I knew that by Wall Street, the occupiers were referring to the Lloyd Blankfeins of the financial world, not the Alizahs. But still. I write for one of the largest financial firms in the country, so by proxy, they’re also protesting me.  But I don’t need others to do that. If I wasn’t working, I might be protesting myself.

I was curious. I wanted to know if they were as disorganized as they were made out to be. Where were they sleeping? Who was feeding them? What were the police doing? Where did they go to the bathroom? (the Burger King across the street)

Turns out they were just standing there. The police, I mean. Leaning, talking amongst themselves. Some of the protesters were in little hives of activity. Others were doing nothing. I went up to the makeshift information desk and asked how the whole thing was set up.

These are the committees, explained a dude, pointing to a list that included media, arts & culture, food, childcare and topless dancing. He advised me to find a committee and get moving. The arts group was meeting in a few minutes.

In search of the arts & culture group, I came across the media group. A guy with British accent was explaining how they needed to become more systematic in getting their message out there. Who was going to be responsible for putting stuff up on the web? There was a bit about the live stream, but I couldn’t hear very well or see over the heads of people in front of me. A girl sat on the ground in the middle of the circle furiously typing on her Dell. It seemed productive.

Besides ratty mattress that made me worried about catching bedbugs secondhand and a few pockets of really bad b.o., the park was relatively clean. I even noticed two women sweeping around the edges.

It was hard to hear with so much noise. I learned later that they use a human mic system – people repeat what the speaker says, sort of like a game of telephone, so everyone can understand. I got tired of trying to decipher the group leader, so I walked over to the food table. Apples, oranges, and various snack type items were scattered on low tables in the center of the park. Someone was making lots of pb&j. Two girls, one wearing a headscarf, came up with rectangular aluminum trays full of what appeared to be homemade food. A mostly-empty can for donations sat on the table.

That’s when I met Chris, a journalist who works for a small financial publication. He wore a backpack and glasses and I though he should be in math club somewhere, and he was ready to answer questions before I even asked. People got the OWS group wrong because they were looking through the prism of a traditional protest, he explained. In the past, protesters started with a clear cause. Then they came up with demands, and only after they’d established some kind of platform did they attempt to harness the power of the people. Today you had general unrest, anger, and disillusionment, but they couldn’t be pegged to any one thing. It was bigger than protesting the war, the government, or even Wall Street, for that matter. But it needed to start somewhere, and so they started here.

****

I came back the next day. It felt a little more chaotic, slightly more carnival-esque, and I wondered if this was what Burning Man felt like, at least back in the day. I figured it had something to do with the possible Radiohead appearance that never happened.

I didn’t really have an agenda, so I wandered. I noticed half-shaved heads and shirtlessness. I signed a petition to ban the extraction of natural gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing known as fracking. I paused at a signs that read, “Do people care more about text messaging than paying attention to the world around them?”  and “Shit is fucked up and bullshit” and “Let the banks fail. We’ll build new ones.”

But it was not the smelly, scruffy or heavily pierced that really caught my attention.  It was the guys in khakis and button downs carrying messenger bags and briefcases who maybe worked in my building, or close to it, who wandered too. Did they expect to end up working on Wall Street? Maybe they wanted to paint colorful protest signs, too. Maybe they wanted to earn a living. Maybe they recognize their complicity in the corruption, too. Maybe they felt torn between inertia and responsibility and passion and frustration and the need to earn a living, as I did, too.

I went back to the info desk. Dan seemed like a leader, so I asked why he was the default info guy. He said he got the job of info desk guy because he sat at the info desk. All you need to know is that he made a short film about a guy who could play music by cracking his knuckles in different tonal and rhythmic patterns. We talked about a lot of things (Amusing Ourselves to Death, Citizens United, Obama’s campaign winning an advertising award). In his opinion (he emphasized that he doesn’t speak for everyone) the initial goals of the protest were simple:

1)Hold Wall Street accountable (Lloyd Blankfien et al go to jail)

2) Reinstate finance restrictions so a crisis can’t happen again (capital gains reforms)

3) Campaign finance reform (so candidates are elected, not bought)

All the while, people were taking pictures of two girls with a sign that read “Cats Against Groceries.” One was sitting in a box, mugging for the cameras and looking feline. Maybe because it was funny. Maybe because the girl scrunched in the box was pretty. Maybe because Cats Against Groceries is no less potent a phrase than We Are the 99%. Maybe we’re just tired of placating ourselves with our iphones (which unfortunately I can no longer do).

