Days have
been nothing but inconsistent blocks of time. Some long, some short. Some so
vague they hardly existed. And now the clock ticks and all that remains are a
few weeks, which can either last as long as a one night’s dream, or a song, or
as long as they hours permit.
Iowa City is a town of beautiful demons. You see them scattered, darting, imposing, at times fleeting. They look at us with awe and disgust, us writers from another planet, us writers from across the borders.
Here, there are no borders. Here, there are no limitations. Here, there are pools and each pool is of a different color. But still, they are all pools.
In Iowa City you drink and you dance and you love. Pretty much like anywhere else, right? Wrong. Here you do the living with a bunch of writers and poets, most confused, some amused.
It’s a funny thing, being part of a community of writers and poets. As one myself, I’ve never felt this odd sense of foreign belonging.
There’s constant chatter of literature, which I often find rather pertinacious. But every once in a while, you engage in a revelatory conversation that brings your own writing into prospective. And often, these happen when we are NOT discussing the “impact of the global novel” and the like.
I’ve asked myself many questions that I thought I will have the answers to here. All I ended up having is more questions. We are in this bubble and life is happening out there in the world.
And we convince ourselves that what we write will somehow save the world, one day, one word at a time. But that’s an overly romantic view.
A crazy person in a town full of crazy people will seem like a normal person.
This is what Iowa City is like for writers.
The clock ticks.
Iowa City is a town of beautiful demons. You see them scattered, darting, imposing, at times fleeting. They look at us with awe and disgust, us writers from another planet, us writers from across the borders.
Here, there are no borders. Here, there are no limitations. Here, there are pools and each pool is of a different color. But still, they are all pools.
In Iowa City you drink and you dance and you love. Pretty much like anywhere else, right? Wrong. Here you do the living with a bunch of writers and poets, most confused, some amused.
It’s a funny thing, being part of a community of writers and poets. As one myself, I’ve never felt this odd sense of foreign belonging.
There’s constant chatter of literature, which I often find rather pertinacious. But every once in a while, you engage in a revelatory conversation that brings your own writing into prospective. And often, these happen when we are NOT discussing the “impact of the global novel” and the like.
I’ve asked myself many questions that I thought I will have the answers to here. All I ended up having is more questions. We are in this bubble and life is happening out there in the world.
And we convince ourselves that what we write will somehow save the world, one day, one word at a time. But that’s an overly romantic view.
A crazy person in a town full of crazy people will seem like a normal person.
This is what Iowa City is like for writers.
The clock ticks.
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