David Mitchell - reconfirmed hero

I saw David Mitchell at Cody's tonight. The man is brilliant. He read from Black Swan Green.
http://www.codysbooks.com/product/info.jsp?isbn=1400063795
It was completely captivating: the story, the language, his reading. He really gets into it, does all the voices, the sounds. And he obviously loves questions. He really thought about the answers, wanted to get them right.

He got a question about genre, since he has elements of Sci Fi and and Gothic etc in his literary fiction. He said that genres were like sections in an orchestra, usually someone masters the section and stays there. The instruments in that section are usually not used by those outside of the section. Genres can be used as tools for a writer. And they can be the way into writing as they are often the way into reading. (He thanked Dan Brown for bringing so many people to reading.) That's my understanding of his idea. He said it much more eloquently, of course.

He also talked about originality coming from cliche. Go for the cliche, the common understanding, and twist it.

So I'm pumped because his writing, and his thinking about writing, and his passion for writing and for ideas, are everything I love about both reading and writing. But also, once again, I'm feeling like my writing will never be as good as I think good is, since little is good next to David Mitchell. I'll keep working at it anyway. He also said, when I saw him two years ago, that when he realised that if he wanted to ever write he'd better get started, he was twenty-five and he wrote a bunch of 'crap' for years. (Couldn't have been too many years though. I think he was born in 69 and is now working on his fifth novel.) So, I'm just going to go ahead and continue to write my crap and see where it takes me. Though, I've got to get some reading done too. I'm going to reread Cloud Atlas, then onto Black Swan Green.

Patrick's Surfaces IV

Once my computer finished humming down, the silence was encompassing. I put my empty whiskey glass down on my wooden desk and the deep "thang" echoed for countable seconds. Then all I heard was my heartbeat.

I couldn't move from my chair. I still felt watched. My iMac was perfect in it's black and white contrast, but I still felt watched.

I gasped short when I realized that I missed her, that I wanted her back, that the silence was loneliness. I had hopes that included her.

I thought I should go for a run. Do the shopping. Anything out of the house. Or drink myself into a long sleep. I had choices and I listened to my heart beat.

Then I could hear my neighbor do dishes on the other side of my wall. I had never heard him before. He was only ten feet away from me, certainly sometimes much less than ten, and I had never heard him before.

I smelled baked cheese and wondered if it came from next door. Maybe he was having guests. What kind of man baked cheese in a greasy, cheap apartment and did the dishes while it was in the oven?

And whistled. He was whistling. "A Kiss To Build a Dream On." He'd never whistled before. If I could hear him whistling, he could hear my music. I'd been playing that song constantly for two weeks. I almost began to sing along with him, out of habit. "And my imagination will make that dream come true."

What else could he hear? Had he heard the conversation I'd just had? Did he hear the word "cacophony?" Did he hear the word, "composite?" What did he know about me? I knew nothing about him, never heard him before. I only knew what he looked like. I didn't even know his name. It could be Patrick for all I knew. He could be Patrick for all I knew. He might be Patrick and he might have been watching me so closely that he'd know the surfaces of my cheeks are not smooth. That I like white ankles. He might know everything.

I knocked my chair over in my panic getting up, grabbed my keys, and unbolted my door. I heard him unbolt his. I froze. I didn't open my door. I couldn't possibly see him. I bolted it again. He bolted his.

I tiptoed back to the computer, turned off its speakers, and turned it back on.

"Hello, dear," she said instantly. "Don't ever do that again please."

Bottom up

I'm not sure about part three of Patrick. Make sure to read the first patrick post with parts one and two before you read three. And then please someone tell me what is happening. Who's Patrick?

Patrick's Surfaces III

III

I wanted to just turn the computer off. But I was paralyzed by the things that hadn't happened yet.

"What are you wearing?" she asked. Patrick must have turned her voice equalizer towards "sexy."

"Doesn't Patrick know that too?" I still hadn't turned back around.

"No." She laughed. "He hasn't seen you today. Come on, what are you wearing?"

"A black cloak."

"Are you naked underneath?"

I really needed to turn around and walk over to the computer and turn it off. But all I did was splash whiskey onto the sideboard.

"So? Are you naked underneath?"

"Yes." I flipped the hood of my State sweatshirt up onto my head. Black cloak. I closed my eyes and remembered being ankle deep in a high mountain lake, feeling the heat of the sun on my head, anticipating the cold of the lake on my bare belly, and craving the soothing but dreading the shock.

"Why a black cloak? Are you Death?"

"Will you close your eyes?" I said.

