Freak

"So what are you going to do?", Lovely said.

"Nothing. I am going straight to work, then taking the train out at 2:30, I won't think about this until I'm back from Philly Tuesday". I added three pairs of socks, and a book ("The Six Cents - by Knight Shyamalan") on the top of 3 neatly folded shirts of varying pinkness in plastic covers.

"And then?"

"And then I tell him we're off, we're through, finito. I can't go through life with a freak."

"He's not a freak. He's just a litte uh...dogged by bad karma lately". Lovely likes to stick up for Manish, because he brings Pinkberry icecream home every Friday evening, and he always brings her some, even though she doesn't live with us. And he guards it like a cat from me, checking the fridge everyday to see if the box has been moved around. I mean, she doesn't even come by for 3-4 days sometimes, and it sits there perfectly aligned with the black line on the fridge light he drew, so he'd know if it was moved. Yeah, I know about that. It's low. It sucks. It's Manish's bloody sense of fair play

"He is a freak. I've never even heard of things like that happening to anybody once, and it happens to him all the time.He's a whole Ripley's book all by himself". I added the black eyehole top that I think is sexy, actually a little slutty. The eyehole is just a little too big.

She was trying that face on me again, the Mother Theresa Accosted by Man Selling Viagra Still Life in Poster colors face. "Why do you wear that thing? It's hideous, it makes you look like a tramp. I'm not surprised if men feel like stopping you and saying Ëxcuse me, how much for half-hour?"

"I like slutty. You have no kink in your soul, that's the problem. Besides, men like that don't waste time saying Excuse Me". She's irritated, and I'm off to a good day. I'll be all sweetness at the office now.

"But I haven't told you what happened yesterday", I continue.

"What yesterday?"

"Yesterday we were getting ready for Ennis's party, and Manish was sitting on the bed, checking the laptop for map directions, and he was drinking Coke straight from the liter bottle, like he does, and he drank a little too much too quickly. Started to come out of his nose. Have you ever snorted Coke from your nose? It stings your nasal membranes like two hells. So he spit out the Coke from his mouth, and it landed on the keyboard of the laptop, and shorted it. Blew up sparks all around like mini fireworks. It gave him a bad shock."

"Oh my god, it must have scared him." Lovely was concerned and excited at the same time. She's not bad, actually. She really likes Manish, but she also likes to hear how Manish gets it under the chin sometimes.

I swung around the bed and sat down next to her. I have to be leaving soon. But this story has got to be finished.
"No, I mean he really got an actual electric shock. Couldn't feel his fingers and toes for a while. We gave Ennis and his party a miss, went to Emergency instead. Had to tell this story to the doc three times. He was very doubtful. He thought maybe we'd been doing some Friday evening after-work happy-shiny highs. I had to tell him some of the other stories. How Manish was shaving with a knife in memory of the old Italian barbershop his father used to take him to, and how he sneezed and cut his jugular and had to go to St Martins through Memorial Weekend traffic wrapped in a bed sheet, because there was no time to dress.

"The nephew story?" she volunteered. She knows all the stories now, better than me. She's even been using it as a fallback conversation picker-upper when nothing else works on whichever colleague she's trying to get interested in her.

"That too. Although the doctor thought I was exaggerating when I said Manish actually killed his own nephew by falling on him. He said it was extremely unlikely - any 4 year old would be hurt, perhaps bruised quite a bit, but die of internal bleeding from an elbow in his stomach? But it happens to Manish. Anyhow, the thing I wanted to tell you is that Manish told me something weird last night.after we got back from the hospital"

Lovely's eyeballs grew large.

"He said that just before anything nasty like this happens to him, he has like a split second thought of 'What if an accident like this happened?', and then it really happens. Each and every time."

"He's got precognition?!" - she said, now actually aroused, "He can see it before stuff happens!". Her excitable hand was messing up the clothes in my suitcase,. I shut it, pushed the zipper around in one swift circular motion, then pulled it off the bed and stood up, ready to leave.

"No, that's not quite it." I was definitely late now.
"Manish thinks he's actually making this stuff happen by thinking it".

She stared at me. "Why would he make such stuff happen?"

I had this last bit well prepared, "He said he may be doing it to get me to dump him. Because I won't want to be near someone who has accidents all the time".

She was all up on Manish's side now. "And you are? Going to dump him for thinking that? That's not fair. I mean, even if he's nuts thinking what he's thinking, it's not true, you know that."

"Yes, I know it's not the truth. He's a freak, I told you". I stepped out the door, closed it behind me. I stood for a minute.
I should, I shouldn't.
I shouldn't.
I should ?

I opened the door and peeked back at her. She was still standing where she had stood. I grinned.
"He's doing it for you. Will you call him and tell him I ate your icecream?"

Caferati link..

The shocking truth about the slush pile [Article excerpt and link] (Peter Griffin)

...
The envelopes and emails rolled in, and I rolled them out with the standard knockback letter. It stopped being funny; it felt arduous. I hated that it was my job to shatter people's dreams of being published, but I also hated that so many of them had such illiterate dreams. The physical act of writing a book may not be difficult, but there's a big difference between smacking away at a keyboard and writing something that anyone who doesn't really love you wants to read. The majority of people who submitted their work went wrong after the first few pages at best, if the cover letter wasn't dreadful.

