she moves she

The more I think about it the more I think I’m done with this town. Chicago, you have worn me down and down and down. (In truth, we broke up six months ago and we’ve been embellishing in the After Break-up Sex for quite sometime. Unhealthy. So unhealthy. Then a couple weeks ago he slapped me. Right across the face with one of those -10 degree winds and I knew right then and there that our love affair was over.) All the romance of spring and the poetry of summer won’t get you back into my good graces, Chicago. And you know I don’t like hot dogs, baseball or beer. And the blizzard outside isn’t helping your case dear, three inches of snow in half an hour, with -14 degree gusts of 45 mile per hour winds puts you in…what do they call it? The dog house? Well yes Chicago! You are in the dog house. This is the beginning of our separation.

I haven’t been sick for a long, long while. I’ve said multiple times “I don’t get sick.” Apparently, the flu gods heard me and decided to teach me a lesson. The last two and a half days have been misery. I can’t ever remember being this sick in my life. Everything malfunctioned and my head feels like it is going to explode sinuses. Even my teeth hurt. The cure for the common cold is called Sedative. I wish I could just sleep through this and wake up having fought it all off. The worst part of being sick is the Cabin Fever and the Fuzzy Brain. The only way to make a quick and successful recovery is to allow your body the time and energy to heal itself, which means intensive bed/couch time. The first thought is “Great I’ll catch up on my reading” but reading anything of substance while your brain is surrounded by globs and globs of swollen glands and Stuff is like trying to steer a fighter jet through the bayou in a hurricane. You don’t know where the heck you’re going. Only the most shallow entertainment will do and as I learned today…daytime television has not improved since I was twelve. Though I did sort of enjoy the small segment of “Scot Baio is 46 and Pregnant” but I’m sure that’s just the DayQuil talking.

Attraction. Physical Human Chemistry. Possibly the most mysterious thing I’ve ever experienced. It is impossible to correctly define or explain and just as impossible to deny. It’s the reason why sayings like “All’s fair in love and war” and “Love is blind” are so wildly understood. Desire is universal. Anyone who has ever felt volts of electricity shoot through their limbs simply from seeing someone across a room or feeling their hand brush against another’s hand/back/leg/arm understands the intoxication of human contact and its undiscriminating power over us all. It is Cruel and Kind. Elating, Devastating and Unrelenting.

And it’s all just electrical impulses in a cerebral cortex. Isn’t it? If it is merely a local exchange of energy, explain then how two can people feel something at the same time. Just as there are electronic impulses sent through synaptic regions between two neurons, is it possible that similar impulses can be sent through the space between two people? If neurons are electro magnetic conduits and we essentially are our neurons because they are the infrastructure of consciousness, then maybe we are all conduits as well.

What explains human attraction–wild, stomach-flipping impulses shared with a select few people in our lives? We perceive 400,000 bits of information per second but are only aware of 2,000 of them. We use at most only 10% of our brains, so it isn’t unlikely that there is unseen electric, pheromonal, chemical information being traded constantly with people around us.

Yet it isn’t arbitrary. Our chemicals are picky and erratic and unpredictable. One moment you’re fine and the next moment your blood is on fire, your face is flushed, and you’re wondering what hit you.

But. If someone truly had the explanation I wouldn’t want to hear it.

The beauty…is not understanding it.

Day 12 of novel writing and I’m very behind. Mostly because I started over. But that was unavoidable. I felt some urgent Nabokavian calling to start fresher, with more color. Not listening would have made me criminal.

Something strange is happening with this writing nonstop thing. I find myself desperately loving it again. The sort of love that feels so at home underneath your skin you don’t know how you lived without it for so long. Back again is that commitment/conviction that will keep me out of Grown Up Corporate Land forever.

