THE 25th OF JANUARY
Hard lessons are learned at George Saunders Elementary School.
16
WARNING: PAPER IS DANGEROUS
The card catalog is a threat to truth and relevance! It is a constantly intensifying, present-tense menace. It becomes. It does this every day.
TODAY’S JOURNAL ENTRY
Tired
Today it was so incredibly hard to empty the dryer’s lint trap. Wasn’t it enough that I’d washed the clothes, and that I’d moved these clothes to the dryer? Did I really have expend those extra two seconds of energy to clean the lint trap? I just couldn’t do it. I did it. Afterward I didn’t think, “that was no big deal, next time I should just shut up and clean the lint trap.” Instead I thought: that nearly put me over the edge.
Letter To a Young Student
Dear _______,
Remember me? We had a writing workshop together. Also a lecture. But maybe you didn’t clock me because there were so many people in that room, and besides I was only the professor. I always wanted to read your stories, but this desire seemed inappropriate, especially in a graduate creative writing setting. Your clear and generally what one would call “good” skin suggested to me that you would probably be capable of clarity and goodness in other regions of your self, and by goodness I don’t mean moral goodness, I mean goodness like “good writer” goodness, i.e. you have a good sense of how good is not usually “good,” at least not in the way most people understand good, for example when they’re referring to skin. In skin terms, I imagined your writing would be the equivalent of a funny (at first) face rash, if that doesn’t sound like an insult, because I don’t intend it like that. I am a pretty huge fan of face rashes, from an artistic standpoint, I mean. I think every story should have a face rash. And then after a while maybe that face rash gets picked at, you know, with a fingernail, the metaphoric literary fingernail. And pretty soon there are holes in the rash, deep holes, in fact the holes are in the face that has the rash, not just the rash itself, and through those holes you can see…a universe. Which might be small and sad and rashy. This universe. Or it might be sunny and purportedly happy, though the brightness, after a while, can sear your optic nerve, you can actually smell you optic nerve heating up the way people who have Lasik surgery report being able to smell the horror of their own healing. Or maybe it’s just sunny back there, no serious damage save the ultraviolet wear-and-tear of days. Just like with advent calendars, you just never know until you open that paper door (usually with a fingernail, a real one). There might be a candy cane behind it. Or there might just be another stupid bell. Regardless, the bell will mean something, and the candy cane will mean something, and the door will mean something, and none of it will have anything to do with god. S/he doesn’t call the shots in this universe. You do.
All my best,
Heidi Julavits
DOLLY’S PARADOX
“I’ve written some of my saddest songs when I’ve been my happiest.”
STILL LIFE WITH HEADBAND
T-Minus 66 hours until the end of the semester.
(The Blair Waldorfian leopard hair gear only makes appearances during shower-less times.)
GOD’S EYES IN ARKANSAS
They were watching me. And it felt good.
I DIDN’T NEED A MIRACLE
A backstage pass given to me by my college roommate’s cousin, also my boss at the Hard Rock cafe (where I worked for a summer as a merch waitress), because this cousin/boss was dating Bob Weir at the time. Nick Paumgarten’s insanely amazing Grateful Dead piece in The New Yorker made me remember my days as a Faux Head.
MY THANKSGIVING PLATE READING
You will have many dilemmas along your path in life which relate to work versus home or family. You are known as The Helper in work and are emotionally sensitive and psychic. Your lucky days of the week Monday, Thursday, Sunday.
Famous people with the same Thanksgiving plate include Miro, Adolph Hitler, Jessica Lange and Carmen Electra.
IF ROMNEY WERE AN OLD HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN
