The skies have been uniformly grey since I have been home. All the leaves are gone. Bare branches against the grey sky. One of the loveliest sights that I know.
One day - there was a heavy fog. Normally, in Rhode Island, the fog lifts by mid-morning ... burned off by the sun. But this fog lasted all day. A heavy thick blanket of fog. Beautiful. I took a walk around the neighborhood, scuffing my feet through the brown leaves, hearing the sounds around me ... squirrels scurrying up the tree trunks, the mild dripping of water off the leaves ... but I couldn't see any of it. The fog covered it all.
Later that night, I stood on my parents porch ... the fog had lasted into the night ... The lights from the house across the way were blurred, haloed. Everything took on a ... I guess I would call it a poetic look. Black trees tangled up in fog.
My parents and I went and took a walk on the beach during the foggy day. The waves were crazy - thrashing grey foam, continuous pounding on the shoreline. My favorite sound in the world. I found a couple of pieces of beach glass to add to the collection.
One of the amazing things about our walk on the beach was this: There was all this debris down on the shoreline. By debris, I mean flotsam and jetsam really: shells, pebbles, random crab legs, rocks, seaweed ... But mixed in with all of this ocean debris, were piles of sodden brown oak leaves. Oak leaves? These oak leaves were remnants of that massive 2-day windstorm we had early in November. Amazing. There are no oak trees near the beach. These oak leaves had traveled a long way.
I took a walk to a pond near my parents house ... a pond where my friend Mere and I went skating once when we were in high school. There is a little open-sided "lodge" on the edge of the pond, with a stone fireplace and a couple of picnic tables. It's in the middle of the woods.
I love it down there. Nobody's ever down there.
I stood at the edge of the "pond" - which was crowded with brown weeds and grass .... the trees standing tall around the edges .... the ground completely covered in wet fallen leaves. Ah, autumn!! This was during the foggy day, so nothing was clear-cut, or clearly seen.
And suddenly, I could hear the call of the geese. The geese leaving town.
That sound ... something about that sound ... pulls my heart up out of my chest. There is something so mournful about it. I don't know why. But also exciting.
Because of the fog, I couldn't SEE them above me, couldn't see the "V" formation which I knew they were in. But it was like ... a Doppler effect moment. I stared up, into the thick grey, seeing nothing, but followed the sound of their "goodbye till spring" call across the grey sky.
My friends and I went out on Friday night to this local bar which is basically a fisherman's hangout ... a dirty rickety SHACK which stands literally on the beach. It has a deck, teetering on stilts ... and when the tide is high the waves roll under the deck.
The foggy day had turned into a wild windy night. We sat at tables by the window, having our drinks, looking out at the ocean. Which was now completely rough, wave after wave after wave after wave.
The lights from the bar spill out onto the ocean - so even though it was a night, we could see out there.
Seagulls hang out on the ocean there ... bobbing up and down on the waves ... so at night ... what you see when you look out the windows of this bar, is black ocean, white foam, and across the top of the black, these little white origami-birds. It's a very odd and beautiful sight.
But this time - because the waves were so rough ... the seagulls were having quite a time. The origami-birds kept coming to life, flapping their wings, fighting against the wind, flying over the foam, trying to come to rest somewhere.
We called them "the party birds". All the other seagulls were calmly sleeping in a parking lot somewhere, shielded from the wind. But not these birds. They wanted to fight the elements.
As we sat there, talking, having our drinks, the night kept getting wilder and wilder and wilder.
Rain began to pour against the windows, coming off the sea. Pounding against the glass. Coming at us horizontally.
You know what it looked like?
It looked like ... the moments in Star Wars when Han Solo pushes the Millennium Falcon to go into 'warp speed' and all the stars turn into streaming lines.
It looked like the BAR was moving through space.
It was unbelievable.
People were warm and dry, having their drinks, talking over the music, and then suddenly would glance at the windows, and exclaim, "HOLY SHIT."
Then the rain stopped ... but it was still the wind ... There was mist on the ocean and it was being beaten off the waves by the wind. Betsy and I went out onto the deck, struggling against the wind. Because of how the rain had flown off the ocean ... the sides of the deck were completely dry. We stared down into the foam ... the waves were now crashing on the sand and coming directly under us.
There's a lot I am thankful for ... but one of the things I am most thankful for is the beauty of Rhode Island ... the beauty of the beaches, the woods, the fog ... the eerie dying beauty of November's greys and browns.
I sit here at my parents house ... today is my birthday ... as well as Thanksgiving. I'm in my pajamas, and on my 6th cup of coffee. Yesterday, on the train ride home, I finished Savage Beauty, the biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Nancy Milford.
And there is one section which I wanted to excerpt today - it occurred to me yesterday when I read it that it would be completely a propos for Thanksgiving, for this oh-so-American holiday.
Here's a bit of context: Millay was in Paris, doing her bohemian thing. Hanging out with Parisians, and ex-pats, etc. She was invited to salons, to private houses, to clubs - Everyone wanted to get a look at this famous "girl-poet", and to hear her read her famous sonnets.
Alan Ross Macdougall, an American in Paris, who edited a French literary journal, and a friend of Millay's, introduced her to this whole Bohemian world. Here is a description of one of the encounters Millay had - and the second I read it, I thought of Thanksgiving:
Just before she read, Millay was drawn into a conversation with Mme. Delarue-Mardus, who was talking about her recent trip to the States. "Wonderful country! So alive, so vigorous! But such bad food!" [Macdougall rememebered that] "Edna's eyebrow was raised quizzically as she heard these touristic cliches ... Then she began an interrogation which was at once a patriotic dithyramb and a gastronomic prose poem in praise of her country's native products and dishes ..."In your travels, chere madame, did you ever taste the lobsters that come from the waters off the coast of my home state, Maine? Broiled or boiled and served with melted, fresh country butter, they are unforgettable. Did you have fish chowder made of haddock, Maine potatoes, onions, salt pork and rich milk?" The travelled literary lady slowly shook her head.
"Were you ever introduced to Boston Baked Beans?" Edna continued. "I mean the kind baked in an old-fashioned crock. We cook them slowly and for long hours in the oven and serve them sometimes with such brown bread as can be found in no other part of the world. Did you ever have Cherrystones or Little Necks; and did you ever, by chance, taste a Provincetown clam pie made of the deep-sea Quahogs and a liberality of olive oil and garlic, cooked by one of the Portugese fishermen who had hauled in the clams himself? Were oyster-crabs and whitebait ever set crisp before you? Did you taste soft-shell crabs, lightly sauteed, or drink the juice of the soft-shell clam? I must say I have never met their like over here. And were you ever a happy member of an old-fashioned clam-bake on a secluded New England beach?"
"Helas!" said Madame Mardus; she had not been long enough in America to have experienced the primitive joys of a clam-bake.
"Then what of the other American dishes that are seldom to be met with elsewhere on the gastronomic globe?" Edna asked. "There's the shad roe and the shad itself, both broiled; sweet corn and sweet potatoes; pumpkin pie and deep-dish blueberry pie; diamond-back terrapin done as the Baltimoreans do it in a rich Madeira stew, or as the Philadelphians do it with egg-yolks, cream and 'sweet butter in a lordly dish'. Then there's Philadelphia Pepperpot which has tripe in it, and that same city's surprising mixture of tripe and oysters. There's the Creole Jambalaya of New Orleans made with savory rice and shrimps almost as big as your French ecrivisses.
"We have also our native blueberries. And there are our cranberries and our beach-plums which I used to gather on Cape Code. We made delicious preserves from them. Oh, there are many other products and dishes native to states and regions of my country. If you have never tasted them, ma chere, you cannot in all fairness judge American cuisine..."
As Madame Mardus started to say something in reply we were called into the other room. I heard her there tell her friend, Romaine Brooks, the painter, that she thought Edna's defense of her country's specialites gastronomiques was tres bien faite.
And so: happy Thanksgiving, America.
I just had an email exchange with an old boyfriend, who reminded me of a story from my life he particularly loved: The story of "Sam and the Coffee-Can stilts". I will tell it here. It is a story of heartbreak, pathos, and unconditional love.
Sam was my grandmother Mummy Gina's sheepdog. Sam's white hair fell over her eyes. Sam was a member of our family. But her allegiance was to one person, and one person only: my grandmother.
Oh, did that dog love my grandmother.
It still cracks my heart to think of it. (Sam is long dead. She got very old, she lost her sight - one time, when she was at our house, she got stuck in a corner - a corner in the kitchen where there was a Lazy Susan - and Sam kept pressing her head against the corner, stuck ... unable to get out ... until one of us noticed her plight and rescued her.)
My grandmother would go off on trips, to visit my aunt, or to travel with her friends, and would drop Sam off at our house.
Before she departed, Mummy Gina would lean down and say right into Sam's peaceful white furry face, "Sam: I'm going to church. I'll be right back."
Sam knew what that meant: "I only have to bear the unbearable separation for an hour."
And then, of course, Mummy Gina would be gone for two weeks, which must have felt like FOREVER to Sam. Sam never got her bearings at our house. Getting stuck in the corner is only one example. She never stopped missing Mummy Gina, and mourning the loss of Mummy Gina.
Me and my siblings were kids at this time.
We had made coffee-can stilts - do kids still make those? Pierce holes in the corners of coffee cans, put strings through those holes ... and then put your feet on the upturned coffee can, holding onto the strings, so that you can then stagger about, on "stilts".
Well, the O'Malley children were VERY into coffee-can stilts. Pairs of them were lying about the house, like carnage on a battlefield.
One night, the family was woken up by a terrible metallic crash.
Now this story has a tragic element, so be warned:
My father responded to the crash, and found Sam, lying at the bottom of the cellar steps, her feet stuck in the coffee cans.
She obviously, in her blind wanderings through the house, searching hopelessly for Mummy Gina, got her feet caught in the coffee cans ... and staggered around ... stuck ... until she finally fell down the stairs, crash ... crash ... crash.
Poor little thing! All the love we gave her did not make up for the loss of the Mummy Gina love. And, actually, knowing Mummy Gina, and having been loved by Mummy Gina - I don't blame Sam!
One rainy night, Sam escaped from our house ... and went on an adventurous trek to find my grandmother, who was, at that moment, sipping a cocktail on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, or something like that. Sam disappeared. The rain poured down.
It was like that movie - what was it called? - where the dogs travel 800 miles to get themselves home. "The Incredible Journey" or something like that? I read the book when I was a kid, MERELY because the author's first name was Sheila too. Yes. Egotist, thy name is Sheila Kathleen.
Anyway. Sam could no longer stand it in this confusing world of Lazy Susans, and corners which surrounded you, and coffee-can-stilts which would not leave you alone, and 4 little kids who occasionally try to ride you like a pony ... and she flew the coop.
The ASPCA (or somebody - Dad: was it a neighbor? Or someone who took Sam in?) contacted us, telling us that they found a mud-soaked half-blind dog - 5 miles away from our house ... wandering around ... as though she knew where she was going.
Poor little wee dog. She loved my grandmother so much.
