Literature Is Not Dead

My new writing tool is a jump rope.

All winter I’ve struggled with the fact that if I sit still for an hour or two I get cold, and I happen to have a profession which requires sitting still a lot. My space heater helps, as does getting up to do the dishes, but generally I would get uncomfortable and my writing would suffer.

Then I read a writing blog somewhere about the importance of keeping blood flowing to the brain. This made perfect sense, and combined nicely with the solution to another problem of mine: a lack of cardio exercise in the winter.

Hence the jump rope. I now pause my writing whenever I need to think and jump rope for a minute or two. This gives me time to puzzle out a new solution to my writing problem, warms me up nicely, gets the blood recirculating quickly, and over the course of a morning spent writing, adds up to a decent amount of cardio exercise.

With my jump rope I will now be better able to complete my novel and will (finally) be able to compete with the girls on the playground.

Point to the internet this morning. I signed on half an hour ago to write this post and nearly stood up and walked away from the computer just now having forgotten to write it entirely.

Back in the good old days I used to write an hour every day. For a long time I fell out of habit, but this marks the fifth week of my return to quotas. My goal is 500 words a day, and I’ve hit it every day but four. Most days I’ve crushed it, in fact, since once I start moving I can easily turn out 2000 words in an hour or so.

I work well under quotas, but then I’ve never had much trouble self motivating. Others find my motivation impressive. Since it doesn’t feel that way to me, I’ve begun thinking a lot about motivation and where it comes from.

So this paragraph should have a big insight. Only I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m tempted to say that our dreams motivate us, but everyone has dreams. Some people build on their dreams and some don’t. Why? If the internet doesn’t distract me, maybe I’ll have answers in my next post.

No word from grad schools as of yet, though I had a dream (the sleepy kind, not the motivation kind) that I received an acceptance letter from Goucher, a school I did not apply to. The acceptance letter referenced writings of mine I’d never sent in but which they’d found by infiltrating my life. The letter was written on the back of another, unrelated letter.

My final post of pictures from Europe-town. The city: Zurich.

Pretty:

Is that lady wearing a bathrobe in a public park? Yes indeed, but it’s not because she’s crazy. It’s because she’s getting married. One of her bachelorette party challenges was to kiss a ton of man, which turned out to include Doug and I.

Damn Europe and it’s beauty

Zurich was not only pretty, it was fantastically expensive. As one of the banking capitals of the world, rich people collect there, and when rich people go shopping, they spend 25 thousand dollars on a watch. Oh, what should I buy today: a small car, or a watch? I guess I’ll buy a watch.

The only picture of Doug and I together from our entire two week trip. If I look un-amused, it is because I am about to leave Europe and Doug is about to continue traveling for another two weeks.

My obsession with book T-shirts: ahead of the times. Finally, New York gets on the bandwagon. The Hound of the Baskervilles tee is definitely my fav, though the Brave New World one is a close second.

Next up: My industrious friends. Doug’s got a tale from our European adventure into the San Fransisco Chronicle. The man’s unstoppable, or as the kids say these days: he do too much.

Munich! What did we do in Munich? Drink beer. See historic sites, that’s what!

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… terribly overrated. It turns out that watching people watch the Glockenspiel is much more fun than watching the Glockenspiel.

Definitely click on this image for a closer view. Socialized medicine isn’t the reason everyone in Europe is healthy. They’re healthy because they avoid prostate cancer by screening themselves with tests purchased from vending machines like this. Not fiction.

Doug and one of our many fun fellow travelers enjoy the beginning of an inebriated beer garden tour. That’s the official Europe on Five Bad Ideas a Day salute, by the way.

Did my pork shank cost five dollars? No, but it did taste like Bavarian goodness. Just out of range of this photo is a family of strikingly gorgeous Aryan women that made me cry that I’d chosen Spanish to fulfill my foreign language requirement.

Lastly, if you want a city dedicated to turning the entire German culture into ornate knick-knacks, Munich is your town.

Not pictured: Me standing on a picnic table leading a group of strangers in a rugby drinking song, The Contessa, My epic hangover, Men actually wearing lederhosen.

Ah, Berlin. Our Berlin experience began with us disembarking from the train to Doug’s insistence that he knew where he was going. Did he have a map? No. A street number? No. Did he know which side of the metro station to exit? No. The hostel is big and tomato red, he said. This is how a real traveler travels. Knowing nothing.

