Shorthand for Nothing

When I was a kid my father worked at the community college, and we’d spend a lot of time around his work after school. Often we’d go to the bookstore and someone would buy us some snacks. For some reason I associate it particularly with gummi worms; for the longest time this was my only association with the place. I didn’t really notice or care that it sold books, so long as there was candy in it for me.

I remember an occasion where someone asked if I wanted to go to the Snackbar. This is apparently what the cafeteria used to be called. Naturally I said yes, because I assumed they meant the bookstore, where we got our snacks, and I could be relied upon to want candy. And we went to this place which was foreign to me and serving food that wasn’t candy at all, and I was very upset. This wasn’t the Snackbar, this was some other place, some place serving food I wanted none of. It was shattering. I felt cheated. I felt like the world wasn’t working the way it’s supposed to.

I’m older now. I know the context of things, and I understand confusion, as much as any of us can. I still care a great deal about words and what they mean, though, and I still find it shattering when life doesn’t live up to my expectations. I have them so rarely, that when it doesn’t happen I don’t know what to do. I was expecting something. I had every reason to believe it would happen. When it doesn’t, I feel just like I did back then. Like there’s something that just fundamentally broke, and I’m left holding the pieces.

And I’d been thinking of that story lately, because sometimes an old story you’d forgotten for years is the best way to frame the world.

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From Joey Comeau’s Overqualified, which I previously reviewed:

It’s Joey, not Joe or Joseph. My grandfather was Joe Comeau, and Joseph is my mother’s name for me, but I have always been Joey. I worry sometimes that it’s a childish name. Would a “Joe” tell jokes in bed, perform puppet shows after sex, and give every body part a different high-pitched voice? It seems unlikely. The names we choose for ourselves aren’t meaningless. They’re self-fulfilling prophecies.

When I was a kid, my mother called me Robby. It was just the name I went by, and I was fine with it for a while. Then at some point I decided I didn’t like that, and I told her that my name was Robert, and that I would like to be called Robert, if it’s all the same to her.

I remember feeling that Robby was a silly name, and that I wanted to be taken seriously, so I would wear a serious name. My grandfather was Bob, and that was fine for him, but I would be Robert. There’s still a chair at my dad’s house that has “Robby” written on the back. It bothered me when I was a kid.

Sometimes I wonder if that was a mistake.

In late high school my name stopped really mattering. Maybe before then, but by then everyone was calling me Mason and it didn’t bother me. I had no preference. I even preferred it to Robert sometimes. Robert is a name I never liked seeing typed. So when I made a Myspace profile, back when that was a thing that you did, I put my name as Rob. I didn’t figure it would matter.

But then a few people called me Rob, and suddenly I had a new name. I used it in a few other places. It suited me: it didn’t speak to me of anything in particular. So, with the exception of my family, I was now either Rob or Mason. There were distinct groups which stuck with one or the other, and they mostly stuck with their own. It was here that I started letting other people introduce me, so there would be no confusion.

Then I moved to Boston and there were no more distinct groups, and I had to do the introducing myself. People never quite knew what to call me. Sometimes an introduction required explanation.

I keep going back to the time when I was a kid, though. I couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 years old. I decided then I wanted to be taken seriously, and I gave myself a name that would be taken seriously. Would I have been different if I was Robby?

I can’t bring it back. You can’t just change your name. It’s an organic process. But I wonder.

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I’ve been reading through House of Leaves again recently. It benefits from being the type of book you can read through several times, at least in part due to the fact that it is fragmented and convoluted, to say nothing of being nightmarish. It’s the sort of book with encoded messages and obscure references, some of which are pointed out in the footnotes. It has footnotes. The footnotes have footnotes.

I’ve just reached the labyrinth chapter. For the first part of the book the typesetting, at the very least, is relatively normal. There’s nothing too weird going on typographically; sure, the story is a bit strange, but it’s simple. It’s straightforward. Then there’s the SOS chapter, where the paragraphs get broken up into Morse code. At the point of the Labyrinth, it starts coming unhinged. It’s difficult to describe, but there is an image online of one of the pages here. It is these pages I show people when explaining the book.

From there on the book fades in and out of lucidity. Some parts seem almost normal, others are still bizarre. There’s a chapter which concludes with a page which contains nothing but a single, enormous full stop. And I haven’t really even gotten into the contents of the book yet. The house is the sort of thing it is best to explore for oneself. (Highly recommended. Go read.)

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I left this on a napkin once for a waitress who just looked like poetry. I don’t mean that to be weird, but she was cute on a level that made me want to leave this for her. I don’t think I ever saw her again, which is weird because I was there all the time.

She smells like quiet drives in the rain.
The weather is cold and unpleasant
but the car is warm
and the windshield wipers freshly changed
(And from the car it’s easy to imagine:
the rain is clean and renewing)

And despite the clouds blocking the sun
it’s bright out
and the colors are clearer
than the sunniest of days.
Such a day could not be called dreary.

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This installment is about the bout of insomnia that made my insomnia legendary, among certain circles. (more…)

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For some reason I have been recently explaining themes and motifs to people a fair amount. I am not going to do so here, but I have been thinking about themes and motifs, and I realized it’s generally themes that my more ambitious projects are really lacking. It’s always story first, then later on, a theme would happen. They are fun to write, and they are usually not too bad to read, but their lack of a driving purpose tends to keep me from actually finishing them.

My short stories tend to start with a theme, which is why I spend so much time hunting for a title for them: I want it to encapsulate the theme in some way. And the short stories tend to be solid, and I complete them easily and usually think they are pretty decent. Sometimes it gets lost on the way. I’ve got a theme in mind for a new one, and I will probably work on it as soon as possible. It will be called ‘Stalker.’ Isn’t that fun?

(This is true of my best very short fiction, also, though I write so much of that it’s hard to say there is a rule for it.)

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This section starts with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson. It’s about taking flight, in more ways than one. (more…)

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Following is what may eventually be the opening to the thing I am working on, which will simply go by Untitled for now. After the jump, a wall of text. It appears to be a story about departures. It is unnecessarily bleak, but that’s what departures will do for you. (more…)

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