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Air in the Paragraph Line Issue 05
Air in the Paragraph Line
A journal of Jon Konrath's writing and other crap
Issue 5/ July 1996
[Pre-press Draft, July 2. 1996]
Apocalypse Now starts with no credits, no plot buildup, and no
beginning title. I always liked that. Not only was it
unconventional, but it was realistic. Life doesn't follow the perfect
plot curve, with a buildup, a climax, and a bunch of closure, padded
on both sides with credits, notes, and explanations of the
unexplainable. Life just isn't as predictable; the interesting bits
are too spread out, the problems too interlaced with the joys and
boredom. And if they made a film of my life, where would they cast
Kevin Bacon, or find a way to insert a love scene every 22.5 minutes?
I've seemed to hook onto a biography kick in my reading diet.
Not entirely coincidental, but I read two very large bios back to
back: _Without Stopping_, by and about Paul Bowles, and _Literary
Outlaw_, about William Burroughs and by Ted Morgan. Both were
biographies about living people, which meant they had to end at a
particular point in time, i.e. when they were written. Both managed
to make a semi-integrated stop, with Bowles talking about his
settlement in Tangiers, and Morgan wrapping things up with a
semi-philosophical rap about how Burroughs has set up shop in Kansas.
I liked both approaches better than the typical cheap bio about a rock
band, which is usually out of date by an album or two when it gets to
the stores, and seems so unfulfilling and hollow when you read it and
realize there's 18 months of explosive history missing at the end.
Writing these semi-autobiographical "fiction" books makes me
wonder about the cycle of life, the smoothness when compared to the
average Michael Crichton album or John Hughes film. I never know when
to end a book, and how to wrap things up in a way that is enticing to
the reader, yet isn't compromising to my writing future. I mean, if I
write a book about my college experience and it ends with me getting
married and moving to the suburbs to sire babies and buy Volvo
stationwagons, and then my next book shows me out of college dealing
heroin and singing in an accordion band, then I think people who read
both books will feel ripped off. I'd like to write books that fit
together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Of course, the pictures
on the pieces won't match at all, and half of the pieces will be
missing, but at least the pieces will fit together.
I've spent time outlining my third opus, which will be another
novel and will dovetail with my first book, _Summer Rain_. The
outlining and the characters have made me want to go back and edit
_'Rain_ again, to give it another chance. I've found that spending
time away from the manuscript has given me a great deal of power
during the second edit, and I can easily spot problems and correct
them, much more so than when I was editing immediately after the first
draft. I've fallen in love with the story again, and I'm really
enjoying the changes and the strength of the new work. The book has
always been my baby, and I'm glad to be under the hood again. The
first three chapters are my current goal, and they're looking better
than ever.
I was worried about the manuscript, because you hear all of
these stories about writers writing books in 3 months or 6 months, and
there's a new Steven King on the shelves every 5 months and Kerouac
wrote _On the Road_ in 20 days. It took me about 6 months to write
100,000 words for Summer Rain, and the manuscript has been kicked
around or gathered dust for another 6 months. I got pretty depressed
that the book would never get done, or that I was working at some
ungodly speed. Then I learned that _On the Road_ was written in 20
days, but took FOUR YEARS to edit. Someone at a conference told me it
ONLY took them four years to go from blank page to galleys with their
book. I feel better about my year on blocks with this one.
Everyone's asking me about the second book. I hate the
fucking second book. It's not a novel, and the only parts that other
people liked are the parts that I hated and have already cut from the
manuscript. 95% of the book is an inside joke, the writing is
primitive, and it'll take a lot of work to get it to the point where
agents would send me rejection slips that don't have explosives
attached. It's going to sit for a while, maybe a long while. Maybe
in 6 months, I'll start editing it again and I'll love it. It won't
be the first time I've done something I said I wouldn't do.
