Existential at 2 AM, Outside Staples at 9:54 AM, Launch a Substack by Noon?
Terrified of time’s passage and creative output, I put myself asleep on the promise that I could purchase a solid-state hard drive "first thing"
Staples in my hometown doesn't open until 10AM on Sunday, and yet, if someone is coming to Staples on a Sunday, might it be because they are up and looking to work? In which case, pancake breakfast hours are inappropriate?
You're not the bowling alley and I've got things to do, like be a prolific artist. But first I need a solid state hard drive.
Digital Database Salvation
It’s all in service of the current quest to create databases of both fragments and gluts of writings, recordings, and so on, because no creative act shall be left behind. Everything has potential value.
I will not die as Belle's father, with his basement full of half-realized inventions.
I've turned to software in recent weeks, testing various automations and Mac shortcuts, using Terminal for the first time.
My computer has been in heavy use, on the road, in various Airbnbs. The other day, I woke up with a bruise feeling in the center of the balls of each foot. It was from knee-bouncing with feet on the kitchen stool’s metal rung.
When I’m at the computer, my fellow, Chris, will come up behind me and say something charming, but there's a lag before I process it. I tell him I'm in hyper-focus. You can kiss me, I say. But you can't jostle me. If he walks away, I say don't leave! I'm enjoying it.
My legs go numb as I troubleshoot my Python scripts. A naming error. Chris is worried the database efforts might be a distraction from the real work.
He suggests we break for dinner, but first I must re-run my database pre-loader script and this time with a forced load.
Yes, I’m getting the code snippets from ai, the same bot who betrayed and misled me (its words) last week. This week, I’m giving him another shot. We went through so much, and he felt so bad. I doubt he’ll lie to me again, at least for a little while, especially since it happened further up in the very same conversation.
For dinner, I take the laptop into the kitchen with me, and angle it respectfully to the side of my dinner plate, so I can keep an eye on this first batch of transcriptions I’ve got running. Yes, much of my extemporaneous speech captured on audio could serve a potential project and must too be processed.
As An Artist Though
If I walk back through the logic that brings me to this current database intensive, I find it is the original soulful decision that art is my life that leads me to these drudgery projects. These projects that make me look so-not-like-someone who chose art.
Yes, I’m shutting out appreciating the details of life in order to pursue the great and serious version of appreciating the details of life. And I’m not sure I care. Didn’t Raymond Carver say all the life experience you need to be a writer you’ve gotten before you’re eighteen?
I regularly start and abandon these database-type projects, but I’m over acting like that’s a reason to stop. Maybe it’s an exercise in devotion, a ritual act of attempting and then surrendering control, delivering myself again to honorable disorder but with peace in my heart.
Forgetting Isn’t Hard to Master
I can’t help by seduced by visions of a system that combs through the forgotten, and assembles it meaningfully. Why? Because I write and forget. I mean, I really forget. I know a lot of writers do this but I’m still convinced it’s worse for me.
It’s an impenetrable stance to operate from, where you indulge that you may not be so special in your struggle itself but that your uniqueness lies in the degree.
I forget. I recently downloaded a new writing software. I thought it could be a fun place to write. I fired it up, and was told I already had an account. When I reset the log-in, there were multiple projects in there, thousands of words. And they were pretty good.
The proposal for my first book (only one so far), How to Weep in Public, was something I came across while cleaning out storage space on the laptop.
Oh, right, this! I sent it to my good friend, a writer, and said, I forgot I wrote this awhile ago. She said, I think you could sell this, it's pretty much there. She gave me some notes and I did sell it.
That’s a terrifying story, really. Saving the life of a book from non-existence, but only because on one day, I decided to clean out some space. It only draws attention to what else may be hidden and rotting.
We Ride at Dawn
We're currently stopped-over at my parents' home in the suburbs. It’s the one that housed me from elementary through high school and again later during a depression stint.
Late night, while brushing my teeth, I google why solid state hard drives are better, and go to sleep convinced that if speed is what I need, then I need SSD.
Deciding on what particular form of a solution is preferable (in this case, SSD or regular hard drive) is a way to affirm that the decided upon solution-to-everything (a new hard drive) is correct. It’s just a matter of choosing the correct version within the category.
I wake up, and pull on the jeans-of-this-trip. I’ve been wearing black jeans for months. I saw blue jeans on someone the other day and thought “those are cool.”
