Amy Butcher

Alaska was fun and all, but it's got nothin on a fr

A dog and his Alaska

http://www.rookiemag.com/2014/07/vilnius-travel-diary/

So I won’t feel bad anymore about my spaghetti."

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad writes, “It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.” Well then, so be it. To the woods I go, peanut butter slathered across my torso.

Aviva is a high school student with whom I had the pleasure of working with last year at the Iowa Young Writers' Studio; she’s published her first piece in Hobart this morning (a poem), and I am ecstatic. Good news all around.

In what's been the most lovely surprise, my essay, "Reenacting," was selected for the 2014 Iowa Review Award in nonfiction by guest judge David Shields. The essay is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Visiting Hours (Blue Rider Press/Penguin, April 2015), so I especially couldn't be more ecstatic and grateful. Enormous thanks to the Iowa Review, David Shields, and the editors.

I insist on going back: to every place I’ve ever lived, every face I’ve loved. I have to go back after I've realized there'll be no returning. I have to go back to trace the outline of what once was there. Oftentimes, it’s very hard. I find myself wondering if I inflict experiences upon myself because I trust pain as a more authentic experience than comfort or, grosser still, if I do so as a way of harvesting something compelling, something I might ruminate on later? As if running my finger on the edge of a ruin can make it come back to life. I’ve spent more time than I wish tracing that argument fully, and the conclusions I've drawn don't reveal themselves to be so simple. I think, instead, I can say this: I return on sheer compulsion. Because I want—and need—to see the ruin as it stands, burning.

Voici mon secret, et il est tres simple: practique--toutes les temps--pour l'amour, la vie et la literature.

"The problem with the breakup was not the breakup itself but the couch traded between them before it happened. This was an old couch, something of a family heirloom, and what mattered was not its quality but the history it held—this was a couch she’d often played on as a child, tucking the pillows in, violently shrieking, its 80s-era floral cushions still inundated with crumbs and pieces of Ritz crackers smothered in peanut butter. His ownership of the couch now seemed wrong, as if the universe should step in and do something about it, and she wished it would hurry up."

Tolstoy, Family Happiness

The mutual friend was of shared interest: her purple pants and big, empty house. She reminded us of a librarian and she spoke like a dictionary, like a foreign language translation site, coupling the things I knew so well in patterns I had to think about to understand. Her house was a series of rooms with yellow shag, planters drooping low from vintage barstools, their leaves so big and flat the cat would chew on them until he hacked. I liked her for her strangeness, her unpainted nails and simple hair, and when I was high or was not high, I wanted to know if I could be like her. I’d met an edge of adoration, and wanted to see how far it stretched beyond. From time to time, she spoke to us about existence as one of many simulations, our world a blinking cosmic hard drive, and I liked most to consider that concept. It made me terrifyingly ecstatic, how bad it could get if the plug got pulled.

Over at The Kenyon Review online, I gush about my favorite work of recent nonfiction, Sarah Manguso's The Guardians: An Elegy For A Friend.

Everything swirls when I enter this state. (at Phillipsburg Diner)

Highlight of my day is getting retweeted by Colgate University, which goes to show you how exciting my day's been. But man, I miss that place.