I haven't been writing as much as I should because I just
changed jobs. I don't usually talk about my 9 to 5 work, but my
current job has just been going downhill fast, and the changes are too
embedded in my daily life to ignore them. The company stock is going
through the floor, the management is floundering, and many people are
leaving. All of my projects were getting cut, there were daily
re-orgs, and I didn't know who my boss was anymore. It was time to
dress like a lady and head for the lifeboats. I hooked up with a
recruiter, and he got me into a new place within a few weeks. The new
job is closer to my house, and every aspect of it is just better.
More money, more benefits, better work, nicer people, and incredible
offices. I liked the atmosphere a lot, and I'm hoping it works out.
About the last job's business model: I have this theory about
the Internet market, loosely based on a theory Douglas Adams put into
motion in one of his books about shoes. See, as more companies launch
their Internet services and convince everyone in the world that they
need to use the Internet, more people will use the services. But, the
companies will stumble to conquer the market and deliver more Internet
service to people, and they will in turn create more fragmented,
shoddy Internet services. This will cause a higher demand for
Internet service, because people will be pissed off with their ISPs
and will switch to other ISPs. The higher demand will cause more ISPs
to come to market, and will cause large ISPs to develop different
offerings for people (of lower quality - what my last employer did).
Eventually, this increase of both supply and demand will cause all
other free market businesses to become Internet Service Providers just
to stay in business, but they won't be able to, and the entire global
economy will fail.
That's my theory anyway.
Quitting the job was weird. I've stayed at all of my jobs for
long periods of time, and most of my employment termination was
because I was moving to school, leaving school, that sort of thing.
Once I quit, I realized I had basically no work to do for 2 weeks, and
everyone knew I wasn't exactly going to jump up and head a new
project. I started cleaning out my machines, and edited the book a
bit. It almost felt like everyone was saying "go ahead and fuck off,
it's expected of you".
I feel the same way about working a salary job though. In
food service or tech support or computer lab jobs, when you're not
helping a customer, you're wiping tables or sweeping floors or
changing toner cartridges or answering customer e-mail. But when I
got into this writing job with salary instead of hourly work and long
deadlines, I found that there were unwritten rules about slacking. It
was almost expected that you had bad days and good days and it would
all average out. I once had an entire week where I did absolutely no
writing. I'd come in late, slack, read e-mail, take a long lunch,
look at the work, say "fuck it" and leave. But the next week, I
slammed the entire project through in 10-hour days, hit before the
deadline, and got praise for it. Everyone knew I fucked off, and
nobody cared too much, as long as I didn't miss the deadline. It was
a completely different feeling for me.
I've recently decided that everyone who posts to usenet news
is a complete idiot, myself included. I remember the good old days,
when DOS people didn't have any software to post, and the religious
and far-right assholes didn't know how to turn on a computer. When
you had to use trn or nn, the bar was set high enough to keep out
almost everyone but the intelligent, hard-core discussionists. Now,
every one of the 25,000-some newsgroups is hosting a giant war about
gun control, the MAKE MONEY FAST virus is spreading across the net on
a daily basis, and you can't post anything without some fucking
asshole saying it's immoral or immature or satanic.
I've decided that I just can't talk to people anymore, because
I'm on the losing end of every major flamewar in existence. I like
the Macintosh, I think Unix is better than NT, I hate Microsoft, I'm a
liberal, I think guns are stupid, I don't pray to any god and I think
that church and state should be separated by a brick wall. So, any
time I post anything that has to do with my life, somebody's got to
tell me I'm wrong and that I'm doomed and that unless I upgrade to
Win95 and buy an AK-47 and vote for Buchanan and bash queers and go to
an evangelical church, that Bad Things will happen. Well, bring 'em
on. I've got 46 years' worth of Ramen noodles in this apartment, I
can probably avoid leaving the house for a long, long time.
I've started drawing. Maybe this is just one of my hobbies
that I will adhere to for about a week, but I've found that I enjoy
doodling with a nice ink pen for a few minutes or a half hour a day.
