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I Tried Not To Think About My Life. I Did Not Have Any Good Solid Plans For It Long-term - No Bad Plans Either, No Plans At All - And The Lostness Of That, Compared With The Clear Ambitions Of My Friends (marriage, Children, Law School), Sometimes Shamed Me. Other Times In My Mind I Defended Such A Condition As Morally And Intellectually Superior - My Life Was Open And Ready And Free - But That Did Not Make It Less Lonely.

-Lorrie Moore

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I Tried Not To

Lorrie Moore

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I Tried Not To Think About My Life. I Did Not Have Any Good Solid Plans For It Long-term - No Bad Plans Either, No Plans At All - And The Lostness Of That, Compared With The Clear Ambitions Of My Friends (marriage, Children, Law School), Sometimes Shamed Me. Other Times In My Mind I Defended Such A Condition As Morally And Intellectually Superior - My Life Was Open And Ready And Free - But That Did Not Make It Less Lonely.

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Pleasantness Was The Machismo Of The Midwest. There Was Something Athletic About It. You Flexed Your Face Into A Smile And Let It Hover There Like The Dare Of A Cat.

No Matter What Terror The Earth Could Produce - Winds, Seas - A Person Could Produce The Same, Lived With The Same, Lived With All That Mixed-up Nature Swirling Inside, Every Bit. There Was Nothing As Complex In The World - No Flower Or Stone - As A Single Hello From A Human Being.

I Love Plays. Even Bad Ones. I Like The Fact That Actual Live, Breathing People Are Standing Before You In Tense Situations That You Are Not Personally Responsible For.

I Always Had The Sense With Her That She Didn't Suffer Fools Gladly But That Life Was Taking Great Pains To Show Her How.

You Chose Love Like A Belief, A Faith, A Place, A Box For One's Heart To Knock Against Like A Spook In The House.

Her Life Her Life Had Taken On The Shape Of A Terrible Mistake. She Hadn't Been Given The Proper Tools To Make A Real Life With, She Decided, That Was It. She'd Been Given A Can Of Gravy And A Hair-brush And Told, "there You Go." She'd Stood There For Years, Blinking And Befuddled, Brushing The Can With The Brush.

You Emptied The Top Rack Of The Dishwasher But Not The Bottom, So The Clean Dishes Have Gotten All Mixed Up With The Dirty Ones - And Now You Want To Have Sex?

I Often Think That At The Center Of Me Is A Voice That At Last Did Split, A House In My Heart So Invaded With Other People And Their Speech, Friends I Believed I Was Devoted To, People Whose Lives I Can Simply Guess At Now, That It Gives Me The Impression I Am Simply A Collection Of Them, That They All Existed For Themselves, But Had Inadvertently Formed Me, Then Vanished. But, What: Should I Have Been Expected To Create My Own Self, Out Of Nothing, Out Of Thin, Thin Air And Alone?

Perhaps She Drives Men Away. Perhaps, Without Even Being Able To Help Herself, She Just Puts Men Into Her Ill-tempered Car And Drives Them Off: To Quarries, Dumps, Small Anonymous Bodies Of Water.

She Hadn't Been Given The Proper Tools To Make A Real Life With, She Decided, That Was It. She'd Been Given A Can Of Gravy And A Hairbrush And Told, "there You Go." -- Willing

I Missed Him. Love, I Realized, Was Something Your Spine Memorized. There Was Nothing You Could Do About That.

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An Agony. The Exit Like The Entrance - But Reserved. A Palindrome: Gut-tug.

All The World's A Stage We're Going Through.

The Thing To Remember About Love Affairs," Says Simone, "is That They Are All Like Having Raccoons In Your Chimney." ... We Have Raccoons Sometimes In Our Chimney," Explains Simone. And Once We Tried To Smoke Them Out. We Lit A Fire, Knowing They Were There, But We Hoped The Smoke Would Cause Them To Scurry Out The Top And Never Come Back. Instead, They Caught On Fire And Came Crashing Down Into Our Living Room, All Charred And In Flames And Running Madly Around Until They Dropped Dead." Simone Swallows Some Wine. "love Affairs Are Like That," She Says. "they Are All Like That.

