life on marinate

I really like using the word marinate as a verb outside the venue of food preparation. So I've been letting somethings marinate lately, and trying to kind of slow myself down a little (not working so well, but I'm using time more efficiently). So last night I decided to not do anything with my evening that I could not do from the comfort of my own bed... hey, eyes up here. So I can't do one thing at a time. I have to be using at least 2 senses at once or I get kind of antsy... unless I'm asleep. Anyway, I decided to take a look at this novel I wrote the summer I turned 20 and see if it was even worth editing, which is a project I've been meaning to take on since... well, the summer I turned 20.

I don't know if its because it's semi-autobiographical and I can recognize some of the moments in it, but I got really into it. I think I'm actually going to suck it up and pull out the red pen. The weirdest thing is that I haven't looked at the thing in almost a year, and I used a lot of similar imagery and phrases in recent poems that I used in the book. Specifically things about stoplights, and spaces between shoulders and collarbones... like literally exact quotations. I have some weird wiring in my brain.

My favorite line though is this: "What's your real life plan?" A real life plan is like your back up, for if you don't get to be a rock star or a novelist or in the wnba (what can I say, I was an ambitious 13-year-old.). It's funny to me now, because the main character's real-life plan is being a novelist... if making movies doesn't work out. I still have to wonder how much I've really grown up since I wrote the piece, though. I love what I do, but I'm not going to lie, I love meeting people I think are really cool and finding out that they already know my name ALMOST (ok, not quite almost) as much as I love talking to 16-year-olds about hegemony. So I don't know if I have a real-life plan. But I am pretty impressed with the storytelling skills that I had at 20, and seriously feel like I need to get back to honing them.