There is no inverted country

because
all i want to do
is map out
your city...

Saturday was a true Brooklyn day. Coffee at Tilly's, a bookstore crawl, falafel at Zaytoons, strung together with good conversation about books and writers, and tramping through the frigid cold and the ice-slick, day-old snow. I discovered the gorgeous Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene, and another new Brooklyn neighborhood altogether. I looked for books by M. John Harrison but didn't find anything. It's become a matter of course. I looked at Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem and The Magicians by Lev Grossman and tried to figure out what I want the most, but couldn't decide. I thought about community and tried to articulate that still vague longing, still knowing that 'community' isn't quite the right word. It's an intangible abstract and it drifts away the closer we get.

But doesn't everything?

I love days like that -- cold, exhausting days that tire you to the core but still pull you forward because you realize how much there is left to discover. I love conversations about writers and culture and books, and despite everything I still feel like I don't have them enough.

Sunday I took the train to New Jersey for the first time. I texted my brothers during the superbowl but it just made me homesick.

I feel like I've been traveling but I haven't really been anywhere except away from home. I'm tired at this cell-deep level and I don't know what's the cure. My cats miss me, too. One of them has found a new sleeping spot: on top of me. Back or chest depending on what's facing upwards. It makes tossing and turning difficult, but I suppose there's some comfort to that weight.

I'm listening to Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band again. The self-titled album. It's always better than I remembered.

That doesn't happen very often.

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Documentary triple-feature this weekend:

Food, Inc.
"In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment." (Rotten Tomatoes)

Hands-down the best, but having read The Omnivore's Dilemma, there was little new information here -- although there was certainly something powerful about seeing concrete visuals, shots of farms and factories, interviews with farmers. (Which also brings home in a wordless way how much this story is also about class and socioeconomics, particularly in the south. I understood better.) Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, advised for the creation of this film, and the format it followed mirrored the book's points pretty closely, as far as I can remember. It was also a joy to see Polyface Farms, the idyllic "farm of the future" praised so enthusiastically in The Omnivore's Dilemma. I enjoyed watching this a lot. I would recommend it.

Radiant City.
"The Moss family live in a not-too-distant future which is slowly being eaten away by bland suburban sprawl. While the various members of the family go about their day, and protestors gather to rally against the developments, real-life commentators offer their thoughts on the future of suburbia." (RT)

I was really dissapointed by this, actually. Maybe my hopes were too high, since it wasn't available on Netflix instant play and I had to wait for the physical DVD. I was hoping it would deal more with the formation of the suburbs and American post-war culture, but it was rooted very prosaically in the present day -- if you've actually lived in the suburbs, you probably have the gist. I wanted it for the title, a reference to Le Corbusier's 1935 treatise on urbanism, but despite the title there was nothing about Le Corbusier or his contemporaries. Also, it purported to be an actual documentary following a real family, and then it turned out to be a fake family played by actors, so that was pointless and annoying. Over all -- fail.

The Beautiful Truth.
"Is it possible the cure for cancer was discovered in the 1920s? After the death of his mother, Garrett becomes disaffected with life. But a research assignment on a controversial book by Dr. Max Gerson propels him on a mission that may offer humanity the ultimate gift--life." (RT)

This was just silly, so I'm not going to bother saying anything about it.

My obsession with documentaries has become such that I can't wait for next weekend. Upcoming titles on the queue include The Botany of Desire, Encounters at the End of the World, The Garden, Blue Gold: World Water Wars, and Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa. Plus like ten more about architecture and Germany. I really need a documentary week; documentary days just aren't enough.

I've been so distracted. There are things simmering in my head, things I can't articulate or at least can't share. All I really want to do is cook.

But that's hard, too. Maybe everything seems hard in winter. The good grocery store is far away and my kitchen is too small. So small that even preparing something simple requires juggling skills as well as culinary expertise. There's just not enough surface area. Things are constantly tumbling and falling. There are dangerous corners and shooting knives. Clumsy girl + tiny kitchen = horrible accident in the making.

Mostly, I just don't know who to invite for meals. My house is tiny and my table is tinier, so it's got to be someone special who doesn't mind sharing personal space.

But I still want to cook. I feel like making delicious vegan food for the people is the thing that would make me happiest in life.

Perhaps that's another winter feeling, too. Growing dicontent with this disconnect from the physical world ... and a rising desire to work with my hands and shape it once more. (All I've been doing is reading and writing. I didn't even leave the house yesterday.)

