Little Thoughts

I am reading two books right now. Miranda July’s No one belongs here more than you and Tom Robbins’ Skinny Legs and All.

No one… is a collection of short stories.  Each one peers into the life of the character for 10 pages at most, capturing an interaction they’ve experienced with another person, often an inappropriate or fantastical one.  I take a break after reading each one.  Consuming several in a row feels disingenuous, like I’ve chewed up and spit out their life in my quest for the next one.  But it’s nice.  Real nice.  Each story delivers something real, pure, honest about our interactions with each other.  There is no fat.  After reading ten stories, I’ve understood the motivations, joys, fears (albeit a tiny fraction of them) of ten protagonists.

Contrast this with Skinny Legs… in which I’ve only begun to understand (albeit very well) the life of one or two main characters.  I work for my understanding.  And what if I want immediate gratification? If I have ten minutes to spend with Ellen Cherry, the protagonist of Skinny Legs and All, I may come in at a boring part of the book.  Where is the joy in that?  I believe that at the end of it all, I will, however, know her very well.

These are competing interests.  I must emphasize competing, as opposed to just differing.  It is not simply that one can have a taste for short stories some of the time and novels at others.  I have, on a couple of occasions, wanted to continue reading the novel, but settled for the short story in the interests of time.  Miranda July is actively taking my attention away from Tom Robbins.

Let’s drop the shoddy metaphor.  I decided today that you can think of people in two different categories: those whose lives are novels, and those whose lives are a collection of short stories.  My friend Nicole said that other day that, since moving to Seattle, she has felt like she is on some sort of life hiatus, like a permanent vacation.  I feel similarly, though I had never thought of it in those terms before.  Our lives, I would claim, are like a collection of short stories at this stage.  Vacations are temporary escapes.  One day you’re water-skiing on Lake Wahanawaka, and the next, you’re downing shots of tequila with Chevy Chase at La Casa Igualidad.  This is allowed on vacation.  You don’t go to work every day.  You don’t have the same morning routine.  Each day is a story, without much relevance to your long term life.

I know that this is a temporary state, as vacations are understood to be.  I wonder about returning to work.  I wonder when I will need to.  I wonder if it is good to be in this state of permanent temporality. I wonder when mine will be over. I wonder if I should cut it short, or appreciate it.

Appreciating each day as new and fresh always seemed to be a privilege to me, but what if you want to make a bigger, more meaningful, more extensive point?