I have a system when I fly
It’s a pretty complicated system; I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna be able to sleep, because mostly I don’t, so I don’t really bother trying. I have a flight tomorrow at 7am. This means I’m probably leaving here at 5am. Which means I need to be ready before that (it’s 1am now, am I mostly there? Probably. Will I realize I forgot something the minute I get there? Also yeah. But I’m not flying to the moon, they’ll have a CVS. I have to remember my passport now, because I don’t have one of those fancy new licenses, and I have a pretty ridiculous setup right now for writing, with an obnoxious and noisy keyboard that I bought on purpose and am in a probably toxic kind of love with.
When I first started writing for a living I had one of the very first Macbook Pros, the plastic ones that looked like a Batmobile, and they ran on ethernet so if I wanted to ignore everyone I just left my house because coffee shops didn’t have wifi yet (nor did my house or anywhere else) and so my computer became a typewriter for however long I stayed there, and it was pretty amazing. The Lower East Side folks would wander in and sit near me as I zoned out writing some kind of uninspired script about characters I’d been hired to write but didn’t have much familiarity with. One time the guy at the table next to me got scolded for shooting heroin at a booth and the girl at the register got fired on the spot. It didn’t really affect my flow per se but I felt bad for the girl, although it was hard to argue with her letting a guy shoot up during the lunch hour.
My friend Matt does a lot of his writing on paper and I’m envious of that. I have a notebook I carry in my pocket and I’m trying to make time to get used to the motions they taught me when I was 6. Out of the many things the tiny confused version of me wondered was, did I miss some kind of family penmanship program? My mother and her sisters have similar handwriting, my grandmother had similar handwriting, even my older brother’s is reminiscent of a certain family style. I spent a lot of time alone when I was young, so often I’d see things that seemed innate to everyone around me but that I had no idea how to do, and I was embarrassed to ask how to do things that seemed so fundamental. So I taught myself a kind of handwritten aesthetic, came up with a number of ridiculously ornate signatures. You’d be surprised how little you come across people whose names start with i for inspiration.
I think I was probably a tween when I got my first guitar, a Spanish classical my mom bought from a local shop, I don’t know how formally she chose the age of endowment, but we all eventually got one. I had no idea how to play, but I didn’t let that stop me. Chords are made out of notes and I’ve always had a solid memory for sound, so I would just feel my way around the strings until I found the one note, then poke around nearby for the 2nd, etc. None of us are especially good, but you’d be surprised how far you get with 4-5 chords. Anyway I lost that guitar when a girl took off with it after a fight when I was 19. She’s on TV now, but I dunno if the guitar is on there with her. My older brother gave me his first one after that, and that’s the one still. I play like a teenager anyway, no real reason for me to upgrade.
I’m reading Caesar’s accounts of the Gallic War, which I wrote about in the Roman Stars, although I added space ships. Caesar describes all of his actions and reasoning in the third person, as if he’s a bystander observing. There is surprisingly little polish, he explains what he did, why he did it, how sometimes he’d have to stop and reassess, sometimes the war would take a break for a couple weeks. You might be surprised at how often the main military tactic against the Roman Republic was hiding the food. This really resonates with me because it’s 2am and all I want is a 7-11 Slurpee (cherry, of course) but i have to leave here in a couple hours and that seems not to be a great choice of fuel for what’s left of the night or the journey tomorrow.
To whom it may concern, If we ever fall in love, remember I am easily manipulated at almost any hour by well cooked eggs.
Talk to you soon.
-i.
