Inconsequential Moment

Today, as I was walking home from my class, a girl ran by me and dropped a pen on the side of the road. She didn't just kick a pen that was already on the ground; she dropped it from her pocket. I saw her drop it. By the time it occurred to me to pick it up and run to her, say, "Excuse me, but I think you dropped your pen," she was already at the door of the building she was running to. But I should have done it anyway.
Maybe I didn't want her to be late; she was already running. Maybe I wasn't sure it was her pen. But two seconds wouldn't have mattered, and I saw the pen drop from her pocket.
The truth is, for those few seconds, I was lazy. For those few seconds, I failed to do good.

Catching Up

It's been a couple of days, and what a couple of days! On Friday, I attended the Intermountain Graduate Conference here at Utah State. Because I didn't cancel my classes, it was very hectic going from teaching to registering to teaching again to presenting my paper to sitting in on part of a session to running to a poetry panel discussion. Wow, it makes me almost tired just writing about it! The paper I presented was a short story that I wrote around an issue of modern life, technology and the soul, the influence technology has on the sense of self and on culture, all those topics that deeply fascinate me. I worked with the idea that the story would be told just where technology comes into play, hence the story jumps between three scenes, and leaves out much of what happened.

On Saturday, I had a couple of friends over, and we watched an episode of the TV show Firefly followed by the movie Serenity. Ah, why do they cancel such good shows, when something like Friends runs forever? The Sci Fi channel should really have bought it. Then again, thinking of shows that really do run too long, maybe it's better to die before you're huge than to die long after you're interesting.

I value the TV shows that mean something. A good TV show, like a good book, should say something about how to live. That's why I much prefer a show like Firefly, with its messages of family, honesty, and courage, and even shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, to something more mainstream (and much less meaningful) like any number of cop dramas I could mention. A good TV show should show something about what makes a hero, and whoever doesn't aspire to being a hero seems like a waste of space to me.

Guilt

A while back, someone messaged me on MySpace, asking to be my friend because, to cut things to the chase, she wanted me to buy her book when it finally comes out. Seeing a chance to chat with a fellow novelist about the writing process, I started sending messages with her back and forth. Now, I've decided to stop replying. She's been nice, but I just can't bring myself to care about the story another writer I don't know is writing. I'm not particularly interested in the story from what I've heard. What hurts even more, to be honest, is that she hasn't shown any particular interest in my own writing. I've talked about it a little, but I guess she isn't clairvoyant in being able to leap onto the fact that she should be quizzing me about my own theories about writing and the details of the stories I'm working on.

I'm not saying I don't like being part of a "writing community," as if there was such a thing, rather than just a bunch of writers who are friends. I'm saying that, I'm sorry, but since I don't know this person and she doesn't seem particularly concerned about getting to know me, there's really not much for me to do other than wish her luck, which I did. Maybe I'll buy her book if I see it on store shelves. But there's no personal connection there; frankly, her self-promotion left a bad taste in my mouth. I want to be friends with people who genuinely want to know me and my writing, not just people who want my Benjamins.

Today was a good day. I watched Battlestar Galactica with some good people. Sharing something that I like isn't nearly as satisfying as sharing something I like that I've created, but until the sweet, sweet day I finally get something published, the story of BSG will have to do. Maybe I'll do a blog later giving my own anti-Cylon sentiments. I also had poetry class. That's always an adventure. That class always feels much too short; one of my criticisms is that we spend too much time "workshopping" poems. I have the good fortune of studying under award-winning poet Michael Sowder. Sometimes, I just don't consider how fortunate I am, as a writer, to work with people like that, even though I'm a fiction writer at heart, not a poet.

But Shakespeare never wrote prose fiction, and Chaucer himself was a poet.

A very odd day

So today, I decided to move into my new apartment. That involved signing out of my old apartment. Let me preface this by saying I'm no slouch. I cleaned my room thoroughly two months ago, when I moved out. I'm fully aware that that was two months ago, and things happen in two months. Also, I'm a single 23-year-old guy. I'm not a French maid. I man-clean. If I was dedicated, I'd find the PvP episode that describes what it means to man-clean something. Basically, it's an illusion hinging on not opening any cupboards, drawers, or closets. The apartment was, in fact, much better cleaned than that. There was fuzz on the carpet and dust in places, but I would think that's hardly surprising.