Writing Is Both The Excursion Into And The Excursion Out Of One's Life. That Is The Queasy Paradox Of The Artistic Life. It Is The Thing That, Like Love, Removes One Both Painfully And Deliciously From The Ordinary Shape Of Existence. It Joins Another Queasy Paradox: That Life Is An Amazing, Hilarious, Blessed Gift And That It Is Also Intolerable.

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Better To Think Of Writing, Of What One Does, As An Activity, Rather Than An Identity To Keep The Calling A Verb Rather Than A Noun.

The People In This House, I Felt, And I Included Myself, Were Like Characters Each From A Different Grim And Gruesome Fairy Tale. None Of Us Was In The Same Story. We Were All Grotesques, And Self-riveted, But In Separate Narratives, And So Our Interactions Seemed Weird And Richly Meaningless, Like The Characters In A Tennessee Williams Play, With Their Bursting Unimportant, But Spell-bindingly Mad Speeches.

It Was Like The Classic Scene In The Movies Where One Lover Is On The Train And One Is On The Platform And The Train Starts To Pull Away, And The Lover On The Platform Begins To Trot Along And Then Jog And Then Sprint And Then Gives Up Altogether As The Train Speeds Irrevocably Off. Except In This Case I Was All The Parts: I Was The Lover On The Platform, I Was The Lover On The Train. And I Was Also The Train.

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The Affectionate Farce I Make Of Him Ignores The Ways I Feel His Lack Of Love For Me. But We Are Managing.

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But I Believed In Starting Over. There Was Finally, I Knew, Only Rupture And Hurt And Falling Short Between All Persons, But, Shirley, The Best Revenge Was To Turn Your Life Into A Small Gathering Of Miracles. If I Could Not Be Anchored And Profound, I Would Try, At Least, To Be Kind.

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There Seemed Nothing So True As A Yellow Tree.

Those Are The Love Killers. They Love You And Then They Kill You. They're From Another Planet. Supposedly.

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That Is What Is Wrong With Cold People. Not That They Have Ice In Their Souls - We All Have A Bit Of That - But That They Insist Every Word And Deed Mirror That Ice. They Never Learn The Beauty Or Value Of Gesture. The Emotional Necessity. For Them, It Is All Honesty Before Kindness, Truth Before Art. Love Is Art, Not Truth. It's Like Painting Scenery.

She Smiled At Him, With Longing. 'where Do You Live,' She Asked, 'and How Do I Get There?

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It Was Not Miserable - Often I Did Not Miss Her At All. But There Was Sometimes A Quick, Sinking Ache When I Walked In The Door And Saw She Was Not There. Twice, However, I'd Felt The Same Sinking Feeling When She Was.

Sinking Feeling

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Surely That Was Why Faith Had Been Invented: To Raise Teenagers Without Dying. Although Of Course It Was Also Why Death Was Invented: To Escape Teenagers Altogether.

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I Had Never Feared Insomnia Before--like Prison, Wouldn't It Just Give You More Time To Read?

You Know, I'm Just A Very Boring, Not Very Funny Person In Person. I Don't Feel Pressured To Be Otherwise.

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She Was Not Good On The Phone. She Needed The Face, The Pattern Of Eyes, Nose, Trembling Mouth... People Talking Were Meant To Look At A Face, The Disastrous Cupcake Of It, The Hide-and-seek Of The Heart Dashing Across. With A Phone, You Said Words, But You Never Watched Them Go In. You Saw Them Off At The Airport But Never Knew Whether There Was Anyone There To Greet Them When They Got Off The Plane.

Adults Are Living Increasingly As Children: Completely In Their Imaginations. Reading Harry Potter While Every Newspaper In The Country Goes Out Of Business. They Know So Little That Is Real.

If One Loves Stories, Then One Would Naturally Love The Story Of The Story. Or The Story Behind The Story, Pick Your Preposition. It Does Seem To Me To Be A Kind Of Animal Impulse Almost, A Mammalian Curiosity. For A Reader To Wonder About The Autobiography In A Fiction May Be Completely Unavoidable And In Fact May Speak To The Success Of A Particular Narrative, Though It May Also Speak To Its Failure.

This Is What Happened In Love. One Of You Cried A Lot And Then Both Of You Grew Sarcastic.

Plots Are For Dead People.

I Don't Have A Love Life. I Have A Like Life.

Most Things Good For Writing Are Bad For Life.