I should’ve stayed longer. But it had been a long week, and I was tired, and also lucky to be tired because I have a job. I wanted to finish the novel I’m reading and catch up on Demi and Ashton’s rumored split and cook  the acorn squash that was getting overly ripe on my counter. So they’ll continue to protest, I’ll continue to work in the financial district, and maybe even keep stopping by, if the spirit moves me.

I passed through Union Square shortly before this occurred. I weaved through a crowd chanting “the people, united, will never be divided” and headed into the nearby movie theater to see Drive. I’m not sure which type of violence I prefer: the gratuitous, almost cartoonish gore of the blockbuster, or the candid, made-for-YouTube street conflict below.

These days, I’m working near Wall Street, not protesting against it. I wonder: are there sides in all this, and if so, which one am I on?

The view from my window

Like many Americans, my consumption of 9/11 coverage has dramatically increased over the past week.  And also like many Americans, I still stare in disbelief at photos taken in the wake of the destruction. But these days I’ve been doing something I haven’t always been able to do. I look at the photos online, then I looked out the window of my office at Ground Zero. I looked back at the photos, and then again out the window, where an unconventional triptych emerges fifteen floors and ten years below me: one part pool of water, one part transformer-like metal structure, and one part gaping hole.

*****

I went to a trainer at the gym the other day who told me he used to be a stockbroker until 9/11. “Fuck this,” he told me he told himself, “I’m going to do something I love.” Now  he’s helping me tone my gluts.

There seems to be collective self-reflection going on as we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11. As much as we don’t want to forget, inevitably, we do. The day has long since come and gone. It isn’t present. We don’t forget the event, but we forget the visceral sense of being shocked, afraid, uncertain, and also, alive. When I look out the window, I’m looking at history, but it doesn’t always feel that way. Sometimes it’s just scenery. But I don’t want it to be.

***

I went to a reading of Granta Magazine’s special 9/11 issue. The editor, John Freeman, spoke about how though the moment has come and gone, we’ll always searching for the precise instant when 9/11 began. Its roots are tangled and go farther back than I can remember.

So here we are 10 years later, obsessed with how we’ve changed. I no longer rush to turn on the television each morning just to make sure the world hasn’t blown up. I remember when airport security seemed like a legitimate way to prevent terrorism, and not another banal inconvenience or an excuse for groping. I remember when my mother insisted people were being nicer, that our collective grief had made us more sensitive and aware of the needs of those around us, and that people would stay that way. I remember a professor saying we’d never know the same sense of security again. Perhaps we were all right, at the time.

****

I recently did an interview with the poet Nick Flynn. His words are far wiser than mine. He reminds us that talking of tragedy head on doesn’t always capture the sense of loss. It’s in focusing on the lives, not the death, that we can connect with the enormity of tragedy. That’s why, on some level, we miss mourning and grief. Just when we thought we wanted to forget, suddenly we’re dying to remember. Or rather, to be reminded – to feel what we felt, because it’s the piercing pain and sadness that also makes us feel achingly alive.

But what do I know? I wasn’t there, I know no one who died. But I can’t help but think that if it were to happen today, I would be close enough to see people falling from the sky or crumbling beneath concrete.  So for a brief moment, I feel the past and present compress. From my window, I see the two empty pools that stand in the footprints of the towers. Then I wonder if I’m looking at the sky space where the falling man plunged through. I’ve tried to recreate it in my mind, but that’s the thing. I can’t. It’s all negative space.