But instead of cooking I research and plan. I read cookbooks and cooking sites. I write down my recipe ideas and research how to create the perfect sweet potato fry. I bookmark and tag recipe after recipe for the elusive day when I'll be cooking lots and lots for people I love.

In the meantime I wait and wait for spring, when I know my need for the physical world will be overpowering and I'll long for planting gardens and baking bread and sewing scraps and making collages and painting and building, and making things from morning 'til night.

But I did make this  the other night: Vegan Chocolate Cake with Avocado Frosting. It was weird and wonderful. It was green. It would be prettier with purple edible flowers on top. It inspired mixed reactions. I want to make it for my sister and see what she has to say about it. I also want to make it better. I have some ideas.

I always have some ideas.

I read The Book of Dave by Will Self, probably the most ambitious novel I've attempted since I read Vellum in October. (Was it really October? It still feels recent, but so much has happened since then.) I didn't know what a big novel it would be when I began. It was assigned for a book club I joined, and then didn't get to attend because I was in Charlotte.

But I'd already bought the book. It was sitting on my table when I came home. I thought, Why not? I like a big book. I like a book that tries to do more, and then draws you in. So I started reading. And then, unlike the extended reading project that was Vellum, finished it in three days, late last night. And, unlike the overstayed-its-welcome reading project that was Vellum, I got to the end and thought, "What? No! You can't do that. Where's the rest?"

[This is not a criticism of Vellum. It's obviously a brilliant novel and there's lots to admire there, but I think I'm going to have to read it two or three more times before I figure it all out. Meanwhile, Ink sits there on my shelf, taunting me.]

So I wished I had a book club with which to discuss The Book of Dave. Because there's so much there. Damn my poor timing.

Here's what the back copy says:

"When East End cabdriver Dave Rudman's wife takes from him his only son, Dave pens a savage jeremiad against the contemporary world that filters his fearful bigotry through religious mania, with a generous dose of the London cabby's unique knowledge of the sprawling city. Dave buries the book in his ex-wife's Hampstead backyard, intending it for his son, Carl, when he comes of age. Five hundred years later, Dave's book is found by the inhabitants of Ham, a primitive archipelago in post-apocalyptic London, where it becomes a sacred text of biblical proportions and the template for a new civilization.

Equal parts dystopian fantasy, religious allegory, detective story, and tribute to the sometimes fraught relations between fathers and sons, The Book of Dave is a profound meditation upon the nature of religion and a caustic satire of contemporary life."

Inevitable that I'd be fascinated by this book. It weaves together the themes that intrigue me most...

The identity of a city.
The war between religion and reason.
The landscape of the post-apocalyptic.
Insanity.
Loss.
Language.
Our impotent desire to build the perfect kingdom on earth.

And it's underlined by a powerful rage against the pathetic brokenness of societies both present and future. No coincidence that I'm listening to Happy Hollow today and renewing my faith.

Parts of it reminded me of M. John Harrison, one of my favorite writers, mainly for the depictions of Thatcher-era London, a particular culture of insanity that anchors the surrealism of many of his stories. I liked that, too. And in my post-reading-binge web crawling I was immensely gratified to find that he'd written a review of the book , although it was not in-depth as I would have liked. Not enough material to feed the obsession that I keep feeding, more than a year since it began.

I have this one story. I think it's the biggest story that I have, at least right now.

I started trying to tell this story during the summer of 2005. I tried to tell it and I couldn't.

Since then I've tried three more times. I've tried four times in all. I've written hundreds and hundreds of pages now, thousands of words. I've dug my way in and dug my way out, and somehow this is the only story that I can't figure out. What's on the paper is never anywhere near to what's in my head.

It's different from my other stories. They're smaller but I'm capable of figuring them out if I work at it long enough. They're like collages. I have the pieces, complete images, and all I have to do is figure out how to piece them together in a way that's coherent, and if I'm lucky, symmetrical, complete.

This story, it's like painting. I start with nothing. I start with emptiness, and when I move to fill in the spaces everything is clumsy, everything is wrong, I can't make the image come clear no matter how hard I try.

I keep thinking Just give it time but its hard to have faith that I have enough. 

I woke up late this morning after a late night. I went to the window, there was snow on the ground... magically appeared since I walked hom at 2:30 a.m. I love it when that happens. It still reminds me of being a little kid and praying every night during winter that I'd wake up to snow; it only happened a few times, ever. But those few times, they were truly magical.