Perhaps One Would Be Wise When Young Even To Avoid Thinking Of Oneself As A Writer - For There's Something A Little Stopped And Satisfied, Too Healthy, In That. Better To Think Of Writing, Of What One Does As An Activity, Rather Than An Identity - To Write, I Write; We Write; To Keep The Calling A Verb Rather Than A Noun; To Keep Working At The Thing, At All Hours, In All Places, So That Your Life Does Not Become A Pose, A Pornography Of Wishing.

I Feared Sarah Was One Of Those Women Who Instead Of Laughing Said, "that's Funny," Or Instead Of Smiling Said, "that's Interesting," Or Instead Of Saying, "you Are A Stupid Blithering Idiot," Said, "well I Think It's A Little More Complicated Than That.

Personally I've Never Put Much Store By Honesty- I Mean How Can You Trust A Word Whose First Letter You Don't Even Pronounce

People Love Gossip Because It's Slightly Removed From Actuality. It's A Very Literary Thing... You Can Hear A Great Story, And It Turns Out That It's Largely Not True. Fiction Writing Is Like Gossip. It's Not Malicious Gossip, But It's Gossip.

(such A Life)engaged Gross Quantities Of Hope And Despair And Set Them Wildly Side By Side, Like A Third World Country Of The Heart.

All The Way Out I Listen To The Car Am Radio, Bad Lyrics Of Trailer Park Love, Gin And Tonic Love, Strobe Light Love, Lost And Found Love, Lost And Found And Lost Love, Lost And Lost And Lost Love—some People Were Having No Luck At All. The Dj Sounds Quick And Smooth And After-shaved, The Rest Of The World A Mess By Comparison.

Once Love Had Seemed Like Magic. Now It Seemed Like Tricks.

Forgiveness Lives Alone And Far Off Down The Road, But Bitterness And Art Are Close, Gossipy Neighbors, Sharing The Same Clothesline, Hanging Out Their Things, Getting Their Laundry Confused.

Things Between Us Were Dissolving Like An Ice Cub In A Glass: The Smaller It Got, The Faster It Disappeared.

What Do I Do When Writing Isn't Going Well? Well, I Don't Write - Which Is Symptom, Cure, And Cause. And Then Sometimes I Just Tell Myself, As I'm Writing, "i'll Fix It Later." And Sometimes It's True, I Do.

Basically, I Realized I Was Living In That Awful Stage Of Life Between Twenty-six To And Thirty-seven Known As Stupidity. It's When You Don't Know Anything, Not Even As Much As You Did When You Were Younger, And You Don't Even Have A Philosophy About All The Things You Don't Know, The Way You Did When You Were Twenty Or Would Again When You Were Thirty-eight.

Start Dating Someone Who Is Funny, Someone Who Has What In High School You Called A "really Great Sense Of Humor" And What Now Your Creative Writing Class Calls "self-contempt Giving Rise To Comic Form." Write Down All Of His Jokes, But Don't Tell Him You Are Doing This. Make Up Anagrams Of His Old Girlfriend's Name And Name All Of Your Socially Handicapped Characters With Them. Tell Him His Old Girlfriend Is In All Of Your Stories And Then Watch How Funny He Can Be, See What A Really Great Sense Of Humor He Can Have.

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If You're Suicidal, And You Don't Actually Kill Yourself, You Become Known As 'wry.

Killing Yourself

What Little Reality Television I've Seen Seems To Be About Economic Desperation. Like The Marathon Dancing Of The Great Depression, Which Should Give Us Pause. People Willing To Eat Flies And Worms For A Sum That Is Less Than The Weekly Paycheck Of The Show's Producer. I Haven't Seen "reality Television" That Is Other Than This Kind Of Painful, Sadistic Exploitation Of Fit Young People Looking For Agents.

When You Were Six You Thought Mistress Meant To Put Your Shoes On The Wrong Feet. Now You Are Older And Know It Can Mean Many Things, But Essentially It Means To Put Your Shoes On The Wrong Feet.

We Had Put Almost All Of Our Possessions In Storage, Which Was A Metaphor For Being Twenty, As Were So Many Things.

Love Is A Fever," She Said. "and When You Come Out Of It You'll Discover Whether You've Been Lucky - Or Not.

