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Aug. 2nd, 2005 01:00 pmIn the last five days I flew to DC and back and went to NY via Long Island and back. On Sunday I fly to Pittsburgh and go back on Monday. This is on top of four other long distance trips in the last month. I am tired of traveling, yes.
It was interesting to be back in DC, walking all over my old hunting grounds, from Adams-Morgan through Dupont to Georgetown. The Ethiopian restaurant in Adams-Morgan where I would get "injera sandwiches" was gone, unfortunately, but everything else seemed mostly the same. The next day the workshop I was at hosted a reception in the upstairs conference room at the Smithsonian Castle, where twelve years ago, as an intern there, I sat in the balcony to hear academic papers. Twelve years later and I get to speak on the floor -- to thank people for coming, big whoop.
Pernicious nostalgia: Mostly it felt good to walk again, as I did so much in those days. I would walk and walk, from U Street to the Cathedral to Georgetown to Capitol Hill, from coffeeshop to record store to work to grocery store to movie theater. I lived in a house with five people I barely saw, sleeping on a mattress pad on the floor, and played chess with Richie and saw art films and listened to Liz Phair. I schemed about my novel, which I got about halfway into by recording most of the things and people I'd experienced in the six months since graduating from college. If you knew me then, you probably ended up in the novel. (Last night on the train I read through it again to confirm that it was as awful as I'd remembered -- it was -- but I'm glad for having done it, since it preserved a lot of things I would never have recalled otherwise. E.g., Kris telling me, at some dorm party in spring 1993: "Whenever I think I'm becoming too uptight, I look at you and I feel better." E.g. cultural artifacts I had completely forgotten. Does anyone still remember "X" caps?) I still moped a lot about the girl who had dumped me at the start of the summer. It was a good time. I wish I could walk that much, both as a form of mental floss and for physical health. Surely walking miles every day had something to do with how I could eat a whole plate of Hydrox cookies every night and not gain weight.
I'm easily led by the cognoscenti, so after I read that article about Henry Roth in the New Yorker I found my way to a copy of the first volume of Mercy of a Rude Stream. It's no Call It Sleep, but it was pretty interesting nonetheless. Call It Sleep had a strong and not entirely healthy influence on my writing style in those days. It encouraged the overearnest, angsty expression that makes both my semi-novel and my journals from those days fairly cringeworthy. But it represents my interior monologue well enough, unfortunately.
It was interesting to be back in DC, walking all over my old hunting grounds, from Adams-Morgan through Dupont to Georgetown. The Ethiopian restaurant in Adams-Morgan where I would get "injera sandwiches" was gone, unfortunately, but everything else seemed mostly the same. The next day the workshop I was at hosted a reception in the upstairs conference room at the Smithsonian Castle, where twelve years ago, as an intern there, I sat in the balcony to hear academic papers. Twelve years later and I get to speak on the floor -- to thank people for coming, big whoop.
Pernicious nostalgia: Mostly it felt good to walk again, as I did so much in those days. I would walk and walk, from U Street to the Cathedral to Georgetown to Capitol Hill, from coffeeshop to record store to work to grocery store to movie theater. I lived in a house with five people I barely saw, sleeping on a mattress pad on the floor, and played chess with Richie and saw art films and listened to Liz Phair. I schemed about my novel, which I got about halfway into by recording most of the things and people I'd experienced in the six months since graduating from college. If you knew me then, you probably ended up in the novel. (Last night on the train I read through it again to confirm that it was as awful as I'd remembered -- it was -- but I'm glad for having done it, since it preserved a lot of things I would never have recalled otherwise. E.g., Kris telling me, at some dorm party in spring 1993: "Whenever I think I'm becoming too uptight, I look at you and I feel better." E.g. cultural artifacts I had completely forgotten. Does anyone still remember "X" caps?) I still moped a lot about the girl who had dumped me at the start of the summer. It was a good time. I wish I could walk that much, both as a form of mental floss and for physical health. Surely walking miles every day had something to do with how I could eat a whole plate of Hydrox cookies every night and not gain weight.
I'm easily led by the cognoscenti, so after I read that article about Henry Roth in the New Yorker I found my way to a copy of the first volume of Mercy of a Rude Stream. It's no Call It Sleep, but it was pretty interesting nonetheless. Call It Sleep had a strong and not entirely healthy influence on my writing style in those days. It encouraged the overearnest, angsty expression that makes both my semi-novel and my journals from those days fairly cringeworthy. But it represents my interior monologue well enough, unfortunately.
