Sorry, Folks.

It's been a rough time for me. Well, aside for the Royals game -- Greinke was great, and afterwards he confessed that the particular umpire working that night gives him bad dreams -- because he delays strike calls. You could see Zack a number of times going, "Hey, wasn't that a strike?" and then the call finally coming. Seems kind of cruel to do that, like a girl hemming and hawing after her boyfriend proposes, when all along she knows what she's going to say.

Something like this happened to me over the past week. I don't want this blog to like suddenly turn into my public journal, but I just need to write some of this down, and I don't have the energy to do it in private. Do you guys know how that is? It's like you're just talking to yourself, sometimes, when you journal, and right now I've got this dialogue going even when I'm not journaling, so maybe this will quiet me down some.

So ... all of a sudden I started spending time with someone, someone new (I'm one long, up-and-down relationship into adulthood, followed by this seemingly endless period of mourning some call celibacy (I call it mourning)), and in her company, I felt new, I felt, like, exposed, but in a good way, the way you feel when you read a story with a character in it who reminds you of yourself -- not just the good things, but the insecurities and the crazy hopes and dreams, it's all right there on the surface and you know they can see you as you really are, not just as you want to be seen.

She came with me to the game and I explained the rules as well as I could (she's foreign). We spent hours in cafes and restaurants, talking about everything we could think of except what was or was not happening between us ... and of course I was going nuts, wanting every moment to lay myself on the line. And fuck, I did. Last night. I had no choice -- I wasn't going to be able to concentrate on anything else until I did.

You can guess what happened. I've misunderstood everything. I've seen my reflection when I should have been looking at her. And now I have to be big enough to keep her in my life, to make things safe for us again. That's the hardest part, acknowledging the gap in what I want and what she wants, and learning how to live with it. But what I just don't understand is how, if she saw me as clearly as I think she did, she could have let me hang myself this way.

In the words of Win Butler:

Somethin' filled up
My heart with nothin',
Someone told me not to cry.
But now that I'm older,
My heart's colder,
And I can see that it's a lie.

Children wake up,
Hold your mistake up,
Before they turn the summer into dust.
If the children don't grow up,
Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.
We're just a million little gods causin' rain storms turnin' every good thing to rust.
I guess we'll just have to adjust.

With my lightnin' bolts a glowin'
I can see where I am goin'
To be when the reaper he reaches and touches my hand.
With my lightnin' bolts a glowin'
I can see where I am goin’
With my lightnin' bolts a glowin'
I can see where I am goin'

You'd better look out below!


http://youtube.com/watch?v=DEKC5pyOKFU&feature=related

Tuesday Morning Dreaming.

Just got to work, and all I want to be doing is working on the screenplay. (For those of you who voted, you might be interested to know that I've thrown my cards in with "Goodbye, My Brother." I probably knew subconciously it would be the one -- it was first on the list!)

Such a brilliant story. Sometimes I think to myself "Poor Tifty" when I've been away from the story for a little while, and then I read it again and all his gloominess comes soaking over me the way it does the whole Pommeroy Family. "Fuck Tifty." And I DO just want to pummel him. But then I think, all that pressure from the family to have fun, I mean it really could turn you into the exact opposite of what they want you to be.

Now to work. (Sigh.)

Wherever You Look, There's A Story To Be Told.

Some of you may have noticed that I am a bit of a sports fan. Well I for one don't see a conflict of interests in loving both books and baseball. And basketball. Let's not forget that George Plimpton was a boxing nut (rumor has it that Hemingway dropped him during their Paris Review Interview).

Anyway, those of you outside Kansas may not be aware of the amazing story of one Zack Greinke. A flamethrowing righty, potentially the greatest Royal pitcher EVER. Now, a couple years ago Zack dropped completely out of baseball, revealing that he was suffering from social anxiety disorder ... and after battling his personal demons, he returned to the club last year as a reliever. This season he's back as a starter, and as we speak, he's making a case for himself for the Cy Young Award. He's only 24.

Anyway, on Wednesday I'm heading out to Kauffman to catch him in action. There are all kinds of stories in this world, and its up to you where you choose to look for inspiration.

Wow!

http://threeguysonebook.blogspot.com/

Their inaugural post is about none other than Harry, Revised. I feel ashamed for not delving so deeply into the novel -- but I'm just one guy.