I don't draw anything intricate, just a lot of random shapes and
objects. I like using a roller-ink pen and shading things in great
detail, with lots of shadow lines and dots and plenty of texture. I'd
like to continue drawing, and maybe even get some cheap oil paints and
some canvases and do something weird.
I guess I am jealous of painters and sculptors, because they
are surrounded by their work. When a person walks into their house
and sees these easels and drop clothes and pottery wheels and stuff,
the person knows they're an artist. It must feel good to go to bed
and have all of these raw materials and half-complete works of art
around you. As a writer, I don't have much beyond a pile of
manuscripts, and the raw products are all in my head. A filled canvas
just looks so much more complete than a finished first draft - the
blank space has been consummated. Of course, I get this feeling
sometimes when I'm writing that I'm working on a giant painting, that
every word in the computer is like another brush stroke of paint.
Maybe it's cliche, but it gets me closer to finishing these things.
It's now Tuesday night of my last week at this job. Today, I
showed up at 11:15, left at 4, and took a 2 hour lunch. Tomorrow, I
have an exit interview with "The Cleaner", the HR person who was sent
out to the Seattle division from the home office in Ohio, with the
express purpose of breaking everyone's balls. I act nice to her in
person, but I'm starting a rumor that she met her husband in prison,
and everyone believes me. She told me to return my employee handbook
and benefits handbook to the meeting tomorrow. I think they're afraid
that I will bring them to my next job and divulge great secrets of how
they do their paid holiday schedule. Just to fuck with her, I changed
the spine of the benefits book so it says "TO SERVE MAN". If you're a
fan of the old Twilight Zone TV show, you know what's up with that.
There's always some small thing fucking with my life and
putting a new drain on my wallet, and this time it's my bed. I really
need to buy a new bed. My current setup is a twin mattress and box
spring sitting on the floor with no frame. The springs started poking
up from the mattress, and now one finally got through the cloth, the
steel scraping into the open. I had to cut open the mattress and jam
a piece of a sock into the hole, pushing the curled barb of metal back
inside. The temporary fix works, but my back is all fucked up because
about 4 or 5 of the springs are solid lumps where they are trying to
push to freedom, and the entire thing sags like hell in the middle. I
need to go buy a new bed, but there are so many problems: how do I
move it, what do I do with the old one, where do I shop for one. And
I don't have a few hundred dollars to just blow on it. So I just have
to wait, and hope the damn thing doesn't get worse before I can trick
a friend with a van to take me to a mattress warehouse place.
I had a two year old bed before I moved to Seattle, and I sold
it for $40. It was a very firm mattress, perfect for my back, and was
brand new when I got it. Originally, I planned on moving to Seattle
with a carload of stuff, and everything I couldn't sell would be UPSed
out later. My car blew up the week before the trip, so I got a
U-Haul, brought out all of my shit I hadn't sold, and I took my old
bed from my Mom's house. This was probably the first real bed I had,
aside from bunk-beds, cribs, and other kiddie-beds. I feel bad
replacing it, just because it holds a bunch of memories. It's always
strange to lie in this bed and think that it was the same one I used
to have at my mom's when I was in junior high and high school. I hid
Playboy magazines between the mattresses, and I even lost my virginity
in this bed. I also think about all the girlfriends who slept in this
bed. For 2 or 3 years after I started college, I had this bad habit
of bringing my girlfriends home to meet my parents, so almost all of
my former partners up to a certain era had slept in this bed. I
eventually realized it wasn't a great tactical move to introduce
people to my parents though, so I stopped.
I had the choice this week between buying a new bed and buying
a bass guitar. I bought the bass. It's a Fender Precision fretless,
a nice red with a white pickguard, single pickup, a couple years old
made in the new Fender factory just across the border in Mexico. I
don't have an amp, and only have a few documents from the 'net for
reference, but I'm re-learning music theory at a decent pace. The
circle of fifths and all that crap is the easy part - the hard part is
stretching out my hands enough to play a long-scale bass. Re-training
them to remember the stuff I was playing five years ago is a little
tedious, but at least I have a hobby that doesn't have to do with
writing.
