So ends 2015. It was an incredible 12 months, overstuffed with life experiences as some banged-up suitcase missing a nametag left on a baggage carousel in a Thai airport for two days.
I got married in the Rainbow Room with a band playing “War Pigs.” I had a baby named Winter (enduring six months of people, to whom I’d mistakenly disclosed the name, telling me “Winter is coming”). I hiked a 1,000 year-old Buddhist cemetery, prayed with monks at sunrise, wandered Paris while less than a mile away a shootout with terrorists was in progress. I saw The Who, interviewed a geisha, watched professional Sumo wrestlers train, going to great pains not to show any of them the bottom of my feet, as that would have been a terrible insult. I went snorkeling off Pamalican Island in the Philippines and got mobbed by a dense school of parrotfish. I cooked and read and wrote.
My intention for 2016 is that it will be a year of less journeying outward, more staying in one place. I’ve decided to record my thoughts on it here—giving readers a glimpse of what goes on behind the closed doors of being a writer: how I manage to get up everyday and write, rather than lazing around un-showered in a bathrobe watching Scandinavian thrillers on Netflix (see Islands of the Mind #1).
How do I do it? Do I do it? Or do I farm all the work out to a small, angry gnome? (see “Small Angry Gnome,” From the Desk of, #2).
Here, you’ll find riffs, raves, diatribes, digressions, and sketches—plus the odd complaint to management that will doubtlessly go unanswered.
So bring it on, 2016, in all your as-yet unwritten glory. May you be as startling and true as a bit of Banksy graffiti showing up one morning on a war-ravaged wall.
