Adrian Tomine, A.C.

A Love Affair with F. Scott Fitzgerald

I was required to read The Great Gatsby in high school, like approximately every other American human being. I read it begrudgingly, and I didn't like it. What's the point? I remember thinking to myself with a condescending sniff as I sat there in my English class. Who cares about these people and their silly lives? Who cares about this rich guy's obsessive love for Daisy, who sounds kind of flighty and irritating anyway? And what's the big deal about her voice? Boring.

About two years ago I began a mission to read the classics I'd missed, or re-read the ones I had read when I was too young to understand them. I started with this one, and when I say it walloped me what I mean is that F. Scott Fitzgerald himself stood up and punched me repeatedly in the face with his magnificence. I gasped out loud at many sentences, re-reading the same paragraphs over and over as I tried to understand his way of weaving things together. Every single freaking word is perfect and right and the whole thing is just stitched together with a weird atmosphere of party lights and alcoholism and a leaking, desperate sadness.

I read it on an airplane, traveling south. I had a pencil and I underlined the crap out of it, moment after moment, which is a thing I never do to books. I finished it with a bang and immediately started it over again. I know it's fiction, but the atmosphere of the story is so true and visceral I felt like I could reach in and somehow dance my way right into it. That's the magic, to me - knowing that every part of Fitzgerald's imagination was born from his reality. The world he wrote from was real and actual. The events were manufactured, but the world was his true life, and he captured it for me, for everyone, and through some crazy veil of time and chance and typographic trickery I can see it too.

I know everyone knows this book is greatness, of course. I'm just feeling a bit effusive about it on an otherwise inoffensive Saturday, and wanted to share after bumping into this letter he wrote to a young aspiring writer. I want to tattoo it onto my hands.

PS: I know I am behind on real posts. My sincere apologies to the random five people who are reading this. The summer has run away with me, but I'm getting back on track now.

Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who  is merely facing some  blood-thirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself.

-Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid 

Contests, etc.

People: this is really, really difficult. I made a vow to post one piece of writing a week, but nothing I’m working on feels even slightly ready to be out in public. I’d rather slice off my own skin and snack on it than post something I’m not really into, but a promise is a promise, so here we go.

I wrote the piece below when I entered a fiction contest earlier this year. It was for NPR’s This American Life, and the challenge was to write a short story based on the prompt of this beginning sentence:

 She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door.

 I’ve never written a fictional word, ever. Only non-fiction comes out of my tap, for some reason, which is really annoying. Additionally, a friend brought this contest to my attention only about two hours before the midnight deadline, so I also had a massive time crunch on my hands.

 I calmly walked my dog in a light rain (which leaked its way into the story) and had violent internal debates about normal Sunday night bedtimes, and then figured, what the hell. So I locked myself up in my office and made stuff up for awhile, to see what that felt like. In a span of two hours, I wrote my first fiction, and entered my first contest, which felt faintly like crossing an important threshold. I lost, of course. But I still did it, and that felt important, so I’m glad.

Anyway, I promised to post something, so here you go. To see the real winner, click here.

*********

 She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. Once the decision was made she felt like there had never been a time when she was unsure. She strode forward with purpose, slipping on her sandals and grabbing her keys, little sparks of light beginning to roll through her veins.

Because she was not the kind of girl who remembered to think about umbrellas, or other useful things, she was unprepared for the thundering downpour that met her at the front door. It was 1 a.m., and he lived three blocks away. She paused, considering, but then laughed and ran for it through the icy spring rain, jumping over puddles filled with dropped blossoms. She slowed as she neared his building, one in a row of shabby little brownstones just like hers, crumbly and perfect. A thin ribbon of yellow light shone from around the basement curtains where he lived. She loved to peer out that window when they were hanging out, watching movies or eating Chinese food, watching people’s feet and little dogs stroll by.

Without allowing herself to think or to breathe, she rapped on his door.  The lock’s tumblers clicked over and there he was, hair crazy with sleep, wearing sweatpants and thick woolen socks. She had always loved his feet in socks.   

“What are you doing here?” he asked, bewildered, glancing at his watch. He did not open the door wide enough to invite her in. She felt a wall of panic slam into her from wherever it had been hiding.

“I finished it. Your book, I mean.”

He stared at her blankly. Her hands started to shake.

“I went to the store and got a copy right away. I read it straight through. It was so beautiful.”

He smiled then, and his shoulders dropped a bit as he leaned against the doorframe.

“You came out here this late, in the storm, to tell me you liked my book?”

“I know,” she laughed, too loud. “This is silly. But it’s your first one, and I know how much it meant to you, is all. So…here I am. Congratulations.”

She looked up at him, aching, while an inner voice berated her for punking out, again. In her head she was saucy, bold, - vivacious, even. That inner brave girl would just shove that damn door open and launch her sopping, messy body into his arms, just push him right up against the wall and show him what he meant to her.  Showing was better than talking anyway, she reasoned, stalling. It would save time and cut down on confusion. She commanded her body to do this one simple thing, but her actual self, the one she was stuck with, just couldn’t seem to get there.

