by joshua heineman                        ( about cb )

The Problem of Story

In recollection, time erodes truth to the benefit of story. This process - like weather on rock - sculpts beautiful mountains that no longer resemble, you forget, the original situation. This must be why I feel so stupid & inarticulate when trying to describe recent life. To approach the truth, I’d have to talk for a year just to cover an afternoon.

So what’s the answer? In fiction, the answer is to lead the story in a way that finally gets back at some original truth recollection itself would be unable to faithfully reproduce. This is, I think, why we’re moved by certain bound collections of little white lies more than we ought to be (at least on the surface).

Variations on Nothingness - — - — - —

The pause between conversation. Not naked, but unclothed. Men made of shapes shook momentarily from the stupor. A pin dropping through the floor. Drowned in the shallows. Typed from notes. Unmoved.

Cafe Culture, ol’ Nob Hill, San Francisco

“Money, it means nothing,” said the barista, handing an espresso & powdered scone across the display. We had carried on a surprisingly successful exchange of small talk that began with the rain, still wet in my hair, & ended on the meaning of life. She seemed satisfied & returned directly to practical matters. “That will be $4.75, sir.”

Another barista (from Algeria, it turned out) then asked, straight-faced, if I was a fashion designer. I wore a white tshirt & gray cotton pants w/a blue flannel from grocery chain Fred Meyer slung on my shoulders like a jacket. “Fortunately, no,” I said, but silently I decided to move to Algiers as soon as possible.

Interlude that sticks to the ribs.
Not long after moving across the country, I was walking the streets of Portland w/a pretty girl I’d met at the grocery store a few nights before. She’d written the codes of bulk items in permanent marker all over her arms in lieu of memorizing them & I was lonely & found that charming. I remember the air was mist, & w/in a scent of chimney smoke & pine needles. She talked mostly about the city blocks we passed over & the memories they held for her. They were blank slates for me, completely free & being formed as she spoke, but I didn’t tell her. Instead I described my apprehension at turning twenty-three in the coming months. She said not to worry: “Twenty-three is when you figure yourself out.” She was nineteen & I believed her.

Our function in the universe is unclear, while our malfunctions are self-evident.

Why that “happiness thing” is so difficult for all of us human beings, caught somewhere between pure beasts & angels. A theory.

Literally holed up in a beautiful dive in North Beach yesterday evening drinking Irish Coffees & lost in a book when a former poet laureate interrupts me… ‘buy a newspaper,’ he says. (?!)

The New Year came to me on a high roof in San Francisco w/fireworks over the Embarcadero & wine euphoria & one of my favorite people suddenly singing ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it’ beside me while the explosions intensified in tempo & color. A real moment.

Earlier there was a feast among friends & blind Cab Sauvignon tastings & maybe just a touch of apprehension over the looming year… & the last, a troubled knot in the history of this stupid & beautiful world. All that was lost by the final hour & I felt hopeful in ways I didn’t wish to admit.

I spent the first daylight hours of 2012 above the Golden Gate on high cliffs w/my wife & our friends. We had a blanket, a baguette & goat cheese, apples, dried papaya & bottled beer. I’d seen dolphins in the water from the same spot in another life (mine, but long ago in another time). By midday we moved on to the Cliff House for three rounds of coffee, an Irish Coffee & two Ramos Fizz. The ‘Giant Camera’ outside on the landing reminded me of the time I attempted to turn my entire apartment into a camera obscura - 2011. The waves beat on. The sun astounded. People everywhere, laughing like sea birds on new years. I forgot everything but happiness before the new winter day was down.

Washingtonia Robusta

If California could only dye the fronds of its common palm tree yellow, the entire state would resemble an immense field of dandelions.

You are walking on the moon, reader. I am under the waves of the sea. This point seems overdone, but your life is only obvious because of what it is & who you are in relation to each other. If we had been born somehow among the rings of Saturn, we wouldn’t understand the swirling violence & noise at the surface of the earth on a quiet sunny day in December.