"Why? I can't see you anyway."

"Please?"

"But, why? Are you going to take off your cloak?"

"Please close your eyes for just a moment."

"Okay. There. They're closed."

"Thank you." I turned and saw them closed but looking at the blue and blond and of her, all framed in white, was bright like the bright after a nap on the high mountain beach. I walked over to the computer and dimmed the screen so that all I could see was her vague outline. She was a shadow against darker shadows. It was the best I could do.

"Okay, that's good. Thank you." I sat down and faced the screen.

"So? Are you naked?"

"No."

"You still have your cloak on?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"I know exactly what it is of you I want," I said.

"What do you know I have that you don't have?"

"You have power and place. You are flat and framed. Composed. Placed. And if you moved out of frame, you would no longer exist."

"Patrick didn't tell me you'd be like this." Her voice had been taken away from sexy.

"Patrick's not here."

"No, he's not. Because, he's here. Patrick is with me.."

"Goodbye Patrick." And I turned her off.

Patrick's Surfaces I and II

I

Her ankle was white with a black rose on the inside.

"I didn't know you could tattoo a bony place like that," I said.

"It's not a tattoo. It's Patrick. He likes to dabble in body art. Doodle, if you like. It'll wash off." She pushed her blond hair behind her ears, looking at me. While she had my gaze, she tucked her feet up on the chair underneath her, covering both white ankles and both pink feet with her blue paisley skirt.

I wondered where else Patrick had dabbled.

"Do you know Patrick?" she asked me.

I told her I didn't. "How could I?"

"Well, you never know."

I began to wonder if I did know Patrick.

For all she knew, I was Patrick, playing some dirty trick. I assured her that I didn't know Patrick.

"Good," she said with a decisive nod.

I went to pour more whiskey, making sure to do so silently. She could hear everything but saw nothing. I told her that my iSight camera had broken that morning. She believed me. Just like she believed everything I'd told her over the past two weeks of our correspondence.

She looked exactly how I thought she would and I wondered if she would look as good if she weren't framed by the pure-white of my 20-inch iMac. Her ankle had been almost as white.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Watching you," I said, putting my whiskey down.

"I'm not sure what to say to you," she said. "It feels like we've said everything already. It's nice to hear your voice, though. Talk to me."

"What would you like me to say?"

"Tell me what you look like."

"You know that already." I hadn't told her anything true, and wasn't sure I'd remember. I began to think her stupid for not suspecting. Or maybe she was clever and trying to catch me in my lies.

"I know." She looked straight at me from the screen. "I know you know Patrick. You may not know his name though. He's the one who told me what you look like."

I took a sip of my whiskey. "I told you what I look like."

"Yes. True. But he sees you differently."

"What does he see?"

"He dabbles, like I said. He looks for surfaces. He said the surfaces of your cheeks are not smooth."

This was true.




II

"Patrick never told you anything," I said.

"Oh, Patrick told me lots of things. He said, for example, 'luscious.'"

"What are you talking about?"

"He was talking about your lips. He said, 'luscious.' He also said, 'cacophony.'"

"That's no longer involving surfaces." I was done with my whiskey. I wanted another, but I felt like she could see me through the screen, though there was no camera to give her an image of me. Her round blue eyes were touching me, bristling my eyebrows. I felt her, and couldn't draw my gaze away from her face, from her own unblemished smooth surfaces. She was perfect, with her hair pinned up, her gauzy blouse, her gold-chained wrist. A dream. A day dream. Not possibly true. Perhaps, then, Patrick, whoever he is, made her up. Perhaps she was pure Photoshop and Flash. "What do you mean, 'cacophony?'"

"I mean loud chaos." Her grin made me think of a colon and a right parenthesis.

"What did Patrick mean by 'cacophony' in relation to me?"

"Oh, please," she said, and actually looked away. "Stop playing this game."

"Patrick told me about you too." I wanted to play the game. I wanted to be steering the conversation again. I wanted to turn my computer off, but had no power.

"Patrick said to me, 'nebulous.'"

"He said to me, 'rendition,'" I said.

"Pantomime," she said, her mouth making a perfect 'o' in the middle, then going flat. A colon and a lower case 'l'.

"Composite," I said.

When she said, "Sacrilegious", I got the strength to turn my back, walk to the sideboard, refill my glass.

"Where'd you go?" I heard her say.

"Tell me more," I heard her say.

"Cellular," I said to my glass.

First Post

I'm still not sure about this blogging thing. But, perhaps a new place to write can't be a bad thing. I'll see what happens.