But damn. I still laugh (with pity and horror) at the thought of Sam, white furry-eyed Sam, crumpled up in the O'Malley children's coffee-can stilts, completely bewildered at what her life had become.
Bill and I got together last night - for drinks and food - and (of course) talked like maniacs about everything under the sun.
Knowing that he is a self-professed "history geek" - I asked him a question about the Peace of Westphalia - something I was not all that clear about, and it is referenced as often as the Magna Carta, and referenced in a way which makes me think: "Hmm. This is something I should know."
But I never got around to looking it up online, etc. I mentioned this to Bill. He confessed that his primary passion is American history.
I sign on this morning, and lo and behold, there is an email from Bill - linking to an explanatory page about the Peace of Westphalia ...
Bloggers. They are a rare and beautiful breed. They have integrity. They follow through.
Thanks much, Bill. Had a great time last night.
I decided to go back to the devastatingly embarrassing high school years for this entry ... flipped through the pages of my sophomore year diary ... reading all of the tortured ecstatic prose ... every page flickering with endless exclamation points.
Suddenly came upon this relatively simple entry ... which describes a memory from 4th grade I had, up until this very moment, completely forgotten. It STILL tickles my funny bone, after all these years.
So here is the latest installment of Diary Friday.
I remember in 4th grade, Dee Dee wanted to get together a rock group - she wanted to call it The Shooting Stars - and we had one rehearsal at Erica's house, in which we sang for about 5 minutes, got into fights, and broke the closet door so that Carolyn got trapped.
Anyway, the whole thing was so ridiculous. We all sat on Erica's bed, trying to sing these 60s hippie songs, from one book that Dee Dee had.
O.K. Now Dee Dee had this old battered guitar that was so out of tune it wasn't even funny, and Dee Dee's voice was this weepy off-tune thing. And she looked like a hippy with her long disheveled frizzy hair, and jeans jumpsuit, and just watching her strum dreamily along on this twangy guitary and singing a ballad, shakily, swaying, her eyes closed - it was just hysterical.
And Glenda and I have always had a problem with going into hopeless hysterics at crucially serious moments.
So anyway, just watching Dee Dee was enough, but Glenda leaned over to me, during the singing, and murmured, "I'm going to stuff a handkerchief in my mouth so I won't laugh out loud."
Well, this obviously made things worse.
Whenever Dee Dee opened her mouth to sing, Glenda would calmly and matter-of-factly open her mouth wide and stuff the handkerchief all the way in. And that would send me absolutely rolling off the bed.
So The Shooting Stars obviously didn't get very far.
Glenda is so funny. I taped the mass today for people in nursing homes, who can't go, and I walked home, blasting Devo as I went.
Today is really wet and windy and the snow keeps sliding off the roof. And the road had steam rising off of it.
Glenda told me to come to the Prout mixer that was open to all schools, so that a bunch of girls wouldn't be standing around dancing with each other, and I want to go.
I mean, who knows? Some kid from another school may ask me to dance. I know now that I have no chance (Ed: The word "no" is literally underlined twenty times. No exaggeration.) for romance at my school. I don't know what it is, but no one looks at me. And I know I'm not grotesque. I don't know what it is. I am not grossly unpopular. All the popular kids like me, but I am not in with them. I guess I'll just have to wait until I get out of this fuckin school. My school is really bad with peer pressure.
But maybe some other guy from other school would stoop to dance with me, because he won't know about how it is for me at my school.
I really shouldn't put myself down this way. Because I know I'm nicer than the popular kids, but it's hard to be confident when all these cheerleaders are surrounding you, trading boyfriends, while I stand meekly by with a head full of dreams and not even one kiss to my name.
Read other Diary Fridays, should the spirit move ya...
I re-connected with an old friend. We are talking OLD friend. I had not seen him since 1985.
A strange thing ... to be so damn old. A strange thing to be able to say "I have not seen him since 1985" and NOT mean "I have not seen him since I was 3 years old."
It was amazing on multiple levels ... but what I am really left with is: I recognized him still.
I'm not talking about his face.
I'm talking about who he is. His personality. His essence.
He has changed, yes. As have I. But ... the reason we were once friends ... so long ago ... still exists.
An amazing thing. Because of this I have felt, somehow, very close to the young girl I once was. The teenager. She feels very near. Peeking around the corners at me, observing the me I am now, the me I have become ...
Sometimes that's a cool thing, but at other times, it is very disconcerting.
"On Nov. 19, 2003, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced eight finalists in the competition to design a permanent memorial at the World Trade Center."
I'm not sure which one I like best. (Not that the deciding committee asked me what I thought!!)
The "Suspending Memory" one struck a chord - it somehow seems to capture the vastness of what occurred that day ... and not just the vastness, not just the collapse of the buildings and the beginning of a war, but the loss of innocent human life.
I think I have to agree with Michele here, and say that "Garden of Lights" is my favorite.
I think maybe because there is something abstract about it, something heightened ... (as opposed to a garish memorial like this one - Yuk.)
Also: the darkness appeals to me, personally.
When I go to remember the dead, I don't want to be in a big echoey flourescent-lit hall, with grey carpeting.
I want it to be a space of contemplation, a space of meditation, a space where loss can be expressed, let out. Where people can come who were NOT here on that day, and feel that they have mourned too, grieved too.
I am now reading Savage Beauty, the most recent biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Nancy Milford, the same author who wrote the biography of Zelda Fitzgerald I referenced a couple weeks ago.
I enjoy Milford's biographical writing style very much. The style is not completely objective, which I found a wee bit difficult to get used to. Her style assumes some things. Which, perhaps, is not the style for everybody - and I have read biographies (eg: the massive one on the Bronte sisters, which kind of raised the bar for biographers everywhere, published about 10 years ago) which assume NOTHING.
There is definitely something to be said for only letting the facts, whatever facts may remain once a person has passed on, tell the story.
Juliet Barker's biography of the Bronte sisters is a towering achievement in this regard. It weighs 20 pounds. The footnotes take up 1/4 of the text. It is breathtaking in its insistence on only relying on the facts. To not contribute to the Bronte myth, in any way, shape, form.
Milford takes a different tack. Her writing is very emotional - she obviously feels passionately about her subjects - She gets into Millay's writing style, her writing breakthroughs - which, so far, have been my favorite parts of the book. A literary biography that does not analyze the writing style of the subject is crap, in my opinion.
That's why I ate up the Ellmann biography of James Joyce. Not just because it was such an interesting life, and I loved hearing about it ... but also because Ellmann made sure to get into Joyce's prose, Joyce's archive of symbols, Joyce's driving force, Joyce's metaphors ... Reading that biography helped me to get through Ulysses.
However, I must mention my father. My father was my true "coach" through that book. He gave me the context, he would point out what Joyce was "doing" in passages which confused me ... and with a couple of simple words from my father, Joyce's prose cracked open, revealing vistas beyond. That was half the fun and exhilaration of that book. It is a club, a secret club ... you have to figure out the "open sesames" along the way.
Here's a perfect example of an "open sesame", provided to me by my father.
I was reading the "Cyclops" chapter.
One potentially infuriating thing about the book is: Joyce does not label them as chapters, there is not even a delineation to guide you along, ie: Chapter 1, Chapter 2. And he certainly doesn't toss you the bread-crumb of letting you know which episode of Homer's Ulysses each chapter parallels - You have to figure that out yourself. Or buy one of the myriad guide-books available. So I had no idea I was reading the "Cyclops" chapter, at first.
All I knew was this: Leopold Bloom finds himself in a pub, where there is a character named only "The Citizen", who pontificates his views loudly, and obnoxiously. "The Citizen" is an Irish nationalist ... The energy in the pub is unfriendly, tense. Leopold Bloom seems to just look on, as an outsider.
I understood, sort of, what the hell was going on ... but like with the rest of the book, I needed to know WHY. I needed the underbelly. I needed to figure out what Joyce was up to, because without Joyce's intentions ... you cannot understand Ulysses. It is a mystery, it seems like an exercise in style ... It can be annoying, purposefully vague.
Why is this episode in the book? Why is it told in the way it is told? It is told in retrospect, by some other bystander, not Bloom, describing the encounter with "The Citizen" to members of ANOTHER pub, hours later.
Like: what the HELL IS GOING ON HERE?
I blundered my way through the prose, reading on, not getting it ... I was sitting on the porch of our rented summer house in New Hampshire.
I finally just had to call my Dad, because moving on with the "chapter", or "episode" or whatever, was pointless.
"Dad: could you come here a second?"
Here comes the dad.
"Okay - I'm reading the part where Bloom sits in this pub, and it's all tense and weird - and I just don't get it."
Dad took the book. Looked at the page and said immediately, "This is the Cyclops episode."
"How did you know that?"
"Look at the page. It's filled with the letter I."
Amazed, awe-struck, I looked at the page, and yes, indeed, all you could see was the letter "I". That is the only clue he gives, in the language, that we are now in the Cyclops episode.
See, that's the kind of stuff that makes the hairs rise up on my arm.
Here is how the chapter begins:
I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D.M.P. at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye. I turned around to let him have the weight of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony Batter only Joe Hynes. -- Lo, Joe, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see that bloody chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his brush?-- Soot's luck, says Joe. Who's the old ballocks you were talking to?
-- Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I'm on two minds not to give that fellow in charge for obstructing the thoroughfare with his brooms and ladders.
-- What are you doing round those parts? says Joe.
-- Devil a much, says I. There is a bloody big foxy thief beyond by the garrison church at the corner of Chicken Lane-- old Troy was just giving me a wrinkle about him-- lifted any God's quantity of tea and sugar to pay three bob a week said he had a farm in the county Down off a hop of my thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there near Heytesbury street.
-- Circumcised? says Joe.
-- Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named Geraghty. I'm hanging on to his taw now for the past fortnight and I can't get a penny out of him.
-- That the lay you're on now? says Joe.
-- Ay, says I .
Now: what I LOVE about this ...
Well, I love a lot about this.
I love James Joyce for being such a genius. For making reading such a game, such an exhilarating ride. Where you can feel like you are not just an observer, but a participator. You must participate actively - you MUST accept him as your leader - and then try to figure it all out.
I love that he never spells things out.
But what I love most of all - what I find so awe-inspiring - is that you can tell what episode you are in, merely by LOOKING at what the text looks like on the page. My dad didn't even read a WORD of it. He just saw "I I I I I I I" when he glanced at the page, and knew. So many "I"s must mean Cyclops.
Isn't that brilliant?
The Ellmann biography spends as much time on the origins of Ulysses, and analyzing each episode, as it does on James Joyce's childhood.
That is really what I am talking about here.
A biography which gets to know its subject through his or her art, rather than just snooping through letters and diaries - now that is a beautiful thing.
Nancy Milford, author of Zelda and now Savage Beauty is all about that.
I grew to trust Milford's gift as an author during the sections in Zelda, where Milford discusses Zelda's attempts to write.