Actually, I've got a little music theory tip for you if you
are having trouble learning the circle of fifths. See, there was an
all-girl dorm at IU called Forest. With that in mind, you can
remember the circle of fifths, F C G D A E B, as Forest Chicks Go Down
After Every Beer.
My old bass teacher at IU used to use that in lectures,
because my class was about 6 or 7 people, all guys. Once, a bunch of
music education major people of mixed gender came in to observe his
lecture for credit in some class they were taking. He almost blew it,
and then for the rest of the lecture, we all stumbled through the
circle of fifths, too embarrassed to use our neat mnemonic device.
The same guy used to give out excused absences for Grateful
Dead shows. And he had an all-Black Sabbath class once, we learned
NIB, Iron Man, Electric Funeral, and a few other classic,
bone-crushing, Ozzy-era bass lines.
I finished the old job last Friday, and had an odd weekend of
depression and unsettlement. I moved to Seattle a year ago to start
this job, and I've synonimized living here with working at this place.
It felt weird this weekend knowing that I wouldn't be driving back
there for work Monday morning (or afternoon). I hate the place, but I
do have some close friendships there, and I didn't like abandoning
this daily routine and support net with these people. I spent the
weekend restless with large amounts of general depression, thinking
about all of this and sleeping as much as possible. And playing bass.
I started the new job today. When you work at Taco Bell or at
a gas station, they basically tell you everything you need to know in
about 3 seconds, "There's the cash register and the slurpee machine
and the lotto tickets. Now work." In contrast, the corporate job
involves total immersion in an endless stream of introductions, names,
policies, forms, meetings, tours, network logins, machine setups,
security codes, voice mail systems and information, of which you
remember about 1%. Everyone seems nice, and the place seems
considerably more optimistic than the last. There's just a
nervousness about being released in a new environment. I mean, I
don't want to show up 2 hours late on my second day, wearing a FUCK
GOD TOUR 95 shirt and listening to Anal Cunt in my office. You need
to gradually introduce those subtle nuances of your personality over a
week or two.
I've probably explained this before, but my life's been very
flashback-oriented lately. I don't mean that I did a lot of acid in
high school or something, it's just that I think the current era of my
life is boring, and everything reminds me of a few years before, in a
time period that I now cherish. I stand on my deck and feel the cool
summer air and think of my summers back in Bloomington, and how it was
to be on campus, surrounded by people my age, hanging out with friends
and dating different women and just wandering the streets at night, by
foot or in my old car. I don't remember being poor, worrying about
grades, being controlled by my parents, having a car that fell apart
every other week, or the fact that I felt just as alone in 1992 as I
do today. I just remember the good times.
It's all classic grass is greener on the other side stuff. I
am glad that I am only remembering most of the good stuff. I went
through some hellish episodes, ones that it took a long time to get
over. I recently unearthed an audio journal from 1992, and some old
notes I wrote to myself around the same time period. They made me
remember how it took months, even years to get over a couple of the
more harrowing breakups I had that year. It's comforting to know I am
finally over a lot of that stuff, and I'm finally at rest with those
people.
And I know in two years, I'll be somewhere else wishing I was
sitting in my studio apartment in downtown Seattle with nothing to do
on a June weeknight. What worries me is that these triggers to these
episodes of nostalgia are popping up constantly, and I feel like my
current existence is just references to other parts of my life, a
giant index of years and eras and apartments and cars and women and
jobs. Every day I see a woman that reminds me so much of an
ex-girlfriend from college, or listen to a CD or smell a cologne or
eat a food that takes me back to some semester of my past. Maybe I'm
insane, but maybe it's just an overactive memory in full gear.
The depression thing's strange lately, but keeps me thinking.
