

⁣I've been obsessed with Dickinson since I was young. I think she is one of the greatest American poets — if not the greatest. It’s no accident that my daughter is named after her.

⁣This 1961 edition of Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson’s Poems was the one my father had when he was in college. It’s a lovely no-nonsense edition with 576 poems, the first that “truly represents the complete range of [Dickinson’s] work.” When I read her work anywhere, I can smell this book and feel its faded pages.

As an added bonus, I found an army recruitment card inside the book (I love discovering things inside books!). If I’m not mistaken, this is the recruiter my father reported to when he joined the army. My father was lucky, and his time in the service brought him (and my mother) to Turkey instead of Vietnam. ⁣

⁣I think about that card in that little book, and how it set my parents off on an unusual path at the very start of their marriage, and how that card set in motion the chain of events that would lead to my brother and me and so on and so on...⁣

⁣I love this book, not because of the poetry, but because it’s a document of a moment in my father’s life. And though I wasn’t part of it, I’m linked to its ripple effect and, in turn, to Dickinson herself.

⁣Some people have the Bible.

I have this book.

On Editing

I work hard to make my editing workflow as easy as possible for the writers. I maintain a quick turnaround time so the writers can stay engaged with the work and maintain momentum. I do this so the writers can produce quality writing. At the end of the day, their name is on the line, not mine.

To the writer, the editing process can be arduous and boisterous, like banging pots in the kitchen while preparing a difficult recipe. A collaboration where sometimes a positive comment motivates the writer to finish, and other times a harsh note forces the writer to weed out the paragraph they love the most for the rest of the page to flourish.

To the reader, there is no sound of pots and grunts from the kitchen. There is only the final result, and the writer is complimented on how delicious it is.

And we’re out

We lose an hour this weekend (in Europe), which is why I decided to dust off parts of my old stories. I hope you enjoyed that trip down memory lane. It really was a lifetime ago.

Stay safe out there, wherever you are. Things feel dark, I know, but that doesn’t mean there’s no light.

Have a great one!