walter mosley – Jason Toney

April 1, 2018 / 0 Comments

Find That Love Again

Yoga: Yoga for Connection (27 minutes)
Meditation: Ease with Everything (11 minutes)

“Something on my mind, something I gotta find.”

— Phonte

The prescription didn’t take. Well, that’s not true. I didn’t spend the week in a bad mood, but I’m struggling to shake this ennui. This morning’s session of yoga was about connecting with your breath and with yourself. It was mostly still—Shana might call it lay-on-the-ground yoga—and I was present throughout. I felt release. Alone in the house, I loudly exhaled several times. I cursed with relief. I thought I might cry.

Instead, I smiled.

That connection was fleeting, though. The meditation I do before writing these Sunday missives was an exercise in distraction. My mind wandered to to-do lists and imagining future interactions. I’m unexpectedly traveling for work in a week, and it has me uncharacteristically and unnecessarily anxious. But this isn’t the problem. I’m focusing on usual work shenanigans because the real challenge is elsewhere.

I told a friend this week that I don’t fight against the tide. I want life to be easy especially for everyone around me. I want to keep it nice. That works for me 99% of the time.

March 2018 was the other 1%. Maybe that’s why this morning’s meditation didn’t go well. Maybe I don’t want ease with everything. Maybe ease leads to complacency. Maybe trying to be easy is what got you to this uncomfortable feeling in the first place.

Probably. Sometimes. Maybe.

When I’m trying to figure my shit out, I write. So, I’m grateful this week for this space where I get to tap tap tap it out and hit publish. And for reminders that sometimes I write things I like, like this little story from 2002.

When I’m trying to figure my shit out, I read. So, I’m grateful this week for my public library branch and their seven-day rule on new releases which forced me away from digital distractions to devour Walter Mosley’s latest. I picked up J effrey Eugenides’s short story collection for this week’s adventure/challenge.

When I’m trying to figure my shit out, I eat. So, I’m grateful this week for this Epicurious meal-plan which was perfect even if my execution was not.

When I’m trying to figure my shit out, I seek fellowship. So, I’m grateful this week for lunch with my mom. Our conversation was wide-ranging but deep and probably not long enough. Afterward, though, I saw myself better.

I don’t know that I’ve ended this week having figured my shit out. I’m grateful, though. For the words. For the stories. For honesty. For the kitchen. For patience.

And, for you.

Yes, you.

March 26, 2018 / 0 Comments

Blow Your Mind (Mwah)

“You can’t tame me.”

— Dua Lipa

Like Arrival before it, Annihilation is creeping into my thoughts frequently. There’s some kind of through line between the serious science fiction of these two films and the humor and catharsis of watching Hidden Figures, a story about real people doing real science. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but they are all connected in my head, lifting each other up.

I’ve been thinking about how radical it is that we have major mainstream pop culture that doesn’t center the male gaze. That maybe doesn’t even consider it. I haven’t seen Wrinkle in Time yet, but I have noticed that women have seemed to enjoy the flick far more than male critics. When something isn’t made for you, perhaps explicitly ignores you, after everything before it was made for you, is your adverse reaction visceral even if you don’t recognize that is the root?

I haven’t seen it yet, but I wonder.

I finished reading The Tipping Point. It only took me nearly twenty years to get to it. We talk about virality so much these days, and in our digital culture, it is easy to identify the salespeople, and with a little more thought, we could tell who the connectors are (we’ve got the data), but who are the mavens? Have we given that role up to services that aggregate everyone’s thoughts? Is that better than trusting an individual who we know has done the proper legwork, whose opinion we respect, who delights in the knowing?

I wonder.

LA Public Library rules for new releases is that you’ve got seven days to read it, no renewals. I’ve taken the bait on a Walter Mosley novel that I didn’t even know was out. Can I win the battle with my devices and idle TV time to focus and finish a book in a week? Challenge accepted.

Maybe I’ll use it as an excuse to implement candle hour, act like a futurist, slow jam the news, or even break up with my phone.

Doubtful, but I wonder.