Because Slate always has something to say that makes me feel insecure about my own life, today’s article on How to write faster made me revisit my slowpoke status yet again. Writes Michael Agger:

Kellogg, a psychologist at Saint Louis University, tours the research in the field, where many of the landmarks are his own. Some writers are “Beethovians” who disdain outlines and notes and instead “compose rough drafts immediately to discover what they have to say.” Others are “Mozartians”—cough, cough—who have been known to “delay drafting for lengthy periods of time in order to allow for extensive reflection and planning.” According to Kellogg, perfect-first-drafters and full-steam-aheaders report the same amount of productivity. Methinks someone is lying. And feel free to quote this line the next time an editor is nudging you for copy: “Although prewriting can be brief, experts approaching a serious writing assignment may spend hours, days, or weeks thinking about the task before initiating the draft.”

I tried timed writing because my debilitating perfectionism leads to creative suicide. So I use a few cliches and overused adjectives as now and then. Who cares but me? Only I will cringe with disgust at my own work. No one really pays much attention to your stride when they’re focused on watching you sprint to the finish line, right?

Yet I’m not a true Mozart. When I first write, I don’t finish sentences. I don’t even think. I write furiously, knowing I’m spewing worthless junk, and also knowing that I’ll return to it and tweak it later, perhaps for hours on end. I’ll whittle away at each word and massage various phrases until they bend under the weight of meaning and intention. I go back to previously perfected paragraphs and rearrange sentences like a textual game of jenga. Some might call this counterproductive, but I call it the only way I know how to write.

I write like this because don’t know exactly what it is I’m trying to say until I start writing. Many a writing manual (and English teacher) will tell you that all writing is re-writing. A cohesive paragraph is born a tangled ball of ideas and emotions; the writing process is almost a form of gestation. The great Judith Crist always said two things: 1) you need to let your copy cool and 2) writers are more concerned with their own heads than anything going on in the world. Writing is not a means to an end but a end in itself: a way of dialoguing with the voices in my head and clarifying my own thoughts.

We’re living in an era that prizes expediency over reflection — and sometimes even accuracy. Perhaps, in another day and age, to produce one solid piece every week would be enough. As a journalist, having an online presence is important. So is producing a solid, well-researched, error-free body of work. One takes rapid-fire production that often doesn’t require much thought, the other requires long hours and undivided attention. As I sit in my room, listening to the rain, stuffing my face with Utz’s Salt’n'Vinegar chips and trying to resist checking my email, I wonder how much “better” my writing is one way or the other.

Agger’s article speaks to an underlying anxiety facing most writers:we aren’t producing enough. Production equals exposure, which equals…what? Posterity? Being heard? Paying work? I’m not exactly sure.

Yes, I’m insanely jealous of those writers who possess unfiltered clarity. They sit, focus write, and it just comes pouring out totally intact. I can’t imagine writing like that. I can only envision the fragmented, piecemeal process that I’ve adopted as my own. The fact that Slate title this “How to”implies that I’m doing something wrong, and the right way to write is zippity do da fast and faster. But the page is the only place I have control, and I’d really like to loiter there for as long as possible.

Rejection is par for the course, but needless to say I had some trepidation about starting up again. Lots of things happened since my first round of submissions – I moved to New York, started two different jobs,became obsessed with Lost (I know I’m a little late to the party) and now, finally, I’m getting back on my feet to give it another go. But c’mon. The world needs another book like it needs to raise the debt ceiling. So how to distinguish oneself in a market so completely saturated?

So here’s the hard truth: even *if* my story is stellar, it doesn’t matter unless I figure out how to frame it. In short, how you market and present a book is as important as the book itself. As I gear up for revisions and another round  of submissions, I have more questions than ever. The playing field is wider, the options trickier, and publishing is rapidly evolving. There’s Lulu, Byliner, a host of other self-publishing sites, and that girl who got a million dollar book deal after self-publishing. I’ll add her to the list of people I hate.  So I thought I needed to create a forum in which to share my experiences on the ups and downs of writing and publishing – and I realized I already have one.

So let this be my brief intro to what I’m sure will prove a very long and Sisyphean road ahead.

Exhibit A: marching along in sea creature gear to the radical tunes of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra at the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade.

It makes sense to couch parts of your life between parentheses. Those slender cupped hands of punctuation hold auxiliary information often glossed over or outright ignored — but also that which gives new depth and meaning to the bare bones narrative. Parenthetical statements are distinguished from separate clauses set apart by commas, and easier than footnotes.

