The End of an End-Note Era

In the cover letter that accompanies all of the stories I exchange around the country for form rejections, as the conclusion of my little bio, are lines explaining that I am "working in a job only significant for writing fodder, hoping that my freshly completed first novel will rescue me from night work." Well, my first novel still only occupies my shelf, but here I am, having just finished my last night at the last and longest of a string of jobs I was militantly unfond of, rescued by my lovely wife.

Having excelled in her teacher credentialing program and the ancillary tests, she is now a fully fledged California public school teacher, in one of the few districts that pays a decent wage (still not reasonable considering how teachers influence the course of civilization, and with no health insurance; but compared to our usual pathetic yearly gross quite substantial) - and not enough that she will be my sugar mommy - but enough that we can swing preschool, so I can have a reasonably houred job, and take night classes, and have a normal evening together after this four and a half years of 8:30PM - 2:30AM, Monday through Friday.

Let's just hope I don't repay the fruits of her extraordinary work by getting in her hair when she would use that priorly unhusbanded time productively.

VID-agra for my libid-EO

There was a time where I couldn't get enough films to watch. I'd watch two, three times a day. The Alameda County Library has always been for me the poor man's Netflix, and I'd have them pimping out as many vids as I could carry home. I was open for anything: independant, foreign, Hollywood, classic, in all genres; I'd find a director to frequent and wear them out, then move on to another, and another. I'd watch two movies during the day, and then watch another with my wife that night. I was insatiable.

But I have found that one of the byproducts of where I am as a writer now is a cooling of my viewing lust. Now at the most I'll watch a piece of a film that I own - that I've already watched several times - when I'm eating lunch or folding laundry, so that maybe I'll get through a movie a week; most times I just reshelve it after fifteen minutes. Films by my favorite directors - films that I've had a request in on for months - get returned unwatched, and too frequently late and with a fine!

I'd like to attribute this to settling down, to the refinement of maturity. But I suspect it has more to do with an unhealthy obsession with my writing. Whenever the desire to watch a movie pops up, there is an unwanted word-count calculation of what I could accomplish during that two hours, or amount of revision time that would be lost, or research time on markets to submit my short stories or agents to query for my novel or publishers that accept unsolicited manuscripts or inspirational reading that might catalzye a new short story or novel chapter or revisional path. The onanistic nature of my current writing regime has sapped my passion for film as a valid source of stories - of an equivalently influential medium to impel my narratives - and, most of all, a satisfying source of entertainment.

So, how does one temper an addiction to their own creativity?

The Superest of Costumes

My son is a full fledged Harry Potter fan. He has five Harry Potter video games, has watched the four films innumerable times; when his reading level allows him to attack the books I'm quite positive he will tear through them like a rabid badger. Since getting his glasses he even bears a substantial resemblance to Harry, though his facial scar is due to a villinous playground step and young legs moving faster than he could properly control, and well hidden on the underside of his chin.

From the previous Halloween when he and his sister dressed up as Mouseketeers (The cult of Disney is the most fully ingrained at Casa Karaczewski), he has insisted that this Halloween he was going to dress up as Harry Potter. But what came back from our local Target was no wizard robe but the bright primary colored surprise of a Superman costume.

Growing up as a comic fiend - I mean, enthusiast - I was drawn to Marvel comics almost innately. I'd occasionally pick up a Batman comic (and then only after reading Frank Miller's Batman), but I doubt that I have more than a dozen DC titles stored away among the hundreds of Spiderman comics. I enjoyed John Byrne's Man of Steel miniseries, but the first official Superman comic I bought was the one where they killed him, and soon as they contrived him back to life I was out.

I was never a fan of the movies (Superman 2 kinda freaked me out when I was young - couldn't tell you why). So, when my son picked out his costume for this year, he wasn't acting on any kind of influence of mine. As far as I know, before choosing to be Superman, he didn't know that Mr. Kent existed, nor that there were enviable powers to emulate. For him, it was the draw of the costume, a universal draw of red blue and yellow that my Mom reminded me when I informed her of my son's choice that I myself adorned one Halloween at about his age, at a time before I would have known the particulars of the hero I was assimilating.

Pulling the costume from my son's closet to examine the symmetry of the fake muscles, the sharp-edged kinetic energy of the diamond S on the chest, the cape that begs to be caught up in wind behind you, I admit it is striking. But I still feel that what constitutes its exceptional universality is beyond my superpowers of description, and call on you heroes for an articulation, or testimonial.

The Week in Randomness

An interesting week here at Team Karaczewski. Began in a trough with:

The Awards for Disappointments of the Week

Gold: Revising a chapter of my novel as a matter of honor (I am a cat who left a dead mouse gift on someone's doorstop, who stepped upon it with bare feet and swept it and me off the porch)

Silver: The green chili and potato burrito from Trader Joe's (when I was in Bellingham, WA for my last college roommate's wedding, he took me to a Mexican food restaurant whose specialty was a potato burrito - was intrigued enough to try: wonderful, slices of potato fried in a unique batter, plenty of self-serve green salsa; too many marinated carrots on the side - coins of vinegary fire setting my sinuses to rinse. TJ's potatoes were mashed up with green chilies and jack cheese; bland, paling.)

Bronze: The continued isolation and terrible silences of the writer's life.

But has begun to rise with Thursday morning's email request from a prospective agent to read the "first 150 pages or so" of Alexander Murphy's Home for Wayward Celebrities. Just to know that some of it is being read has sent me up a crest heady enough to bodysurf.