Tuesday, February 21, 2006 | by nathan

Sometimes The Process Is This

For my Novel class we had to review a bestselling work of fiction from the past year(ish). I chose Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, as it is one of my favorite novels, but almost unbearable to read, because it is such a perfect picture of what grief looks like.

So I was reading the book last night, and then I had to go - of all places - to Humor Writing. Prof. Marlette is cool in that he doesn’t so much teach us how to be funny, but to mean what we say, which is the crux of good humor. You have to buy into what you are saying. Alyson Hannigan is great at this, which is the only reason Date Movie didn’t entirely suck.

So between all the grief in Foer’s story, and all this talk about really, completely believing everything you write, I was a little awash. I wrote this in my notes/journal:

“I think the biggest question I ask myself is, ‘How do we even bear being alive?’ Between all the heart-rending sadness, and all the moments of soul-nourishing grace, and all the boredom and worry and hilarity in between, how does it happen that our souls even stay in one piece?”

It’s a little overwrought, I grant you, but there it is. If you’ve read Foer’s book maybe you get why all the big emotion. I cried a lot as I finished it this morning; luckily I was in the bathtub.

Anyhow, when I got out and dried off, I went upstairs to get dressed, because I knew I really needed to get to the Gazette. But something suddenly hit me: another note I had made myself about really believing everything. Not in a religious or philosophical sense, so much as just in a sense of - when I write something, am I rattling off words, or is there a point beyond, “I’m a writer, this is what I do?”

Then I went to put in my contacts, and I was staring down at them, and at myself in the mirror, and thinking about how I had bought these contacts in 2003, just after I moved home from Connecticut, and how I wished to God, right then, that I could travel back in time three years to the moment I bought them, even if just for a moment, so that I could tell my 2003-self that it was going to turn out more or less Okay, that all the panicky sadness and crazy fear and unbearable boredom would pass, and I would not, in fact, spend the rest of my life fighting off the urge to shoot up a post office or just be drunk forever.

I wrote about all the things I would say to all my past-selves, all these people I carry within me, whose voices I can still hear sometimes. And I went ahead and let myself feel all of that grief, just as fresh as if it was new, and to write honestly about it.

This is why I do what I do. You’ll get to read the piece; I’m adding it to a queue of columns that will be coming out as soon as I get a new photo, which will happen when Eric Riddle updates his effing site. But no rush, friend.