Now I'm itching to reread and see if I can catch some of the stuff the "Three Guys" noticed that I missed the first time around. But alas, Fresh has got my copy ...

Dear Mr. Patterson,

You spoiled my Sunday. (To be more precise, my "so-called friend" Dave Fresh spoiled it when he knocked on my door this morning with the Sunday Book Review in hand -- for some time now I've been encouraging him to read Harry, and there he was, triumphant, having, in his words, uncovered "evidence" not to spend time with the book.)

Wherefore the axe to grind, sir? I can't help but suspect jealousy -- perhaps you are a closet novelist, or a failed blogger?

You compare the novel to the movies "Airplane" and "About Schmidt" (fine films, I'll give you that), but what, sir, are you doing in the NYTBR talking about movies? This is a book Mr. Sarvas has written. Treat it as such.

For example, you might have compared the scene in which Harry falls of the bicycle to another classic humiliation scene in the literary canon, Jake Barnes struggling with Lady Brett in their taxi. Impotence, sir, is a powerful theme. (Harry is not impotent, but do you get my drift?)

But Mr. Patterson, sir, why stoop to your level? Why allow you to infiltrate my brain, and start me questioning "why do I love this book so?"

What I would like to say is this: I feel sorry for you, that your cleverness got in the way of your ability to be moved. Criticism has veiled your heart. Cast it off! Take away that magnifying glass and enjoy the art for what it is: ENTERTAINMENT. (I know that's not you at the top of this letter, but it's how I imagine you.)

Daniel Day-Lewis, in his Oscar-winning turn as Daniel Plainview, said, "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed." Mr. Patterson, we all have competitions in us, but the thing that distinguishes a small man from a great man is that a great man looks PAST his own small dreams and is able to recognize somebody else's achievements without feeling impotent. Mark Sarvas has a big, wide-open heart -- how often has he championed criminally neglected writers? He is the voice of the many. You, sir, have revealed yourself to be nothing more than a modern-day oilman, scratching around in the literary dirt for spoils. Well, sir, the only thing you´re going to get is dirt under your fingernails.

Signed,

Mike Eagle

The Truth.

I had such good intentions about live blogging, but something took over my life this weekend, and that something was Harry, Revised. Ordinarily I spend, I don't know, three or four weeks per book, but from the moment I got home from work on Friday until the opening pitch of Royals - A's yesterday, I did not look away from this book. What an experience.

I don't know what more to say than "Thank you, Mark." There was just so much truth in this book, about how people can hurt each other, even when all they want to do is help; and how hard it is to forget someone, even when you know your life depends on it (I'm thinking of Lucille and her shithead son); and *SPOILER ALERT* I'm just so blown away that Harry gets the girl in the end -- and promptly gives her up! And even more amazingly, I kind of understood WHY he would ask her to leave, and it was okay with me that he did so, even though we missed out on a damn good sex scene.

Everything about this book was unique. The crazy high-falutin' language, the seemingly bizarre backwards flashbacks, a main character who sometimes seems invisible, and sometimes seems like a goddamn force of nature (I like to think that all men are a little like Harry, noble even when they're cowardly.)

And you know what was the most interesting thing today? When I walked into work, and people asked me how I spent the weekend, and I said, "With a book!" and didn't even feel like a loser. Because if Alexander Dumas can do what he did for Harry Rent, then Mark Sarvas can damn well do the same for Mike Eagle.

"Thank you, Mark."

Chapter One.

And so it begins.

And bizarrely, it began, for me, in a pizza joint. Almost a diner! Alas, unlike Harry, I did not have some hot little number waiting on me, but rather, a disinterested man behind the counter. The effect of the pizza, however, was the same as the Monte Cristo: bloating.

I really liked the line about the "time honored tradition of epiphanies." There were a bunch of great moments like that, where it was clear that Mark was playing around with "literary tricks," giving us a wink, if you will, that he KNOWS these things can be hackneyed (in lesser hands).

Love the closing line. All this time in the diner, without a hint that his important meeting is his wife's funeral??? Such restraint -- like expelling a fart outside the opera house, rather than inside.

I am more than ready to find out how this Harry Rent goes about "revising" himself, and whether it is for the good or not (me thinks it will be FTG).