Mosquitoland: 'Sparkling, startling, laugh-out-loud' Wall Street Journal

by David Arnold

(Every great character, Iz, be it on page or screen, is multidimensional. The good guys aren’t all good, the bad guys aren’t all bad, and any character wholly one or the other shouldn’t exist at all. Remember this when I describe the antics that follow, for though I am not a villain, I am not immune to villainy.)

It’s the first rain of autumn, my favorite of the year. And maybe it’s this, or the adrenaline of my day’s decisions, but I’m feeling reckless—or honest, maybe. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference.

“Writing sort of … rounds off the sharp edges of my brain, you know?”

Either way, you should write. It’s better than succumbing to the madness of the world.”

I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.

I’ve developed a theory I like to call the Pain Principle. The gist of it is this: pain makes people who they are.

But there’s a quality behind Dustin’s eyes when he talks, a dimness, like the slow fade of a dying flashlight. Like someone forgot to replace the batteries in Dustin’s face. This kind of emptiness can only be filled with heartache and struggle and I-don’t-know-what … the enormity of things. The shit-stink of life. And neither enormity nor shit-stink can be found in a pancake breakfast. Pain is what matters. Not fast cars or big words or fabulous stories in exotic settings. And certainly not some French-toasted-sunrise-sensei-servant-motherfucker.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve learned to accept my pain as a friend, whatever form it takes. Because I know it’s the only thing between me and the most pitiful of all species—the Generics.

And as simple as it sounds, I think understanding who you are—and who you are not—is the most important thing of all Important Things.

Dear Isabel, A quick note: I don’t think a vivid imagination is all it’s cracked up to be. I’m quite certain you have one, but if not, thank the gods of born-with gifts and move on. However, if you’re cursed as I am with a love of storytelling and adventures in galaxies far, far away, and mythical creatures from fictional lands who are more real to you than actual people with blood and bones—which is to say, people who exist—well, let me be the first to pass on my condolences. Because life is rarely what you imagined it would be. Signing off, Mary Iris Malone, Storytelling Lackey

said. As I grew up, my tastes changed, but when I think about it, even the music I listen to now has a certain tragic honesty to it. Bon Iver, Elliott Smith, Arcade Fire—artists whose music demands not to be liked but to be believed.

“Help is help to anyone, Mary. Even if they don’t know they’re asking for it.”

“Have a vision, Mary, unclouded by fear.”

When you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.

Funny, as a child, I never knew whether to laugh or cry when Mom said that. But now I know the truth. You can laugh and cry, Iz. Because they’re basically the same thing.

But all my favorite movies have one thing in common: a singular moment in which you can feel the director telling his character’s story as well as his own. It is beautiful, poignant, and appallingly rare.

I don’t know what’s in this box, but I am part of its story, as it is part of mine.

There are times when talking just pushes out the tears. So I float in silence, watching the final touches of this perfect moonrise, and in a moment of heavenly revelation, it occurs to me that detours are not without purpose. They provide safe passage to a destination, avoiding pitfalls in the process. Floating in this lake with Walt is most certainly a detour. And maybe I’ll never know the pitfalls I’ve avoided, but I can say this with certainty: a sincere soul is damn near impossible to find, and if Walt is my detour, I’ll take it.

So I need to write it down, because sometimes writing a thing down is a good way to work something out.

I have limited experience, but I know this: moments of connection with another human being are patently rare. But rarer still are those who can recognize such a connection when they see one.

“Sure. Frayed, worn, stringy, faded … It’s all just proof of a life lived well.”

The prospect of there being a God scares me. Almost as much as the prospect of there not being one.”

“My point is this: My heart must continue beating in order to pump a red liquid called blood through tiny tubes called veins throughout this unit called a body. All my organs, in communication with my heart, must work properly for this carbon-based life-form called Beckett Van Buren to exist on this tiny spinning sphere called Earth. So many little things have to be just so, it’s a wonder we don’t just fall down dead.”

“So you believe in God because you’re alive?” “Guess I should just say that next time, huh?”

I think about how quickly things have changed for me. But that’s the personality of change, isn’t it? When it’s slow, it’s called growth; when it’s fast, it’s change. And God, how things change: some things, nothings, anythings, everythings … all the things change.

You spend your life roaming the hillsides, scouring the four corners of the earth, searching desperately for just one person to fucking get you. And I’m thinking, if you can find that, you’ve found home.

Asking What If? can only lead to Maybe Things Could Have Been Different, via Was It My Fault?

I swear, the older I get, the more I value bad examples over good ones. It’s a good thing, too, because most people are egotistical, neurotic, self-absorbed peons, insistent on wearing near-sighted glasses in a far-sighted world. And it’s this exact sort of myopic ignorance that has led to my groundbreaking new theory. I call it Mim’s Theorem of Monkey See Monkey Don’t, and what it boils down to is this: it is my belief that there are some people whose sole purpose of existence is to show the rest of us how not to act.

It’s deep and real and fucking old-school. It’s a fortress of passion, a crash—a fatal collision of neurons and electrons and fibers, my circus of oddities coming together as one, imploding in a fiery blaze. It’s … I-don’t-know-what … my collection of shiny. It’s love.

Make no mistake, of all the despicable qualities available to a person, trying to be something you’re not is by far the most pitiful.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE VALUE OF FRIENDS.

I REMEMBER HEARING once that the section of the brain that triggers sense of smell is located next to the section where memories are stored. In this way, a person can literally smell a memory. (Maybe Beck is right. Maybe the body, in its enigmatic miraculousness, truly is of the divine.)

And even though it’s cryptic and more than a little odd, sometimes cryptic and odd are better than lying down for the Man.

Maybe I could muster the courage to speak those words so few people are able to say: I don’t know why I do the things I do. It’s like that sometimes.

I write to you with the strongest of urges. I write of substance, and of despair. I write to teach and learn, purge and fill. I write to speak, and I write to listen. I write to tell the fucking truth, Iz.

Home is hard. Harder than Reasons. It’s more than a storage unit for your life and its collections. It’s more than an address, or even the house you grew up in. People say home is where the heart is, but I think maybe home is the heart. Not a place or a time, but an organ, pumping life into my life.

Because even though honesty is hard, you really have to murder people with it if you expect to be a person of any value at all.