Recently I was speaking with one of Corrie's coworkers who is the only other worker there who lives in Long Beach. I mentioned that in one of my days off I rode my bicycle to San Pedro, an event I chronicled in the Two Towns Over post.
He looked perplexed, and asked why I hadn't ridden the other way, towards nearby Seal Beach or to slightly further Huntington Beach. It was nicer and cleaner, he accurately pointed out.
It was then that I realized something about myself. It had never occurred to me to go east, into Orange County and to the nicer, cleaner beaches and cities. My plan had always been to ride off into what Corrie had called "the loneliest sand-spit on Earth". The appeal of the blight, the hardship, the rough pawnshop lined streets was always very strong with me.
And then I started to think about the artistic and philosophical background.
When I started my latest writing binge, around age 19-20, after a little break to finish up high school and have a, er, good time in the dorms, the majority of what I was writing was philosophy. Inspired by the biggies--to me--Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Ryle, Baier, Chomsky and Sagan, I filled page after page with musings on various topics. At that time I couldn't imagine writing mostly fiction. Fast forward a few years, and fiction was what I was mainly working on. Now, a few years later, this non-fiction work has started to impinge on my fiction. It's all in the game.
But, as an artist--and a philosopher--the interesting things in life, the things we follow and mimic and make art from, the things that truly speak to the human condition, have always been the hard-scrabble. I like to joke that my marriage to Corrie would make rather boring literature.
Denis Johnson's unnamed protagonist from Jesus' Son, Zoyd Wheeler, Webb Traverse, even Ishmael...all characters from eras and areas that aren't the shiny places, even appropriately back-aged.
Must be what they call "keepin' it real."
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