Milford did not fall into the trap of many people (mostly women) who write biographies about "the woman behind the man". She did not try to raise Zelda up to Scott's level. She did not try to unearth a hidden genius. She looked at what Zelda wrote, her stories, her failed novel, and came to the conclusion: "Obviously, whatever was inside of her, whatever was expressed so brilliantly in her letters, was not accessible to her when she sat down to write fiction." Milford would look at an unedited passage from one of Zelda's stories, and then compare it to the version after Scott took his editing pen to it ... and, hands down, Scott made it better.
I am not interested in someone trying to convince me that the world is a less vibrant place because nobody appreciated Zelda Fitzgerald's art, and because her husband got all the glory.
Please don't make me read "The Yellow Wallpaper" and try to convince me that it is AS good as Moby Dick or Madame Bovary.
F. Scott Fitzgerald deserved all the glory, because he was a writer, a glorious writer, and she was not ... at least not outside of her letters to him, which are, actually, breathtaking. In the letters, the personality of Zelda leaps off the page, she pulses, she is vibrant, real, funny, tragic, heartfelt ... all those things. But letters are different from being a craftsman. Sitting down, and choosing how to tell your tale, and finding the right way to do it ... is quite a different matter. Zelda could not marshal her forces in that direction, which was a tragedy for her. She went mad because of it.
Zelda had quite enough an interesting life as it is - without some author trying to re-dress a grievance - ie: ZELDA was the true hero, SCOTT just sapped her dry ... Zelda could not write fiction to save her life. The excerpts in the book are hideous. Stilted. Ridiculous. Un-readable, actually.
Milford, by recognizing that, even though the book was ABOUT Zelda, a woman who, obviously, she had enormous sympathy for ... made Milford into a "reliable" narrator, in my eyes.
So back to Edna St. Vincent Millay.
I did not know much about her. At least not about her life. I know she wrote sonnets. I know her face, I know she was very beautiful, and very celebrated, as a poet, DURING her lifetime. A very rare thing, especially for women, at that time.
One of her sonnets has always been a favorite of mine, although sometimes I forget about it.
It usually unearths itself in my consciousness (I know it practically by heart) when I am very very sad, and finding myself trying to get over someone with whom I was once in love.
It takes me forever to get over someone, if I once was in love with them.
And this sonnet, more than any other poem I've read, expresses that sentiment so perfectly, so well, that it seems to come FROM me:
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, -- so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!
For some reason, that poem just gets to me. Like a lance through my heart.
I know that feeling. I know that feeling. Being dogged at every step by the memory of the loved one ...
Her language - so formal and yet so passionate, too - appeals to me on a very deep level.
It is clear, from what I have read so far, she led an extraordinary life. An unexpected life. Men fell in love with her and never got over her. Women fell in love with her and never got over her.
I am just at the part where she gets into Vassar - being ushered into that world by powerful friends who decided to give this little red-headed self-educated poetess from Camden, Maine a shot at greatness.
Is Derbyshire SERIOUS? Is question #2 really serious? Is EITHER question serious? Is he equating prison-rape with gay marriage?
I read shit like that from Derbyshire and it makes me think: What the fuck am I doing reading "National Review" anyway? Who have I become? How in the world can I possibly read a magazine with so many views that I find so contemptible, so hateful?
Yeah - some great foreign policy articles, yeah, I am addicted to Victor Davis Hanson ... but WHAT EVER.
Here is a two-line query by John Derbyshire about gay marriage, and I feel, in all conscience, that I can never ever open up www.nationalreview.com again, because it is too much of a betrayal of who I REALLY am.
If conservatives have a problem with that - they can bite me. I will never fit in completely with the NRO crowd and I'm glad of that.
Pardon the swearing. I just hate that bigot. I should never read anything that has his byline. Ever.
I need a shower.
(via Scott at Wunderkinder)
(Oh: heads up. This is not the first piece of Derbyshire's I have ever read ... I didn't just stumble over it ... I am aware of his views on this matter, and have read his columns before - but those two little questions struck me as unusually hostile and ignorant. More than anything else, I am struck by his ignorance.)
Michele posted something earlier today which struck a chord with me ... (I haven't had any time for blogging today, obviously)... but here is what she said:
"What you see on someone's weblog is not necessarily the whole of that person."
Having had my own run-ins with readers who perhaps read too much into what I do - or who are looking for clues into my glorious hidden personality - or who assume that they "know" me from the 2 or 3 things I post a day - I thought: Yes. Michele is right.
What you read on my blog is NOTHING compared to the whole picture.
What you get here, for the most part, are my opinions about things. My convictions.
My opinions and my convictions are NOT the sum-total of me. As a matter of fact, they are the least relevant, in terms of who I am to my family, my friends, my loved ones, my nephew.
If you asked my friends: "Hey, who is Sheila to you?", they would not say, I guarantee, "Well, she supports what we're doing in Iraq and she thinks that Ted Rall is an ass."
Of course not. They're gonna talk about my essence, my personality, what I did for them, favorite memories - whatever.
What you get here - is me blabbing my mouth off about things that piss me off, or things that I notice - so that I don't have to bore my friends with all this stuff, and we can actually enjoy each other's company, and chill OUT.
And for the record, Michele?
I can tell, just from the way that you write, that you are "living the good things". That energy is in your personality, it's in your sense of humor, it's your turn of phrase ... It's in the style of your writing itself.
It looks like snow.
I had a great weekend.
Lots of time with friends - a bit of carousing - and then a lot of time lolling about in my pajamas, drinking coffee, candles lit, and writing.
A perfect balance.
Busy week ahead of me.
Today has been a wellspring of activity, panic, frenzied frustration, agonized waiting, and occasional moments when I would stand on the windy sidewalk and gawk at the sunset light on the skyscrapers.
But for the most part, I am a nutcase and my life is nuts.
I did want to say, briefly, that I am glad to see that Lileks has had it too. He puts it into better words, though.
I read his stuff, and feel, somehow, through osmosis, that I learn more about writing. He certainly is something.
Also: Had a great time with Steve Silver last night.
I love hanging out with bloggers because it is all TALK TALK TALK.
Steve and I talked, non-stop, for two hours. No news item was too small to go unnoticed by us.
However: There was one thing I had heard about and he had not: Jethro Tull being banned from New Jersey radio stations, for saying some anti-American stuff. But Steve's comment was: "'Jethro Tull' has been on the radio recently? Since when?"
Very good point.
We met up at a bar formerly called Miss Kitty's, in Hoboken. It sounds like a brothel, obviously - but it's really just a regular pub.
However, two Guinness Girls showed up ... wearing white kneesocks, and little (we're talking little) tartan skirts, and hair in ponytails ... promoting some Guinness thing, like a pedophile's dream come true.
So perhaps Miss Kitty's did live up to its name.
Great evening with Steve! Check out his version of events here ...
Have a great time in Boston!
This journal entry is basically a continuation from last week's - same time period, same characters. It's two entries blended together.
Chicago. During a fall which is now known as "the magic time". Best friend Ann Marie. Pat McCurdy shows at Lounge Ax every Monday. The Emerald Queen afterwards. Hanging out with MS (Note from Sheila: His blog-name is now Window-Boy) the old flame of yore.
It was a frivolous time in my life - a time of high-pitched emotion - a time in my life when I actually included descriptions of what I was wearing, to go along with every journal entry. I was young - I was free - I was having the time of my life.
I sang with Pat McCurdy every week, and became a wee bit famous, in my own small way. The "magic time" is when that experience really blossomed.
I went back to sit with him. I felt like I was shooting out light from beneath my skin. I was so happy!
Pat had me sing with him. The intro to that song pulls my heart up and out of my body. He makes me feel like I could fly. If only I could run fast enough.
After the show, everyone was heading to the Emerald Queen, all of us exiting together. Pat was leaving too. I made MS do the velociraptor for Pat.
(Ed: A quick note: MS did absolutely riotous "imitations" of dinosaurs. He had been developing his velociraptor imitation for some time, and I was addicted to it. I would be sitting at the bar, doing my thing, and glance over and see MS at the jukebox, as a velociraptor, picking out songs. Or he would suddenly become a pterodactyl as he took a sip of beer. He became known, in my group of Lounge Ax friends who had a habit of giving everybody nicknames: "Dinosaur Boy.")
MS did NOT want to do his velociraptor for Pat, and I made him. Afterwards, MS was just wincing about it. "Pat McCurdy was having none of my velociraptor."
We all had this HYSTERICAL walk over to the Emerald Queen. MS and I, our arms around each other, were lurching across Lincoln Avenue. It was 1:30 in the morning, and a huge crowd of us had been set loose. Gus Kapinsky was leapfrogging over parking meters, one after the other after the other. We made MS watch him do this.
Still stuck on Pat's clear animosity towards him, and Pat's indifference to his velociraptor, MS stood on the curb and pretended he was about to leap off and commit suicide. "I'm gonna jump!" he screamed.
No cars in sight. Long empty black street. Street lights changing from green to yellow to red with no cars there.
Suddenly MS announced bluntly, "A velociraptor can go 75-80 miles an hour" and he took off. Other Lounge Ax people heading to the Emerald Queen, some in 2s, others in larger groups, saw him gallop by, and started laughing, pointing. "Look! It's Dinosaur Boy!"
Voices echoing. Cold.
MS was a velociraptor. He peered hungrily into the windows of a car pulling out of a lot.
I was laughing so hard I thought I might need medical attention.
MS said to me after, "When I move my body … people laugh."
Thinking of the velociraptor, the spontaneous jazz dances, the circus horses, the ostrich running through my apartment, I had to agree.
At one point, at the Emerald Queen, some Sinatra song came on and MS suddenly leapt up and made a spectacle of himself with an impromptu jazz dance. A crowd surrounded him, roaring with laughter. Ann and I were mopping off tears. There were actual people watching, but MS was performing for an imaginary crowd, which was my favorite part. Also, he and I had literally been in the middle of a conversation, there hadn't even been a lull, and he responded, mid-sentence, to the call of the music.
MS turned to me suddenly, later, and said, "You wanna see my circus horse?"
You really have to ask?
The place was packed with people and suddenly MS pranced through the crowd, and all I can say is he WAS a circus horse down to the expression in his damn eyeballs.
I heard people murmuring, "What's going on" as MS high-stepped around me. He became himself for a second to explain to me what he did physically to become a horse (he had a theory about it) and then he became a horse again.
Ann turned around in the middle of all this and saw him high-stepping by. She watched him for a moment and then slowly looked to me for an explanation. Her expression was priceless.
I said quietly, "He's a circus horse."
She nodded, accepting this. "Oh."
MS said to me, word for word, "You and me … we laugh. We hang out with each other and we laugh. Know what I mean? It makes me happy. I like laughing with you. For too long I've lived my life like that Pat song about being artistic. I don't want to do that anymore. I like being happy."
And then – 2 weeks later – came my birthday extravaganza, held during a Pat show at Lounge Ax.
Ann Marie basically decorated the bar. She is so incredible. There was a huge bunch of balloons ("Here. Arrange these in a festive manner," she ordered Lady Elaine).
