Moving back in two weeks

Things I'm going to do before then. Consider this self-inflicted public humiliation.

• Apply for driver's permit. Vision test and written test on Monday.
• Swimming classes. To, uhh, relearn how to swim.
• Driving school. Pass.
  
• Road test.
• Read some books. Now including Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook.
• Learn some more MATLAB. Cry.
  

Excellent.

Writing like Hemingway

I noticed a book at Barnes & Noble yesterday to teach people how to write like Hemingway. I sat down with it for a while. It spoke a lot about how literary devices, his writing style, sentences structure, Iceberg Theory. Then I noticed I really don't want to write like Hemingway. Aside from our subject matters, I don't think it's cool to be evasive, indirect and short. Words already fail us so often, I just don't have the patience to create something out of other people's imaginations rather than the ideas that I already struggle with transmitting. Better pick up some Fitzgerald or Poe.

And speaking of writing, I just read John Richardson's piece in Esquire: The Last Abortion Doctor. One might think this is an article about abortion, but it spoke so truly about related topics such as medicine, politics, gender and pain. It's really hard to read. It's probably the best thing I've read in a long time. I do think that all feeling human beings need to read it, especially now, just to understand a little bit more about what life is.