"something out there in the distance" ... an excerpt
"I know that I am alone, even when I am not alone."
How do you describe a person? Is it their smell, the rhythm of their breaths? The way they pinch their lips without even knowing it, the crimp of their brow? Or is it the force of their longing? The determination of their steps? Their wild joy? You can feel a person, can’t you, feel them even when they’re in another room, even when they’re gone? I think we all possess something inside us like electricity, a pulse, an energy—you feel it, but you can’t see it. It’s there even when it’s not. I suppose that’s a soul.
I know that none of us sees quite the same world. I know that as much as I touch and hold, grasp and yearn. I know that I am alone, even when I am not alone. And yet there’s always something beckoning us in the clouds. Something like a scent in the air, something out there in the distance. That’s the way I think of Dawn now: out there in the distance.
something out there in the distance
The above excerpt is the beginning of my new “flash novel,” something out there in the distance, made up of short, short stories connected to photographs taken by my good friend, Gail Butensky, which are then linked to each other in a larger story.
The book tells the story of two lovers taking a reckless, searching road trip through the American West. Dawn is a photographer who captures desert landscapes in a flight to stave off a terminal disease. Jonny drives just to drive, running away from the end of time or running toward the end of time, looking for a home even as his restlessness overtakes him.
The University of New Mexico Press aimed to make the book itself a work of art, and they succeeded. It's a good companion book for my craft book, The Art of Brevity. Find out more about the book in my post, The story of my new book.
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Because a quote about aesthetics
The aesthetic of brevity helps return us to direct sensation. It heightens attention, recasting life with vividness. We realize the contradictory significance of things. Or the harmonious significance of things. Or both.
It’s a little like falling in love. It’s a little like noticing the first slant of the autumn sun. It’s a little like that moment of waking from a powerful dream and finding yourself in real life.
An aesthetic is our lens upon the world, so our aesthetic holds an existential position. Often the word aesthetic is seen as focused on determining the beauty of an object, and an aesthete is seen as someone who is removed from real life, immersed in art, perhaps even decadently so. I’d love to open up the definition of what aesthetic means and focus less on its subjective or superficial traits and more on how an aesthetic is a framework to express and understand life.
The Greek term aisthesis means sensual perception, so an aesthetic is rooted in the feeling of experience. An aesthetic offers an entry point into our relationships with people, objects, events, environments, the past, the present, the future, and even the political structures in which we are all enmeshed.
An aesthetic might seem distant from a belief system or a faith, yet an aesthetic forms the foundation for how a story or belief is expressed. An aesthetic is a conversation. Our aesthetic determines how we experience life and how we express it.
Excerpted from The Art of Brevity. Yes, I’m an aesthete. An enthusiastic aesthete.
A writing prompt
The first line of my book is the question, “How do you describe a person?” Think about a person who you love, or a person who you are haunted by, or a person who you’re intrigued by, and describe them. What is their essence? How do you feel them in your soul?
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Upcoming events
September 28-October 1: One of the highlights of my year is teaching at the one-of-a-kind Okoboji Writers' & Songwriters' Retreat V News at Lake Okoboji in Iowa. This will be my third year, and the roster of faculty includes great writers, songwriters, and journalists. Early bird registration is still open! Find out more.
November 10-16: Kauai Writers Conference. What more needs to be said? Kauai! Writing! And … some of the most amazing faculty I’ve been a part of. Find out more.
Because a photo
I know I shouldn’t take photos while driving, but when you’re on an empty highway and you’re dizzy with the expanse of your surroundings, it’s hard for me not to.
I almost ran out of gas about 200 miles after I took this photo. I was so overwhelmed by the world around me that I forgot cars needed gas. I literally coasted into a gas station just outside of Elko.
I’d love to buy (preorder ) your book. Unfortunately, bookshop.org doesn't deliver to the Netherlands.
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For a long time I felt guilty about loving the beautiful, in light of all the horrors of the world, and wanting beauty around me, in me, on me, and then when I started writing, creating it as well. In high school I actively appreciated our beautiful campus (acres and acres of rolling hills with oak trees and a creek), later at CAL--same thing, I found places under gorgeous trees with views of the prettiest buildings to have my lunch, also clothes, interior decoration, faces, art, etc etc. Then, in teaching a book club, I learned all about the writers coming out of the Victorian Age, out of the Gilded Age, who had the established icons and belief systems destroyed by world war and who wrote for and about Beauty with a capital B, for its own sake. How the Beautiful can be a philosophy in and of itself (think Tender is the Night, Woolf, or even Proust), because it means more than surface "aesthetics," it means a way of seeing and recreating the world.