I AM TRYING TO DESCRIBE THINGS I DON’T UNDERSTAND
Author’s note: This piece is an anomaly, for me. It’s a substantial outtake, a chapter that needed to be left behind when my present novel-in-progress, The Arrest, took a stylistic and narrational left turn. An absurdist pastoral set in Maine during a near-future technological collapse, The Arrest represents a kind of “return” to science fiction for me (if you ask me, I never left). The first draft was written in a frothy first-person voice from the point of view of the main character. Then, at the wizardly editorial suggestion of my friend Steve Erickson, I converted the book from first-person to third-, losing a lot of the froth in the process. In the meantime, I’d been reading “I Am Trying to Describe Things I Don’t Understand” aloud and getting a great response; I myself was infatuated with the piece on its own terms. But it no longer worked in the book. Now only a shadow of it remains there. So, herewith, one of the dearest darlings I ever killed.
Without warning except every warning possible it had come, The Arrest. Suddenly and in