(Ed: This is so hostile but there was another Pat fan who she and I did not like, who was a bit crazy, and obsessed with McCurdy in a kind of stalkerish way - not in the ultra COOL and sophisticated way that ANN and I were obsessed with Pat McCurdy (sarcasm) – and basically this stalker-fan's nose and his chin almost touched – so Ann Marie and I called him "Lady Elaine" after the puppet on Mr. Rogers, because we felt there was a resemblance. We did not call him "Lady Elaine" to his face, but we would blatantly refer to him as such, "Wow, look at how Lady Elaine is hovering around Pat…" "Loved Lady Elaine's crazy air guitar during 'Knock Things Over'"…So the image of Ann Marie ordering "Lady Elaine" to arrange balloons in a "festive manner" … I just … It's just freakin' funny, that's all.)
Ann Marie baked cupcakes, brought candy. It was a total extravaganza. Everyone knew it was my birthday. I wore my mermaid dress and a black choker. (Ed: How embarrassing – but I warned you up front! Every diary entry during the "magic time" is accompanied by a description of my clothes…)
I went to find MS and he was sitting at the bar, so cute, waiting for me. I was so happy to see him I was high on him. We were a happy couple. We are a happy couple.
I pointed to all the balloons, arranged by Lady Elaine. "Those are for me."
He asked me how my actual birthday was and I told him pretty bad and that I had cried on the train. He was hurt by this news. "You cried on your birthday?"
Then he said, "I thought about you on your birthday. I thought about calling you, but …" and he stopped himself with this very inward-look on his face. He had no word of excuse, he looked confused at his own behavior. "I don't know why I didn't."
I said, "You should have! Of course, at the first sound of your voice I would have dissolved into tears."
We laughed at that.
I asked him how his Thanksgiving was and he said, "It was all right," but with such an evident edgy look of misery and anxiety in his eyes. He cannot mask his emotions. I responded to the look on his face, not his words. "Not good, huh."
He shrugged and then said, "Well … clearly I have issues."
I couldn't help myself. I burst into laughter right in his face. He has assimilated me! Me, always talking about "issues". He looked truly confused, like, "What did I just say?" – and I kept laughing, and then he began YELLING at me, "No! No! I don't have issues. I have PROBLEMS. I don't have issues. I have PROBLEMS."
Ann Marie wrote me a fairy story for my birthday. I was living in such a euphoric state. Everything was perfect. Ann also gave me flannel sheets! Bless you, Ann!! I love them. She went totally nuts for my birthday. She is an incredible party planner.
I had raved to MS about how I wanted flannel sheets, and he told me I had to get some. So I showed them to him, all excited. "Look, MS! Flannel sheets!" He was cute – kind of withdrawn, but smiling, shy, kind. "Hey! You just told me you wanted some!"
Half of our conversations are about objects and their faults or virtues: bureaus, incense, coffee makers, coffee tables, banana pickers jackets, new blue jeans, veal parmesan sandwiches, his special mattress he had as a teenager, etc.
I loved it that MS would get all puffed up like a peacock because he was "the guy with Sheila". He would pretend there was an imaginary crowd around him and he'd say in a very over-it casual tone, "Yeah … I'm with her. It's no big deal. I'm just with her."
MS told me his mother said his haircut made him look like a "jackass".
We left the bar with a huge fanfare because of all my gifts and balloons.
Pat had had me sing, and had also led the entire place in singing happy birthday to me.
MS helped me carry some of my stuff out. Ann said he was behaving "very husbandly" which is so true. He was loaded down with all my gifts, and I was keeping him waiting as I said good-bye to everyone five times. He was grumbling about it, and impatient.
"I have to say good-bye to Ann Marie!"
"Didn't you already do that?"
"Yeah, but not for the last time!"
He sat in the car, exhaling frustration as I flew around hugging everyone and saying goodbye to Ann Marie 10 times.
We released all of my balloons into the air outside of Lounge Ax. They floated up over the Biograph and disappeared into the black.
I climbed into the car with MS, this person I have known for almost 2 years now, and we peeled away from the curb.
A great piece on bad academic writing (which is, perhaps, an unnecessary redundancy). Camille Paglia has been bitching about this for years - the primacy of "theory" in universities - and how it is killing adventurous thought, and any kind of honest intellectual inquiry.
Ophelia Benson, in this blistering piece, calls a spade a spade.
...Another benefit of talking about theory-disparagers' being frightened off is that by implication it makes the theory-lovers seem brave, daring, butch, risk-takers, rebels. Or at least that's what it's meant to do, but the trouble is of course it doesn't. The whole maneuver is so transparently self-flattering that you would think such a knowing, hip, wised-up, rhetoric-conscious crowd would notice the fact, blush violently, and delete that bit of text. But no. Perhaps they think we don't notice? Perhaps they think that because the non-theory team is by definition and invariably so frightened off by questions about language that we are entirely blind deaf and stupid about rhetoric? Perhaps, but sadly for them, we're not, and we can see perfectly well what they're doing.And the same goes for the 'difficulty' ploy. That's also a popular one, of course. Theory isn't gibberish or vacuity dressed up in resounding neologisms appropriated from Lacan and Derrida - no, it's difficult. It addresses subjects so complicated and arcane and profound that a special new language is required in order to deal with them at all.
It's ridiculous - truly.
I'm a big fan of Dennis Dutton's yearly "Bad Writing Contest" , hosted by Arts & Letters Daily - which exposes these academic buffoons for what they are. Uh ... buffoons.
The winning entries are always laughably impenetrable.
The only people who read that stuff are ... other people who write like that. It's like a strange doomed contest to see who can write in the most incoherent way.
How in the world has this occurred?? I have a feeling it all goes back to post-modernism, and de-constructionism - a worthy pursuit in the abstract - but when you get right down to it: dammit, is a poem good to read? Does the language sweep you away? As a whole, what does it say to you?
All of this "theory" takes the juice out of ANY writing. It tries to make language manageable, understandable, easily broken down into components. The theorists can then be Masters of the Universe - they can translate everything for the un-washed masses.
I can hear the cackles of Shakespeare and Chaucer and James Joyce now.
"De-construct ME? You must be MAD! Just read it out loud - just hear the sounds - do I not amaze you?"
Just for a joke - here is one of the winning entries in the Bad Writing Contest:
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
Woah.
I can only look at that sentence and think: Such language only emerges from a very confused and unorganized mind.
We are having some kind of freak wind-storm here in the New York/New Jersey area. It is out of control. I saw a teeny little woman literally clinging to a lamppost on 42nd Street so she wouldn't be blown away. I myself was chased down the street on my way to the bus by a renegade trash can. I was RUNNING, trying to get away from it. Trees bent to the side. I woke up to the sound of howling against my window. The wind was not whistling, it was howling.
It's exhilarating. I love it.
The wind blew the clouds away from yesterday.
Well, mostly. I was flipping through my new Vanity Fair during my commute - and there's a long piece on Bloomberg - and one of the quotes they pulled out into large type was this: "Think about all of the press attention to 9/11. That number of people die every year in the city from secondhand smoke."
I had heard that monstrous quote before.
But suddenly I felt like standing up and throwing the magazine out the window. I wanted to scream or cry or something.
I closed the magazine, and began to viciously compose a letter to Bloomberg in my head, telling him exactly what I thought of him, how much I hated him, how much I think he is a bloodless cadaver during his press conferences, how much he hectors New Yorkers like we are spoiled children ...
Blah blah blah. I didn't vote for the guy cause I live in New Jersey, but you know what? I would have voted for him. Because Guiliani endorsed him, and after September 11, I would have voted for Donald Freakin' Trump if Guiliani said so. A sad statement perhaps, but a true one.
Then, letter fully composed in my mind, I got out of the bus on 42nd Street and was immediately hit in the face by this huge wind - I mean, it felt like ... Wizard of Oz or something ... women's skirts blew up over their faces ... the air was filled with swirling cyclones of leaves and paper bags ... random strangers met eyes as they struggled down the sidewalk, and laughed ... there was a sense of solidarity in the street.
I love wind.
Last night I walked home from the grocery store - The night was still. No hint of the Maniac-Wind barreling down upon us. But the mist ... it felt like I was back in Rhode Island, on a misty day, where you can't see 50 feet ahead of you. You drive down the country roads in Rhode Island, through a pea-soup mist, headlights on ... and you see ... dimly ... as if in slow-motion ... other headlights approaching you through the thick grey. It's a sea mist, an ocean fog.
And here it was, covering New Jersey. The lampposts along the main drag were haloed in a thick nimbus. You could not see beyond four blocks ahead of you.
I love mist, too.
So mist last night, wind today. I feel a bit better, and more like myself.
Also, I went home last night, cooked some dinner, and proceeded to watch "Bend it Like Beckham" (Emily!! David Beckham!) - which I had never seen before - and which is, literally, a joy from start to finish. Like my friend Mitchell says, on occasion, "Sheer liquid joy." I laughed, I cried. Great film.
Loved the actor who played the Sikh father. He was wonderful. Just wonderful.
I think my favorite line in the film was Juliet Stevenson's (a great actress - see "Truly Madly Deeply" if you haven't already!) - She plays the obnoxious mother of one of the girl soccer-players, who is horrified at her tomboyish daughter, obsessed with the fear that her daughter is a lesbian, etc. She is a ridiculous character. Her daughter is out in the back yard, kicking a soccer ball around, and Juliet Stevenson comes out to hector her daughter - "Why can't you be a normal girl? Why can't you grow your hair?" Etc.
The daughter wins the argument but this is Stevenson's parting shot as she goes into the house.
She says to her daughter, in a tone of grim importance, "Just remember, dear. It is no mistake that Sporty Spice is the only one without a man."
John Hawkins polled a bunch of bloggers, asking them to list "History's Most Interesting Dinner Companions".
And although it's interesting and all, and I wouldn't turn down the chance to have dinner with Voltaire or Socrates, I have to agree with Baldilocks on this one, who says, "Now I’m all for learning from the great thinkers and doers in history, but when I go out to eat with someone, I want to laugh and have fun, as well as enjoy my meal. I want to joke around as well as have those Great Intellectual Conversations. I want to Laugh Loud and invite dirty looks from the other patrons. And I want to inspire loud laughter in return, if possible."
Amen, sister. Can't take ourselves TOO seriously now.
She starts off HER list with Frank Zappa which gives you some idea ...
So here's my list. Off the top of my head.
People I would like to dine with, living or dead:
-- Shakespeare
-- Grania O'Malley (female pirate ... a real bad-ass, and an ancestress of mine)
-- John Adams and Abigail Adams (preferably with Thomas Jefferson in tow - so I could sit with the three of them, all together)
-- Jackie Gleason
-- Galileo
-- Ewan McGregor (can't help it)
-- Lucy Maud Montgomery (author of the "Anne of Green Gables" series)
-- Tycho Brahe
-- James and Nora Joyce (together - they have to be together - probably with Lucia and ... Dad, what was the son's name? Giorgio?)
-- Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
-- Katherine Hepburn
-- Lech Walesa
Thought of a couple more to add:
-- Jesus. (He's on every list written by everybody about anything - and rightly so. Didn't feel right leaving him off. It would be nice if he invited Mary Magdalene to the table, cause I'd like to meet her as well.)
