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“To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It’s worth it.”

—Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering The Craft

window & typewriter (printed on A4 Rivoli paper)

This is an introduction to a serialized piece I’m calling I. Honda. I. Honda is a yarn in every sense of the expression: colorful and unlikely with no clear end in sight. That said (about the distant ending), chapters will be brief, sharing the four corners of Topical, Political, Mythological, and Speculative. Think Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk meets Anne Sexton’s Transformations.

The writing process misbehaves, of course—who knows if I’ll stick to the plan. Yet these touchstones are all about misbehaving. Maybe naming this will count for something.

Additionally, the intention is to record the physical typing (like, typewriter-typing) of every installment. See the below video:

I’ve been told that the video is nice to leave on in the background. Try it out and let me know what you think. I’m still dialing it in.

*You can find the actual typewritten draft in this video at the bottom of this post.

Very little planning is going into the structure and content of I. Honda. I mean to write it quickly and post it quickly—admittedly, a dicey direction.

Why “dicey”? A writer’s process can often seem hermetically sealed, privacy often being key to making brave choices in poetry and fiction. Generally, a complete text doesn’t require the author to appear to explain their decisions—those decisions were made, and the finished text is the primary response to the feedback for that same finished text. Upon its submission to the glory, disinterest and annihilation of public interpretation, the only thing that can change from then on is the story surrounding the text, not the text itself.

Here, I’m imagining the sacrifice of long-term privacy as an acquisition of urgency. I. Honda simply must go on. And while I won’t be explaining all of my decisions in it, I may reflect on some. Writing this way does mean I’m open to feedback between chapters, though I won’t be relying on it and don’t expect to receive much of it.

I think what appears here explores process as text as well. A kind of poioumenon? A story about the process of creating itself? Sure.

These drafts are malleable because they are drafts. Key details may change. But for the sake of the yarn, I will only double back if it is entirely necessary. If I do double back, it’ll be indicated in margins or notes briefly, though ideally these edits will be folded neatly into the chapters somewhere and somehow.

If Everything Everywhere All At Once depicted anything, wasn’t it the intense beauty of deviation? Of rewriting oneself? Of folds and layers?

Why this way? one may ask.

I don’t know.

I like this way.

Looking over the below draft, I’d honestly change many things. But the rule I’m following for this exercise expects that I must post what’s typed if the general direction leaves me with some questions I’d like to explore further. Lets see what happens.

All this said, turn back now if talking crows and crashing planes sound like a bad beginning, middle or ending to your day. Turn back now if you only have time for what’s fine and fit and finished. Turn back now if you were going to anyways.

If you’ve read this short distance, you should know I mean to go a long way and hope you’ll join me.

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I, Honda: Chapter 1 Crow flies down from the crown of the pine & asks to borrow my password. I assume it’s for something silly, like Netflix. No good shows now, I say. Do not go there if you are indecisive. Thanks, says the crow. Now hand it over. I give him the password, of course. I hear men are having a hard time nowadays, says the crow. Many of them are unemployed and have very few close friends. And if it couldn’t get any worse, I say. The most likely person to murder a man is another man. It’s not good, says the crow. It’s not good at all, I say. I’m Nell, says the crow. Call me G. … I can’t tell if Nell is waiting for more conversation or if Nell is just a crow being a crow now. I turn to go back inside my cabin. I have writing to do. It’s not for Netflix, by the way, says Nell. I needed your password for fraudulent activity. I want all of your money, and now I am going to steal it from you. Damn, I feign. ___ It’s night. Silence is a little louder now. An owl coos & hos. Something skitters through a cluster of tiny rocks nearby. From where I lay on my cot I see my writing desk in the blue-black flooding through the window above me; the edges of my precious machine gleams with the moon’s milky journey. I lay satisfied with the day’s haul; hopefully I may awaken satisfied with the night’s. And then a little bit of purple. A sketchy bit of orange wiping away the thick black comfort carrying me off to tomorrow. Is it the forest cracking open? Yes it is. In a blaze, a thunderous war of light. Heat and sound pull me outside and into a man-made dawn. The fire is large, as far as fires go—but the forest is too wet to let this one feed for long. A small jet has made a long awkward clearing, with pieces of the wings broken off in a metal trail heading hundreds of feet into the darkness. I soon learn that this crash was not done so with a plan or a purpose. It was not an attack. Just a small malfunction; just an error; just a tragedy. This is what the one survivor I found has told me. She, being the pilot, swears on her life everything was fine when she took off. She, being unscathed, is destroyed. I assure her that she does not need to — Page 1

explain herself to me as I give her my coat and help her walk to my cabin. When will they be here? she says. Who? Paramedics, she says. Fire Department. Police. When will they be here? I’m sorry to say this, but I do not know if they are coming. In fact, I very much doubt it. What? I do not have a phone and no one answers when I radio, I say. This place is in the middle of nowhere. What? I hesitate to make it a little worse: I’m here alone and I don’t know how I got here. What? I’m a writer. What? Will you just try the radio??? I do. No response. ___ I awake in shock that I have slept. The proximity to such tragedy threatens one with the inability to sleep ever again. Yet here I am on the floor. Rested. Somewhat stiff, but rested. And my cot is empty; the pilot has vanished. I step outside to fresh noon light burning with gloom. I can see where the forest is charred and sprayed with jet fuel. I do a little searching for the pilot; she left some tracks heading back to the plane. And once I’m upon the mangled fuselage, the footsteps that brought me here blur and bulge in the smoldering earth. It seems the pilot had come upon something. Bold strokes of charred dirt speak to a struggle—depressions left by wrestling, perhaps. At the very least, some kind of engagement. Another survivor? What’s happened to the pilot is ultimately unknown. What’s happened to the crows, however, sits in a speckled, lifeless trail filling the clearing left by the jet. Nell? My thief? ___ I make some oats and pour a little coffee. The forest is a little quieter today. I hear what sounds like little pieces of metal — Page 2

dropping on the porch. I walk outside and see nuts and bolts and gnarled shiny scraps. Oh, I think. The plane. Hey, says Nell. I look up. Nell’s resting with her claws wrapped around a thin limb of the pine that greets me when I step out of my cabin You’ve brought me pieces of the plane, Nell. Yes, says Nell. As payment for my password? Yes, says Nell. Thank you. Are you alright? I’m OK. What about your murder? Some of us didn’t survive the crash. My condolences. I heard it was an accident, though I’m not so sure it was the kind of accident the pilot wants me to think it is. I take a sip of coffee. You should know that the people who left the plane will be back soon, says Nell. We’ve been following them all day. They have nowhere else to go. Interesting. One of them a woman about yea high? Yes. There’s a small one too. A child? Perhaps. And a very large one. A man? No. Something else. Something us crows have never seen before. — Page 3

In the off-chance you’ve seen the newly released Knock at the Cabin, note that the footage of me writing the above draft dates to February 1st. I just saw the film this past Friday (2/10) and was amused by some coincidental imagery between my draft and the film.

I. Honda

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