Daddy's Job

Eric sure liked being in this, what was it called again? Oh yeah, the V.I.P section. He heard the shiny-headed bald man dressed up as a policeman call it the backstage. The fact that he was back here was utterly unfathomable to him.

Usually he would have to spend nights like these at his grandma and grandpa's house. They'd make him supper, tell him a story, he'd tuck grandpa in as he dozed off while watching the 9'o clock news. But tonight grandma and grandpa were going to a get-together across the street and they could not look after Eric so he was forced to go to work with his dad.

This place was even louder than lunchtime at his preschool, he thought to himself. People ran past him, by him and nearly knocked him over. It seemed like the whole city of New York was back here and to Eric, that very well seemed feasible. There were frantic men holding clipboards yelling at other frantic men who were carrying shiny lights. Eric held onto his sippy cup and took a sip while watching three scantily clad women walk by.

Things began to slow down backstage and soon Eric heard a loud noise coming from in front of the egg-white walls which encased him and these other people. It sounded a little bit like music, but it was much more agressive. It was as if the music was angry at him or something. He glanced at the man who was dressed up as a cop; he was having an interesting conversation with the scantily clad women. Eric decided to see what all the ruckus was for. He dropped his sippy cup and went off to investigate.

He strided toward the jet-black door with the gracefulness of a rhino suffering heat-stroke pushed off of his tippy-toes and reached up to the doorknob. It was the heaviest thing he had felt but he knew he had to open. He set down Norbert, his favorite teddy bear and used both his clammy hands to pry open the door. He danced around in triumphant victory, took one last look at the VIP area where one of the men who was holding lights beforehand was now drinking out of a tiny little sippy cup of his own, though this one foolishly had no top.

Eric walked down a dark and scary hallway. This was always how he imagined what walking alone in a scary forest would be like, although there were less trees. Suddenly, a light at the end of this hallway beckoned him, as did the rhythmic and animalistic noise. It grew in volume with each step he took until he was at the end of the hallway. What he saw (and heard) changed his life forever.

His dad was grwling into the microphone like an angry wolf and he was pointing at people in the crowd who he surely did not know. His dad had always told him to never do either of these things! He was saying some mean things to the audience and even swearing. Eric couldn't believe his ears. His dad was even sticking his tongue out at people! Eric gasped and held onto Norbert's paw as his father jumped on top of these poor innocent people and they pushed him back onto the stage, obviously frightened of his violent ways. THIS is what dad did for work? Eric pulled Norbert up on his shoulders and laughed because his dad was gonna be in big trouble once he told mom about what he was doing at work.

It caught me in between dreams. Like clockwork, I heard it tap against my window, seemingly right when I rolled back over. I glanced at the clock, it was somewhere between 4 am and 5am, that blurry baguely unreal time that we never seem to recall perfectly in the morning. I don't know what I want to happen. I just can't believe that, for the first time in my life, I am seeing a deer outside of my bedroom window, chomping away at the unkempt grass. And when it finally left at a time closer to 5:30 than 4, I settled back into my bed and wondered what deers dreamt about.

But when I woke up, my thoughts were much more razor-sharp. And all I could think about was how such a beautiful moment had been wasted on my sleep-riddled vision. I tried to tell the story to anyone I could but their reactions never satiated the pit in my stomach which craved some sort of resolution, or maybe some way to sum the whole event up.

"That's great, Cody," My mom said, "That's one of those special memories that'll stay with you forever."

But as she told me to get going to school, I knew that it wouldn't. Because memories fade in order to make room for new ones and this one would definitely be one of the first to go since it wasn't necessarily an important one. And maybe it's not important in the grand scheme of things... even in the more modest scheme of things, it was only a deer eating grass outside of my window. But it was important to me and that was all it needed to be to become beautiful.

As I sat by the ledge with my camera in hand, glancing at my alarm clock every so often, I knew he wouldn't come. I knew that soon, I wouldn't be able to remember the scruffy white patch of fur beneath his chin. The way his dark black baleful eyes told a story of impending death, the way he chewed so modestly, despite not even knowing I was watching him.

And as I set down my camera, I knew that I could still remember the beauty of that dark blue dawn, if I could just write it down. Because a picture captures the truth, but our words let us create our own version of the truth. A happier one. And I know that no matter what happened to that ten-point Buck today, he'll always be safe here. Roaming the forests and the backyards, free to chew on whatever grass he wants. It may not mean much but it means a lot to me. And that's all that matters.

My Ideal Writing Life

"What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head."
- Anne Lammot, Bird By Bird

My ideal writing life may not start off quite like you would think because unlike most would-be writers, I don't want to sleep in past noon every day. Instead, I would wake up around 4:30 or so because that is my favorite time to wake up and it makes my days feel very long and fruitful. Next, I would eat breakfast, grab a can of Sunkist and flip open my laptop. I would have several new music releases queued to listen to on my iTunes and prepare reviews for as one of the reviewers for the music magazine Q. Once I finished preparing first drafts of those reviews, I would maybe go for a run, play some music and then get back to work, only this time I'd be posting a blog entry for my fans (or detractors) to read. At around 3pm or so, I would get ready to rehearse with my band and when I got home that night I would be prepared to work on my latest book (by now I'd have released several, which is why I got hired by Q Magazine in the first place.

That dream couldn't be further from my reach than it is right now (which isn't true because it was probably a lot further from my reach back when I couldn't read or write). The reason I selected the quote I did from chapter one is because it really boils all my writing problems down to one key statement. I always over-criticize my work until it is no longer enjoyable to read. I second-guess every adjective, over-think every piece of symbolism. If I could estimate how many starts to a story I have deleted because "it just sucked" then I would say I would have enough pages to write the next great american novel (although the continuity would be a problem). I actually do wake up at 4am almost every day so I don't foresee having too much trouble finding time to write (in fact, my desire to write more is why I decided to wake up so early). Thanks to this class, I vow to fight back against my inner critic... or maybe just let him catch a few more hours of sleep while I write in the morning. :)

They were burning beef in their backyards, brown burly men with beer cans. I was always petrified to talk to them. Not because of their color or anything like that. It was more this foreboding vibe they gave off. It was like seeing a car in front of you swerving and changing lanes dangerously often. You just can't help but worry that something is happening in that car. Something terrible. It wasn't that I thought they seemed like bad people, menaces to the neighborhood... it was that the way they acted and never seemed to *look* at anything or speak a real word... they didn't even seem like people at all. Like, if there was any trace of humanity in them in the beginning... it had left so long ago that they had forgotten what it was like to have it.And when I happened to catch them on a walk out of the neighborhood last week, following them them far behind on my bike, I saw them do something I can never forget, even when I close my eyes. In fact, closing my eyes leave me only with those millisecond nightmares for my subconscious to feast upon. Sometimes we can only feast on that which our mind tells us not to. We are as compulsive as animals and just as easy to catch. People sometimes forget about how similar we are to animals. I never will again.