old haunts

A couple of weeks ago I flew to New York, and then B and his girlfriend and I drove to Binghamton for a friend's wedding. First, though, we drove to Colgate, where B had gone to college. He hadn't been back in a decade and change. It was a brisk early October day, all glorious red leaves and ominous skies; it was the first day of fall break, and campus was almost eerily deserted. There was a lake with swans, and a library with views of the green of the quad, the gentle roll of the hills beyond.

When he was a student, B had an accident that could have killed him, though as it turned out, he survived just fine. (I mean, he was in a wheelchair for a while, but he's fine now.) It happened that we had come back on the anniversary of it, to the day. He took us to the spot where it had happened. He made us take pictures of him standing there, grinning. It was macabre, definitely, and upsetting but kind of abstractly; almost, but not quite, funny. (Well, that was my take; his girlfriend did not think it was remotely funny, and he thought it was hilarious.) (Hi B, I know you're reading this.) It felt like the opening to a campus novel and/or a horror film.

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After the wedding I went back to New Haven, where I had just been over the summer, though before that not for a handful of years. I was staying with some friends who live just outside of town, but A was able to loan me her car so I could drive around at my leisure. It was gray again, threatening rain. It felt like so many other afternoons I'd spent in that city: shifting between warm humidity and cold gusts of wind, the weather almost but not quite about to send everyone running inside. I ate a wood-fired pizza and drank a beer and read a book; I went to the coffee shop where I wrote all of my college essays and worked on a screenplay. (Creative exercise, not for anything exciting coming up.) I looked for ghosts of myself and found them everywhere: on street corners, at the bookstore, inside of my own head. 

Later I went up to the Farm. I was expecting it to be empty, but a class was there along with two of my former colleagues. Again, the resonance with moments past: the coziness of the afternoon descending into evening, the rain finally breaking, but soft, soft. I knew exactly what it would feel like to stand in front of the fire in the oven, to walk down the hill to my old apartment smelling like smoke. I would pick up Thai food and then go put on leggings and curl up with whatever reading had to be done before class the next day.

I looked up at the students gathered underneath the Pavilion that I helped raise, lit by string lights, and thought: I will never be happy in the specific way that I was happy here ever again. It didn't feel sad, or it did feel sad, but not tragic. Mostly it was factual. That part of my life is over. The distance between here and there is uncrossable. It just is. To honor what it was involve accepting that it's over. 

This idea has come up in several conversations I've had recently, about going back to college and doing it all over again, knowing what we know now. Being less self-conscious, less anxious and awkward and basically less stupid. I understand the appeal, and I also can't imagine it. Who I am now is a house built on the foundation of those years: the mistakes I made, the people I hurt (myself, for fucking starters). I can't undo her-- painful, hurtful, miserable as she was-- without undoing the rest of it. I understand that's not how the thought experiment is supposed to work, but I still can't wrap my mind around it. What was there to learn, except what I already did? What is there to do next, except keep moving forward?

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No new pieces to link you to, but I am teaching something I'm really excited about this fall! It's the third class in the WTF family, but this one is geared towards writers of all genres, not just romance. It's called Editing WTF, and it's about... I mean, you can guess, I think.

I'm very amped on it!! I understand why so many writing classes are focused on the drafting stage, because it's easier to talk in general terms about something that doesn't exist yet, but, like, editing is SO much more of the writing process-- and especially the novel writing process-- than drafting. I spend six months, very approximately, writing a first draft. The work of making that draft into a publishable book takes years. So let's talk about how to tackle it, shall we? Details below: