GRIZZLY PEAR
It took me a few weeks to start making 1 sentence stories after reading about them in Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millenium.
The impetus finally came last week at 3:30 AM last Monday when the boy woke us up with a huge nosebleed. While trying to fall back asleep, I decided to finally try my hand at writing some of these stories. This sentence was among the first batch of lines that I tapped into the phone while hazily sliding into slumber.
I wasted last night playing Sid Meier’s original Civilizaation.
To atone for staying up way too late, I wrote a blog post about my love of that game, but I then got replaying Acrtivision’s Deathtrack, my other favorite video game of my childhood. How did thirty years disappear so quickly?
It is super cool to have these old games back available to play on the internet now, but one must exercise some self control in the face of such temptations.
In other words, it’s the internet folks!
I visited my office yesterday, meeting some coworkers for the first time in a couple of years. It was a fun reunion.
However, the drive there and back reminded me why I much prefer WFH.
Borges and Bioy Casares put together an anthology of short extraordinary tales (Cuentos breves y estraordinarios, 1955). I would like to edit a collection of tales consisting of one sentence only, or even a single line. But so far I haven’t fond any to match the one by Guatamalan writer Augusto Monterroso: “Cuando despertó, el dinosauro todavía, estaba allí”.
“Quickness”, Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino, 1985
When I woke up , the dinosaur was still there.
Augusto Monterroso
I went to the dermatologist who removed a mole on my leg for a biopsy. It was strange to watch a small piece of myself being slowly detached from my body.
My guy was just a friendly nurse practitioner. But I now understand why a surgeons are stereotyped to have big egos. Cutting into another human must be the most powerful manifestation of god-hood in this modern world. It must be intoxicating to be the one holding the scapel.
I’ve started playing around with one-sentence stories. I’ll push it through the end of the month and reassess from there. Who knows where this experiment might lead (most likely nowhere), but this is what grizzlypear is for.
Hope you also had a good breakfast this morning.
What a year!
The good news is that we all stayed healthy, my job is still keeping me busy (and I’m still enjoying the effort), and the kids seem no worse for the wear.
The bad news was pretty much everything outside the walls of the house.
It was a great privilege to ride out this storm in relative peace, and I thought I should list a few key items of gratitude, beyond the basics.
To start meta, I’m quite happy with the current revival of this blog. I think I’ve found a good balance of consumption and production that enriches my life with a single medium-ish effort post every week. I’ve been reading more than I’ve been posting, so I’m hoping to turn this into a twice weekly post, but we’ll see if that happens.
I also lost quite a bit of weight. Most of it was due to being evicted from restaurants – my last meal was at an In-N-Out parking lot in Henderson, in February. I still want to lose a few more pounds (and I’ve actually gained back a couple since my low in late summer) but I can’t complain about where I’m at.
Fermentation was also a nice find. I’ve gotten consistently good with making Natto, the Bread is still awesome, and the discovery of how to make Kim chi / Sauerkraut has been a revelation. I now consider fermentation as one of the great pleasures in my life (along with reading, board games, and playing music).
And the kids really do keep growing. I don’t know what we would be missing out from in-person learning in a non-pandemic reality, but we have caring contentious teachers for my daughter who are trying their best. It has been a joy to watch the two of them blossom and develop a relationship with each other.
I heard an aphorism on Jonah Goldberg’s podcast about life with children “the days are long, the years are short”. With two kids, I can vouch for the truth of this sentiment, but I’d say it also applies quite well to 2020.
This past year was just a moment, and an eternity, ago.
Let’s see what the future brings.
