Mints Aren't Meals

It's a land where space and time aren't concrete truths but rather matters for debate as if they were art or music. "You see at this time of day, Santa Monica is the shortest way to get to Hollywood. If it were tomorrow, the 10 to La Brea would be much shorter."

LA's roads are like a Dali paintings. Ever shifting.

Lines growing and shrinking with no connection to reality.

Clocks, like my soul, melting.

My friend and I moved to LA simultaneously and independent

of knowing each other's plans. His name is Seth.

We talk sometimes and that makes things feel more ok. Like the whole world hasn't stopped making sense. Mostly this consists of gripes regarding what passes for normal here. This could be anything from talking about the fact that yes, people really do own those stupid tiny dogs. whygodwhy To the need to immediately compliment something about a person's appearance as soon as you see them. New hair? Love it. Great T-shirt! Your skin looks amazing. Some of these things are good things, but it's great to have someone around who is running headlong into the same bewildering experience. One of the more confounding stories that Seth told me recently was about a mutual friend whom he had invited to out to lunch. She looked at him, pondered a bit and said, "No thanks, I'm eating dinner tonight and I have some mints. I don't really want to eat lunch as well."

I've started working a lot in the past couple weeks as a result of my little sister (thelavirgin.com) basically knowing every last person with hiring/firing capabilities in Los Angeles. I'm venturing for the first time into the realms of the service industry as a Busboy as Hemingway's Lounge in Hollywood (hemingwayslounge.com come grab a drink!) and advertising as a Copywriter for DBA Worldwide (dbaworldwide.com come get advertising done!). All told, I'm pulling down a lot of non-concurrent hours. 

Down at 3AM up at 730. Check.

I love the places that I'm working, the challenges are new and both will be incredibly flexible as I move into the school year.

They are changing me though. 

Pulling me into the ether of Los Angeles.

There are some days when I work at both institutions. This involves getting to Santa Monica at roughly 930 (read: leaving Pasadena at 730, driving 25 miles on the freeway at an average speed of 12.5 miles per hour while imaging how great personal flight would be as well as how great personal violence to those around me would be. I laugh maniacally the whole time.) I work there until about 630 and then run over to Hemingway's for my shift which begins at 8 (This 1.5 hour drive is shorter in distance so, for reasons of personal sanity, I don't calculate an average speed), complete my shift at around 230 and hit the hay back in Pasadena at 3. The roads are empty at that time of night and the freedom makes me weep for the roads of Detroit where my little Ford Focus can and does travel as fast as it wants to go with its mismatched wheels.

So sexy

One such day I found myself glued to my desk working feverishly on a project when I looked down to see that it was 2 in the afternoon.

I was very hungry.

But I had bigger problems.

If I ate then, I would lose my rhythm on whatever it was that I was doing and I would ruin my dinner. (this 'dinner' being a mcdouble that i would pick up on on the way to the bar. dont judge me. im so sensitive.) I don't normally go for Altoids, the experience is too violent for my liking, I prefer breath fresheners that taste like candy and fortunately, I had just that in my backpack. I began fumbling blindly through my backpack with my left hand while continuing to type with my right and found the container. I started popping the candies in my mouth like a toofarnorth penguin eating sand because he thinks it's snow.

This is when I had me Teen Wolf moment.

I was changing. Adopting the habits of the people around me and not one that I was particularly fond of. I was looking in the mirror and seeing my canines grow. I shouted "Mints aren't Meals!", Confused my coworkers severely and ran out to get something to eat. I would write better with a full stomach.

Afterword


Cities always change us. 
We are going to become like the people we spend time with.


Jerusalem made me slow down and rest.
Port-au-Prince showed me how to hold my own.
I'm just trying to be mindful of what I want to keep from LA
 and what's not worth hanging on to.

Unintentional reading and books that make me feel dim

That English degree sitting in a box somewhere in my closet may not have given me an office wall to hang it on, but it most assuredly represents the fact that I'm at least semi-literate and have tried to consume a decent number of books. Sometimes I read these books and they make me feel eloquent and dynamic.

I'm able to have aggressive discussions
about them complete with allusions,
incisive commentary
and a subtle clink as I sip my Jack on the rocks.