You Know, As Fiction Writers, If Our Instincts Are Off, We Can't Pay Our Bills.

She Had, Without Realizing It At The Time, Learned To Follow Nick's Gaze, Learned To Learn His Lust...his Desires Remained Memorized Within Her. She Looked At The Attractive Women He Would Look At...she Had Become Him: She Longed For These Women. But She Was Also Herself, And So She Despised Them. She Lusted After Them, But She Also Wanted To Beat Them Up. A Rapist. She Had Become A Rapist, Driving To Work In A Car.

A Short Story Is A Love Affair, A Novel Is A Marriage. A Short Story Is A Photograph; A Novel Is A Film.

Nothing's A Joke With Me. It Just All Comes Out Like One.

I Count Too Heavily On Birthdays, Though I Know I Shouldn't. Inevitably I Begin To Assess My Life By Them, Figure Out How I'm Doing By How Many People Remember; It's Like The Old Fantasy Of Attending Your Own Funeral: You Get To See Who Your Friends Are, Get To See Who Shows Up.

Who Your Friends Are

This Was Love, I Supposed, And Eventually I Would Come To Know It. Someday It Would Choose Me And I Would Come To Know Its Spell, For Long Stretches And Short, Two Times, Maybe Three, And Then Quite Probably It Would Choose Me Never Again.

After A Childhood Of Hungering To Be An Adult, My Hunger Had Passed. Unexpected Fates Had Begun To Catch My Notice. These Middle-aged Women Seemed Very Tired To Me, As If Hope Had Been Wrung Out Of Them And Replaced With A Deathly, Walking Sort Of Sleep.

Love Is Art, Not Truth. It’s Like Painting Scenery.

One Should Never Turn One's Back On A Vivid Imagination.

Vivid Imagination

I've Come To Realize That Life, While Being Everything, Is Also Strangely Not Much. Except When The Light Shines On It A Different Way And Then You Realize It's A Lot After All!

I Don't Care If I'm A Fish, I Still Want A Bicycle.

I Don’t Go Back And Look At My Early Work, Because The Last Time I Did, Many Years Ago, It Left Me Cringing. If One Publishes, Then One Is Creating A Public Record Of Learning To Write.

Love Drains You, Takes With It Much Of Your Blood Sugar And Water Weight. You Are Like A House Slowly Losing Its Electricity, The Fans Slowing, The Lights Dimming And Flickering; The Clocks Stop And Go And Stop.

A Funny Line Can Never Exist On Its Own. It Needs To Be Surrounded By Mood And Circumstances.

People Will Do Anything, Anything, For A Really Nice Laugh.

If I Had A Staff Of Even One Person, Or Could Tolerate A Small Amphetamine Habit, Or Entertain The Possibility Of Weekly Blood Transfusions, Or Had Been Married To Vera Nabokov, Or Had A Housespouse Of Even Minimal Abilities, A Literary Life Would Be Easier To Bring About. (in My Mind I See All Your Male Readers Rolling Their Eyes. But Your Female Ones - What Is That? Are They Nodding In Agreement? Are Their Fists In The Air?)

They Had, Finally, The Only Thing Anyone Really Wants In Life: Someone To Hold Your Hand When You Die.

Women Now Were Told Not To Settle For Second Best, Told That They Deserved Better, But At A Time, It Seemed, When There Was So Much Less To Go Around.

Your Numbness Is Something Perhaps You Cannot Help. It Is What The World Has Done To You. But Your Coldness. That Is What You Do To The World.

The Detachment Of The Artist Is Kind Of Creepy. It's Kind Of Rude, And Yet Really It's Where Art Comes From. It's Not The Same As Courage. It's Closer To Bad Manners Than To Courage. If You're Going To Be A Writer, You Basically Have To Say, 'this Is Just Who I Am'. There's A Certain Indefensibility About It. It's Not About Loving Your Community And Taking Care Of It — You're Not Attached To The Chamber Of Commerce. It's A Little Unsafe. You Have To Be Willing To Have Only Four Friends, Not 11.

I Do Have People In Mind When I Write. I Don't Know Precisely Who They Are, However, Or How Many Of Them There Are.

For Love To Last, You Had To Have Illusions Or Have No Illusions At All. But You Had To Stick To One Or The Other. It Was The Switching Back And Forth That Endangered Things.

Love Relationship

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