I’ve read some cool books lately I want to share. Among them, Mai Mochizuki’s The Full Moon Coffee Shop, tr. Jesse Kirkwood. This one is about a coffee shop that appears only on the full moon to folks who are going through it. The cafe is staffed by human-size cats, who serve food and drink based on the guest’s star chart…because these cats also know astrology. Very much in the vein of “cozy” reads, which why the fuck not. I read it in an afternoon. This one also reminded me of a pair of cats I saw in Venice Beach a few years ago. The cats were each perched before a bowl of Meow Mix outside a tent where I think I could have paid $20 to hear my fortune. To this day, I wonder what those cats could have told me.
I also finished José Eustasio Rivera’s The Vortex, tr. Daniel Hahn and Victor Meadowcroft. I nodded to this one a few notes ago (and ended up being super different from what I said then!). Epic in scope, following two lovers eloping from Bogotá during the Amazonian rubber boom, until she leaves him and he must search for her. As he moves through various landscapes, meeting additional characters, reveal corruption and exploitative working conditions within the rubber industry. As I read, I kept thinking of Blood Meridian, even though the two couldn’t be further apart in terms of prose. The similarities I noticed had to do with the changes in scenery, the wandering, the growing cast of characters, and the narrator’s vast seeking. Some really wild atmospheric intensity as he plunges deeper into the jungle. This one is the first in the Charco Classics series, a reissued classic from 1920. Get into it.
I finally saw Flow. For those unfamiliar, this film is about a cat whose quaint cottage life becomes less so, first with the absence of her people, and then a mammoth flood sweeps through, overhauling the landscape. The only option for this solitary feline, if she wants to survive, is to tag along in a boat with unfamiliar animals. For a film without language—no dialogue, subtitles, or title cards—Flow says a great deal about the fragility of our world, suggesting that survival depends upon the collaboration between creatures with different impulses, needs, and desires. Legs of the journey are perilous, frightening, uncertain, and heartbreaking (see: a group of birds turning on another when it tries to help Cat). Yet Flow’s world is also struck through with wonder for a world in which change is the only certainty—Cat looks up curiously at a half-submerged statue of a hand, she falls in the water and vibes out staring into a vortex of fish.
Writing-wise, I worked at my bed-desk whenever I could through January and February, with a printed draft. I’d prepared for this. In December, I bought a box of pink Blackwing pencils. I printed the book a few weeks before I began the pass. I wanted this revision to feel different, detached from the desk, more embodied. Bed-desk has been a reset. The dreamy atmosphere clinging to me. Phone in a drawer. Pets lounging around in the twisted bedding. The occasional sunny morning spilling into the room, how the windows in my old house are original and toss wavy reflections on the wall. Elements in the manuscript fitting together, while others fall apart. Past revisions have found me buzzing with a kind of “This is the last time I’m doing this” energy, and I wonder now if that’s one way of cursing myself. It’s also, like, just not fun to work that way. And while work isn’t always fun, writing isn’t always fun, locking too hard into any one mindset for too long in my work gets boring. This time, I’ve just been letting myself work, no deadlines or pressure. On walks, I’ve been thinking, “What if I just wrote this book forever?” It’s a thought experiment, not the plan, but I like the air, the endlessness, the swoop of possibility I feel even when I’m not working on the book. I’m back at office-desk these days, working through those changes and making more. Something really cool happens when you change the first sentence of something you’ve been with for a long while. On my wall, I have this note:
The second part is a lost mystery to this manuscript now. But the first sentence bit is solid. I resisted ditching the first sentence in this book for a long, long time. Once I changed it though, I felt more open to whatever came next. There’s that swoop of possibility again. Give it a try and see how you feel about it.
In a few weeks, I’ll be in Los Angeles, and I’m excited to read for Morning, Fuckers, LA with Lexi Kent-Monning, Frayn Masters, Kevin Maloney, Mike Nagel, Kyle Seibel, and Adam Voith.
If you plan on attending, RSVP here. Hope to see you there!
It’s light when I leave work lately, and I saw some hellebores coming up in the garden, and the new Scratch Acid box set sailed onto my porch yesterday, so that’s on tap this weekend.
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"A STORY'S FIRST SENTENCE IS ITS DNA." Obsessed with this concept! Also, general comment to say that I enjoy your newsletter so much.
Bed desk forever! Can’t wait to finally meet irl in LA 💞