I am called...

Nathan Englander, who talks in tight little circles that unwind like tangled balls of yarn, told us on the first day of workshop something to the effect of "I don't believe in labels. I call myself a cosmonaut, because I think that's cool and I've always wanted to be a cosmonaut. I'm writing a play, so I guess I'm a playwright? I write, so I guess I'm a writer." Later (second workshop) he furthered this position by asserting a hyper-distaste for bookstore genre-sections like "African American Literature" and "Jewish Literature", saying that these labels were preposterous because everyone writes everything from their own universe and we don't only relate to Tolstoy because he's a Russian, or James Baldwin because he's gay and black. The universe is a point of view. And art is recognition. And all of it is an attempt to understand someone telling you something, emphasis, as always, on YOU.
I talked with a friend for a while the other day about defining yourself by what you do -- and not merely in terms of career or job or what you physically do with your hands, I mean what you are doing now, how you eat yogurt and prosciutto and ice cream and cheese (I am doing these things right now). It seemed perfectly logical to me that you can label yourself based on what you've made or what you want to make, but she pointed out that some people don't create anything, and some people don't really want to create anything. There are hedonists, and people who care only about the happiness of others, and this must make them defined by their traits or their perspectives that develop in accordance with the actions they take. I think that's interesting. What do you think makes a person what they are?

Nathan, not unlike any other artist I've ever met, believes that his art-form is the most important and the most pure thing in the world. Within the printed word is the ability for people to dream up and imagine and identify with a thousand personal visions and a thousand universal concepts -- he gave this example that a kitchen, on a page, is my kitchen, your kitchen, forty-five different kitchens, and even when sculpted with adjectives and context it's still always a different kitchen but we all always understand.

Some lingering thoughts:

1) New favorite short story:

A RADICALLY CONDENSED HISTORY OF POSTINDUSTRIAL LIFE (David Foster Wallace)

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist on their faces.
The man who introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

2) So far in France, I have encountered two (2) men on the street who were so attractive that I almost fainted. This is problematic in tandem with 2b: while I never aspired to the romance of chugging juice straight from the jug, I am not quite over how delightful it is to have a container with the word "pamplemousse" running up the side.

And this is the first thing I have written for WRITERS IN PARIS, en France, avant edits:

They flew Air France. He surprised her with the tickets at breakfast, slipping them beneath her place mat while she stood up to make more coffee. “Let us make love beneath ze Tour Eiff-ell,” he’d affected in a vague European brogue, whirling her around the kitchen while the steaming mug she held threatened to evacuate its contents. She laughed. He laughed like an exhale. She could think of no good reason to say no.

It was being so close to him. It had been a while since they’d really been that close. In bed there were twisted bunches of nubby flannel sheets, the clickety click of a breaking ceiling fan pushing fetid air into the crevices their bodies made, there was sweat, pajamas, space to roll away into, a distant promise of a basement futon if they fought, it was dark. Nights when they wanted closeness weren’t comparable either -- he tended to make loud, distracting grunts, and then there was that perverse, heckling box-spring that creaked beneath their frenetic mutual shoves and jerks and un-remarkable stabs at an ecstasy that was at heart entirely self-concerned. On the airplane, though: dry. Quiet. Cold. Upright. Separated only by the cheap thin layer of polyester blend Madras shirt he had un-ironically covered his pot-belly with this morning, they were hemmed in so close she didn’t want to breathe, for fear of expanding slightly and rubbing against an elbow puckered with goose-bumps, an arm on fire with tangly clots of bristly black hair wandering anarchically up the coast of a wrist interrupted by exema patches that felt like lizard scales. She could feel his inflated body holding a cough and a fart simultaneously; with deep dread she prayed for his vigilance.
Sylvia had been the first to point out, in 1987, that Frank did look an awful lot like Andre the Giant about the face -- minus, of course, fifty pounds and ten inches. Before this invention of Madras shirts and international travel in coach, clicks on ceiling fans went unnoticed while the Physical Education major with hands like twin boiled hams tiptoed through a studio apartment to allow a woman to sleep through month-long depressions, leaving coffee or runny omelets or Beanie Babies as little sentinels for the woman he loved on days when he had to leave early for class. Claire (her name is Claire) would cry into the sweat-stained-but-still-sweet folds of his polo T-shirts and the laps of six particular beloved pairs of khaki shorts and even if Sylvia didn’t quite get it, there had been no question, none, of needing space. Frank took up a lot (even for a pygmy giant…could one still say pygmy?) but years had trickled down bathtub drains of crappy apartments with Claire coping and him, letting her. “Let us make love beneath ze Tour Eiff-ell,” appeared now an unmistakable fissure, from a hot and ugly tongue, those awful sideburns laughing like hyenas, unlovable, every particle, oh she didn’t feel like watching this ancient thing die quietly above sea-level somewhere, better to pray for the plane to go down instead…
The sandwich came in a plastic puckered pillow-case. After accepting it with a truly humiliating stab at French (Mercy, bo-cop!) and a wink that threatened to fracture the corners of the stewardess’ violin-string-taut smile, he tore it open with his teeth. When he’d finished, bits of iceberg lettuce and masticated American cheese clung like a dying rebel army to the bank of his scruffy chin. The sound he made eating was something between a baby’s spitting up and a swallowed belch. Before the second chomp was over he’d already begun to ask, “Do we get peanuts later, too?” Claire felt, surely, that the entire aircraft would be repulsed into silence forever. She shrunk low in her seat. Maybe people would think they were strangers to each other if she kept the same expression of forced, apologetic politeness on her face. Her eyes scanned rooftops of blue cushions but saw no gagging, no horrified.
“Yes, sir, you do get peanuts!” was the stewardess’ sing-song reply (could one still say stewardess?) . She moved her cart along the aisle. Frank grinned at Claire here, twiddled an imaginary French mustache between two hot-dog fingers, looking all the more stupid because she knew he couldn’t know anything had changed .
And surely, Claire thought then, there had been other sandwiches: Camembert on rainy days, Wonder Bread when poor, Tofu loaf during an ill-advised vegetarian phase, they’d swallowed each-other’s almost-everything (tempers, pride, sorrow, sex, secrets), but this could not, would not, did not stand. Once, there’d been attempts to remove food before wanting to look elegant saying ‘I love you’, in America, at home, in cotton, as kids.