Last night I said "Life is the pursuit of magic," and I didn't exactly know what it meant, not yet, but I know it's true. Like everything else in this world, the cause for happiness is the same as the cause for heartbreak. I found a painting I could climb into and a painting that pushed me away.

I read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader so many times when I was a kid -- a fantasy that begins with a painting that pulls you in. Recently I wondered if The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was inspired by "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and if so, what that would mean? Would it mean anything? I read that book so many times, as if I could somehow capture its magic for myself. I left my first copy in the park one day and it was ruined by rain.

I think I'm still trying to recapture what that book made me feel when I was six, seven. If I could ever reach my world-behind-the-world, that's where it would be.

All my reasons have been incoherent lately.

I started reading Viriconium, reading it slowly, no longer reading for destination but reading for meaning. I made it through two chapters. I'm not worried that I'm not reading faster. I have the rest of my life to read that story. I will never stop reading it, I will never stop writing it, I will never stop telling it.

[A stranger in this world without you... is all that I can ever be.]

I still remember driving through Atlanta's downtown streets at 7 a.m., listening to AVO and realizing that I was in a place I'd always return to, but never for long. Did I leave that place, or did it leave me? I'll probably never be able to know for sure. Lately I've longed for it desperately. Knowing that it's gone forever, like everything else.

[Strip the soul.]

Home is a place I keep searching for. Home is a place I keep finding everywhere I look.

It's time to make new stories to tell. I finally know what they're about. I found something that makes me so happy: happoier than sandwiches, kitties, fall days, north carolina in the summer time, santorini in the fall, a boy playing guitar, a girl smiling in the breeze, happier than everything. I know what I dreamed about. It's time to make new stories to tell and for the first time in a while I have something new to say.

I'm so happy, I don't even want to keep secrets anymore.

Homemade vegan panini sandwiches at 2:30 in the morning. My second Tom Collins. My science fiction dreams. Seeing the sunrise and sleeping 'til noon. Phone calls from my brothers at 5:30 am. The best kinds of conversations in coffee shops. The looks on their faces. The feeling that there's so much more. Running through the park with a borrowed puppy. The noise my cat makes when he jumps. Being much too excited about my four kinds of vinegar and my experiments with pickles. Walking down Bedford from Williamsburg to Bed Stuy. Planning trips to places all over the country and all over the world. Dreaming of stars in Arizona and knowing I can finally go. All the books I have to read. Mostly, the knowledge that I'm free.

Yesterday I walked out of my building at 4:30 in the morning. It had begun snowing while I was asleep. Snowflakes fell from the sky, glittering in the street lamps, and a fine frosting of snow lay on the ground, unmarred by footprints. I was bundled from head to toe in coat, gloves, scarf and hat but even so it felt strangely warm. (It gets warmer when it snows, that's what I've heard. I imagine the thick clouds drifting in like an atmospheric blanket of warmth, sealing the heat of our steaming breaths.) It was astonishingly quiet and still. I stood on the steps and waited for the car to come, the snowflakes lodging themselves in my hair, resting on my coat. I looked up at the sky, more flakes floating down, each one distinct in the glowing lights from the street. I was as happy as I've ever been.

The night before last, I had a nightmare. I woke up crying for the first time in a long while, though maybe not as long as it should be. My cats were like WTF mate? I was like, don't mind me. Just, you know, crying it out. After the water works stopped, I laid in bed trying to go back to sleep. Instead I spent an hour thinking about errands I should run and bills I should pay.

I called my siblings first thing in the morning. I talked to my littlest sister while she was still coming out of sleep, her mind wandering and her voice scratchy. (Years ago we used to sleep in the same bed and in the summertime we'd sleep in until the sun was hot, and then we'd wander down to the kitchen in pajamas and I'd make waffles. Every morning. We never got sick of waffles.)

Later that day my youngest brother was in a car accident. He was with his girlfriend and their friend was driving. They were in an intersection and a car ran a red light and hit them. (This is why a small, quiet part of me is as terrified as a hunted animal every day of my life.) They were all OK, just bruised and battered, but the car wasn't. If my brother had been sitting on the other side of the car, he might have been seriously injured, he might have died. And yesterday was just a day like any other day.

When you love enough, you lie a lot. When you love enough, you never stop feeling guilty. When you love enough, you can't walk anywhere without walking away from someone, somebody, something. The further I go the more talismans I carry with me, around my neck, scarred on my arms, tattooed on my ankles, hidden in the closet, behind the bed, at the back of the drawer. That hallway used to be 5 1/2 minutes long, but it gets longer every time.

