I QUIT

Scrappy runt garners fame by reading stories of playing an elf at Macy’s on American public radio. (“Unemployment, for instance. My last job had been as an elf at Macy’s.”) In Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, this is what David Sedaris talks about because this is how rich he is.

  • I could have easily held a full-time job, then come home at night and tied twigs together, but in a way I needed the poverty, needed it as proof that I was truly creative

  • The people I hung out with in my early 20s were middle-class and, at least to our minds, artistic. We’d all turned our backs on privilege, but comfortably, the way you can when you still have access to it

  • Unlike a lot of authors I know, I enjoy my book tours – love them, as a matter of fact. That said, I’m in a fortunate position

  • The thing about Hawaii

  • It was late September, and Hugh and I were in Amsterdam

  • To those who don’t travel very often, the Courtyard Marriott might seem like a decent enough hotel

  • Because I’m in the air so often, I hear this story a lot

  • In the year before the election, I travel[l]ed pretty much nonstop: Italy, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, and all through the U.K. and Ireland

  • I was in London during the inauguration

  • After a month in the United States, I flew to Canada

  • After my month in the United States, I flew back to France

  • At the spot Hugh and I go to in Normandy

  • my experiences in France, where I’ve lived off and on for the past 13 years

  • Our village in Normandy is too small to have its own

  • Years later we moved to Paris

  • In the cent[re] of town, where we’re lucky enough to have an apartment

  • All those years in France

  • It was the same after our move to England

  • I was in London, squinting out my kitchen window at a distant helicopter

  • it was enough to convince us, in the way that horrible, childless couples can be convinced of such things, that we needed to sell our vacation house in Normandy and resettle in West Sussex as soon as possible

  • “We’ll take it,” Hugh told me – this while standing in the living room, before we’d even seen the second floor

  • We were in Japan, walking through a national forest in a snowstorm

  • On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing

  • “I have to go to China,” I told people – this in the way I might say “I need to insulate my crawlspace” or “I’ve got to get these moles looked at.” That’s the way it felt, though. Like a chore

  • before landing in China, Hugh and I spent a week in Tokyo

  • On our last trip to Tokyo, Hugh and I rented an apartment

  • Hugh and I returned from China, and a few days later I started preparing for a trip to Germany

  • I’ve been to Australia twice so far

  • I was in Australia on business, and because someone else was paying for the ticket and it would be possible to stop in Japan on the way home, Hugh joined me. This is not to put Australia down, but we’d already gone once before

  • People think it’s easy to leave home and resettle in another country, but in fact it’s exhausting

You’re supposed to sit there and pretend his tales are just as wacky and he’s still the lovable scamp you grew up with. But do you want to live vicariously as a Macy’s Xmas elf or as the guy who flies to Australia – again – on somebody else’s dime? You’re enabling him.

You can’t kill the Rooster golden goose.

The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2013.08.06 15:14. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is:
https://blog.fawny.org/2013/08/06/sedarism/

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