Today's a year since I got my offer letter from Spry and started my
move out here. The fourth of July is a year since I pulled into town
with a U-Haul filled with everything I owned, starting this entire
Seattle chapter of my life. So, I've been evaluating my post-school
experience and everything that's happened since the move, and trying
to figure out if the net gain has been positive or negative.
I've made some decent progress in the last year. I'm pulling
in almost three times as much money, I have benefits like insurance, I
have a 'real' job with perks like an office, parking, a phone, and my
own computers; I have my own apartment, I'm living in a real city, I
have a new computer and a car without major mechanical problems, I am
getting caught up on bills, I'm writing more, and my general material
well-being is dramatically improved. But even with this major shift,
I still find myself depressed, even with a maintenance level of
lithium in my blood. I've found that I have traded away many of the
aspects of college life, like being around a bunch of single people my
age, having the freedom to wander in life, and many of the close
friendships that helped me survive. I guess as I settle into
corporate life, or some niche outside of it (like the art scene or the
writing scene or something), I'll feel a bit better about things.
The one thing that has helped me survive the last year is the
fact that I'm not as socially driven as most people, and I really do
enjoy time alone. I like to listen to CDs and sit in bed and read for
hours and write in my notebooks and work on the computer. Too many
people feel a need to always be around SOMEONE. Whenever I socialize
with people like that, the content of the meeting is so bland and
drab, it's like they are just going through the motions of meeting at
a tavern and eating a meal and talking and then leaving, just to have
something to do other than to watch TV. I go to a meal to savor the
meal, or to sit in a Denny's and write, or to see someone I genuinely
want to see. I bet half the failed marriages in the country happen
because of people who feel a need to have someone else around the
house every day of the week.
Speaking of CDs, I've been buying as many as I can afford. I
don't have time to review everything new, but I'll mention some
tidbits about the discs that are spending the most time in the player.
I just picked up a copy of Miles Davis: _Bitches Brew_ and I
love it! Almost ethereal keyboards throughout by Chick Corea make the
background sound eerie and ominous, with Davis's horn attack the sonic
equivalent of a black velvet canvas suddenly covered with crimson red
from a shotgun blast. Two discs make this a great value, something to
listen to while writing or reading.
Another dual-CD that I've been listening to a lot is the new
remaster of Frank Zappa: _You Can't Do That on Stage Volume 2_, an
excellent recording of the 74 show in Helsinki. With a very tight
band, FZ tears through old material with precision. I love the
impromptu version of the Finnish Tango, and the great spin on Montana
called Whipping Floss.
Back to Chick Corea for a second, I've been listening to
Stanley Clarke: _Journey to Love_ a little more than frequently
lately, especially the track "Song to John" which features Corea.
Clarke is a motherfucker on the bass, and this album features
everything from Stan jamming with Jeff Beck, slapping all over "Silly
Putty", and playing some upright behind Chick's cool piano sounds.
I'm still spinning a bunch of Chick Corea, especially when I
write. It's yuppie-from-hellish, but I do love Electric Band's
_Beneath the Mask_ and _Eye of the Beholder_. Both are discs I've
literally played hundreds of times, maybe more than any others in my
collection, and are still full of energy and memories.
Jawbreaker: _Dear You_ has also been growing on me lately,
it's been a great CD for work. It's also got some real depth behind
the poppy sound, the lyrics are really pretty decent after you hear
them a few times. It's kinda like a more mature Green Day, without
the drug references, obligatory sell-out punk rock bullshit, and other
annoyances.
I got a copy of Bloody Mary's _Five Years of Blood, Bruises
and Balls_, a collection of the East coast thrash band's material from
the last few albums and demos. It's nice to finally have all that
stuff on CD instead of tape, and they sound better than ever.