-- William Shirer (author of "Rise and Fall of 3rd Reich")
-- Rumi, the Persian poet
-- Eleanora Duse (stage actress at turn of 20th century)
And on another note entirely:
-- Oliver Cromwell (so I could poison his drink)
Thought of some more:
-- George Bernard Shaw
-- Eddie Izzard
-- Robert Kaplan
-- Ryzsard Kapuscinski (Kinuk - care to join us??)
-- Patrick Henry - I always had a soft spot for that firebrand rabble-rouser
Fantastic post over on Cold Fury about the Jessica Lynch "nude photos" thing. Mike is merciless on Flynt, and rightly so.
Lynch might have made a big mistake in choosing her sexual partners (obviously), but that neither reflects particularly poorly on her personally (lots of otherwise honorable women make those same mistakes) nor diminishes the historical fact of her capture and subsequent rescue. This is purely about a dishonest, hypocritical, bottom-feeding piece of subhuman garbage making money off of something he has no business even knowing about while boosting his chosen political party - and nothing else. Flynt is scum - always was, always will be.
Oh, and one additional comment:
Everyone keeps saying she "posed" for pictures.
From the description, at least in the articles out there right now, she did not "pose" - in that: she did not have a date with a professional photographer, like Coco from "Fame" - who asked her to disrobe, and then she posed about like a little model.
Obviously - I haven't seen the photos - and I'm not saying posing nude makes you immoral, or a slut, or worthy of whatever bad things happen to you - NO.
Here's how the photos are described:
A skin mag claimed yesterday it has pictures of Iraqi POW Jessica Lynch frolicking topless with male soldiers before she went off to war.
Without having seen them, I can't judge what exactly that means.
But "posing" may be incorrect - in actuality, she may have been drunk and dancing about, and someone took candid shots of the partying Jessica - There's a world of difference between the two.
But Mike pretty much says what I wanted to say.
... as chosen by The Observer.
I have read 37 of them.
But, of course, being obnoxious, I have a couple of comments about some of the books:
The Executioner's Song??? What? To have THAT book be on there and not In Cold Blood (Truman Capote invented the genre, and Norman Mailer stole it) is very bizarre. I didn't think The Executioner's Song was THAT great a book - definitely not one of the greatest novels of all time. That seems baffling to me.
Second of all: neither of those are novels. They are true-crime books. They are dressed up as novels, which was the whole "gimmick" of them - but Truman Capote got there first, and In Cold Blood is a much better book. Please don't even argue.
I was completely gratified to see Charlotte's Web on there.
I have huge gaps in my reading - stuff which must be rectified.
I haven't read any Paul Auster. I haven't read any George Eliot (which I know is completely shameful - she is DEFINITELY on my list).
I have read Pilgrim's Progress of all things, but I haven't read any Philip Roth. Please don't kill me.
I have not read David Copperfield, strangely, although I have read Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Christmas Carol and Bleak House. How did I read all of those and miss David Copperfield, which everybody talks about as his best?
I have never heard of the book Sybil, by Disraeli. Sue me.
I haven't read any Trollope, and I haven't read any Wilkie Collins.
I have read all of the Bronte books numerous times. I have read all of James Joyce.
I, somehow, embarrassingly, have not read any Faulkner. This is horrifying, I know. Faulkner is on my eternal list - I own all his books, but I haven't read them.
I have read Crime and Punishment, but I have NOT read The Brothers Karamazov - which, I believe, is one of my dad's all-time favorite novels.
Glad to see Catch-22 on there. In my opinion, it should be #1.
I have read Portrait of a Lady but it left me cold. I mean ... I liked some of it ... I liked how much of it was conversation - not a lot of description, but just long long passages of people talking to each other - fighting, jostling for position ... But it certainly didn't strike me as one of the "greats".
I like the passionate wild books better. The Wuthering Heights. The Anna Kareninas.
I have never read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and yet I HAVE read Three Men in a Boat, which I thought was abysmal, but that is probably only because I was in a dreadful musical adaptation of the book, described in this post here. The production was so awful that one critic started off his review with the following words: "Not since the Titanic has there been such a nautical disaster..." So I despise Three Men in a Boat. I think it's a stupid book.
I have only read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness - have not read Nostromo, which appears on the list, and is called Conrad's "masterpiece".
Never read any Ford Madox Ford.
I've read all of DH Lawrence and I know this is sacreligious - but ... I guess I didn't get it. Perhaps I was too young when I read them. Maybe I should go back and try them again.
I think Howard's End is a far superior book to Passage to India, but I could be persuaded otherwise.
I have had Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum sitting un-read on my bookshelf for nigh on 15 years now. My best friend Mitchell read it and it blew his mind - He could not stop talking about it. But it's one of those books I haven't gotten around to yet.
And puh-leez: Housekeeping??? Gimme a break.
I need someone out there to enlighten me on the slant of this list. Am I missing something?
Oh, and one other subjective comment: Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey has no business being on that list, in my opinion. I had to force myself to finish that book. I know everybody fawned over it, and loved it, and praised it, but I thought it was over-praised. Some of the writing was okay - and the plot itself was fascinating (carrying a glass church over hundreds of miles) but ... whatEVER. The book didn't work for me.
Oh, if you haven't read Primo Levi's The Periodic Table - you really must. However: it's a memoir. It's not a novel. So ... why is it on this list?
Please comment on the list freely ... want to hear everything from everybody.
(got the list via Red Ted)
So I try not to pay him any mind - but he's just so damn loud, I can't tune him out.
I'll let Michael Totten take it from here though - he has some great things to say about Michael Moore's most recent America-bashing moment (a rant in Germany's Die Zeit.)
First of all, here is a preposterous quote from Michael Moore: "Ok, come on, you Germans, you really know better! You are well-read. Your media also reports on things south of the Alps. You travel. You value education. And in the past year you took over the moral leadership in the question of war or peace."
Uh.
WHAT? You Germans "know better"??
The Germans started two goddamned World Wars in the last century. The Germans are single-handedly responsible for killing 6 million fucking Jews. The Germans know better??
But again. Michael TOTTEN finds a much more articulate way to deal with Moore's nonsense. Here's an excerpt:
America leads the world because it is the only world power left standing at the end of the 20th Century. Germany (which supposedly “knows better” and is where his article is published) turned Europe into a smouldering crater. It’s hard to lead the world from beneath a pile of wreckage. Japan was a world power, too, but it went on one wicked rampage too many. Belgium and France had power, but their vicious imperialism in Asia and Africa led to a long-overdue ass-whooping. The last world power, the Soviet Union, imploded in a spasm of idiocy and evil of its own making.America did none of that. We skipped the whole communist/fascist/imperialist thing. So here we are. The only world power, aside from Britain, that didn’t chew off its own leg.
Oh, whatever. Like I said, Michael Moore makes me tired. So go and check out Totten's words.
So Miss Afghanistan won a special award in the Miss Earth contest, huh? And it's a big ol' victory, right? Seeing her on the catwalk in her bikini, right? A triumph for the new Afghanistan?
Fazel Ahmad Manawi, deputy head of Afghanistan's Supreme Court, takes the tone of one chiding a CHILD: "I hope that this lady regrets her actions."
Jackass. She's an adult. And you know what? That's how the civilized world treats women - as ADULTS. Capable of making their OWN choices.
He added that Afghan prosecutors may open an investigation, but refused to say what charges or penalties Samadzai could face.
She "could face prosecution if she returns to her native country."
I've had it with these freaks.
(via Instapundit)
And we're back. After the relatively debauched weekend I have had, here I be: fresh-faced, Monday-morning ready, or, as my dad would say, "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed".
Read Mike's own description of his weekend over here.
Mike: looking forward to the next time! Two weeks, huh? That will give me plenty of time to recuperate.
And thanks for the compliment, re: my shot-drinking performance art piece.
...As a matter of fact, I woke up at one p.m. today. Since most of you don't know me personally, you will not know how out of character that is. I am, categorically, a wake-up-at-6-am kind of girl.
I just have to say:
Mike Hendrix, and his crew of friends, and his stepsister - are fantastic people. We tripped about from bar to bar last night - and all of them were completely welcoming to me, accepting that this unknown blog-chick, a stranger to them, was part of their group. It warmed my heart. There was like no question in their minds - they just accepted me.
And by the end of the evening, I was speaking in a southern drawl. I couldn't help it. It was infectious.
Hanging out with them made me yearn to get a wallet-chain as well.
I am tellin' you: These guys are COOL. Pompadours, sideburns, wallet-chains, big ol' boots - DAMN. Rockabilly personified, strolling down Avenue A.
Very sexy.
It was a great time. A great weekend.
Drive home safe, y'all.
Paul Johnson has a great piece in the Hoover Digest, on America and empire.
This is obviously a complex issue, and not something I want to get into at the moment - on a late-on-Friday afternoon - (with a rockabilly evening ahead of me) but the essay is a good one, and I suggest you give it a read.
Traditionally, successful imperialism has reflected high birthrates and the ability to export large surplus populations. The climax of European imperialism in the nineteenth century coincided with the European population explosion. America has never exported people overseas. On the contrary, its growing power and wealth have reflected its ability to attract and absorb immigrants. That continues. America now accepts more immigrants than the rest of the world put together. The amazing ability of groups such as the Cubans, the Hong Kong Chinese, the Vietnamese, and other new arrivals to grow roots and create wealth is a key part of America’s continuing success story. But America also has a high birthrate. Its population is now coming up to the 300 million mark. By 2050 it will be more than 400 million. By contrast, Europe’s population will shrink and the percentage of working age will fall rapidly. The ability of America to sustain a global role is demonstrated by the demographic figures, especially those on the working population.
And here below is where the complexity lies ... our own inner conflict as a nation about imperialism, and empire. How does one resolve this? The true difficulty is to really admit what it is we are doing, and call it by its proper name:
The Bush administration is only beginning to grasp the implications of the course on which it has embarked. It still, albeit with growing difficulty, speaks the language of anti-imperialism. But that is the jargon of the twentieth century or at least its second half. Who says it will be the prevailing discourse of the twenty-first? As it happens, imperialism became a derogatory term in America only during the Civil War, when the South accused the North of behaving like a European empire. It then became politically correct to speak only of “American exceptionalism.” Internationally imperialism became a dirty word early in the twentieth century, and it was the Communists who were chiefly responsible for turning it into a hate word. And it is worth recalling too that up to 1860 empire was not a term of abuse in the United States. George Washington himself spoke of “the rising American Empire.” Thomas Jefferson, aware of the dilemma, claimed that America was “an empire for liberty.” That is what America is becoming again, in fact if not in name. America’s search for security against terrorism and rogue states goes hand in hand with liberating their oppressed peoples. From the Evil Empire to an Empire for Liberty is a giant step, a contrast as great as the appalling images of the wasted twentieth century and the brightening dawn of the twenty-first. But America has the musculature and the will to take giant steps, as it has shown in the past.
Anyway. It's Friday.
I'm gonna go to the gym - and then - head out into the night - to join up with the different Manhattan world which lies below Canal Street. Can't wait.
