December 2009
37 posts
Carl Jung
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
(This is the stuff of new year’s resolutions.)
what happens when you fall asleep reading Faulkner
I dreamt of a giant barn whose uptake was both my responsibility and my guilt. It was in total disarray. I dreamt of fire ants crawling up and down my arms and someone’s voice echoing in my head that I should’ve known, it is Texas, after all.
And then I dreamt of worse things, the kind that make me shiver and not feel like sharing. But I am awake now, and the sun is still shining, and...
Orson Welles:
“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”
blizzard reading
Oscar Wao finally finished.
3 Saunders short stories from “Civilwarland in Bad Decline,” consumed.
Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, in progress.
Silly articles from Vanity Fair on Meryl Streep and cranky British royals, finished while sobering up last night. Perhaps a waste of time, there.
White Teeth, Z. Smith, in progress…
…(this one makes me ache to read, because she...
Kenneth Burke // Counter-Statement // fiction talk
“Thus, the great influx of information has led the artist also to lay his emphasis on the giving of information—with the result that art tends more and more to substitute the psychology of the hero (the subject) for the psychology of the audience.” pg. 32
“Music, then, fitted less than any other art for imparting information, deals minutely in frustrations and fulfillments of desire, and for that...
Dr. Seuss // Christmas Eve
“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ‘till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if...
“1. the path is not straight.
2. mistakes need not be fatal.
3. people are...”
– Marion Winik
what happens when you fall asleep reading Saunders
I dreamt that I was seated in luxurious leather booths so big and stuffed that when one person sat down, another popped up. Everything in the room (restaurant?) was bathed in sepia colors and warmth.
On the right of Adam sat a woman who I had seen before and who was much older and looked and seemed quite a bit like the actress Jane Lynch. Adam and I were writing, and the ideas were literally...
What I actually did yesterday
Write Read and all but finished Oscar Wao (today!)
Watched Julie&Julia with m.a.m.
Vacuumed out his car and took it through the automatic car wash
Picked out new glasses for Christmas @ Crandon&Crandon that definitely make me look more than a pinch nerdy
Picked up Pachamama’s star bar, shared a bottle of red, and hit re-start w/ m.a.m.
Today should yield cookies and booze in the...
“Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do...”
– Minor Myers Jr.
m.a.m. got me a left-handed guitar for Christmas.
(And a lifetime supply of free lessons.)
“God said ‘Ask and you shall receive’, he didn’t say...”
– Tony Robbins
“Death tugs at my ear and says, “Live, I am coming.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
a very brief movie review of the sports and race...
The Blind Side: Yay
Invictus: Nay
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come...”
– Howard Washington Thurman
remember the day he asked:
So what’s up? Are you going to be a writer, or what?
I have taken to...
sitting on the closed toilet in the bathroom, door closed and laptop on knees, when I need to really focus.
It’s warm in here, too.
“It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always...”
– Emerson
re: The Blind Side
Rachelle: i love movies about
1. race relations
2. football uplifting stories
3. heartwarming thinners
and 4. sassy southern women
so i'm sure I will like it even if it is lousy!
me: LOLOLOLOL
(so LOL)
“once the town knew
a dying man had
been
lost
waiting for the blinking red...”
“Every shadow, no matter how deep, is threatened by morning light.”
– The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky
Arrival, by William Carlos Williams
And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom— feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind … !
kristenfromkansas:
copycats:
Merry Christmas...
“And you would accept the seasons of your heart just as you have always accepted...”
– Kahlil Gibran
a mathematical query: taste and time-investment
What if CDs had extensive reviews printed on them, the way that books do? Why is it important to know what approximately 2 other writers, the Chronicle, and New York Times critics think of a book before you purchase it, but not important to know what accolades an album may have received? (That is, aside from those cute little gold Grammy-shaped stickers they affix to the plastic. But those...
Kundera is a genius.
Like all of culture, the novel is more and more in the hands of the mass media; as agents of the unification of the planet’s history, the media amplify and channel the reduction process; they distribute throughout the world the same simplifications and stereotypes easily acceptable by the greatest number, by everyone, by all mankind. And it doesn’t much matter that different political...
“Gratitude is heaven itself.”
– William Blake
“I dream of men who take the next step instead of worrying about the next...”
– Theodore Roosevelt