Jason T. Lewis's Blog

I’m making downloads of my novel and LP, The Fourteenth Colony, free this weekend. Please go get yours and tell a friend or two.

I read Kafka on the Shore to teach for a class a couple months ago and have heard Wind-up Bird is even better. So I’m psyched. 

Comics I picked up today:

Ultimate Spider-Man 9

Thief of Thieves 1 & 2

New Walking Dead

Batman Annual 1

Super Crooks 1-4

Just finished reading A Farewell to Arms for maybe the sixth time. Still one of my all time favorite books. As with any great art, it gives you something new every time based on where you are in life. The loss of a loved one. The loss of a child. The loss of idealism. The loss of hope. I feel both uplifted and transcendent, as well as utterly sad. Wonderful.

This time I also walked away with more of an appreciation for Hemingway as a writer than I’ve ever had before.

I’ll discuss that and much more in an upcoming episode of the podcast “Book Fight” co-hosted by my pals Tom MacAllister and Mike Ingram.

I’ve been working on a new novel for the past several weeks. It’s been a slog, I’ll tell you. I don’t know why I’ll tell you, but I will. Maybe it’ll be helpful to others out there who want to keep writing but find that there are times when the thought of putting words on the page drags you into the muck so heavy you just want to run. But I don’t run. I keep writing. I get my 500-100 words out at least 5 days a week as best I can and I try not to worry when I think that every word I write might not really be any good. This is the time when I jut have to generate. I have to get it out and see what form it takes.

At least I have Scrivener, which has helped me take notes and think about form in a way that MS Word could never do.

Again, I don’t know why I’m writing this or making it public, but I am. It’s a slog. I guess I have to remind myself of that. In a couple months, when I have a finished draft, I’ll feel better about the whole thing. I hope.

Still Be Around by Uncle Tupelo from the LP Still Feel Gone

Recording chain:

1.Gibson Advanced Jumbo>AT 4040>MBox3 preamp,
2.Vox>Shure SM7B>Presonus Eureka

Recorded into ProTools at Sad Iron Studio.

I forgot to turn the alarm off.

So at 5:10 it sounded

and I picked up my phone

to silence it,

maybe to go back to sleep

maybe to go to the gym.

A Monday, busy week ahead.

But I can’t keep myself

from checking messages.

I knew from the first words

what the message would say,

even though it was impossible.

You, good friend, were gone.

Impossible.

We exchanged messages little more

than a day ago. We put off talking about

the book we had read

until you felt better,

until more people from the group

could make it.

Impossible.

I don’t feel like I deserve

to feel the way I do.

These are emotions reserved for family,

for those who shared your life

much more intimately than I did.

But I do feel this way.

I feel this loss.

I think of your children,

Your wife, your family,

and I think of you:

a good man.

No, great, because in every way

you were good.

I want an explanation.

I want reason.

I want this to not be.

But it is.

Impossible,

but it is.

I want solace and comfort

for all of those who knew you,

for all of us who will think of you.

But for now, I will do what I can

to tend this hole that has opened,

and we who knew you

will reap the bounty of knowing you

and hope that bounty

can be a salve to our grief.

There are many things I have to quit. Among them are worry, procrastination, short-tempered snarkiness, and the desire for more than I have.

There are other, more pressing needs in the quitting department. And I am at a a place where that quitting has to happen or bad will happen.

So I am trying to come to terms with quitting. I have never really quit anything. And I probably would have been better off off if I had quit many of the things I didn't quit. But yet not quitting also turned into perseverance, which led to good. How to know the difference?

Well, I quit smoking, but that was after I got to the point where I was sick all the time. And I'm that bad in a different way now.

But I'm afraid of all the stuff people are afraid of when It's time to quit and move on.

Namely, what if I succeed? Or what if I fail?

I've been very busy the past few days and now I'm really tired.

Have written an editorial for the local paper.

Have travelled to talk to students about writing.

Have read a little on the radio.

Have input edits on the new issue of the Examined Life.

In a half an hour I'll teach.

The family went to visit family without me for the weekend.

I have to read.

I need a break.

I really can't complain.

It is not winter

it is not spring

it is the in between

where the socks

hide, not lost

not waiting,

but in limbo

between being a pair

and being discarded,

alone

one sock is not

of use to anyone.

I am not the mate

your sock is missing

you are not mine.

When I wake in the morning

one sock on,

the other lost deep

in the blankets

I do not understand.

This is not a poem

about socks.

Say I,

Should I?

Somehow

Say..what?

Cracks

in the pavement.

Helpless.

Will I be here?

Should I?

Personal

ledger.

Personal

cost.