...things I forgot to mention, which Auntie Jean kindly reminded me of.
When I traveled home last weekend, via Amtrak, I realized what a class-stratified society we do live in and I realized that I am near the bottom rung.
Usually, that knowledge is hidden from me, because I get by. I am not living in a sodden cardboard box on the sidewalk. My teeth are not rotting out of my head. I struggle - but I have my own apartment, I can buy my own food, I'm okay.
But step onto Amtrak ... I dare ya ... step onto an Amtrak train ...
and you realize that there is an enormous class of people way up in the stratosphere above you who never EVER have to put up with the nonsense of riding on a train.
The train was literally filled with garbage. It was one huge garbage dumpster shrieking up the Northeast corridor. Every corner was stuffed with crushed coffee cups, dirty napkins, old newspapers ... Nobody bothered to come through the train and neaten things up. We just had to clear spaces for ourselves in the middle of the trash, and make do.
All the people in the car looked exhausted.
One woman, sitting two seats behind my sister and I, called over to us in this jaded voice, as we slung our bags up onto the rack, "This train ride has been one long continuous string of nightmares."
I needed to sleep - so I stretched out on two empty seats - basically surrounded by GARBAGE - and fell asleep.
It was nasty.
The other thing I forgot to tell was:
My sister Jean came to pick us up at the train station - and she left a Halloween party to do so.
She was dressed up as Smurfette.
Siobhan and I knew that, basically, Smurfette was going to be waiting for us - so when we emerged gratefully from that GARBAGE CAN OF NIGHTMARES, into the fragrant autumn night, we looked around the train platform, already laughing ... knowing that whatEVER we were going to see ... it was going to be hilarious.
And there she was.
Standing at the top of the steps.
She looked like an absolute lunatic. She had a blue-painted face. A white knitted hat. A blue turtleneck, blue running pants - and WHITE SLIP on over all of this ... and then ... these ridiculous white pumps. They looked like Barbie shoes.
And there she stood. I could see her teeth gleaming with laughter out of the blue.
Her boyfriend was the Crocodile Hunter - and while yes, he did have a rubber crocodile peeping from his pocket - he looked relatively normal, and his face was not blue.
Two days later, Jean still was washing remnants of blue from out of her ears.
This entry is from my Chicago era, specifically the fall of 1993.
I was singing every week with Pat McCurdy, a bit of a star in the Milwaukee/Chicago/Madison area.
Through this rock-chick experience, I met a host of insane characters – hilarious, beautiful. Ann Marie became my dear friend at the time. We met, as we called it, "at Pat". As though Pat McCurdy were a place.
From the moment she and I met, it was like we were long-lost sisters. Our friendship truly exploded in the fall of 1993. This entry is from that time. Oh, and the man in my life at that time is the "old flame" I described in this Mystic-River-inspired dream. The man who felt it his duty to make me laugh. I will refer to him in here as ****.
Follow the events if you can. It's a bit nuts.
There was a major snowfall. We drove around looking for parking for 45 MINUTES.
The bar was jam-packed for the first Bulls game. Everyone was shrieking, "4-PEAT! 4-PEAT!" People, it's the first game! Stop re-hashing the future! Can you let the season happen, please?
Ann's British friend Trevor stood at the bar, the whole place erupting into insanity over some play or other, and Trevor yelled at the top of his lungs in his British accent, "GOD BLESS AMERICA!" This made Ann and I laugh very hard.
Ann Marie and I were so into each other that we found it difficult to be social with others. We were pretending to be gorillas, picking bugs off of each other and then eating them. We began discussing patty cake games, and of course we had to try them out and see what we remembered.
And that was that. We patty caked FOREVER. Ann Marie literally had bruises on her hands the next day.
We lost the words in the middle of Miss Mary Mack – at the same time – a big blank overcame the both of us at the same time. But we got Coke and a Smile down to perfection. We couldn't stop. People kept craning their necks over to look, because it sounded like some kind of fight was going on with all that slapping.
Ann Marie said, totally business-like, "I'll call my sister tonight for those Miss Mary Mack words." Then she had to stop herself and say, "Ann Marie, what are you talking about?"
Finally we left, having made a spectacle of ourselves as always.
Big beautiful snowstorm.
Then came a once-in-a-lifetime event: There was a bouncer at the door. Very chunky, no neck, flat top, He-Man Action Figure. He spoke to us and Ann and I were both immediately aloof.
"Hey, what was that hand thing you girls was doin'?"
Hand thing? Believe it or not, we didn't know what he was talking about. We looked at each other, confused, and he went on, imitating our patty-caking, "You know!"
Light dawned on us. "Oh! That!"
Ann confessed to this person, this stranger, "We can't remember the words to Miss Mary Mack though."
He said, "I do!"
So … he sang the words for us (with gusto too) and Ann and I patty-caked to his accompaniment. We made him do it 6 times.
It was so wonderful, so hilarious, so joyful: the snow coming down, our hands stinging, tears of laughter in our eyes, patty-caking on the sidewalk with his tough-guy voice singing:
"Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack
All dressed in black black black
With silver buttons buttons buttons
All down her back back back"
He kind of bounced up and down as he sang, too. I will never forget it! Totally classic!
"I hate to ask you this," Ann or I would say to him, breathless, "but could you do that one more time?"
All of his friends walked by during this insane time, and made fun of him mercilessly, but we couldn't stop. I felt that if we didn't keep going the spell would be broken, and Ann and I would be dressed in rags, and the bouncer would turn into a pumpkin or a mouse.
Finally we left, calling good-bye to our momentary soulmate joyously. It made us both so HIGH. We raved about it the whole way home.
And Jim arrived from London yesterday. He's staying with me and Mitchell.
Ann, Mitchell and I dragged Jim and his jet lag along to go see Pat. Ann and I are getting so juvenile and it's got to stop. We decided to "go glam", so she came over to primp with me. She had on this navy blue flowing thing with brass buttons (just like my eggplant flowing thing). I had on this long green blazer and flowing pants.
We were scurrying about like lunatics.
Jim and Mitchell were down the hall in Mitchell's room talking, but also listening to our girly blither from the bathroom. Mitchell informed Jim bluntly, "They're 7."
And at that moment, as if on cue, came the sounds of Miss Mary Mack from the living room.
We headed to Lounge Ax.
Jim was in some kind of Zen state. He said later that sitting in that bar, watching Pat and the cultish audience was unbelievable. "It was like Pat McCurdy was some kind of god."
Now, let me just tell two separate things that Pat said last night (I am so insane):
1. He began work on the new CD which will be called "Show Tunes". He announced to the audience in this monolithic voice, "There WILL be a duet on my new CD."
2. He also said, during the show, "Hey, you wanna hear a song I wrote last week? It's not finished yet." He began it and – for some reason – I thought: I wonder if this is the duet I'll be singing with him on his new CD. I took this HUGE LEAP in my brain that – the "duet" he mentioned was obviously gonna be with me – So suddenly I assumed that I would be singing on the CD and then I assumed that it would be this particular song. I know it sounds crazy – but actually, as it turns out, I'm not crazy at all. I have frighteningly good instincts, that's all.
Here's the latest: I WILL be appearing on Pat's new CD, and it WILL be that "song he wrote last week". So … maybe I'm not crazy.
Speaking of crazy, Ann and I basically stormed the stage to perform Coke and a Smile for all. Pat said, as we got up there, "These two met at one of my shows … and will soon be wed." He loves us.
Later on, Mitchell came back from the bathroom and said, "**** is here." He showed! I did not think he would! I was very happy.
The new thing Ann Marie and I say all the time is, "My heart cracks with love." So I heard that **** had showed up looking for me, and my heart cracked with love.
I'm a lunatic.
I went out to find **** and we hugged hello (a new development). Within two seconds, we were talking about his new apartment, his first apartment. I asked him how things were going. He conferred with me about how he cleaned out his coffee pot with vinegar: "You know how they tell you you're supposed to do that?" (Another heart-crack moment). He said the coffee still tasted like vinegar. "Is that supposed to happen? Will it go away?"
Me: How is your utensil situation?
****: We have one pan.
Me: Really. No pots? I would need at least one pot to cook my pasta.
****: We have one pan. The other day I fried an egg.
He kills me.
He makes fun of how I insist of finding coincidences all about me. I'll say to him, "God, isn't that so weird?? What do you think it MEANS??" and he responds flatly, "Sheer coincidence."
I told this to Ann Marie, and she said, "Thanks for the magic, ****."
So I said something to him, at Lounge Ax, about this "weird coincidence", and I started blithering in his face, wondering what it all meant – and he launched into this monologue about our mass-media instant-information society and how we are all bombarded with identical images, so that the chances for global "coincidences" skyrocket.
He really shot me down. Laughing in my face.
The night ended in a whirl of chaos. People swirled by and around us. Jim and Mitchell went home. There were group plans to hit the Emerald Queen.
(Ed: A bit of background: There was a nearby bar called "The Everleigh Club". The tradition was this: we would all go "to Pat", and then go over to The Everleigh Club. I had told **** this, when he started joining me "at Pat", "So after the show, what we all do is, we go over to The Everleigh Club." One night, wondering what was going to happen next, **** said to me, totally seriously, "So … now we go over to The Emerald Queen?" The EMERALD QUEEN. It immediately became folklore.)
Everyone calls it The Emerald Queen now. Rick goes to me, casually, as he passed by, "Meet us at The Emerald Queen, okay?"
**** wanted to finish his beer, so we decided to hang out for a bit and meet everyone over there. We sat at the bar talking about frying pans and velociraptors.
Pat came up from downstairs and came over to me. Said to me, "I have to talk to you."
"Why?"
"I have something to show you."
"Show me now."
"I can't. I don't have my guitar. Next week. Remind me, cause I might forget, but I really have to talk to you. Okay?"
"Okay."
Then he was gone, and the second he was gone, I blithered in poor ****' bemused face. "Did you hear that?? I think he wrote me a song!! I really think he did! I wouldn't be surprised if I were gonna be on his new CD!!"
"You are not gonna be on his CD." Total scorn from ****.
"I am too. I can feel it, ****. I can just feel it."
"You are NOT gonna be on his new CD."
"I am TOO."
(Ed: I was right. On all counts. Pat needed to talk to me about a new song he had written, which he wanted to record with me. I appear on the Show Tunes CD, in a duet with Pat McCurdy, entitled: "You and I Are Just About to Fall in Love".)
**** finally said, to shut me up, "I'm gonna be on Pat's new CD." This made me laugh, so he kept going. "I am all over Pat's new CD."
When **** is with me, his goal in life is to make me laugh. Whatever it takes.
Like Pat was nearby, talking to someone else, and **** would pretend to respond to a wave from Pat, ultra blasé, and say, "Hey, Pat, how's it goin', man…" – Meanwhile, Pat is totally not paying attention, so **** ended up looking like a pathetic loser, waving at someone who had no idea he existed. I was crying with laughter.
**** and I emerged onto empty Lincoln Avenue, and then walked over to The Emerald Queen. When we entered, the throngs hailed us. The JFK Jr. look-alike was working. He loves me. He loves **** (they used to bartend together.)