Anyway. I attended a discussion of Roberto Bolano’s recently translated collection of nonfiction, Between Parentheses, at the trendy Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO. Initially, I questioned my intrigue with Bolano. Was I following a trend, or bucking one? Though born in the 50′s, with that jaunty look and dangling cigarette, he appears to be a throwback to an era when people saw literary figures as distinguished thinkers whose opinions mattered. They had the cachet that vapid celebrities have today, and their work served as political and social bellwethers. Now we’ve got the Kardashians and the Biebs. It’s no wonder there was a mini-Beat resurgence this summer (James Franco, are you out there?)

Bolano writes with the reckless abandon of a man who never dreamed editors from elite literary magazines would be parsing apart his work at a chic art space in Brooklyn beneath lavender tinted lights (it sort of felt like Fantasia for adults). Yes, Bolano contradicts himself and makes sweeping generalizations, but there’s a certain urgency and infectious energy that emerges in the writing of those who stop caring about being correct and start focusing on truth. That’s why for me, Bolano’s intrigue lies far beyond the text. He isn’t around to define his brand, solidify an online presence with incessant tweets, dream up kitschy book trailers, or, um, pontificate on his blog. We spend so much time thinking about packaging, it’s easy to forget to just be. I guess for now, I have the luxury of not taking myself seriously and assuming no one is listening.

As much as media pundits like to tout ideas of access and exposure as key ingredients to success, at a certain level we want those we revere to remain shrouded in mystery. I’ve often thought that I need a scandal to increase my literary cachet. Perhaps fastening a scram bracelet around my ankle like a fancy accessory? But it’s not my style to seek out the spotlight. As Bolano says, top-notch writing is peering into the darkness and leaping into the void.

On principle, I won’t read what everyone else is reading. The tastes of the masses are often bitter, salty or just plain wrong (think the high waisted jeans trend or that weird Orbitz drink with the little gel balls floating around that’s now off the market) so I never run out to purchase the latest Swedish mystery novel or whatever else I see people reading on the subway (unless it’s the L train and we’re talking Roberto Bolaño). In this case, it was Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad, and I resisted the celebrated novel until I could no justify ignoring it.

I finally capitulated, and so it was with great anticipation and some trepidation that I started reading. The novel starts off with a bang: Sex! Shoplifting! Therapy! A cute Manhattan apartment with a bathtub in the kitchen! Sex, drugs, music, sleezy older men, trying to make it in an impossible industry — all right up my alley. The characters listen to classic rock and grunge, which speaks to those of us going through a phase of late 80′s-early 90s nostalgia.

But then the book started to feel like one of those sitcom reunion shows where you expect everyone to stay the same, but then you find out Marsha from the Brady Bunch was on drugs and everyone slept with everyone else. They’re not perfect. They’re real people, and it’s just not the same.

I flew through the book, but when I finished, I was faced with a literary conundrum: how could I enjoy a book while simultaneously feeling dissatisfied?

I loved the trippy ride with Sasha, who, as we see through her future daughter’s powerpoint right there in the book, goes from messed up teen to kelpto to cool mom. But one or even two chapters isn’t enough to fall in love with the other, and a gimmicky powerpoint isn’t a story. It’s a rough sketch of a narrative. Then again, this is modern life: people swirling in and out, leaving lasting impressions but never figuring prominently into our narratives because we (or perhaps they) just don’t stay in one place long enough.

In this sense, Egan’s book is accurate. Structurally, it reflects what our lives look like: bigger networks, fewer real friends. More connections, fewer authentic interactions. So it’s no wonder that Good Squad resonates with a large audience — including myself.

But I want my books to be different from my life. I want to know the characters deeply, not just have them be accessories for some cool music industry pose.  If you’re going to write a story that spans three decades, then it needs to go a mile deep, not wide.

What makes a book great in the legendary, literary sense of of the word isn’t want makes a novel the book du jour for the moment. So what I really need is not a visit from the goon squad, but an extended stay. But maybe that’s not what books are anymore. Maybe they capture moments, not eras. On some level, time always keeps marching on.