So, you know.

There are other worlds than these.

For Christmas I received my first vegan cookbook. I'm really excited about it, especially because it's such a great one: The Vegan Table .

It focuses on cooking with vegetables, grains, oils, etc instead of meat or dairy substitutes, which I really like. It's also organized according to the type of meal (romantic for two, casual celebration for four, etc) instead of the type of food, which makes browsing interesting. I like it so much I want to cook my way through it and try everything, but there's just one catch: who's going to eat all that food? I need an army of Brooklyn-based vegan meal testers.

Speaking of food, I wish I'd planned better. I really want to invite people over for Southern-style collard greens and black-eyed peas on New Years Day (you eat them for good luck), but I just got back in town, the house is a mess, and I still don't have any dishes. Maybe next year.

My sister and I are setting a shared New Year's resolution for ourselves -- "Don't buy anything new." The exceptions: food, underwear, and in her case, art supplies. The rules: craigslist, e-bay, thrift stores, consignment stores and used items on amazon are all OK.

The reason for this is environmental more than financial -- it takes slightly more work to find the stuff you need used, and you may not get exactly what you wanted, but it's an important aspect of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle."

So, in keeping with this idea, we wanted to get started early by testing out the "Don't buy anything new" plan on our Christmas gifts, too. We told everyone in our family about this plan ahead of time, of course.

Meanwhile, my mom decided she was too burned out to do much Christmas planning/shopping, so she put my sister and my 15-year-old brother in charge, and put some strict financial limits on how much they could spend.

The result: pure awesomeness.

We did indeed buy the majority of our gifts used, most of it within two or three days of shopping. We got records for my dad and lots of cool clothes and books for everyone at Goodwill. (And I'd found more good used books at Strand earlier that week.) We found Beatles Rockband used on Amazon, a gift for everyone in the family to enjoy together. My 17-year-old brothers had been asking for a waffle maker; I remembered that I had one stashed away somewhere in my dad's house, so we dug it up and cleaned it off. For my 17-year-old brothers we also bought lots and lots of snacks/groceries, because they're always hungry and there's never enough food in the house. My sister and I spent an hour or two decorating a big white box with drawings and quotes from popular Beatles songs. Because we got everything used, we spent a very small amount over all.

Because we'd done most of the shopping together, no one was completely surprised about what they were getting, so we did most of the wrapping together too, and wrapped everything in newspaper (my sister's insistence).

My 15-year old brother (who loves food almost as much as I do) planned a gluttonous Christmas brunch at my mom's house, and my sister and I planned a smallish Christmas Eve dinner at my dad's house. Both included lots of vegan dishes. And all of us kids did the cooking together, too.

Christmas Eve we had a "mattress party" at my mom's house. Basically we removed all the mattresses from the beds, put them downstairs in the living room, and stayed up all night watching movies. It was pretty hilarious. Of course we were all totally exhausted the next day, but after we opened our presents and made our enormous brunch, there wasn't really much to do besides watch more movies and take long naps.

Anyway, it was different than the way we usually do it. I don't think we followed any of our Christmas traditions at all. But our celebrations were very much focused on togetherness -- we did the shopping and wrapping and planning and cooking together, and we had lots of time to do other activities, too... watching movies, playing rockband, roasting marshmallows in the fireplace, sampling charlotte's vegan restaurants, and just sitting around late at night talking and laughing and fooling around. Not to mention cooking and eating way too much food pretty much every day. I was only there for 8 days, but I got to spend almost all of every day just hanging out with my siblings. Which made it a really good holiday.

 
Last night I laughed so hard I thought I might have an aneurysm. If you haven't stood in that too-big house at the edge of the woods, you've never seen me laugh like this. I thought: It can hardly be healthy to laugh this hard. Then I thought: Why not? Maybe it's unhealthy to not laught this hard. 

I've been tremendously happy to be back in Charlotte. We spent a day Christmas shopping at thrift stores, me and my sister and my brother, and topped it off with a visit to one of Charlotte's few vegan restaurants. We ordered delicious vegan subs with meat substitutes and spicy sauces that spilled all over the place. There were no tables so we sat and ate in the van. 

We went home, wrapped lots of presents in newspaper, tried on thrift store clothes, told jokes. Our favorite adopted sister came over. We had a pancake party: this one went a little over the top. Chocolate chip, banana chocolate chip, chocolate-chocolate chip, blueberry, plus strawberry sauce, maple syrup, fudge sauce. We made maybe like, 80, 90 pancakes for the eight of us. And then two of the boys failed to perform their pancake-related duties -- one was sick, one had made the grievous mistake of consuming multiple pizzas earlier that day. So there were a lot of pancakes. There will be many more pancakes to come. 

