LIaDVp.14: No tears until it's gone; fugitives from the world

August 20, 2004

I read Richard Brautigan’s Willard and his Bowling Trophies again. What an incredible 165 pages. Just like Raymond Carver’s short stories, I can’t believe how such a small amount of words, run of the mill subject matter, and tight prose can accomplish so much in painting the human predicament. It doesn’t take much if it’s all in the right place. Billy Bragg said, "The most important decisions in life, are made between two people in bed." That’s the American short story in a nutshell, when at its peak. We don’t do War and Peace, but a novella about a couple with an STD, a sad bondage routine, and a papier mache bird living downstairs, can make you cry.

About to start a collection of Joe R. Lansdale short stories. In the author’s notes, he talked a lot about his early career, and how he wrote a story a day for three months. And how he made a ritual of burning rejection letters and the stories attached. It was an obsession for him, and a love. Sort of gave me some good insight into the direction I'd like to go: Do what it takes to pay the bills, and in the meantime, write and read - constantly. Make it not the means, but an end in itself. The only thing you have to do to be a writer is to do it; what happens then is inconsequential.

August 22, 2004

That sound is the beautiful pitter patter of the wet slippery stuff. The soundtrack of back home. The hangover gods smiling down at me and granting me reprieve for good behavior, released on time served. It’s pouring rain and work is cancelled.

Last night I drank Sake, Soju and beer with Dru, Stan, Rabbit and two Koreans named Dong Won and Rock. We started shortly after work and polished off two bottles of Soju (a Korean rice and sweet potato wine) two bottles of Sake and 18 beers. Judging from Stan kissing another man and puking all over the dorm, the Koreans getting chewed out by the shuttle driver for drunken behavior, and various confusing pictures on my digital camera, we must have had a pretty good time.

The Koreans are great guys, and I think we’ve made a pretty good friendship. We sat on the floor of Stan and Dru's room circled around our Asian liquor, eating bag after bag of seaweed and talked some bullshit about both countries, music, the Lake. The pictures made it look like some kind of Korean drug den, all of us huddled in a circle, around our pile of rice liquor. Every round of rice wine was punctuated with "We-hi-yo," the Korean cheers. Stan kept pouring more alcohol for everyone and saying, "No tears until it’s gone, and when it’s gone we cry." He says it’s a Japanese saying about Sake, but you never know with Stan.

By the end of the night, the Koreans were annihilated. Rock couldn't stand up without falling over and knocking something down. He was hanging all over Stan and Dru, kissing Dru's neck and laughing. He was so happy. We got a great picture of them flipping off a photo of Ronald Reagan. A tweekerish bald guy named Dan came by and drank so much that it appeared he was on a bad acid trip. I’ve never seen anyone get so drunk and be so confusing before. Just babbling nonsense. He passed out on their bed and Stan and Dru took turns molesting him. Among the pictures taken were Dru kissing Dan, Stan kissing Dru, Stan kissing Dan, Stan exposing his chest, Stan exposing Dru's chest, Stan and Dru with their pants down, and finally, Dan's girlfriend yelling about his drunken behavior to Dru in her car while smoking pot.

That was the end of the night. She came home and was pissed because Dan got so drunk. Somehow I ended up in the car with her and Dru, and listened to the ranting about Dan. Then I came to my senses, confused as to why I was sitting in the back seat of this stranger's car. I got my stuff and went to bed. When I left Stan, he was passed out cold, with Desolation Row live in 64 blaring throughout the room, probably as loud as it could be. Soon after he would vomit Korean liquor and seaweed all over the room.

August 27, 2004

The last five days or so we’ve been rained out of work. Not good for the money. I spent two days camping with my aunt, uncle and cousin. It was a relaxing time at Hyatt Lake. We lounged around the fire and canoed around the lake.

When I returned, work was rained out yet again. I hopped in the car and drove to Portland for two days. Casey and I had a great time. Saw a couple of bands at Holocene. Ate some pizza. Cooked some salmon.

Today Rabbit and I were talking about how people are getting stir crazy around here. He went over some of his previous roommates who disappeared on him.

"Some people just crack up fast. They can’t handle it up here," I suggested.
"You have to be in the right mindset, you have to have the right type of personality," he said, the last word bringing out his Baton Rouge accent.
"And you have to be prepared, ready for what you’re getting into," I said.
"Most important, you have to have nowhere else to go." Rabbit said, only sort of joking. "That’s how these parks survive man. A lot of these people we work with - they have nowhere to go."
We laughed at how true that is.
"Fugitives from the rest of the world."
"Fugitives from the world."

I think the lake may have been the most beautiful I’ve seen it the other day, the last one before our week vacation started. It was very windy, slightly overcast. The dock was rocking up and down and whitecaps were crashing all over the water.
"There’s sheep in the pen, George," I told the 80-year-old captain as we launched his boat.
"There’s a whole damn flock of em."
Man we had a great time in Portland. Really made me miss home. Watching tv with the cat and playing on the computer. Going to bars, drinking wine, DVDs. Just have to keep reading, working.

While driving around the state over the last week, I killed three animals: a ground squirrel, a grey tree squirrel, and some big dog-sized thing that I didn’t get a good look at before barreling over it and hitting it twice with the Honda at about 65. I had my brights on and by the time I saw the thing, it was practically underneath me. It scared the shit out of me, and shook me up pretty good. Just the sight of it, and knowing that I destroyed something of substantial size. Not a pet or anything, but it could have been. It was probably a marmot, but I didn’t stop to look. I was crying and saying I’m so sorry and driving about 30 mph. It felt like I had made a declaration of war against nature. I didn’t know if I was afraid or guilty or sad or just fatigued from the road. Regardless, I’ve decided to try not eating meat, other than fish, to see how I respond to it. That horrible, gnawing feeling of being complicit in killing a living, thinking creature. It was just horrible. And I want to feel better about it and myself and not eat meat. Not be complicit in suffering on such a massive scale. I dont’ consider it a moral issue necessarily, or that eating meat is inherently wrong. It’s just a matter of me feeling bad about something I do everyday, and wanting to stop it and see what happens.