Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 21

CarrollBlog 9.12

Forget that first kiss, the first sex, the first tears of misunderstanding, the first fight. Forget the first amazing gift from them that says they thought long and hard about what you love. This gift is physical proof they tried their best to get you something concrete, in-the-hand wonderful to show the intensity of their feeling for you.

Forget it. Forget it all.

The first great real intimacy between two people begins when secrets are told. The time you stole money from the candy drive when you were a Girl Scout. The time you slept with your ex-sister in law after their marriage dissolved. That one shitty self-serving lie you told your boss which changed everything and ended up burning every bridge you had at the time. To this day you cringe whenever you think about having told that lie. And finally that secret about your parents you thought you would never, ever tell anyone.

But one day you do—you tell your new partner. No matter what happens to the two of you after that, they know the truth now and you can never take it back. They have the goods on you and you on them; your life together shifts permanently on its axis. It is impossible to predict whether that is good or bad.

CarrollBlog 9.3

for women who are difficult to love

you are a horse running alone

and he tries to tame you

compares you to an impossible highway

to a burning house

says you are blinding him

that he could never leave you

forget you

want anything but you

you dizzy him, you are unbearable

every woman before or after you

is doused in your name

you fill his mouth

his teeth ache with memory of taste

his body just a long shadow seeking yours

but you are always too intense

frightening in the way you want him

unashamed and sacrificial

he tells you that no man can live up to the one who

lives in your head

and you tried to change didn’t you?

closed your mouth more

tried to be softer

prettier

less volatile, less awake

but even when sleeping you could feel

him travelling away from you in his dreams

so what did you want to do love

split his head open?

you can’t make homes out of human beings

someone should have already told you that

and if he wants to leave

then let him leave

you are terrifying

and strange and beautiful

something not everyone knows how to love.

Warsan Shir

CarrollBlog 8.24

Into Arrival

by Anne Michaels

It will be in a station

with a glass roof

grimy with the soot

of every train and

they will embrace for every mile

of arrival. They will not

let go, not all the long way,

his arm in the curve

of her longing. Walking in a city

neither knows too well,

watching women with satchels

give coins to a priest for the war veterans;

finding the keyhole view of the church

from an old wall across the city, the dome

filling the keyhole precisely,

like an eye. In the home

of winter, under an earth

of blankets, he warms her skin

as she climbs in from the air.



There is a way our bodies

are not our own, and when he finds her

there is room at last

for everyone they love

the place he finds,

she finds, each word of skin

a decision.



There is earth

that never leaves your hands,

rain that never leaves

your bones. Words so old they are broken

from us, because they can only be

broken. They will not

let go, because some love

is broken from love,

like stones

from stone,

rain from rain,

like the sea

from the sea.

CarrollBlog 8.12

“When did you know you wanted to be a writer?” It is an impossible question to answer because it’s like asking someone to pinpoint the moment when their life was decided forever and ever. “When did you decide you wanted to repair air conditioners/design Barbie doll clothes/ cook Thai food...?” Most can only shrug and mutter “I dunno.” Because the big things in life aren’t usually decided so dramatically-- They sneak up from behind. When we turn to see who just tapped us on the shoulder, they go “BOO!” How did you end up where you are in your life? Dunno—it just sort of snuck up on me.

Yet it is also true that for some people there *is* a moment. A moment when something happens that suddenly points us in a direction we will follow for a long time. For some, this moment arises from luck, others from tragedy or whim or desperation... It comes from all sorts of disparate places. I don’t know when I decided to be a writer. I know exactly when the moment pointed me toward the profession.

I was a bad boy and a miserable student in high school—a lousy combination for a teenager. My parents grew so worried about both my behavior and me that they shipped me out to a conservative all-boys preparatory school in Connecticut where students had to wear jackets and ties and classes were held on Saturdays. It wasn’t as bad a place as Holden Caulfield’s “Pencey Prep” from CATCHER IN THE RYE but for me it was an awful experience. To this day I haven’t forgiven the school for what it did to me. I was so out of place in the community that there really was nowhere for me to hide. For two and a half years I failed at just about everything I tried. Classes, friends, sports—you name it, I blew it. I had survived into my senior year but just barely. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there and was just biding my time until graduation.

