"Masturbating and Making Money"

"The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize that you only ever lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room, masturbating and making money." -- Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger than Fiction

I spent the evening at the library, among tired bookshelves and bums and forlorn legged kids who, like I did when I was their age, find the pubic library to be one great playground. I had planned to write some poetry. Instead, I sat reading about computer programming and, more often, staring off into space thinking about my novel. I loved it.

Five minutes before closing, I ran into a former roommate, and as he talked and talked and talked as he always does about the most fascinating and simultaneously mundane things, I gazed at his face, sizing up proportions, shapes, emotions. I caught how his eyes would dart from contact with you to pondering the labyrinthine sky above, checking in with your eyeballs as if to make sure you were still listening. I saw how his mouth hung down at the corners, though still smiling. I noted how he hardly ever answered my yes or no questions with a simple yes or no, a masquerading litigator wandering the streets of Fort Ord, California.

I suppose I was deconstructing his face so much because I continue to draw sketches for my upcoming novel. The latest are below.

I'd just like to add that I love the sound of Palahniuk's quote above, yet I do not--at least not at present--share his fear in the least. I think that means I'm living.