"You must have been depressed"

Today I went to the NZ post office to turn in my application for my IRD number, which is some type of THX-1138 style number I need for tax purposes. One of the documents I had to show to the teller was my passport, and my passport picture is not very representative of present-day Travis. The picture is from my junior year of college 5 years ago when I had black hair down to my shoulders. In the words of Brodie, I looked like a punk rocker from the 70's. In the words of the post office teller, I must have been depressed.

Things have been a bit rough recently. Last weekend my grandmother Gigi passed away from a fast-acting cancer that was literally just found a month or two ago. It was unexpected, but luckily most of my family was able to see her and say goodbye. It was frustrating to be stuck half the world away and not have the same opportunity to say goodbye to Gigi, but I will always have my memories and those marks that she left on my life as my grandmother. I remember riding with her in their puke-green VW bus (covered in conservative bumper stickers of course) and having it stall out in the middle of Cincinnati rush hour traffic. I was young and fatalistic and was pretty sure we were about to be murdered by some irate, offended, in-a-hurry motorist stuck behind us. But Gigi was a firecracker and all the honking, swearing, and finger-waving didn't phase her at all. The scene really impressed on me at that early age what peace amidst adversity could look like. Oh, and we definitely have a picture of her wearing a clown wig and wielding a butcher knife. That one's pretty scary.

I completed my first semester of classes so now my month will be dedicated to the novel, as well as a couple of short stories. I knew rewriting was necessary to make the first draft coherent, and now I'm elbow deep. It will be nice come June 28th to hand in at least the structure of the novel--it's ghost or larvae or shadow. Here's the first couple of sentences (remember, work in progress):

"The morning began with a headache that prayer couldn’t fix. It pulled at my face and I felt like my skin was stretching against my skeleton, ready to split if I moved my mouth into a frown or a smile."

I know, I know. Cheery stuff.

Otherwise my life has been pretty low-key, which is nice. I've been bowling and discovered a Denny's (which is just as bad as you would think, half-a-world in the future doesn't change anything). I tried Dim Sum with my friends Teale, Brodie, and Karen the other day. I wouldn't have thought I would be eating fried squid again after my whole dissecting-then-eating squid experience in the fifth grade, but it was actually pretty good. I liked the concept of being able to sample tons of different type of food. Reminds me of the Old Country Buffet days with Johnny and Ben, although much more exotic (and fresh, haha).

Here's some other stuff.

Music I've been bedroom dancing to:
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
J.Geil's Band - Centerfold

Dreams:
Skywriting, grandparents, yelling, records, robots, crayfish, the Prairie River

Words:
A Book of Paris Review Interviews. John Gardner is particularly insightful (he's the reason I picked up the book). Check it:

"The writer's job on the other hand, is to be radically open to persuasion. He should, if possible, not be committed to one side more than to the other--which is to say that he wants to affirm life, not sneer at it--but he has to be absolutely fair, understand the moral limits of his partisanship."

Vertigo by WG Sebald. Sebald is probably one of my favorite new discoveries. I am impressed with the multiple textual "dreamscapes" he is able to seamlessly weave and traverse within his novels. And he is a genius at portraying dread.

Okay, I'm out. Back to the books. But here's a picture of my converted 70's hotel apartment complex. Don't worry, it's not run by a Bates.