I'm stoking a flame, because I've been writing more lately, and I'm quite happy about that. Part of the idea here is that this is something that I may contribute to Evan's Zine. I'd like feedback, because this might be a draft I'll change before I tell Evan to use it if she likes it. Anyhow, it's a short, personal piece:
Second Homes.
When I get busy, one of my biggest regrets is that I get what I can call (for lack of a better word) homesick. I don't mean for where I grew up, or for my family's house or anything like that. I don't mean for my own apartment, fortunately, I still see that a lot. I mean for my second home. I usually have one, at least. I know where mine is now. I know where it was last year. I can recall, if I try where my second home was, when I had one, all the way back since I was a kid.
You know what I'm talking about. The place where you spend that much time. I know it's actually someone else's home. They know too. They call me their roommate. I've cooked and cleaned there. I have kramer rights to slide through their door and walk to the fridge. Or shower for that matter.
It was a lot like that last year, with different people. I remember when it was my the dorm room where my friends Kevin and Dan stayed. I remember when it was Billy's or Jon's house when I was an adolescent. And I remember times, recent or when I was growing up, that I didn't have one.
I floated from floor to floor when I first got to college. Room to room, environment to environment before I found the place that was the second home. We could always be found there at eleven at night ... doing homework, or just messing around. I wasn't the only one there, and at about eleven everyone of us was: The Eleven O'Clock Rush was what Kevin called it, usually as a complaint. About this time we'd all go for a cigarette and when it all ended, I think we all missed it.
It was a part of who I was, and my friends shared it. I think I remember what each of these places were like well, and it makes me remember myself. My second home was sometimes academic, sometimes it was angsty, sometimes it was all punk, or sometimes it was indulgent, or creative, or very personal and comfortable. I know that I chose to spend time, feeling at home in each of these places. I remember starting to feel less at home, a sort of loneliness. That was as valuable, I think, as finding a home.
We choose our friends and our second homes. Its an over-simplification to say it, but it's choosing our surroundings. Its part of who we are, or it is for me. I think I can say I understand myself more with understanding my surroundings. I think its useful for me to understand myself like this.
What can we say without that?
--Michael.
3 comments:
It's great, Michael. The content is heartfelt and personal. Pure ethos.
That's nice to see, because so often when you write your appeals are to logic and to logic alone - well, maybe a little self-righteous indignation thrown in for pathos, but never soft feelings, never vulnerable places for you. I think it's a good idea to begin stepping outside of your comfort zone and mastering prose that doesn't directly address a universal principle. I like to see you identify your own emotional perspective.
But if you want real feedback, This is what I'd change: I think you should mix your diction. You're capable of extraordinary language, you're verbose and poetic when addressing political feeling. Because this is personal I get the idea that you're attempting to be "down to earth", language that the rest of us are comfortable with. That's fine, but if you do that, don't be afraid to use bukowski-like tropes. Shorten a sentence. Give us something shamelessly self-serving. Run an epistrophe, congeries. Don't be afraid to make it musical.
Or, if it gets too heartfelt a weepy for your taste, take a cue from Douglas Adams. Give us high language and then throw in something vulgar.
Specifically: The way you begin your second paragraph feels a little awkward to me. Instead of that period after Second Homes, if it had been me I would have used an elipses or a colon or some such thing. It feels as though, by putting punctuation after the clause, you're pausing to reflect emotionally on the idea. Instead of making it a statement, make it an open-ended invitation.
Or add a brief emotional clause before the word
Or, if it makes you feel more comfortable, address the reader indirectly. Words like "we" or "those of us" keep a reader feeling as though this intimate part of you is mirroring a part of them. It makes us feel as though we're confidants.
Anyway, that's just criticism because you asked. I really love that you're writing things like this. I've always been impressed with your writing
wow, i havent checked out your blog in FOREVER. I got to admit, i'm surprized you started it up again! It has just been so long since you wrote anything in it! ah, but i do enjoy reading everything youve written since then! and i just had to add that on more then one occasion your couch in your bedroom happened to be a second home for my drunk ass on more then one occasion! oh, happy days. and that was basically one of the last times i can actually recall having a 'second home'.. ha cause god knows theres no way i can call all these army accomidations a second home..!
sometimes I wish I could actually write well on my blog, instead of rant about how much I hate the world.
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