One of our first stops on our free tour was the famous Checkpoint Charlie (midground, left of center) and the soon-to-be-famous Snackpoint Charlie (midground, far right).

Doug shows off his mad photog skills by juxtaposing one of old Berlin’s most beautiful churches with one of East Berlin’s most famous communist monuments. If I was the travel writer of the two of us, I’d know their names, but I’m not.

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Of all the depressing things in that camp, one of the few I could comprehend was this, a semi-circular track made of different surfaces (you can see where the shale turns to dirt about where the tour group is) which the Nazis made prisoners walk on all day to test shoe materials. I can’t really imagine a concentration camp, but I can imagine walking all day over a shitty track. The Nazis were assholes.

Doug, showing off our trusty tour book and a serving of currywurst. Berlin’s favorite snack food turned out to be mildly disappointing (though I ate my own serving and most of Doug’s) because it was not very curry flavored. Doug does look awesome in this pic, though.

Take this tip from an experienced traveling duo. Do not order Mexican food in Berlin.

Not pictured: our brilliant tour guide Inez the 13th, the Sazerac Doug drank (What a sport! Oldest cocktail in the world. That kid knows a classic.), or me, taking a shot of liquor made from the coca plant (but wait! That video is posted on YouTube now. Check it out!)

Part two of our trip was Brussles! Home of beer. Also a small peeing statue, the picture of which I did not include because who cares? Much better a picture from a television show we watched. This is one of the judges on a reality home cooking show of some sort. We decided his glasses are the best ever. At being ugly.

Ever go to bed early, only to be awakened by a deafening symphonic medley of overused classical tunes and movie theme songs? If you did this in Brussels, like I did, you might have stormed outside, intent on joining the party, and found this. A large light show on the side of Brussel’s famous city hall building. This happens every night.

Me, during a self-guided brewery tour at the family-run brewery Cantillon in Brussels.

And lastly, Doug Mack himself. Just look at that roguish smirk, that “Oh, just another day in a foreign country having adventures most people only dream of.”-shrug. This man leads a life of constant toil. Please, when it’s published, buy his book. Save him from his terrible, paltry existence.

My partner in writing and traveling crime, Doug Mack, has finally sent me the images he collected during our trip to Europe to work on his book. I’ll post a few at a time over the next few weeks. Here’s a couple from Amsterdam:

Why Europe has women figured out better than America. They make high heels out of chocolate. If only they could sing Nancy Sinatra while you ate them…

The Heineken brewery. I love this show… No, actually, there is a video being projected onto the inside of this shiny and no-longer in service mash tun, which is what I’m watching. Or maybe I am just dreaming of beer.

They still have Foodomats (or whatever they call them) in Amsterdam. Just one of the many reasons it’s a land of wonder. This picture also reminded me that I haven’t worn the pair of boots pictured in it in a long time. I wonder if I lost them.

Lastly, an image of me that proves that Doug is by far the best photographer I have ever known, because there is no way I am this attractive in real life. Just look at that jawline! I’m seriously about to make-out with my own computer screen! Photoshop is amazing!

Photos of bicycle parking garages, more beer stuff, and possibly some buildings coming soon. Also, if I can figure out how to do it, a video of me taking a shot of liquor made from the coca plant, which is the plant famous for providing us with a different, more potent stimulant.

Since the demise of my buggy reading sidebar some months ago, you all have been woefully in the dark about my reading habits. Veteran stalkers would be shocked by a sharp veering away from fiction in my reading lately as I do research on my current novel. Some of the books I’ve read recently include:

• Shocktrauma
• Gifted Hands: the Ben Carson Story
• How Doctors Think

What I’m reading now:

• Acupuncture: A viable medical alternative
• Chronic City

Still to read:

• The Surgeons
• Chi Walking
• Blackhawk Down
• The House of God
• Better (and/or The Checklist Manifesto)

Now, can anyone guess what I’m writing about?

For the last 60 years, someone has placed three red roses and a half a bottle of cognac on Edgar Allen Poe’s grave each year on the anniversary of the writer’s birthday. This year, the Poe Toaster didn’t show up.

The Sun has an article here.

Nobody knows who the toaster was. Nobody knows why the toaster did not arrive this year. Nobody knows why the tradition has finally ended. 

It strikes me as very sad and somewhat mysterious, and that makes me think that the strange end to this tradition might please Poe himself, were he around to see it.