The Craziest Thing You've Ever Done

In one of those charming articles on true love in the Sunday Style section of the New York Times I read of a dating couple playing a question game where each got to ask the other a question. The boy asked, "What's the craziest thing you've ever done?" The girl confessed that she had gone to Assisi and worked with a wedding planner to concoct her dream wedding, without ever having met the right man. The relationship blossomed and the two were married the following year, in Assisi. (It was an article on true love, after all.)

The piece got me thinking. Could I answer such a question? No. I don't do crazy things. I do ill-advised things, but seldom impulsively. When disaster strikes I tend to freeze like a mouse under the gaze of a snake. I'm paralyzed until I understand what's happening. Sometimes this takes years.

Carina Nebula, the protagonist of Monkeystorm (the book I just finished), is, on the other hand, all impulse. She is so crazy that she had to break out of Trenton Psychiatric, and the craziest thing she ever did was whatever she just did two minutes before. It was interesting to write a character like that. I had to find her inside my stodgy self, where all of us find our characters, if we are writing honestly. But it took a long time. Carina could decide in a heartbeat to torch a building or cut herself on the hand, but I had to mull it over for days before I realized it was what she would do.

So what's the craziest thing you've ever done?

Kate Gallison

Losing It

You will recall how a few weeks ago I declared my intention to go crazy in the service of Art, in order to better understand my protagonist's usual frame of mind. It worked pretty well, as methods go. The first draft of Monkeystorm (current working title) is just about finished. Carina has managed to elevate her craziness to the level of a superpower.

The problem with mental exercises of this sort is that they tend to distract a writer from important details of her own life. There are things I haven't been attending to. There are things, in fact, that I have out and out lost this summer. My mind may be one of them, or not, but I certainly can't find, for example, the new camera. I know we brought it back from Mississippi because I downloaded pictures.

Or my summer clothes from last year. A divine bathing suit I bought in the Florida Keys. Two pair of white jeans that fit me. That suit with the bright-colored flowers that everybody likes. Gone.

Most likely I packed the clothes away last fall and forgot where. But I've looked all over, to no avail. I tell you what. If you see some woman about my size wearing a skirted suit with big gaudy flowers and using a little black Canon digital camera to take pictures, and she isn't me, drop me an email. There may be a reward. Or my mind. If you run into my mind (I know, I know, it's too weak to get very far) hang onto it and give me a call. I'll be most grateful.

Kate Gallison

Update, Saturday morning… I found the camera just now, you'll be happy to know. In searching the house for it, however, I uncovered many levels of chaos. Next Friday I hope to be able to report that my office is clean, my clothes are in order, and five bags of trash have been put on the curb.