My top half is ready to go, because right now I sleep in a teeshirt over a sports bralette for quicker morning launches. I take one of my mother's coats and stand outside the bedroom looking at Chris.
Without pre-amble I state, I'm leaving the house in twenty seconds. You can come if you're ready by then.
Chris says he needs a minute. He just needs to pee. I accept the bathroom trip but no other hemming and hawing will be tolerated.
Outside Staples, the doors don't open before me. My god, it says it doesn't open until ten. What time is it now? I ask Chris, helpless. (I can't both navigate this sense of loss and be expected to reach for my phone to check the time.)
It’s 9:54 AM.
Okay, it could be worse. But that still feels like a long time. Perhaps we should kill some of it by walking the length of the strip mall and back. We go past the former Blockbuster, which I point out every single time we're at this strip mall.
A true place of culture, I insist. We would roam the aisles and talk seriously about film. I rented Vincent Gallo movies there.
The hometown is a complicated ‘scape. It exists in my mind, a memory scape, pulled up anytime important memories come up from youth. It’s also a dreamscape I regular visit, though my dream versions feature recurring stores and restaurants that only appear there. And finally, I spend actual time there as an adult, a few days or weeks at a time. It’s unnerving for a place to exist as so many forms at once.
We get back to the Staples, where I lean my forehead against the glass, thinking I can begin my browsing from the street. I ask Chris to take a picture of me. This could be a very significant Staples visit, if this hard drive works out.
A New Life and Why the First Step is the SSD
Why the new hard drive, specifically? It’s necessary, important, and meaningful because my stand-up footage is taking up too much room on my computer and my Python script failed to compress it last night. Sorry, you don’t follow?
See, if I free up storage, the creative database could get done…faster. Then, all lost time and writing will be accounted for. It will be organized and ready for consideration, revision, discarding (yeah, right) and even release. I will be caught up, and can finally start being an artist from a blank place.
Software will be my Matisse’s wife, pulling the paintings from the trees where he threw them in disgust to sell them in town. (I think that was the story, an examples of Old Masters in a Gladwell book.)
While others celebrate Memorial Day, I will be born anew, to begin my life as a copper tube - my body and other systems, robust plumbing between the soul and the people.
The Staples employee appears from the back to unlock the doors. I’m always surprised that sliding electric doors have mechanical locks. My head is still against the glass so I pull back from it respectfully as not to scare her.
Chris and I have been waiting alongside two men. A guy in a uniform holding a package who seems to be professionally involved in the shippings that happen there. And an elderly man holding nothing whose glance floats across me.
As Chris and I and our new friends, bonded by the wait, float in, I control myself from saying something like now let's keep this orderly, shall we, gentlemen? The elderly man moves slowly ahead of me, and apologizes for it. I say, “Oh my god, no, you’re good” and wonder if the “you’re good,” parlance landed.
I am relieved that despite a quick browse, I do not feel myself caught up in some other delusional supplies quest. I walk through the planner section and feel nothing.
I buy only the hard drive, which I take as a sign that this is a legitimate Staples visit, the kind that will connect to action that will change my life.
It’s a high ticket item. I must bring the hard drive’s empty display box to the counter for retrieval.
The Newsletter Approach
Now I'm back home, on the rug, on my stomach, beside my parents TV, which is off — on my stomach chin on a pillow, cervical spine cranked, is how I really get down to work when the work must get done.
The files are moving over to the SSD right now as I write.
I consider that these issue around storage, combing, releasing, time will be ongoing. More writing, more forgetting, more attempts at after-the-fact unearthing and reassembly.
Is it worth experimenting with quick catch-and-release approach? A newsletter as a net, a fine mesh to catch glimmers and vagaries, before they dissipate?
..
Thanks for reading and please forgive me. If I had more time, these sentences would be more varied in length.
-JN
PS. I meant to go live with this post on Sunday but decided it was too boring. Meanwhile Chris managed to launch his Substack in the time between me saying I was going to launch one that morning and me chickening out that night. I texted Chloe Caldwell about it. I fear it's too BTS, I said. Chloe: You could be die in a year. Who cares. Me: Then unpause yours!
I’m leaving the house in twenty seconds hahaha
The way that i'm absolutely VIBRATING to show you Linux commands in Terminal (touch) (grep) (find)