He was looking at her strangely now. The longer she stood the more aware she became of her soaked pajamas, her wild ridiculousness. She saw herself as if from above, small and wet and pathetic.  

“Well, that’s it I guess,” she said, looking down at her feet. “Sorry to wake you. I’m just…I’m just so happy for you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I really appreciate it. I’ll see you at work tomorrow. It’s my turn to bring the coffee.”

“Ok. Great. See you in the morning.”

She forced a bright smile and then walked away, the garden gate clanging shut behind her. After a few steps she paused, turned back to see if he was watching her go. But his door was closed, dark and tight. A sob rose up in her throat with so much force it actually hurt, but she fought hard and swallowed it.

In his book, she thought for a moment she’d seen her own face: the beautiful heroine, trapped forever with only one book to keep her company while she waited for rescue, longing for someone who could tell her a new story. For one glittering moment, she’d felt the flash of her own spirit in those pages, heard her own laugh echoing up from the binding. That flicker of recognition gave her the courage to finally make it to his door, rain and all, but no further. She just couldn’t get there.

She slipped off her sandals and walked home barefoot on dark city streets, water rushing past her ankles and down the heaving drains.

No Big Deal, Just a NYT Review...

Today my choir, the West Village Chorale, was reviewed in the music section of the New York Times.    We had no idea that we would be reviewed - or, if perhaps anyone among us suspected that we might be, they had the decency to keep it to themselves so we wouldn't all panic.

It's unusual for an amateur choir to be reviewed at all, let alone with such positivity, so this is an almost unimaginable honor. Read the review here. 

If you're a performer of any kind, perhaps you know this feeling - when all of the nervousness fades away, and the show changes from something careful, and perhaps tentative, into something deeply joyous and confident and smooth. Every once in a great while something just clicks into place, and feels both flawless and infinite, and you reach a level higher than you realized you were capable of.

This unusual scenario happened to us last night, even though we were exhausted, and it was an almost unbearably hot, sweaty, endless kind of day. When you're pretty much depleted and sweat is actually dripping down your back and you're squashed like sardines under hot lights for hours, it's hard to produce anything decent, let alone "proficient". But if the NYT says we did, then hey, that's enough for me.

The fact that I am able to be a part of this is astonishing, and wondrous, and a blessing.

On Turning Ten - Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light—
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed. 

Extinction by Terry Fan

Betty the Waitress

The map was spread across the table, wrinkled edges fighting for space against coffee cups and greasy dishes, as we plotted the distance from New Jersey to California. It was 2 a.m., and we were 22, four old friends squashed in a diner booth. Eileen was moving to California in two days, and the rest of us were going along for the drive. We were all one week sprung from college, and I was desperate for anything new, just needing to go, to move.

“More coffee?” asked the waitress, standing over us with a fresh pot in one hand and the other perched on her thin hip. Her name badge called her Betty, and she looked like one, with frizzled yellow hair and chipped magenta fingernails. She had the leathery glow of a lifetime sprawled on a beach blanket down the shore, a cigarette in one hand as the other flicked through a gossip magazine.

“Hey now. Where you guys going?” she asked, spotting our map.

“We’re driving to California,” said Eileen, blond curls shining. “We’re leaving on Saturday.”

“Ooh, California,” Betty said. “Push in,” she demanded and we obliged, wide-eyed, sliding further into our booth so she could sit, half her ass perched over the edge.

I pushed the map towards her and explained our routing.  We’d leave New Jersey and head first to Tennessee, where we’d walk on Beale Street in Memphis, big plastic cups of warm beer in hand as the blues spilled out of the clubs into the steamy twilight. We’d plow on through Oklahoma, where we didn’t know it yet, but we’d sleep in a bug-ridden roadside motel and wake up at sunrise to stand over the empty swimming pool out back, wondering about the rotting mattress resting in the deep end. We’d push on through endless Texas, where we’d eat enormous steaks and take goofy pictures with cowboys. And our final night would see us streaking through the desert of New Mexico, Eileen and I singing Counting Crows songs under a midnight bowl of stars as our friends slept in the back.

Betty listened with calculation, following my eager pencil scratches across the highway lines. Other booths tried to catch her eye but she pretended not to see. She was probably pretty, in a flashy way, when she was younger. I pictured her twenties full of hot pink bikinis and platform sandals, parades of boyfriends with motorcycles and tattoos. Tonight she looked washed out under the florescent lights. I noticed the start of liver spots on the back of her hands.

“You kids seem nice. I always wanted to go to Cali. Got any extra room for me?” she said. She grabbed a french fry off my plate and popped it into her mouth.  

I intuited the game. “Sure thing, Betty,” I said. “Everyone needs to drive to California once, right?”

“You know it,” she said. “I’ll find a babysitter for my kids. We’ll all be best friends by the time we get there. I bet the beaches in California are nicer than the ones here.”

We told her she could squeeze in. We’d leave noon Saturday, from the diner parking lot. Pack light.  

An angry guy at another table shouted out for his check, and the game was suddenly over. “Well, it’s been nice, kids,” she said, hauling herself up. “Enjoy your drive.”

