In a Different Timeline This Would Almost Be a Dream

I wrote this about a week ago, and then I forgot to publish it (ain’t that the way.) I’m no longer in the shitty motel in New York State’s hinterlands, but back in my less shitty apartment in Brooklyn.

I’m in a shitty motel in the middle of Syracuse, it’s snowing out. The place is a flop house, the sheets haven’t been changed. The TV is broke. My brain can’t sleep even after a megadose of melatonin.

I often admired those writers that lived in flophouses and made something. But my typewriter is around 300 miles away, and honestly I don’t have much this second.

Although I do have something to talk about. There’s two masters programs I’m looking at, the MFA in creative writing at City College of NY, and the Biography and Memoir MA at The CUNY Graduate Center.

Both appeal to me. The first one is because I have a novel in me, that I’m trying to get out. Doing that degree would give me a chance no, no– it would give me an excuse to finally finish it.

The Bio and Memoir one, also appeals to me. I write a lot of memoir. I keep a diary, a blog, but I always really loved the idea of being a documentarian.

I did a stint as a journalist and working in a news adjacent spot for about 5 years. But during my time there, I was so miserable I almost threw myself in front of a subway train. So straight journalism isn’t the way to go for me.

But the MA, gives me an excuse to actually document something. Their definition of Biography is pretty loose, I can document something like a neighborhood or a counter-culture. But what’s more, is that it gives me the chance to be something, or someone I always wanted to be…

And of course, only me with my neurodivergent, spergy brain would consider this with any seriousness — but the someone else would be a person or an archetype that mainly exists in fiction, but could feasibly cross over into the real world.

Who would this person be? Don’t laugh, but… Kolchak, The Night Stalker.

Kolchak is a bit of an older reference, even for me. So if you’re an Xennial or Millennial — he’s like Fox Mulder from The X-Files, but instead of an FBI Agent he’s a reporter.

So it would be really cool to use that time for my MA, to be Kolchak and write a book on spooky Brooklyn. There’s got to be genuine ghost hunters, alien abductees, vampires, demon houses, and the like. Right? Brooklyn alone has 2.74 million people, that’s a lot of unexplainable kooky shit that could happen. And God knows what else is out there in the rest of the city.

So, yeah. It’s another thing to consider. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do this sooner than later. Somehow.