Two pieces of media I’m itching to go on about:

Juno. Someone told me recently that they cried during a movie. My reply was “Wow. I can’t remember the last time I cried because of a movie.” Which was an absolute lie. “Actually that’s a total lie,” I said, “I cried last night watching Year of the Dog.” (See it if you haven’t.) I did not cry watching Juno, but I almost did TWICE. Which might count as a cry in some people’s books. What Juno did do was remind me of the desire/sweetness/beauty of being close to someone. I think I’ve become desensitized to developing true connections. A tragedy. The movie is brave and unconventional and just so freakin’ Sweet without the sentimentality. So realistic it’s actually painful.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I was lukewarm about this book the entire way through. Every time I wanted it to get good it let me down. I think that young authors spend so much time and energy trying to be clever that they tend to neglect story and character development. (Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safron Foer) This book is a New York Times Bestseller and Marisha Pessl is a gorgeous 29 year old. I had jealousy issues from the beginning but I don’t think my coveting got in the way of the book experience as a whole, which at best can be described as persistent. Despite the crawling pace of this book I still kept reading. I tolerated the quirks. The visual aids (teenagerish sketches), the bizarre yet appropriate use of capitalization (He was in a Bourbon Mood.) and those damn parentheticals. While describing a look on a person’s face or a feeling or an anything she would use a text book parenthetical. (Ex: She had a desperate, confused look in her eyes (see Ingrid Bergman, Casablanca, 1942).) I enjoyed this for the first forty pages but eventually they became so tedious that I skipped over a good majority of them–something I never ever ever do!! There was little moving the story along. The end should have been the middle. There was a Wrap-This-Up-Cause-I’ve-Written-500-Pages-Already tone about the ending. I felt cheated. I felt that I had spent however-many hours of my life with a character who rarely spoke, who had few likable qualities and whom I had no interest in, all for nothing. I closed the book thinking…”What the hell was that?” like someone had just hit me over the head with a baseball bat made out of lettuce.

After much deliberation the gods and I have decided that 2008 will be the Year of Lauren. Gone are the financial woes, the heartbreak, the at-work apathy, the emotional baggage. It’s just over. Leaving it completely behind to collect a different set of hang ups.

I admit it. I make New Year’s Resolutions. They get such a bad rap. I hear it’s because the idea that you can change your life for the better in one day or suddenly drop all of your bad habits just because the holidays have ended and we all have to remember to write 08 instead of 07 is a ludicrous goal that 99% of the time ends in Utter Failure. It’s more likely that people latch onto the “New Year’s Resolutions are for assholes” motto because it’s such a cool thing to do and/or they’ve been so disappointed in the past that the thought of breaking personal promises for the seventieth time is unappealing . In truth, we’re constantly making resolutions. “I’m gonna work on my abs more/drink less coffee/lay off the tabloids/drink more whiskey/etc.” There’s something about having a date in mind that gives habit-breaking and goal attaining a softer edge. You see that the end is near, you pack in as many cigarettes and as much cheesecake as you can and you don’t feel so bad about it. A couple years ago, I vowed to quit smoking on the Ides of March and actually did it. In fact, I quit before the 15th just because I felt like it. New Year’s Resolutions are just more common because of the ceremonious aspect of a new year dawning, numbers changing. That’s it. So I refuse to lump myself into the squadrons of Chick-Lit fans and Dr. Phil Lovers and Self-Help Book Readers just because I make New Year’s resolutions.

That said, I’m not going to tell you what my resolutions are.

Though I did sign a contract (in blood) promising to write a 50,000 word novel in January. I started on January 2 with the resolve to write 2000 words a day. The trick is that you can’t edit anything, you allow yourself to make mistakes, and you consider every idea a good idea and you just write yourself into stupors. I started with one idea. One. It seemed like I needed more but instead I just let it pour out of me and before I knew it, I had two very in-depth, multi-layered characters and a Not-As-Embarrassing-As-You-Might-Think plot line. If Nicholas Sparks can be a best selling author with his contrived, melodramatic plots then the world won’t be any worse off with a short novel by me with plot holes and flawed character development.

Currently (re)infiltrating my life:

The Beatles White Ablum

Sunset Rubdown

and the brilliant and so sexy Flight of the Conchords (Stella, you’ve been replaced. Serves David Wain right for never responding to all those midnight phone calls.)