**** and I were ensconced in a corner at the bar, talking about the things we talk about.
I kept calling him a dirigible. I couldn't stop myself.
"Well, just think of yourself as a dirigible, **** … That is who you are to me. A total and complete dirigible."
The man should get a medal for dealing with me. But he loves it.
He said to me, "You're a different girl from the one I met a year ago."
"I am?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"The girl back then was much shyer than the girl now."
**** played pinball and as Ann left, she swarmed about him, teasing him, "I am in your life! I am in your life!" **** always responds to this by yelling, "You are not in my life!" He resists permanence.
**** had to get up early because his mother was coming over with a coffee table, that he raved about to me. He explained the coffee table to me in intimate detail. It was literally a 30-minute monologue (I am not exaggerating) about the new coffee table.
My heart cracks, repeatedly, with love.
on the new Matrix are coming in ...
Haven't seen the film yet, so I can't really comment.
All I know is, when Bill describes the two leads as having "all the personal chemistry of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman", I think: Damn ... That ain't a good sign.
... because tomorrow night I'm going to finally meet Mike, of Cold Fury - He's coming to town for the weekend, and I'm gonna go catch his band play tomorrow night with a girlfriend of mine.
And for Saturday - we have loosely planned some kind of Mike and Sheila pow-wow - he has called it a "symposium", involving alcohol, mild outbursts of insanity, shouting over the jukebox, and general merriment.
We also, basically, want to make fun of people who aren't us.
At least that's the plan.
However, one of my favorite sayings is:
How do you make God laugh?
You make a plan.
Regardless. Plan or no plan, looking forward to meeting the Cold Fury in person.
I don't really know how to write about this, but I'm just gonna start and see what comes out.
It's some thoughts about Elliott Smith, who, I'm sure many of you know by now, stabbed himself in the heart a couple weeks ago, and died.
I've always loved Elliott Smith's music - since I first heard him on the "Good Will Hunting" soundtrack.
Something in the sound called to me, in that rare way some musicians have. It's completely subjective, such a response. Certain chord changes, certain lyrics ... It's hard to put my finger on what exactly it might be that speaks to me in a certain person's music.
It's not just the melancholic stuff that appeals to me.
It seems to be a matter of affinity. The chords, chosen by whatever musician, and my own personality.
For whatever reason: certain sounds call me up out of myself.
Metallica can do that.
Foo Fighters can do that.
Lenny Kravitz can do that (sometimes)
Nirvana can do that
Certain Indigo Girls songs can do that (not all of them)
Certain James Taylor songs can do that.
Obviously - putting Metallica and James Taylor on the same list is an odd thing - but that is the beauty of music. It's completely personal.
But back to Elliott.
I have the "Good Will Hunting" soundtrack because of him, and I also have the "Royal Tenenbaums" soundtrack because of the one song of his on it. (The entire soundtrack is fabulous though ... just so you know!)
I read an interview with him when "Good Will Hunting" just came out, and he was suddenly catapulted onto a larger arena. Here was this guy - this very independent folk-rock musician - used to playing small clubs, tiny venues - on a world-wide stage. I liked him very much in the interview, although, in looking back on it, there were certain clues that all might not be right with him. (But then again: who can say "all is right with me at all times"?)
He was living in Queens, at the time, I believe, and would go to a bar every night, and sit there, by himself, all night, and write his songs there.
He offered up this picture of himself unapologetically.
It was actually a bit refreshing - although obviously the story reveals the dark undertones, the loneliness which clearly haunted him.
I don't know why I'm rambling on like this. I guess that I am just so very sad that he is gone - that he took his life in such a horrendous way - I completely feel for him. I cannot imagine what agony such as that must have been like, but it must have been tremendous. Tremendous.
The heart ... it is an organ, yes. But it is such a symbol too.
Our life. Our feelings. Who we actually ARE seems to be in our hearts. So ... to go straight to the source of the pain ... To get rid of the actual organ which holds so much -
God.
I came home last night, made a little dinner, poured some wine - and popped in Elliott Smith. For no real reason. One of his songs was on the Siobhan mix we all listened to on our drive north to Cashel - and that turned my thoughts to him again: Dammit, he is great - I need to listen to him again.
He said that he loved "upbeat" music. He loved the Beatles.
To me, the Beatles influence is obvious in his music.
I love that he loves the Beatles. There is an illusionary innocence in Smith's chord progressions - in the same way of the Beatles. Especially in "Rubber Soul", my favorite Beatles album. Every song on that album has almost an upbeat tune, a zippy little mood, but if you listen to the lyrics - it's all dark, and mournful, filled with loss. It's chilling, actually. A bit frightening.
Smith's songs are like that for me.
There is a profound melancholy suffusing it all. It is hard to put your finger on where that melancholy is. Is it in the tune? Not really ... The lyrics are admittedly bleak - But he sings them in an extroverted way ... not self-absorbed ... However, if you add them up, the songs are a treatise on depression
These lines in particular:
"I got a long way to go
I'm getting further away..." sung over and over and over.
If that doesn't describe the sensation of depression, then nothing does.
But still: the melancholy is not easily identified. It just is THERE. In everything he does. His lyrics are creepily sad and nostalgic - (that kind of "All good stuff is in the past" nostalgia. Not a happy or pleasant nostalgia.)
The chords sometimes are light, and happy-sounding - but still. There is something a little off.
You know that this man battles darkness. You just KNOW it.
I was listening to the "Figure 8" album, which is a terrific album. I want to make it clear that this album is not a downer. There are some tunes which make you tap your feet, each song has a great beat ...
It's a very deep album. There is a lot going on.
I felt myself getting more and more ... upset. As I listened. Thinking about him. Trying to fathom how he died. What he did to himself.
He didn't shoot himself. Or OD.
He stabbed himself in the heart.
There was that recent study (thanks, Danny) - that a broken heart actually DOES HURT.
Well, Jesus, you didn't need to run a study to figure that out! You could have just called me up and asked me! Ask anybody!
That's why people say, "My heart is breaking." That's why it's called "heartache".
What - some bozo thought that the "ache" was just a figure of someone's imagination?
I remember many times in my own life - lying in bed at night after getting my heart broken or whatever - and pressing my hand down on my aching heart. I am not talking metaphorically. My heart LITERALLY hurt.
I was trying to picture what was going on with Elliott Smith.
Obviously, he must have struggled with mental illness, along with addiction. I don't know much about him, though. But he must have been in complete psychic agony.
Agony so deep that he just wanted to make the pain STOP.
I remember going to hear Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill read a couple years ago. She's an Irish poetess. Who writes completely in Irish.
She has had her own struggles with depression and mental illness.
She said a couple of amazing things about it, stuff which has stayed with me.
One was that she was put on Prozac, and she didn't like what it did to her poetry. Normally, her poem lines had lengths of jagged edges - but once she went on Prozac "all my poems were like little neat boxes on the page." She said, "Prozac puts wallpaper over the abyss."
The other thing she said was, "Y'know, there is this feeling or this thought that suffering is ennobling." There was a long pause, and then she said, in this way I have never forgotten, "Not always."
All I can say is: That woman knows of what she speaks.
There is such a thing as too much suffering.
And Elliott Smith's face - he is (or was) a young man. But that is a face of a man who has had enough. He has had enough psychic agony.
I know a lot of this is hindsight. Projecting backwards.
In a way, I am glad his pain is over now. Pain like that is beyond my understanding. I may have felt like cutting my own heart on occasion, just to stop the ache, but to actually do such a thing?
Elliott Smith. Rest in Peace.
I will miss your music very much. But I am not sorry that your pain is now over.
Do not miss, whatever else you might read, this article on Reason, by David Barash in The Chronicle Review.
I have goosebumps. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Barash takes on the primacy of reason.
What is reason? Is un-reason always destructive?
He takes examples from literature, from poetry - he poses "logic" problems, which the reader must try to figure out.
Very eye-opening.
Listen:
To be sure, excessive reason is easy to caricature. Thus, at one point in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, our hero journeys to Laputa, whose male inhabitants are utterly devoted to their intellects: One eye focuses inward and the other upon the stars. Neither looks straight ahead. The Laputans are so cerebral that they cannot hold a normal conversation; their minds wander off into sheer contemplation. They require servants who swat them with special instruments about the mouth and ears, reminding them to speak or listen as needed. Laputans concern themselves only with pure mathematics and equally pure music. Appropriately, they inhabit an island that floats, in ethereal indifference, above the ground. Laputan women, however, are unhappy and regularly cuckold their husbands, who do not notice...Thus presented, to reject reason seems, well, downright reasonable.
That, basically, is the entire premise of the book Catch-22!
The only "reason"able thing to do in certain circumstances is to reject "reason".
As an artist, with a tumultuous psyche, and high emotionality, and yet also - as a cerebral book-worm woman, a person who must think things through on her own to come up with her own conclusions about things, I loved this section:
We may speak admiringly of Greek rationality, of the Age of Reason, and of the Enlightenment, yet it is far easier to find great writing -- and even, paradoxically, serious thinking -- that extols unreason, irrationality, and the beauty of "following one's heart" rather than one's head. Some of the most "rational" people have done just that.
Barash goes on to give many examples: Pythagoras, Issac Newton ...
And this quote from Rebecca West's astonishing encyclopedic book about the Balkans (if you ever have a free three months, you should check it out!!):
Anyway, West's quote really spoke to me:
"Only part of us is sane. Only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our 90s and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set life back to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations. Our bright natures fight in us with this yeasty darkness, and neither part is commonly quite victorious, for we are divided against ourselves..."
Damn, Rebecca, I hear what you're saying, girl.
FanTAStic essay, all and all.
Don't miss it.
(via Arts & Letters Daily)
A possibly simplistic statement of purpose and personality, but I want to get it out there, just so there is no doubt:
Last night I had acting class. More on that later.
We have a new student. He is from France. My training is the Stanislavsky system, Americanized into the famous "Method". Anyway, this new student, who hails from Paris, obviously comes from a very different theatrical tradition in Paris, with Comedie Francaise, etc. It does not interest him. He has been studying in Paris with an American, a member of the Actors Studio.
He loves American acting. He loves American actors.
Anyway:
I, obviously, have feelings about France, as a country.
I have very STRONG feelings about France, as a country.
My teacher was talking to the new student, trying to get a line on who he is, what his training was, what he was interested in.
New student said, in his French accent, "I want to work in America. The actors here are better. And ... I just like the lifestyle here better."
In a flash, my ideas of France separated itself from my ideas about the French.
Because he was speaking as an artist. What he needs and wants as an artist.
I would expect the same thing from artists everywhere - If I speak to actors in Mongolia, in Iran, in France, in Russia ... I am an artist before I am a nationality.
To me, art is the highest good. It is my highest truth.
The new student and I got to talking after class, and we walked across the rainy sidewalks, talking, getting to know each other.
He was lovely. Truly.
I asked him what his problems were with the "business" in Paris. (If you're an actor, you refer to theatre and film as "the business". There is no other business.) He described to me what it was like: basically any audition has to do with looks, not acting ability. He was shocked and taken aback by the fact that in auditions in America you are often asked to read from a script - and not just stand in front of the camera and give them your prettiest smile.
