I’m obsessed and terrified with dying. When I was young, like most young people, I never thought I would live long enough to become old. The difference is that the feeling has not left as I’ve slowly moved towards middle age. It’s not that growing older has been harder than I expected, because in many ways it’s been softer, it’s just that this low decibel hum of foreboding that has always lived with me hasn’t disappeared. When I was twenty-seven my daughter was born. That same year, I remember thinking that I would die when I was thirty-seven. I told a few people that, and it was greeted with an …
By My Muscle Memory
I’ve made the trip to Germany so many times, that the whole process has become akin to muscle memory. I board in the late afternoon in Denver, and fly to either Frankfurt or Munich (depending on the day). I work for the first couple hours and watch a movie when the meal is served. If I can sleep for a couple of hours in the short fly-through night, that’s a victory. I spend the last hour staring listlessly at the seat in front of me or the other confused passengers, as breakfast is served, and morning bursts through the raised windows. There are no thoughts, and I focus on not …
South Boulder
I woke up staring at the ceiling. There were stains in the panels. Not terribly noticeable, but small light pools where water had gathered at one point. Another part of the ceiling sagged noticeably. They were all things that I should have noticed before, and yet they had attracted my attention for the first time. And in that I felt sadness, because I was only noticing these things now, after so many years here, and when I was so close to leaving. I’ve never struggled to say goodbye to a home before. I’m usually ready to move on by then. But thats not the case this time. I know it’s …
Decades
One of the crueler aspects about getting older is that a decade becomes a very real concept. A decade ago I was in my early twenties. I’ve changed since then, but I don’t feel all that different. I’m a more and less recognizable version of the same self. And yet, when I was twenty-two, a decade earlier would have made me twelve. There was nothing to connect those parts of my life. We used to talk in months and years. But now I tell people about things, and it’s a decade apart. I talk about Japan, and Prague, and Chicago. And I’m right there with myself in those moments. But …
Sundance 2017
I’m at Sundance again this year. The annual tradition that is as close to a college reunion as I’ve ever had in my life. I could write pages on the effect that the gathering has on my psyche: the calming, medicative jealousy of a life not lived. The problem is that the movies I’ve chosen this time have brought me a costly type of introspection. Whether fictional or biopic, I’ve found myself resonating with the most depressing characters. So many drunk reclusive writers! It’s like a genre unto itself. Seeing everyone’s mental turmoil makes mine seem much more manageable, maybe even normal. But does everyone have to be so defective? …
New Old Memories
I’ve started digging out my old ALA posts from years ago. I had started to republish them earlier, and then became distracted in completing line edits for a novel. The years through 2010 should be easy, they were already on the old site. What surprised me in reading this small stretch of time between leaving Prague and getting settled in Chicago (approx June 2008 through August 2008) is how restrained the posts are. I was clearly going through a quarter life crisis and frantically grabbing at anything that could keep me afloat, and yet in the writing I come off as (somewhat) under control. Specifically, the part about the cruise …