From "The shocking truth about the slush pile" by Jean Hannah Edelstein at the Guardian Blogs. Read the whole thing at http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/05/the_shocking_truth_about_the_s.html (and don't forget to read through the huge number of comments from both sides of the fence).

Caferati link...

I read the entire post and the comments with a good amount of chuckling. The divide between the publishing world view and those on the wrong side of the slush pile - who serves whom ? - never really gets smaller with all the discussions.

I started to read the blog of one Miss Snark, agent extraordinaire in 2005. I was reading it purely for her snarkisms, but she is both funny and informative, and discovered a whole new vocabulary starting from SASE and slush pile that I had no idea even existed :-)

She stopped writing recently, but the blog archives still exist at http://misssnark.blogspot.com

Aparna

The Pun is mightier than the sword

I got a message from a person with a cool nickname - it was a pun, an original one. He read one of my Caferati comments, and said he could not agree with it more, and hoped the futility of becoming posterity's poster child it would take the pressure off writing (am just paraphrasing him here).

I love puns. I love people who think up great puns. I love 'punny' people who write in to say they could not agree with me more. What's not to love?

The mood has lightened considerably after this.

When Our Writing Becomes Us (John Matthew)

Jump to it..


Dan,
Thanks for the tip. Next book on my list. :-)

John,
Critics can judge, applaud, point to flaws, and compare with other writers, but they cannot tell a writer what to write. They don't decide what books must be written.

I recently read that the number of new English books published in 2004 was 375,000. Total number of English books available for purchase the same year: 450,000. The average reader probably goes through 10 or 20 in a year.
This of course excludes all magazine articles, blog posts, newspapers and every other form of printed information a person comes across, online or offline.

What an avalanche of advice, impressions and thoughts! It seems impossible for anyone to leave any lasting impression behind. I hope we all write at least in part to please ourselves, and those who may chance on it today, rather than posterity.

(If this realization isn't the stuff of Kafka, what is :-) )

Aparna

Making Poetry Submissions [Article excerpt and link / Peter Griffin (Moderator)

Making Poetry Submissions
Chris Hamilton-Emery

Why do I write?

Before considering making a poetry submission to any publisher it is important to consider what you want to contribute to a publishing relationship and precisely what you want to achieve within your writing life. This is certainly not a financial contribution, we're not talking about vanity presses in these notes, it is a far more important contribution than just money. Understanding your intentions and efforts as a writer will, to a large extent, determine what choices are to be made and provide you with a few opportunities and very many challenges. It might surprise you to discover that being published may not be the best choice for you and your work.

(continue...)

--------------
"However, this is not a test for the financial viability of your poems in a published work."

Like everyone else, I'm curious - so I'll hijack this thread, with the dumb question of what is the test of poetry that can sell. I know, it's the million-euro question.

Is there something we can learn by asking - What do we know about the poetry we like to pay for, as readers? Obviously, these are the successful poets.

Hope there'll be more discussions, tips, and questions/answers from people here.

Aparna

Run... [Verse] / Vyom Prashant

Run...

What all I escaped
Colors, textures, and words
All that was mystique
Crystal clarity blurred

(continue reading)

That was good. I feel the second stanza about aging is particularly good - "Beckon to unbecome". As the above comment says, couple of places where the beat changes could be tinkered with. The first line "what all I missed" is a literal translation of a phrase from the native tongue, the English usage would be "All that I missed", or "Everything I missed".

Aparna

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - A Review / Rahul

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - A review

That day, feeling slightly high on a rationed quantity of Old Monk and carbonated fizz, I walked in home to find my brother and my dad talking about a plane crashing into the WTC and even as I was trying to register surprise...I heard that another plane had crashed into its twin tower and suddenly there was this enormous possibility of it being deliberate. I remember feeling sad about the people trapped in the twin towers...but somewhere deep inside me, I was smiling at seeing the confusion within the American Intelligentsia. To use a cliché, 'in one swell swoop', the US of A was exposed to war in their own land.
(continue reading)

Hi Rahul
Your review provokes interest in the book, which I was unsure about reading before. I was waiting to hear some of the book's conclusions about why people like Changez reject America (but you didn't give them away :-)) - and where the root of that phenomenon lies. It cannot be explained broadly as cultural clash, as there are plenty of Muslims who still live in America, integrated or not. Is it a personal orientation, or the play of individual circumstances, or a tide of the times? Is it more about where a person is in his own life, the search for meaning in one's own life seeking larger voices to identify with.

From your description, it appears the book prefers to examine closely the experiences of one individual, hoping to find a clear thread of cause and effect. But perhaps this is a more complex issue, with multiple causations, and the author presents one aspect, without attempting to compile all causes, or an analysis of how they affect individuals.

I'll have to read this book, to find out.
Thanks for the review.

Aparna