massive post about everything that's on my mind

'Apparently he is willing, this is what I am told. I don't know. I don't talk with him any more than I talk with you. I am too busy at the moment trying to make my peace with God.'

____Samad Iqbal, from White Teeth, by Zadie Smith






September 1, 2008, Hollis Brown Thornton

when i was 14, a magpie swooped off some inconspicuous tree and flew beak-first into my 13 year old cousin's skull. She was more scared than harmed, though bled profusely. She was walking down a path (that in the spring was always spotted with dandelions) towards the train station. I'd meet her there, we'd go to school. On this day she had to run home. Her summer-dress (the girls have separate uniforms for summer and winter) was stained red. I wouldn't find out about this till lunch time that day. For unknown reasons, I'd transcend my small sense of selfdom and empathize with how scared and shocked she must have been at the collision. The simultaneous sound of the bird's squawk, the rush of wind, and the grate of beak and bone- contemporaneous with sharp, irregular, thumping pain.
____walking home from the city everyday, i pass a patch of parkland. some 7 minutes of walking on grass, lined with trees, it is a lovely sight. It seems to me, suddenly louder when I arrive, as though the birds hadn't much to say before I showed up, walking, minding my own business, from nowhere to nowhere. Several days now they swoop at me. Warning shots or preliminary attempts I haven't decided... i can't know. This is of those things a person can't ever know; the intention of animals. Their hatred of me. Of course I think of my cousin. Her white dress, checked with thin lines, yellow, and a light green. I walk slower, close my eyes, expect a sharp jagged experience- imagine it as a sort of accidental ejaculation, something I'll feel throughout my body. I shiver waiting for it, for its sharp thrust, like trembling just before a sneeze. Some wind. Squawks. They're up to something. The kingdom of the sky is up to something.

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the novel (the second novel, the one i am writing now) is bothering me. it is not the novel i want to be writing right now. it is too happy. too simple. i have a complete lack of subjective self-analysis. i need constant editors, readers, opinions. unfortunately, the only person who read it has i loved this! more! which confused me. even Martha liked the first page. i don't know i don't know. if you exist, that is to say: if you are one of the 9 or so people who read this blog, and are somehow aroused by the possibility of having god-like power in the choice of whether something is created (and will henceforth exist, unable to be taken back) or not, then email me/comment, and i'll send you a few pages of it. and always appreciate comments

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the weeds of youth are killing me.