Tag: books

How to Waste Time: An Ultimate Survival Guide for COVID-19 and the Future

Yesterday at work (over Zoom of course) my colleague told me that I should take a vacation. He basically sees me sending emails late at night, the green dot next to my Slack name on at all hours of the day, and I’m constantly juggling different responsibilities. He is right. I should take a break and remember how to waste time, but the truth is: I don’t know what else I would do with myself except work if I took a vacation.

During COVID-19, we’re all (hopefully) stuck inside, and while there are many substantial challenges–from financial to mental health to physical health–there is a minor challenge that feels exponential difficult: How do I spend my time?

Let’s be real: When there is so much uncertainty about the world, work, in all of its glory and the dull moments, can be satisfying. Since I can do everything I could do at home as I could in the office, I am very busy, and knocking things off my to-do list was a form of control over the unpredictable. Being able to focus on clear, tangible tasks was a way for me to forget the viruses flying around my community like modern-day plagues.

But now that we’re almost seven weeks into quarantine, I have come to feel that the time we have inside our homes can be used in wonderful ways, and the only way to really take advantage of this moment is to figure out how to waste time with passion.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Blaise Pascal

Being alone in our room with our thoughts is challenging for many reasons. So, stop doing that. You don’t need to embrace the existential crisis of humanity during COVID-19. I recommend wasting time and enjoy the seconds tick by, because, truthfully, that is really all we have. In my ultimate guide to wasting time, I’ll share tips on the following aspects that span streaming to reading to music:

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My Essay is Included in the All-Time Best Narratively Memoirs

This morning, I woke up to some solid news. An essay I wrote in 2015 that appeared in Narratively was selected as one of their all-time best in their five-year history. Narratively has such incredible writers publishing work, and I’m honored to be included.

Looking back on the piece was strange. It was certainly a hard essay to write, and I often wonder, years later, should I have written it? It’s very personable, it’s intimate, and I probably share too much information on a subject that most people consider private.

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But when I wrote it many years ago, my intention was to shed light on an issue that is extremely important: Mental health. I still think that one of the biggest problems in our country is how we treat mental illness. From the stigma still associated with people who are struggling to the quiet conversations we have hidden away in small corners of isolated rooms about illness to the trauma it takes on families, we are nowhere near where we should be as a society when tackling these challenges.

I understand all that. However, when you reveal details about someone you love for a bigger ideal, it’s so easy to tear yourself up for trying to make a point, to share an experience.

But even though I still question whether or not it’s a good idea to share intimate details of family for the sake of art, for stories, for a bigger idea, I do believe there are a couple points from the essay that still really resonate with me, and two years later, it still strikes me in a way that felt honest, good, and true. This one stands out: We will always have breakdowns to remind us we are family.

 

Why I Loved Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

You want to know how to evaluate the bond of a life-long love? Well, like most great aspects of life, it can be found in a book. Let me explain.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve read Richard Price’s “The Whites,” Paula Hawkins’ “The Girl on the Train,” William Gibson’s, “Peripheral,” and David Sedaris’ “When You’re Engulfed in Flames,” and I’m also listening to a Stephen King book. But if you want to know about how to evaluate love, then you need to read Kazoo Ishiguro’s “The Buried Giant.” I want to focus on Isighuro’s book, because something took place in the novel that has stuck with me since I came across it.

The novel is set in a period of English history that would have been associated with King Arthur. It’s a magical world that blends myth, fantasy, and pieces of history into a journey about a married couple who are looking for their son. In the novel, everyone has a difficult time remembering aspects of their own lives. There is a mist (an almost memory-stealing fog) that pervades the land.

As the married couple is trying to find their son, they encounter a terrible storm. They need to seek shelter. The story structure follows the “hero’s journey” that was made famous by Christopher Vogler in his book, “The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers.” It’s a guide for screenwriters, and it was influenced by the works of Joseph Campbell. If you’ve ever seen any movie, or heard a fascinating tale told over a campfire, then you would recognize the structure Vogler presents.

What is amazing about Ishiguro’s books is not the structure itself, but it’s the way that the structure becomes a vehicle for the voice to tap into a mythic and fantastic world, where dragons, knights, and Sir Gaiwan still exist. But it’s achieved with such artful and tasteful strokes, as if he had found a way to make King Arthur seem more like Game of Thrones…minus the sex and random killings.

Credit Joseph Lapin
Credit Joseph Lapin

So this married couple comes to a shelter in the rain, and inside the shelter, they find a boatman inside. He is on a holiday from his job, which is to take people across the lake to an incredible island. On the island, people walk alone for years. They can hear other people, but they can never find each other. They are doomed to be alone. But certain couples are brought to the island together, and they are allowed to walk in peace and harmony for the rest of their lives. The boatman only brings couples over to the island who actually have true bonds of love, and if they fail his test, then he brings just one person at a time, and they are doomed to never see each other again. You can see how this has a fairy tale feel to it.

What was so interesting to me was how the boatman decides whether the couple actually has a strong bond of love. The boatmen simply ask the couple to tell him their fondest memory with each other.

“Besides when travelers speak of their most cherished memories, it’s impossible for them disguise the truth. A couple may claim to be bonded by love, but we boatmen may see instead resentment, anger, even hatred. Or a great barrenness. Sometimes a fear of loneliness and nothing more. Abiding love that has endured the years–that we see only rarely. When we do, we’re only too glad to ferry the couple together…”

I thought this passage was memorable, and it’s an interesting way to evaluate love. When you ask your partner what is the fondest memory, what will they say? What does their answer reveal about the quality of love? What does that say about the very nature of memory? Can a memory define love?

I dare you to ask your wife or your husband this very question tonight. Make sure to check out this new novel by Ishiguro.

ROXANE GAY ON “AN UNTAMED STATE,” BAD FEMINISM, WORK, BUZZFEED, SURVIVAL, CHANNING TATUM, AND MORE

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Roxane Gay, author of “An Untamed State” (Grove Atlantic), co-editor of PANK, and essays editor for The Rumpus, was in Los Angeles recently, and she stopped to talk to The Working Poet Radio Show before her reading at Skylight Books. Listen to Roxane discuss her “An Untamed State,” Channing Tatum, and why she is so fascinated with stories about survival. If you liked this podcast, you might also enjoy our interviews with Daniel Halpern, editor of Ecco Press, or Richard Blanco. Thanks to the Los Angeles Public Library.

Roxane Gay’s writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, West Branch, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Rumpus, Salon, The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy culture blog, and many others. She is the co-editor of PANK and essays editor for The Rumpus. She teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University. Her novel, An Untamed State, will be published by Grove Atlantic and her essay collection, Bad Feminist, will be published by Harper Perennial, both in 2014. She is at work on both fiction and nonfiction projects.

I was on Books and Booze: Check out the interview

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Two weeks ago, I was a guest on the fantastic podcast, Books and Booze, to talk about my new horror story, “The Castle on the Hill,” in a new anthology from Sirens Call Publications. On the show, I talked about everything from mental illness to scotch to Miley Cyrus. Check out the interview here: Joseph Lapin, Episode 81.