I Went to Non-FictioNow...

...and all I got was a sack of Nathan's dirty laundry. I wore your boxers for a while, Nate, grading papers and reading Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. Reed's found himself a new cocksock or two. We'll have to work out a trade, but it's your job to come up with an item attractive enough for me to part with said sack since, as you all know, I'm fond of sacks.

Someone say, "Enough about sacks. How was the conference?"

I don't like to make grand statements. I think women are full of shit if they say they knew the exact moment they caught pregnant. Noses don't itch because someone's talking about you--or whatever they say. It usually just means boogers or dust. Scratching things that itch doesn't send cosmic responses like, "Stop talking about me--unless it's good stuff." Back me up, fellas: My balls itch all the time. And I scratch them all the time. Like obedient, loyal puppies, they deserve to be scratched. Does that mean someone's talking about my balls? Perhaps I should just be content that at least someone's talking about my balls.

I digress.

My grand statement: I'm rejuvenated. The conference informed; it inspired; it started very early and ended very late. I don't remember another time when I came up with so many great ideas. I can't decide the reason for the inspiration from which I'm now coming down. I think I've narrowed the reasons down to two main sources:

1) Gather near-400 people together--who are focused on the same ideas, who are there for inspiration, who want to be inspired just like me--and something happens to the air. Something happens to all the elements in the few-block radius: Even Reed breathed a little easier, I think. The water was sweeter, that rusty sweetness like at campsites. The concrete underfoot up those steep Iowa City hills gave more, cushioned our progress from inspiration, to fuel up on Indian Food, and back to more inspiration. Even the rain felt like a shower meant to rinse resistance away. It's the site of The Iowa Writer's Workshop, Mecca fergodsakes: The land is blessed as a result.

2) I was away from home, from the things I love to let distract me from getting shit done. The distractions range from hockey with Sire to music to poker with Doobs to futbol to, sadly, blogs. I had none of these in Iowa. I had my 'pod but no time or reason to use it during the trip. Things were very simple on the road, Spartan. If I didn't take notes and read, there wouldn't have been much else to do.

Here's the weird thing: None of the notes I took had anything to do with Non-Fiction. Damn near everything I wrote with red pen in my magic notebook had to do with Fiction projects I'm working on. And none of it was "appropriate" for the setting at all. While any given panelist was rambling on about the importance of distinguishing between "The Author, The Self, The 'I'"...

I was writing things like:
"...no matter who you are, how worn your hands, palms are ticklish, asses feel good, and silk is still silk even though it snags on the cracked pads of worked hands."

Or when Pico Iyer spoke with such exactness and smooth English English about existence as neither Indian, English, nor American...

I was writing:
"People always say, 'Everyone should try acid once--for the experience!' That's how he felt about anal. Unfortunately, he thought, he'd never tried either."

Inspiration is a funny thing. Even when you want inspiration to strike, and you're holding on to a lightning rod in the form of a Non-Fiction conference, inspiration will not be told how to strike. Don't argue about being struck in not quite the right way. Just be struck and happy.

Mace... back and out.