Lastly, I seem to listen to the _Naked Lunch_ soundtrack and
Brian Eno: _Ambient 4/On Land_ every night. The former is a mix of
Ornette Coleman doing bop and the London Philharmonic doing dark and
moody symphony with a slight Moroccan twist. The latter is Eno at his
ambient best, an album that reminds me too much of the summer of 1994
and my first stumblings with writing a book. It's a great soundtrack
to my recent writing efforts, something that needs a steady stream of
music to animate the toil and solitude.
More mail's been showing up in the box lately. I like that.
Drop a line if you get a chance, paper or electronic, and keep the
trades coming. Cool trades lately were _I Shot Barbie!_, a nice pink
mini-digest personal zine, available from Mandy/12 David Drive/Nepean,
Ontario/k29 2n1 Canada. It's filled with stories, opinions, and
decent writing from Mandy, a girl in high school up in the Great White
North. I've also been digging _Analgesic Handle_, an 11x17 biweekly
published by John Fail/2324 Birtley Ave/Pittsburgh, PA 15226-1538.
For both, send a trade or stamps (don't send Canadian people US stamps
though, silly).
Just another hint that I love long, readable letters and
ramblings in the mail, plus trades or any other weird stuff that
people send me like catalogs, fliers, or whatever. I don't do this
thing for money, and pay for all the postage and copying myself. So
any cool, free stuff I get is a plus - I like being able to read DIY
publications instead of having to go out and buy copies of Seventeen
and Pregnant Mother to read when conducting my business.
An honorable mention goes to a non-zine trade that epitomizes
the kind of stuff I love to get in the mail. I got a copy of a Jack
Chick comic that my friend Ray Miller completely blasphemized. Chick
tracts are these little comic books with highly evangelical stories
about how Catholics and Jews are going to hell, and overly Christian
people leave them at bus stops and give them to people at airports and
malls. Ray took one and whited out all of the word balloons, filling
them with a new sick and twisted plot. THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD
is now about human sacrifice, man-boy sex, necrophilia, beastiality in
the manger with sheep, satanic black masses, and Jesus being crucified
because he ripped people off as a crack dealer. I crapped my pants
after reading some of his evil and twisted modifications to the bible
story.
Speaking of shit, you're probably wondering what's been up
with the format of this zine. Since you've read this far, I'll
explain it. I basically thought the old format got stale, especially
since all of the recycled bits were just too, well, recycled. I'm
ditching all of my projects except for the books and this, and I
wanted to refocus on my own writing and less of the Catholic-like
going through the motions with a strict template and style. And if
you are a regular reader and you didn't get a copy of issue #4, it's
because it sucked. There was so little mail that month, and I didn't
have time or patience to write any new articles, especially with all
of this job bullshit and my trip to CA. Yes, there was an issue #4.
No, I didn't send out many of them. If you're really freaked over not
getting a copy, send a SASE or a trade (a really shitty trade, so I
don't rip you off) and I'll send a copy.
And I've managed to get through 5 issues without explaining
the title. In comparison, _Slate_, the Microsoft piece of shit excuse
to cash in on the web-zine frenzy, spent about half of their damned
first issue explaining their title. Of course, they published about
10 years late, and everyone assumed the title was _S'Late_. I assumed
it was called _Slate_ because it would go over like a rock. I checked
it out, it's basically a bunch of editors all on the Microsoft payroll
sucking each others' dicks. Typical.
There's a new Bukowski book out, it's called _Betting on the
Muse_. It's a hefty posthumous collection of mostly poetry, with a
few short stories thrown in for variety. I've always found Buk's
poetry from the late 70s/early 80s his most entertaining, with funny
jokes and odd stories about the horses, the women, the booze. Poems
about Bukowski showing up drunk at a highbrow literary party, hitting
on all the professors' wives, and then puking in somebody's car just
seemed to have a great entertainment value to them.
But let's face it, the writing in his older stuff was spotty
at best. It was accessible, and flowed at the readings, but it wasn't
exactly Chaucer. Well, this new book's got a lot of stuff from
Bukowski right before he passed away, stuff that's really matured and
strengthened. It's his best book yet, in my opinion, with some of the
humor but also a side of seriousness from a man who knew he only had a
few years left on his limit. Incredible stuff.