She walked away, old and tired to my young eyes, and I felt a flash of fear. I saw in the set of her shoulders how easy it might be to become someone you had no intention of becoming, to be 47 and dreaming of driving away with a car full of strangers towards a bluer sea. I was full of the terror you feel at 22 when you have no idea who you are or what to be, and the future is catching up with you. When I closed my eyes all I could ever see was a road, a snaking asphalt of exit signs blasting by, radio up and windows down. I didn’t know where I wanted to go but I knew I couldn’t sit still.

I thought of Betty from time to time over the next nine years, as I built my life brick by brick. Of course I thought of her on that cross-country drive, the last time my friends and I would be together and free, with every door still wide open for us. I thought of her again when I flew to England a few months later on a working visa, armed with nothing but one brave friend, a hostel reservation for the first two nights and a hazy plan to get a job, find an apartment, and make a life on the opposite side of a big ocean. I remembered her when I came home six months and 12 countries later, with strong shoulders from backpacking, $44 in my bank account and a heart bursting with a level of confidence I’d never known before.  

But one blink of a year later I was miserable, commuting for three hours a day on crowded, dirty trains towards a desk job in Manhattan that sounded cool on paper, like something I should want to be doing, but I didn’t.

So on my 25^th birthday I reminded myself of Betty and left that job for a new one in the travel industry. And that beautiful little job brought me everywhere – to the Galapagos Islands, where I snorkeled with sharks and laid flat on my drunken back at midnight on the deck of a small wooden ship, dazzled to realize that even the stars were different in this opposite hemisphere, gazing at the Southern Cross instead of the North Star. To a colorful marketplace in Lima, Peru, where I held on tight through my very first earthquake. To the sun-bleached Atacama Desert in Chile, and to the Nazca Lines, where I flew in a tiny red four passenger airplane and tried not to vomit on the pilot. Just this winter I counted my blessings and set foot on the rocky shores of Antarctica for the first time, penguins flocking around my heavy boots and the briny sea smell in my nose. If it’s possible that there is a portal on this planet to another one, then that secret doorway is in the rough waters of the Drake Passage, and on the other side is a miracle of blue ice and bright light. I've stood at the bottom of the earth and felt true wonder, and have been deeply thankful. 

For unknown reasons, I was born with a restless heart. At 22, in that diner booth, I didn’t know how far I could go on this earth, in this life. All I knew was that the world was big, and that I was small, and that I was afraid. I was scared to wake up and be 30, 42, 55, and wonder where it all went, all that limitless space and air.

I watched Betty closely that night, the way she small-talked with the truck drivers and drunk teenagers like a pro, how she sighed as she leaned along the bakery display counter to rest. She kept checking her watch. She felt restless, too.  

It’s my opinion that there are a lot of Betty's out there, actually. People who are dimly aware of the enormous scope of this planet and that have a real itch to feel the miles collect under tired feet, but who get caught up in their lives and somehow just never get there. This is human and normal, and I get it. Life feels long when you’re at the starting gate, and it’s easy to think to yourself, later, later. Someday. I’ll go on that trip/write that book/go back to school eventually, when the time is right. When the money is there. When I meet someone new, when the kids are grown. All of these future days feel like a guarantee when you are young and hopeful and full of plans.

Although I have tried, I don’t believe in later. When I thought of the future, even back then, all I could ever see was loss, the way our moments all slip towards an eventual decline. No one is promised a glowing tomorrow and plenty of good people don’t get one at all, and there is no discernible reason to the way it’s doled out.  Maybe this belief system makes me morbid, or melancholy, I’m not sure. I choose to think of it as a blessing and let it anchor me deep into the earth. My bible is imprinted with one simple thought: you can spend your time dreaming about the future, or you can put your feet on the ground and walk.

Last summer, I went to Africa. One morning, I sat with friends under the equatorial light in a safari vehicle that smelled like sweat and sunshine, and watched as one lone giraffe galloped across the Serengeti’s dusty horizon line. A few days later we stood together on a rooftop in Zanzibar, and I held my hand over my heart as the first notes of a muezzin’s call to prayer rang out across a city made of stone. I looked out over rusted tin roofs to a flawless blue sea and felt a happiness so deep it almost twisted into pain. Every decision I’d ever made that walked me towards that moment had been the right one. And for the rest of my life, I have the gift of remembering that moment of full-bodied joy, that sureness of heart and step.

A few months ago, I mentioned Betty to a friend. In telling the story, I realized I hadn’t thought about her, or what she represents to me, in years. I suppose I don’t need to hold that memory close anymore, like a talisman against time and loss. I’m too busy living a life that fits.

That night in the diner it felt good to be with friends, planning an adventure. It was time to start walking. I watched Betty, ducked my head, and said a fleeting prayer for all of my future selves. Then I fell back into the lines of the map. 

Lisa Barbero

If standing up to applaud an article was a thing people did, I'd do it for this guy. Read it, all you busy busy soldiers of life. Find the time.

The "Busy' Trap - NYTimes.com