He feels he needs practice with "cold readings". (In case you don't know - that's when you walk into an audition, and they hand you "sides" - which basically means a "script" - but it's never the complete script - it's just the couple of pages they want you to read - and they give you 15 minutes to look over it, sometimes only 5 minutes ... and in that time, you have to make choices, HUGE choices, you have to make decisions about your character, you have to decide what you are going to do, how you are going to "make it real" - all based on no information.)
Anyway: as an American actress, I am completely comfortable with cold readings, because that's pretty much the standard practice.
But this French guy was horrified, terrified. He feels he needs more time to prepare, he is not comfortable with his command of the language (even though he obviously is very fluent). So he wants to practice this "cold reading thing" in class.
I love that: I love when actors are problem-solvers for themselves. You recognize your weaknesses, and then you set out to use your teachers or use your experiences in auditions to get over these weaknesses.
So I liked him immediately. I liked his attitude towards the work. He is obviously serious about his work.
He had a lot to say, as well, about what I did in class. More on that later.
We talked about Chazz Palminteri - and how he basically was not getting cast in the roles he thought he should be getting - and so he wrote a one-man show for himself, describing his childhood. Well, lo and behold, Robert DeNiro happened to go see the show, fell in love with it, and decided: "I've never directed before - but I would like to buy this script and direct it as my first film." Which, of course, is what he did, and it became "A Bronx Tale."
If Chazz Palminteri had not taken that risk - if Chazz P. had not decided: "Okay, I have to take my career into my OWN hands" - then who knows what would have happened to his career ...
We make our own luck.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are the perfect examples of that.
They were languishing about in small unimportant parts and decided: "All right. Let's write a VEHICLE for ourselves - a vehicle that completely plays to both of our strengths..."
Jesus. And they won an Oscar.
Anyway. This is where I am coming from now: I want to take my languishing career into my own hands and write my OWN STUFF.
French-student was so into it. "Do it! Do it! Then rent a space - and invite EVERYBODY. You can write, girl. You can write. Don't let anybody stop you. I wish I could fucking write like that. I look forward to seeing the show."
He was 5 steps ahead of me. It made me laugh.
We talked about the Stanislavsky system. We talked about short films we had done, and how we felt about our acting when we saw it up on screen. We talked about our interests as actors, what kinds of parts we were into. We talked about the Lee Strasberg Institute. We talked about wanting to immerse ourselves in our art - but then: ah, there is the problem of FUNDS. How to deal with that ...
Etc.
This is a long-ass way to get to a Mission Statement. But what the hell, my blog is called Redheaded RAMBLINGS.
Here we go
Art is the universal. The truth of art, and belonging to a community of artists, is the eternal thing for me. All else falls away as ballast.
I cherish, already, my conversation with French-man. In a matter of moments, we understood each other completely - through the context of our art. And our lives as artists.
When it gets right down to it, I don't care about anything else.
Art is the highest truth.
I will now steal, shamelessly, from Camille Paglia's great essay "No Law in the Arena". I agree wholeheartedly, and that was what I was present to last night - walking in the rain with a man from France - a country I am very angry with right now - but I didn't think about politics or nationality ONCE while we were talking - because who the fuck CARES??
Here's Paglia:
I look at history from the perspective of art, not morality. For me, civilization is art and art is the highest record of humanity.One day, when we represent ourselves to inhabitants of distant galaxies, it will be by our art that we will want to be known.
Amen.
The leaves up north were a-flame. Entire yards were completely covered in a blanket of sodden fiery yellow leaves. The streets were canopied over with blazing red, or deep purple. Colors to take your breath away. Wet hillsides, raging with color, low grey skies above.
There was a river down the street ... a raging tumultuous river ... catapulting itself down from the mountains ... filling the air with its chaotic sound. We went down there at night to look, shivering in our sweatshirts, teeth chattering, staring down at the foamy madness. Beautiful.
Cashel wore a bright orange hunter's cap.
The telescope gift was somewhat eclipsed (pun intended) by the deluxe Star Wars lego set.
I mean, please.
How could we compete with the Lego construction of the chamber where Han Solo was frozen up - complete with small carbonized Han figure (face screwed up in agony) and an actual chain which lifted Han's chamber up and down?
We did all huddle in the yard at night, with black clouds crossing over the half-moon, each taking turns with the telescope.
It truly was spectacular.
The craters were so clear, so vivid, you felt that you could reach out and touch them. Magnificent. Awe-inspiring. Makes one feel teeny-teeny-teeny, and yet also rather enormous, because, after all, one belongs to the race of beings who actually sent men up there!!
Cashel informed all of us, "We put men on the moon - but nobody has gone beyond the moon!"
He loved Apollo 13. I held him in my arms, while we waited for a turn at the 'scope, and discussed some of the issues in the film.
Cashel had to make sure I knew that the REAL STORY of Apollo 13 is that everything turned out ALL RIGHT. Yes, there was a near-disaster, yes, it was scary, yes, it was bad - "But they came home safe, Aunti Sheila! They came home safe!"
Yes.
We will not dwell on the negative, Cashel. They came home safe.
Oh, and speaking of "coming home safe" - the Aunties broke down in the car, not 10 minutes after getting on the road - at the beginning of our long journey.
It was 7 am.
A rattling sound grew and grew and grew - until suddenly - Auntie Jean lost control of the wheel - the steering belt had snapped, apparently - and calmly cruised us over to the side of the road. Where we sat for a bit.
Then came much improvising, many calls on cell phones, much discussion - much being on hold ... Triple A ... trying to come up with a Plan B - as cars hurtled by to our left.
Triple A man showed up within 20 minutes. Looked under the hood and immediately saw the snapped belt. He towed the car to Auntie Jean's garage --- with the 3 of us pig-piled on top of each other in his truck with him. Lucky man. The three of us were pretty much in a barely controlled state of hysterical laughter. Siobhan realized at one point that she was literally holding onto Jean's thigh with a death-grip, as we went around corners, and I realized at one point that I was gripping onto Siobhan's fur collar, with my own death-grip, during corners.
We basically needed a ride to the rent-a-car place in the next town and so who you gonna call? Friend Beth.
Too funny - after Beth dropped us off at the car place, I said, "Thank you SO MUCH, Beth - Thank you SO MUCH" - and as she slid back into the driver's seat, she called back, "Oh, no problem. I know I'll get a mention in the blog for this."
We ROARED.
Later in the weekend, Jean said to me something like, "I don't want THIS to go in the blog, okay??"
Ha ha ha
Finally: we picked up a rent-a-car, stopped and got some coffees, and were on our way, a couple of hours off schedule, which meant we would miss Cashel's party. Which made us sad.
We BLASTED music as we drove.
Charlie's Angel soundtrack. White Stripes. Eminem. A mix Siobhan made for Jean - awesome stuff: Johnny Cash, and others.
Further and further north ... into the hills, the mountains, the streets crowded up with trees, lakes off to the left, lakes off to the right, reflecting the silver sky, surrounded by this blazing gold - purple - red.
A family weekend.
Star Wars. Blueberry pancakes with chunks of butter.
Cashel does not like the butter to melt. As a matter of fact, he once ordered me, when I was making him toast, "Put the butter on so I can see it!" He actually called this to me from another room. Hilarious. We were laughing about it this weekend, and I said, "Suddenly, his voice sounded like Ray Charles' voice or something." Brendan said, "Well, that would be really interesting - for Ray Charles to tell you to put the butter on where he can see it."
Hm. Good point.
The Aunties all piled onto Cashel's bed with him, and tag-team read him a story.
(A terribly written story ... whatever it is. We kept making faces to each other, behind the book, so Cashel couldn't see.)
Cashel was leaning up against Auntie Siobhan, laughing, and happy. In his little pjs.
My heart hurts!! I feel like I could never be a parent because my love is too much.
A beautiful full weekend.
Flaming foliage, Cashel's happy face, raging river, endless cups of coffee, my parents smiling, uproarious laughter. Tears of laughter. Laughter that HURTS.
Oh, and to my little 6-year-old brave boy, here is my blessing for you:
(Do I have any fluent-in-Irish readers?? Oxblog Patrick? Do you? The translation of this may be very rough - I pieced it together on my own)...
A blessing (Beannact) for Cashel:
Go nueire an Bothar leat.
Go raibh an ghaoth go Brach ag bo chul.
Go lonrai an ghrian go te ar aghaidh
Go dtite an bhaistead go min ar do phairceanna.
Agus go mbuailimid le cheile aris
Go geoinni Dia i mbos A Laimhe Thu.
Well. I hope that says what I THINK it says.
It's the Irish Blessing. I just like the way it sounds better in Irish...
Blessings on you, my sweet little nephew, from Auntie Sheila.
... and then I will never mention it again.
I hesitated to even bring this up - but then thought: Okay. This issue is NOT a private issue - it has to do with my blog, and my blogging, and I've got to get this OUT.
Here's the situation:
I can feel that I am hesitating to write about my personal life now because I have a reader who is - freaking me out, honestly.
He appears to be a bit obsessed with me, he reads too much into the stuff I write, and seems to want MORE from me, basically, dying for me to fill in the "gaps and facades", as he calls them - He says my blog is filled with "red herrings". Red herrings? What? There are no red herrings. There is just what I choose to reveal. It's my blog. I am not bound to reveal ALL here. That's not the purpose of my blog.
If you find me unbearably mysterious, then that's YOUR problem.
This person has done what appear to be extensive Internet searches about my background, stuff which, quite honestly, freak me out. He tries to catch me in inconsistencies, he brings up completely obscure stuff from my own life in emails to me, which shows that he has spent a bit of time searching me out, and he seems to feel that ... because I reveal stuff here on my blog, because he has commented here occasionally, and because we have emailed back and forth (like I do with MANY of my readers - I don't want THAT to stop!!), that we are deeply intimate friends. That he somehow "knows" me. His tone is too intimate for me - It creeps me out.
I have made a lot of friends through blogging. I correspond with a wide range of people. I enjoy it tremendously. I haven't experienced any weirdness with any of my pen-pals, until this moment.
Now: Notice the warning I have added over by my email address.
That warning does not apply to people I already know and trust - but to anyone who comes to me out of the blue, and starts acting too familiar with me, or behaving, in general, like a weirdo - I will post your emails word for word, and leave you open to the scorn of many.
I figured I would bring this out to the open, because I want to write on my blog in my own way, and I will write on my blog in my own way, with no worries towards readers who feel that I reveal too LITTLE - who want MORE - whose behavior, quite frankly, verges on the creepy.
I love the community I have started to form here. I love my regular readers - Danny and Mighty Jimbo and Easycure and David Foster and Terry Reynolds and Steve Silver and Bill and Emily and Patrick and many many others.
I enjoy our conversations. I enjoy your comments. Everything is right with the world.
I like to write about politics. I like to write about art. Occasionally I like to tell stories from my own life.
I don't want that to change.
I don't want one weird-o apple to spoil the whole bunch.