Non Photo-Blue

I've just handed out a new draft for workshop. It's non autobiographical, so that's new for me. I'm really excited. It's that horrible time though, where I hand it in, and have to wait a week before I hear anything about it. Hate that. But I've learned, at least, *not* to read over the mss this week. It's best if I don't think about it at all.

I think I'll publish it on here, serial fashion, a segment every couple of days. What the hell. I finished *Stop-Time* by Frank Conroy, which was awesome. He did so many things there that I'd like to be able to myself in my book, so that's been key. Meanwhile I'm onto Nabokov's *Speak, Memory* and it's good, but damn is he a smug prick. At lease he's unapologetic about it. Still, dude can flat out write. Here's a passage where he's describing his father being hoisted in the air by the local villagers. It's made my wall of quotes:

"From my place at the table I would suddenly see through one of the west windows a marvelous case of levitation. There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind rippled white summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawling in midair, his limbs in a curiously casual attitude, his hand some, imperturbable features turned to the sky. Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up in this fashion, and the second time he would go higher than the first and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin."
--Vladimir Nabokov
Speak, Memory