1) YOU DO NOT NEED TO LEAVE YOUR ROOM

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

– FRANZ KAFKA, at advicetowriters

However…

2) WRITERS HAVE TO HAVE TWO COUNTRIES

“Everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really.”

– GERTRUDE STEIN, at advicetowriters

So hard writing about China
five thousand years old
wielding power,
the width of their culture
not to mention mass
compared to
let’s say
America, at only
250 grams.
The concept is flabbergasting
yet awfully trite
i.e. unimpressive generally,
but if that’s your subject matter
then you gotta write about it,
and how better than in the form of a long detailed documentary.

Or you could weigh the culture using a modern scale.

I once tried to write a short story. It was a three-line dialog about a trip a long time ago that these two dudes went on. It went something like this:

“19 miles to midnight.”
“What?”
“Ok, 18.8.”

The only problem was it was too long. I needed a short story, and fast. Two lines would have been nice, but I couldn’t compact the interaction into such a small dialectal space. Surely I had to reverse my thinking and add a line. So I tried it with four:

“How much further, Jim?”
“19 miles.”
“19 miles to midnight…”
“Well, 18.8 to be exact.”

Unfortunately, it lacked a convincing conclusion. How would the story end? Would the passenger fall silent in satisfaction at the respecified 18.8-mile reply, or would there take place some kind of conflict at that? A discreet critique of Jim’s need to speak accurately perhaps? It certainly needed something — either a resolution or dissolution; at this point it was exceedingly flat. But nothing was coming to me…

At some point about a week later on it struck me to limit myself to three lines, as I had originally intended to do, but to sneak in a whole new character as well. So then I had Jim, the driver, the curious cat (to be known as ‘Frederíco’), and another whom I called ‘the old author’, a retired novelist. It went a little something like this:

“Man, I bet it would take you a month if you were gonna hike it.”, said Frederíco, trying with false appreciation to mask what was really impatience.
Jim gave a flat driver’s-grunt and laid out his ETA: “19 more miles to midnight, folks.”
The old author gazed out at the dim rolling dunes and chimed in to keep everyone aware of the stars that would spin and said: “Look!”

At least now the readers could grin knowing that: even outside of his books can the retired novelist write a new fact. And so, from the muse, it was this story I took.

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☯: I used to be a taoist
but couldn’t feel in black and white

✴: I used to be a buddhist
but symbols labeled me at night

☆: I used to be a child
but biology chose me not to rest

♥: I used to be a somebody
but then of just-about-anyone I thought the best

∆: I used to be a liberal
but had great energy to conserve

⚡: Then I saw solar and was green to convert
but knew pollution could not all be environmentally cured

♦: So now I write
because the words are not set tight
before my pen rolls over them
the linear gift of a gem of my choice
the present my thoughts of profound and deep voice

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