Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

About to rain

Today felt like a day in Bloomington back in 1992 – the weird vibe you get when it’s about to rain and it’s light out, but the clouds are trying to stomp it all out. Although I ignored this in my book describing that summer, the first week or two was filled with cold and borderline rainy weather like this. I didn’t have a job, the girlfriend had split, and I was stuck taking a political science class that looked pretty daunting. For about the first 10 days, it felt like the entire world was going to collapse in on me. And that weather helped reinforce the feeling.

I read in one of the Bukowski letters books (I’ve been reading both of them on and off, just opening to a random spot and reading for a few minutes or hours) and when he quit the post office to write full time, he went on a ten day terror ride of drunkenness, hangovers, no food, and despair. I guess things have been somewhat easier here, although every time I go to Safeway and drop a fiver on a couple of 2-liters or something, it makes me cringe a bit and think about money. It’s going to be an odd trip across the country.

Ryan’s party on Friday was pretty decent. I got there early and we were both a little freaked because nobody showed up for a couple of hours. I guess everyone learned their lesson on his last party, when there was no food and he was still cleaning an hour into the thing. But the whole gang showed up, plus a bunch of other people I didn’t know. It was pretty fun because everyone knew it was my going-away party so all sorts of strangers were coming up to me and talking to me. I had to tell the whole story a thousand times, but it was much better than doing so with the people at work, because these were all people that thought the whole adventure was cool.

So I shot a bunch a video, talked to everyone, drank a fair amount of beer, and got home around 5am. Since that has been my new bedtime lately, everything worked fine.

All I’ve been doing, aside from sleeping and wandering around aimlessly, is working on Summer Rain, or throwing stuff out. I’ve been shuffling through various shelves, boxes, and corners and pitching more and more stuff in the garbage. I sort of feel like those guys who pushed helicopters over the edge of aircraft carriers during the evacuation of South Vietnam.

Oops, I went off and started reading something for like 45 minutes, and now I forgot what I was talking about. I guess this would be a good place to stop.