We stayed up talking until 4:30 a.m., then I curled up in a little ball and went to sleep, my brothers turned out the lights, and I woke up this morning still wearing all my clothes, totally dressed. And because I'm a Boskovich I like that, because it adds extra convenience to my morning. Instead of taking the time to get dressed all over again, I can write this instead.

This Christmas has been and will be completely different than any we've had before, and I'm happy with that. We decided to break all our traditions and start from scratch. And so far it has been completely wonderful. More to come... 

For years I've dreamed about elevators and they're usually nightmares. I can't remember what came first -- the dreams, or my high school physics teacher's revelations about what to do if the elevator breaks its cable and falls. (Nothing. Gravity wins that round. You're screwed.) In college I studied more physics but found no more answers, except for the fact that I suck at high level calculus. So gravity won that one, too, pulling me inexorably toward what has true weight for me: words. (Gravity always wins.)


But in my nightmares I'm moving upwards. My elevators move in fits and starts. They trap me between floors. They dart from side to side. They compress inwards. They shoot upwards without walls. They compell me to step across the gap. They are precarious and unmaintained. They are hand-cranked. Their mechanics never make any sense. All I know is that they frighten me. When I am in them I feel detached from my physical environment. I am numb with fear.


They are usually in libraries.


Inevitably the book I need is on the fourteenth floor and the only way to get it is to embark on this upwards journey in an elevator that my dream logic knows is destined to fail, but I want that book so I swallow the terror and get on it anyways.


Last night I dreamed the dream again.


Now in real life I live in a building with an elevator. I've lived in elevator buildings before, but this one is different -- it's a 1930's era elevator, cramped, caged and lurching, with a door that swings open.


That could be the reason I've been dreaming the dream more often lately.


That could be the reason, but it isn't.

Yesterday we shopped at Strand Books, the hugest bookstore ever, maybe except for that one in Portland that I haven't been to in the longest time. I found books for people I like. I'm excited about all the books I bought. I'm always excited about all the books I buy, but it's the kind of happiness that never gets old. We ate at that cafe nearby with a name in French that I can't remember or at least I can't spell; I like table service for coffee because it reminds me of being in Eastern Europe (the bored waiters, the tiny cups of sweet espresso, the little receipt that comes curled in a shot glass with the drinks). I like warm coffee shops on cold days.

We walked through Washington Square Park and there was a man covered in pigeons, sitting on the bench with pigeons perched on his shoulders and around his feet, and I missed my brother because I knew what he'd say. He wasn't there so I said it for him. (Look at this guy, like he's Johnny Pigeon Tamer or something? Yeah right, ain't no Johnny Pigeon Tamer. Not once, not never.) It's hard to explain why that makes me laugh so much. The sun was shining and it was cold but I'm used to that now. It was impossible not to be filled with joy.

Later, riding home alone on the subway with my bags of books. Two guys next to me mocking the advertisement posted across from us, which featured lots of unlikely text speak in floating speech bubbles. I eavesdropped on their jokes and they made me laugh. A subway performer got on the train and started playing guitar and singing "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone" into a microphone which he had somehow attached to his neck. He was surprisingly good. Everyone listened.

And I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are so many moments where I belong exactly in the place that I am.

Oh, also, it's snowing. 

For the longest time I've been obsessed with cities. I can't remember when it began -- when I read Invisible Cities, or sometime long before that? For me cities have always held magic. Cities both real and imaginary, visible and unseen, past and future. For me fantasy is always about place and cities are the locus of longing and desire, tragedy and dissapointment. Seattle. New York. Atlanta. Veniss. Ambergris. Savannah. Viriconium. Prague. Belgrade. Chiba City and the Sprawl. Perta Perdida, the city of Lost Girls. New Manhattan/Noir Manhattan, the city in Black and White. New Crobuzon. Chicago. Athens. Philadelphia. I've seen these cities in my dreams. I've walked through their streets, tasted their food, smelled their complications, seen the fleeting expressions of passersby with all the past and present they hold.


I'm working on two novels that are both essentially about cities. I've read about the modernists, pursued Le Corbusier, marveled at Alma Mahler. I've worked my way through treatises. There is still so much left that I have to learn. I feel that the research could be endless.