Incidentally, Charles Bukowski used a Macintosh.
I got an email the other day from an old ex-girlfriend,
telling me she was moving to England to marry some guy. I'm not
heartbroken over this, I don't entirely like the woman or miss the
time I spent with her (which was mostly spent arguing over dumb stuff
like if Astrology was an accredited science you could get a PhD in),
but I found humor in the letter.
Okay, if you're my friend, you probably know who this woman is
(who will remain nameless so I don't get sued). Not only that, but
you probably have your own story of horror having to do with her. I
thought about this, and realized that she's this weird focal point in
most of my friendships, this person that almost all of my friends from
Indiana have had bad dealings with. My friends Jen and Bill remember
when I brought her to a dinner get-together at their place and she got
irate when they didn't have Diet Coke at their house. Steve had her
in a music theory class he TA'ed, and she drove him nuts; he pissed
her off by making fun of her during a lecture, something that earned
him bonus points in my book. My friend Andrea knows her because
Andrea answers email for the computing center at IU, and got this long
back-and-forth stream of bullshit between this woman and one of her
ex-boyfriends, where she was playing mental games with him and wanted
to sue him for harassment because he sent an email asking for some of
his shit back or something. This woman stole a guy away from my
friend Angie, so Ang broke into her VAX account (it had a pathetically
obvious password) and deleted all of her stuff. Both of my friends
Tom and Ray met her when we were still dating, and both tried to hit
me in the head with a brick to knock some sense with me. My friend
Larry met her years later, and hit me in the head with a brick, as a
retroactive lesson in my stupidity.
Anyway, the whole thing is funny, because she announces
annually that she's moving to England to get married. I've got a
note she posted on an IU newsgroup in 1992, announcing an "everything
must go - I'm moving to England soon" sale she was having. She thinks
England is some perfect world because she's from the east coast and is
too pretentious and snooty for this country, so she hooks up with guys
over the computer and then tries to weasel her way over there. I
guess they wise up and dump her, and she repeats the cycle over
there.
Sometimes, I realize I've done a lot of stupid things in my
short lifetime.
I'd like to see a "What's on your Linux machine" ad series.
Too bad nobody famous uses Linux on their computers. Well, I'm sure a
lot of famous geek-types do, but nobody like Dennis Rodman or Patty
Smith or anything.
Here's what my ad would look like:
-the Slackware distribution from last January
-backups of all of my email from 1992-present
-backups of the accounts I've abandoned at IU and Spry
-a new ispell dictionary with all the naughty words added
-the following books in various stages of completion:
Rumored to Exist
Starting Rumors (a critical analysis of above)
Summer Rain (several drafts)
Next book, currently untitled
Sound Advice for the Insane (chapbook)
-an unofficial transcript of my time at IU (BGS, 2.141 GPA)
-an old resume
-my 8-line C game
-about 2 megs of pornography
-edb, the emacs database
-a shitload of other writing, short pieces, Metal Curse columns, and
other ramblings
-a copy of Netscape
-three versions of the game empire, some tools, and my patches
There's probably other stuff. I don't install too much shit these
days, it's mostly all writing and email.
I checked the old journals again, and a year ago, I sat in my
Mom's kitchen, with a full U-Haul in the driveway, ready to leave
Indiana. I equated the split from Indiana as another book in my life,
a close to the long series of chapters I labeled "The College
Experience". When I was at her house, before I headed out to Seattle,
I thought about the time in 1989 when I packed up everything I owned
and got ready to jump into the unknown, and close the book I lived
called High School.
Moving to Seattle was one of the biggest leaps of faith I ever
took, something I did unsupervised and on my own. When I went to
college, there was the in loco parentis guidance of the school and the
dorms and everything else, so moving down there was a big emotional
change, but not as much of a sink or swim experience. When I headed
west, I had to find the truck and plan the move and find the job and
find the apartment and sell the car and get the money and do
everything else on my own.