Then a funny thing happened. My father was a well- known screenwriter, which meant part of my rebellion was against him and everything he stood for. I received grades of “C’ in English class and vaguely prided myself on the fact I never read or wrote anything that wasn’t required. However for no reason at all, one day I sat down with an idea for a short story and began to write. But no, the moment had not yet arrived. I wrote the story and asked my English teacher if he would be would read it. He was a nice man who years before had published a couple of stories in THE NEW YORKER so by default, he was considered the school’s writer in residence. I gave him my story. He said he would get back to me on it in a few days. I didn’t think about it again until that evening.

Imagine the beautiful campus in the film THE DEAD POET’S SOCIETY. Imagine red brick buildings with ivy colored walls and hoards of floppy haired teenaged boys walking towards the dining hall. It’s six in the evening, springtime, the weather is beautiful. As usual I’m alone and walking with the hoard toward dinner. I don’t remember what I was thinking. I do know how I reacted when I heard my name bellowed by an adult voice. To this day I remember my reaction —my head shrunk down into my neck in the classic bad-dog “What did I do now?” posture. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but so many lousy things had happened to me at that school that I just expected the worst always, especially when it came out of an adult’s mouth.

Turning slowly, I saw a teacher, Mr. Morris Brown, running down the walk toward me. He was running and repeatedly calling my last name “Carroll! Carroll!” What had I done? It must have been something major because teachers never ran. While scanning my memory as fast as I could to find my sin, Mr. Brown held up a sheaf of papers and waved it at me. “Carroll! This is a *great* story! You have written a very great story!” He yelled this at me, shaking the papers. My papers. My story.

Then. That was my moment. The picture will stay pinned proudly on the wall of my mind till I die: Mr. Brown running towards me, shouting I had finally done something great.

CarrollBlog 8.5

That special secret vocabulary and visual language created and spoken by couples when they are together, but discarded and never used again after they break up. I have this image of an archaeologist in the distant future somehow discovering one of these extinct languages and trying to figure out what the words meant.

CarrollBlog 7.27

For those of you who have asked, here comes a stampede of JC e-books. OPEN ROAD MEDIA is releasing a bunch of my backlist at the same time with new introductions I wrote to each one. Here's the link:

http://www.openroadmedia.com/books/ki...

CarrollBlog 7.25

“Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”

by JACK SPICER

Any fool can get into an ocean

But it takes a Goddess

To get out of one.

What’s true of oceans is true, of course,

Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming

Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed

You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess

To get back out of them

Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly

Out in the middle of the poem

They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the

water hardly moves

You might get out through all the waves and rocks

Into the middle of the poem to touch them

But when you’ve tried the blessed water long

Enough to want to start backward

That’s when the fun starts

Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural

You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown

Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth

But it takes a hero to get out of one

What’s true of labyrinths is true of course

Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

CarrollBlog 7.19

Here's a short wonderful review on NPR of my new story collection which is shipping now:

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/18/1569935...

CarrollBlog 7.16

The future is fastidious and punctual. It keeps perfect time and arrives everywhere on the dot. In contrast, its slacker brother the past has no use for clocks or appointments. It comes and goes as it pleases in our memory, camping out wherever the hell it damn well wants to in there. Untrustworthy, prone to exaggeration, biased-- you wouldn't lend it ten cents, but it *sure* can be charming and seductive when it feels like it.

CarrollBlog 7.8

I think for many people both Facebook and Twitter function as the companion or close friend they don’t have, or an idealized one who cares about their every comment and whim. When people post such things as “I’m really in the mood for a hamburger” it's easy to imagine they’re sending those messages out to a someone who they want to believe actually cares that they’re in the mood for a burger. However we all know such loving concerned friends are extremely rare. So like the child who creates an imaginary friend, these posters send their messages to an idealized (but imaginary) grown up someone who they wish was out there, listening.