And then there is 100 Years of Solitude. My friend Daniel recently suggested that I read it. And by recently, I mean that he let me borrow his copy of the book last year and after the first chapter, I moved on to reading something that was probably slightly less demanding.

(see The Last Ringbearer.
Tolkien fan fiction?
Yea, I get down with that.)

A few weeks ago, I decided that the gig was up and I was going to slog through Solitude whether I liked it or not.

I do not.

I'm about halfway in and every time I turn the page, I'm hoping for a distraction.

Phantom ring on the phone?

Good point, Self,
This is a great opportunity to check out CNN.
I bet a lot has changed in this world since you last did.

This book is genius. It's been confirmed. It's right there on the back binding. White letters on orange paper, "Winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature." Why is this book so impossibly inaccessible to me then? I've got a few ideas.

1. I have no frame of reference to grasp the intricacies of injustice that accompany living in South America.

This idea has a ton of merit to me and the facts of its case completely true.
No one ever put up a banana farm in my neighborhood. I don't know what
it's like to live with constant war and upheaval. However, I have spent
working on behalf of people who have been marginalized. I've eaten with
them, listened to their stories, and told them there was hope, and
watched them die from a treatable and preventable disease. If I can't get
this book because I lack the capacity for empathy, it raises some way
darker questions about me than whether my tastes are appropriate.

2. The chops are gone.

Back in my prime, I could snap through a book faster than the blink
of a fly's eye, gurgle up some literary silliness for an essay, and be back
in time for dinner. Three years out from turning in my last college paper and the
game has changed, I'm all out of the practice of intentional reading. This
leads to listless perusal and most assuredly to a lack of enjoyment
of the text.

3. You couldn't give someone a new name?

Ok, I recognize that I am not Gabriel Garcia Marquez and I have
not won a Nobel Prize, but I don't know how I'm supposed to keep
these characters straight when they all have variations of the exact
same names. So far, there's over 20 Aurelianos. The family tree at
the beginning of the book didn't even help.

4. Maybe I will like it as I get closer to the end.

This has happened to me before. And by that, I mean it has happened
with every Jane Austen novel I have ever read. Every Jane
Austen novel I have ever read has taken me at least 35 pages of slogging
before I start to have any fun. Let's just hope my
Garcia Marquez number is 200.

5. I'm currently ill served to spend time meditating on solitude.

I'm presently coming off one of the more relationally intense periods
of my life. Sharing a home with the 60 people you work with does not
provide you with a lot of 'me' time. I've returned to the States and to
a job where I'm the lone person on duty for roughly 5 hours every
night. Our visitors probably think that I'm about to ask for their phone
numbers given how much I dote on and chase them. I just want them
all to be my friends and to pay attention to me!!

So I carry on. Reading and reading. Using books as a type of self measuring psycho analysis. I've heard literature readers are better in social situations. I will hide comfortably in that.

I think Daniel wants his book back soon. It should be fine though, he's got my copy of The Satanic Verses and I think that one also took me about a year of unintentional reading.

Haiti Day One: Airports and Bad Investments

So I'm on my way to Port-Au-Prince!!

Just touched down in Miami and have a few hours to kill

waiting for my flight out of this country.

Enter the bad investment

I actually just paid $5 for a half hour of internet access.

The shame is overwhelming.

If I paid that much for a straight month, it would cost almost $7500.

Side Note: I'm slow at this and totally failed to get this finished in a half hour.

I am now writing from the camp.

I'm so excited about this new journey in my life, I have spent a little bit of time reading up and getting myself prepared for what I will face when I get down there. The problem is that I have no grid to really prepare for the type of destruction that I'm going to see.

I will be helping facilitate a camp that houses 55K people on what used to be a 9 hole golf course. I don't really know how that is even possible.

I think that one of the most exciting elements of this is the unknown. People have asked what I will be doing and the answer that I give is that I've been told I will be an Information Officer but that I have no idea what that means in the way of day to day responsibilities. I don't know who I will be sharing a tent with. I don't know what I will eat. I don't know creole. I don't know what the hours will be like.

And I'm really excited about all of that.

Some kind of extreme blank slate experience.

