this time to/day/morrow

will be another day, full of the things i must do, and wanting for the things I can't have. but that they are new, that they are things I haven't done before, tempers the responsibility of it, and makes it all palatable. kind of.

I am looking forward to my class with Sam Weller, he, the recent biographer of Ray Bradbury and another teacher I've taken the gall of repeating (they tend to frown on taking classes with the same teacher...the logic is, you learn all their bad habits and miss out on the range of teachers in the department). I took a turn for the worst in his previous class, I decided I was better at creative nonfiction than fiction and my career in the department went from zealot to zero.

It was Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. I couldn't put it down. I loved it. I wanted to write just as many meaningful books/novels/accounts of things in my life that I found interesting and horrifying.

And then, we read David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries. Now, mind you, this was a summer semester class and we laughed hysterically together as a group essay after essay. I decided if I could manage to be funny in my writing (I know, I haven't gotten any closer to that goal), it might be the way to go.

All of it was good solid scholarly inspiration, the sort that you just need the right mix to obtain, the teacher being the most important ingredient. While our class was in session, Sam was flying to L.A. every other weekend to interview Bradbury for the book...and telling us stories here and there of limo rides, airport nightmares, what it was like to sit across from one of his heroes.

and I'd be a fool not to buy into that again, especially since Sam is offering a course called Freelance Applications of Fiction Writing. so I'm most looking forward to being in class tomorrow and getting a taste of what else Sam is going to open my mind to.