And I left behind a lot. When I went to college, only three
or four of my friendships survived in one way or another. Leaving
college meant the split of dozens of relationships, people I'd lose
touch with or never hear from again. Some weren't bad, but other were
pretty painful. Some relationships really needed closure they didn't
get, and other loose ends had to stay loose forever.
But I've learned you need to make sacrifices to get stuff
done. Since I moved here, a lot has happened to me, the job, the
material stuff, the writing, and the changes to my personality and
mind. But mostly, I know I've risen above the conditions that trapped
me a year ago. I'm not a minority in a society falling apart, I
actually feel more comfortable being myself. And I finally live
somewhere that I'm proud to call my home.
And I need to thank all of you who have helped me since I
started this new book of my life, both the new people I've met, and
the people who have carried over from my last life far away in
Bloomington, Indiana. The communication, support, and friendship has
really made a difference.
And on the last night of my first year here, I went to the
movies with my friend Virginia, and blew off doing my laundry by
another day, and drove to Mountlake Terrace with her, while we killed
time until the 9:50 show. 244th Street SW tunneled through the thick
green landscape, with the mountains in the distance, and I remembered
the morning I woke up in Bill's apartment after driving for 40 hours
straight. He was at work, and I showered, got my headphones, and
walked through the same beautiful July scenery. With the tape player
spinning a Pearl Jam album (most of my tapes were packed, so I bought
a bunch of $2 tapes at a gas station in Minnesota), I strolled to the
Dairy Queen, walking out the kinks from the trip and breathing the
fresh air to wash away the caffeine sickness and insomnia.
I looked at the beautiful blue sky, and felt the cool
Northwest air, knowing for the first time, it was my home.
When we walked out of the film, my watch said 7/1 and my first
year in Seattle ended. And now, the second begins.
AND SO ON
Thanks for checking out this issue, I hope you liked the new format
with more new writing. It's been a lot more work, but a pretty
satisfying task to come up with more original material instead of just
recycling email and journals. Anyway, keep the letters and trades
coming, and I hope to have another issue done in August, after my fun
holidays and travels.
Colophon: I edited all of the text for this issue in Emacs on a Linux
machine. The whole thing was laid out on a Macintosh using
WordPerfect 3.5. The title was assembled by hand. No Microsoft
products were used in the authoring, layout, or production of this
zine. FUCK BILL GATES AND MICROSOFT!
Do you believe in Macintosh? Learn how to help the cause by subscribing
to the "EvangeList" listserver! Send email to: <evangelist@macway.com>
or go to: <http://www.solutions.apple.com/ListAdmin/>.
Send all comments, details, ideas, praise, hate mail, trades, review
material, and long diatribes about why I'm going to hell to:
Jon Konrath
600 7th Ave #520
Seattle, WA 98104-1933
(206) 343-5604
jkonrath@speakeasy.org
http://www.speakeasy.org/~jkonrath/
Air in the Paragraph Line is published monthly, within a few days of
the beginning of the month. Issues are a dollar or postage or trade
or some other form of gratuity. Back issues are available at the same
price. Issues are free to prisoners, lumberjacks, the mentally ill,
serial killers, and employees of the government of Estonia. Trades
are more welcome than money or anything else except maybe sex, first
edition books, or Motorhead CDs. Book, comic, music, zine, or female
undergarment submissions for review are welcome. I review all food,
pornography, and computer hardware that is sent to me. Sorry, no ads
or unsolicited submissions. Solicitation by submission, however, is
welcome. I support the environment, this was printed on 100% recycled
extinct spotted owl skin.
Thanks to Ray Miller, Tom Sample, Larry Falli, Andrea Donderi, and the
Coca-Cola Company. No thanks to Evergreen Ford in Issaquah.
Copyright (c) 1996 Jon Konrath. All rights reserved.
