Preparation
"All your better deeds
Shall be in water writ..."
Smallpox. Anthrax. Twinrix. Sometimes it seems like, by the shots they give me, they expect me to go to a disco for lepers, or to do calisthenics in a poorly-ventilated disease ward. Suffice it to say, I got a lot of shots. Apparently I'm getting more when I get to Kuwait. Hoo-zah.
I've been making my final farewells to my friends. There are some of them, I know, that will continue to write to me and keep in touch. There are others--and these are the ones who never call me; I always call them--with whom I will not communicate until next fall. The former expect to hear from me shortly, and say things like "email me when you get settled." The latter say things like "we'll talk to you in a year," and I am disappointed with them when they don't ask if I'll have an email address.
I've got an iPod, a digital camera, a laptop and an XBOX with the DVD player adapter. I'm also planning on finishing my book while I'm in country. I grow alternately weary and excited about it; it's a typical self-absorbed, passionate, semi-autobiographical debacle that I am afraid is what every author produces as his first work. I want to finish it, but really just to get it out of the way, so I can concentrate on more satisfying fare. I'm about to spend a year in the land of the djinn, in the cradle of civilization. A year in Babylon.
If I can't be inspired there, then I wasn't meant to write.
On the other hand, I would rather never develop literarily than shirk my mission. First things first: keep the wolves occupied in the forest, so they don't come into the yard. Support my customers. Keep those guns shooting.
Then worry about your prissy writing.
Shall be in water writ..."
Smallpox. Anthrax. Twinrix. Sometimes it seems like, by the shots they give me, they expect me to go to a disco for lepers, or to do calisthenics in a poorly-ventilated disease ward. Suffice it to say, I got a lot of shots. Apparently I'm getting more when I get to Kuwait. Hoo-zah.
I've been making my final farewells to my friends. There are some of them, I know, that will continue to write to me and keep in touch. There are others--and these are the ones who never call me; I always call them--with whom I will not communicate until next fall. The former expect to hear from me shortly, and say things like "email me when you get settled." The latter say things like "we'll talk to you in a year," and I am disappointed with them when they don't ask if I'll have an email address.
I've got an iPod, a digital camera, a laptop and an XBOX with the DVD player adapter. I'm also planning on finishing my book while I'm in country. I grow alternately weary and excited about it; it's a typical self-absorbed, passionate, semi-autobiographical debacle that I am afraid is what every author produces as his first work. I want to finish it, but really just to get it out of the way, so I can concentrate on more satisfying fare. I'm about to spend a year in the land of the djinn, in the cradle of civilization. A year in Babylon.
If I can't be inspired there, then I wasn't meant to write.
On the other hand, I would rather never develop literarily than shirk my mission. First things first: keep the wolves occupied in the forest, so they don't come into the yard. Support my customers. Keep those guns shooting.
Then worry about your prissy writing.
posted by Battler03 at 7:34 PM
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