I hope to keep this updated while I'm down there and provide clarification, but we will see as I am presently unsure about the hour situation....

New Absurd Project

Ok, so my last project ended up being a gigantic mistake.

Why I thought that I would take

time to write a whole book

whilst in the midst of application

review season and Christmas,

I am unsure.

So now I'm past it and I'm on to

some new silliness.

The goal is to translate a book that is written in a language that

I have never learnt.

I recently bought a copy of Les Miserables in Frnech and will soon start the process of translating it. I am expecting a solid amount of frustration and some really funny mistakes along the way but hopefully I come away with some ability in French and having read one of the great novels of the 19th century.

After finishing War

and

Peace,

I feel Invincible.

John Adams and John Quincy worked on their French while they were crossing

the Atlantic by reading Moliere, and John still sucked at it when he got there.

It will be interesting to see

if I can be any more successful than

this man who clearly towers over me intellectually

simply because I have access to the internet and the ability to

instantly ascertain the information I need both in written and sonic form.

Woot.

Prince Andrey's Sky

I'm reading War and Peace and what started as some truly obnoxious exhibition in erudition (for a definition of the previously used term, one need look no further than the sentence in which it is included) has become a really exciting read.

There's a reason

that

this book is famous

One of the main characters continues to have these epiphanies after doing nothing more than looking at the sky. I'm not done yet and I have to imagine that Tolstoy is going to keep coming back to this idea but he has only done it twice so far.

I guess for me, the individual revelations that the

character experiences aren't that important but I'm really interested in the way that the sky can change someone.

This infinite umbrella that never leaves us can go from the most inconsequential, and unimportant piece of our lives and then, the minute we remember it, it somehow becomes the most profound thing we have ever encountered.

Whether is it hiding behind the roof of a market in Jerusalem.

Or it's riding along with us to where ever it is that we are going. This same sky forces us outside of ourselves and demands that we consider things beyond our own concerns. It's a trite consideration but that same infinite sky sustains us and shrinks us.

Gives us life.

and more importantly,

Perspective.

Plus, it's February in Michigan. Most of us have forgotten that the sky even exists at this point so I figured some pictures would be pretty helpful.

Ok, so I'm all kinds of bad at this

I had a pretty serious feeling when I started this thing that it would not work out. That type of attitude upon entry into this little plan to write a book in a month probably had a ton to do with its failure, but that's ok.

I spend all day reading the essays of college applicants.

These kids are given the option to discuss a setback they have experienced. I read one somewhile back to which i relate pretty easily. The student said that his setback was that he procrastinated. That's why his grades weren't good.

That is not actually a setback.

You are just Lazy.

I'm just lazy.

I don't like doing things when

I get home from work.

So with this kid in mind and the fact that like him - the kid who has nothing to blame for his academic shortcomings but himself - I have thus far found reasons to not do the things that matter, I intend to buckle down soon.

I wish I could say that

with more conviction.

I will keep you posted. Promise.

And now, I shall write about writing

So, November is National Write a Novel Month.

No one told me.

So I'm making December into Lincoln Moore Writes a Book Month. I decided to do this almost 24 hours ago, so that would officially make this day 2 of my month long journey and I will be tracking my progress for the whole world to see.

The truth is, I don't really publicize this little thing

and I'm really writing to have a record of what I was

doing, so that I can take a look back on it in a few

years.

I already have an idea and an outline figured out, so at this point I have a simple goal to write ten pages a day until I am finished. I'm on day two in the journey and I am sitting at the Caribou at Sheldon and Five Mile at 8 pm.

I have not started yet.

I thought caribou would be ideal for its calm air and comfy seating. Not true. It turns out that all the good chairs are taken and the 'air' I expected is being seriously dampened by the wonderfully patient man who is tutoring an absolute tool directly to my left.

"And why is there a halo around the moon

as opposed to the rainbow we see with the

sun? Do you understa-"

"You know what? I need to make a phone call

really quick."

"I don't understand why that couldn't wait

until after we are done. This is the last

question."

And then I flip my table over and demand a bit more respect for that wonderful wizened old man. Now, I'm out one coke and have accomplished nothing towards this book.

Yes, I got a coke at Caribou.

On to writing. Maybe I will go somewhere else tomorrow.