But the guy who checked my apartment must have been the biggest clean-freak in all of China. First, he tells me I have to vaccum the floor. As I said before, there wasthe occasional piece of lint here and there, and I didn't mind vaccuming the floor. But then he checked the drawers of the desk and the chest of drawers. And he pointed to the drawers in the latter and exclaimed, "This is dirty. There are hairs in it." I was shocked. I looked in it and said, stupified, "But it's close enough, right? It's pretty clean." And it was. There was a bit of dust in the corners, and, if I may say, perhaps four human hairs between all four drawers. I wish I was exaggerating, but in this case, truth really needs no embellishment. He just looked at me and said I have to clean it, asking whether I had any cleaning stuff with me. I reiterated, as I had stated before, that I had moved all of my stuff out of the apartment. As my room was as empty as a room can be (save, apparently, for fewer hairs than Patrick Stewart has on his head), it was fairly clear. But then he insisted that I use paper towels (where he proposed I procure some paper towels, or whether he assumed I had moved out everything but the paper towels, I know not). I instead used pieces of toilet paper pilfered from my roommate. As he was standing and watching me clean, he said, "Maybe that's too small. Maybe you need paper towels." I just said, with gritted teeth, "It will do." And it did. He looked again, and it was fine.

The apartment he moved me into was, I kid you not, a mess. The carpet was filthy, the paint was rotting off the walls in several places, and I found a bag half-buried in the finger-thick layer of dust behind the chest of drawers. There were large, bent, rusty staples sitting on the desk and one of the drawers in the desk had what I can only assume to be unusually large, chunky pieces of granola. The mattress had large, brown stains I can only hope came from coffee. When I pointed these out to him, he just shrugged.

The biggest irony? If my new apartment is in the condition it is in now when I move out, I'll be fined or forced to clean it again.

That means that, effectively, they're forcing me to be their maid.

What a world.

Adventures

On Saturday, my mother, brother, and I went to Salt Lake City to meet up with our old friend from High School. We saw the new Spiderwick movie at the IMAX theater. It was great. I read the first Spiderwick book in the car and the first half of the second one, so I knew enough to be a little annoyed with the way they treated the characters in the film. They turned a bunch of characters who were charming into whining Hollywood charicatures. Well, c'est le vie. That's the influence Hollywood has. That's why I'm not sure I'd want to let anyone make a movie out of my book, if I ever publish any. It would be heartbreaking if they didn't "get it right," and I don't know how much creative control I, as the writer, would have.
Also, the movie was a little disappinting on the IMAX. The screen was big, granted, but it didn't seem all that big. That might be because of modern movies' tendency to zoom in REALLY CLOSE, like up-the-nostril, I-think-I-got-your-snot-on-the-lens close, so I never feel like I really see the whole picture. It's as though I'm watching a scene through binoculars. And whatever happened to holding a shot for more than five seconds? Then they wonder why all the kids have ADD. If I was constantly bombarded with shifting perspectives on TV and in movies, I might.... hey, what's that?

After the movie, my mother and my brother returned to Logan, and I stayed in Salt Lake with my friend. We were going to go to a metal show, but when we showed up, they wouldn't let me in because my ID is expired. I felt terrible after that, my mood completely ruined, and we just went back to the hotel. The hotel we stayed in was fascinating. The clerk was a tiny, elderly woman, the kind who doesn't seem to notice she's old, with way too much make-up, a permanent frown around her jowls, and hideously long, glossy nails. The room itself was manageable, but the sheets had holes in them and I could hear everything going on outside. After we got back from the non-show, we chatted, then went to bed. In the morning, I sat up and waited for the day to begin. I read a little Wuthering Heights and enjoyed that quiet time of day where I didn't have to be anywhere or be doing anything. It was just mildly ruined by the symphony of small children in the next room coming through the paper-like walls. My friend and I then had breakfast at Denny's. It was fascinating. Our server was rushed and not terribly polite, and yet I left him a tip. Why am I so well trained? We sat near a Hispanic man and his brood of at least four small children, and across from a couple, half of which was a hideous formless woman with a ponytail and a backwards cap. Why does that same sort of woman seem to be everywhere?

We went to a cool little coffee shop called Addicted Coffee, where my friend bought a chai and we played free Guitar Hero 3 on PS2. It took me a while to figure out how to turn on the wireless guitar controller. How embarassing! But, after bombing "Hier Kommt Alex" on medium, I nailed "Welcome to the Jungle" on medium. Rock star godhood, here I come!

We then went to see Jumper. It raised a few interesting questions, but was generally forgettable. It was interesting to see Anakin Skywalker in a new role. Hollywood is probably going to have to go with him until they find a new leading man who actually has talent. Someone who has natural charisma and can create a character outside of the spoken lines: the mannerisms and expressions that truly flesh out a well-played role.

We rounded out the night by coming back to Logan and, after a dinner of lovely soup prepared by my mother, jumping on the webcam to hang out with my other brother. He and I took turns reading from a story we jointly wrote a while back, much to my friend's amusement.

Stay frosty, my little chipmunks.