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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.