November 27, 2013 / 0 Comments

Revisiting My Old Friend, The Stephen King Novel

“If you can find me, come and get me out of here.” – Oingo Boingo, Private Life

From the age of 12 till about 23, Stephen King was my favorite author. During that time, I read nearly every one of his novels and short stories and his plot driven approach to story telling still informs what I like to read today.

Over the last 15 years, though, I’ve been much more selective with what I’ve read from him. It probably began with The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon—a novella I just couldn’t work my way through. The Dark Tower Novels, Duma Key, and interesting experiments like The Colorado Kid and American Vampire, sure, but, for the most part, I’ve passed. Much of his most recent work just didn’t appeal for whatever reason. Even stories I finished and enjoyed hadn’t filled me with that hunger for me that a much younger me felt upon completion. Only Walter Mosley’s work and the occasional exceptional YA series seem to do that for me these days.

Until now. My third reading of The Shining followed by his latest, Doctor Sleep, has me hungry for more.

I first visited The Overlook Hotel when I was 13 or 14 and returned again in my early twenties. I don’t think I really understood the story either time. What I remembered as I began reading again a couple months ago were a few lingering ideas: Danny Torrance seemed awfully smart for a 4/5 year old; Jack Torrance was scary as hell; and, the hotel exploding.

This time, I still thought Danny was a little too smart but I found many more things that captured my attention that I think I blitzed past previously: the history of the hotel; the hotel as character; how badass Wendy gets when the shit hits the fan.

This poster is way better than the film.

Given these new revelations, I completely get why Stephen King dislikes Kubrick’s film version. He’s right, the movie adaptation of The Shining is terrible. I didn’t get that when I was kid but it really is. Nearly everything that is wonderful and dreadful and terrifying in the book is lost in the film as Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance goes from asshole to evil in a few short steps without any context to who he is and how he got to this point. Dick Hallorann gets incredibly short-changed in the film. And, worst of all, the hotel loses it’s role as the true evil and a character unto itself. In watching the movie for the first time in decades, I was annoyed from the opening moments till the end.

Doctor Sleep felt like a necessary corrective after consuming that dreck Halloween week. It answers the question of what happened to Danny Torrance after that terrible winter in the late seventies and it’s wonderfully scary and modern and mythological and hopeful. There are long sections of terror and awfulness and fleeting moments of dread but you always feel hope and redemption around the edges. And you’re rewarded. It’s a tale of complicated humans and scary monsters and it felt both like the stories I remember from my youth and exactly the kind of thing I want to read now.

I didn’t immediately jump to 11/22/63—a novel that seems perfect for right now, 50 years after that terrible day—as it’s finally time to read Mockingjay (I told you about those infectious YA series). But it’s next. It’s nice to revisit old friends and find you still like them very much.

August 21, 2013 / 0 Comments

From Easy to Elmore

“Words are the finest invention that human beings have ever made. They build bridges and burn ’em down. Glue or acid, that’s what the words you say will be. But you got to be careful. Sometimes you might have both parts at the same time. You got to watch out, because some words will at first pull somebody close and then turn him against you in time.”

— Walter Mosley, Little Green

I was all set to write about Little Green. Written by Walter Mosley (perhaps my favorite author) about the latest adventures of Easy Rawlins (my favorite literary character) as he, once again, tries to figure out what’s going on in the underbelly of Los Angeles (my favorite city). And then, Elmore Leonard died.

Leonard, like Mosley, tells stories that feel alive with characters that feel real in worlds I believe I could go to or that might exist. Human beings in their yarns act like human beings. They talk in real ways.With Mosley and Leonard, their writing doesn’t sound like writing.

I’ve written here before about lessons Elmore has shared about writing. If Easy is my favorite character of books, Leonard’s Karen Sisco is probably my second. And, Timothy Olyphant’s version of Raylan Givens on Justified is my favorite television character today.

So, while my intention was to tell you how much I enjoyed Little Green in detail, it feels more important and pressing to tell you that Elmore Leonard matters to me.

Little Green was good. You should read it. I, however, am going to read Three-Ten to Yuma and Other Stories. I own the soundtrack for the 2007 film but have neither seen the movie nor read many of Leonard’s westerns.

Let’s see how inventive the premier crime novelist is with those kinds of words.