February 2010
41 posts
January 2010
42 posts
last night
I could hear the promising thump of giant fireworks being let out of their cannons. I stood in the front lawn in damp nighttime air and waited for the lights to shine on me, watching the trails of smoke snake toward one another from the four corners of the earth.
I hope fireworks mean revelation, not eventual the loss of something bright.
“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own...”
– J.D Salinger (via theimpossiblecool)
what came of storytime
This weekend I explained copying and scavenging to a four-year-old, dinosaur-loving brown-eyed freckled beam of light. In the first story we read, we came to a page in which a sister pig got tired of her younger brother always copying. The supporting illustration was of the black and white brother-sister piglets in bright red lipstick. The sister had her hand hoof on a pig hip. I paused. I asked...
and his 53rd birthday is today, too
I have dreamt of him for two nights in a row. I tend to dream of my dad when things are calm in my life and when I feel at my most good and most loved.
Last night, he and mom were smoking cigars and exhaling plumes of swirling smoke and I, of course, didn’t want to be left out. So Dad handed me one, but it kept falling apart in my mouth, he continued to instruct me, gently: “you...
Carl Jung
“There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.”
Anonymous
For peace of mind, retire as the general manager of the universe.
From "People People", Antonya Nelson
“Elaine had never been able to mentor Martha. Her sister and their mother had always scorned what Elaine knew—those feminine pastimes of lipstick and gossip and flirting and crying, praising and hugging and lying, of remembering a thousand birthdays, of having an arsenal of costumes, complete with matching undergarments and shoes, handbags, facial expressions, and strategies.”
Navel-gazing on navel-gazing
The industrial revolution changed it all, or so the theses go. As cities begat real privacy (previously unheard of) and we all started thinking more, collectively, psychology sprang up and Freud sat in his backyard naked. He and everybody else thought about the deep inner self, so then the literature from this time also sought the elusive self. Modernists, then, produced a collective body of work...
in today's edition of...
The HarpiesThe Harpies were birds with women’s upper bodies. Yes, please!
The Catorialist (yes, it's what you think) →
Mr. Magorium / Dustin Hoffman
“Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.”
Charlotte Rampling
“You go though a period of immense pain when reality meets the dream.”
movie lines // city kids
I keep forgetting this, but in Gun Barrel City, Texas, just outside of Cedar Creek Lake, I had a first four days ago.
The woman at the Post Office looked at me and then looked at Adam and said, rather sweetly:
“Y’all…y’all aren’t from around here, are you?”
Wrong Map, Jared Walls
setmysights:
Wrong Map Let’s move the furniture. Let’s have a party. Stevie Nicks will be on the stereo and it’ll be fun. We’ll make a place in the corner for all our sad friends to stand and memorize each other’s shoes, their shadows bisected by the floor and the wall. We’ll be the only ones dancing. We’ll be the only ones with beer bottles sprouting from our mouths like trumpets. We’ll...
Yesterday
We fell asleep in the hammock outside wrapped in a king sized comforter and awoke to the dusk sky and bare branches just barely shuddering in the breeze. Some unidentified fowl made a ruckus taking off from the lake.
Today I have written with a pen and with these keys and read 165 pages of The Glass Castle and played Wii sports.
Now he is singing “you don’t have to call me...
Bob Dylan
When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don’t back down and don’t give up - then you’re going to mystify a lot of folks.
the sting
of an insult could be described in the following similes.
His words hurt…
like a rug-burn ruining an adventurous romp.
like an adult’s dismissal of your opinion.
like I imagined the cracking of a green branch might sting a tree.
His words nagged at me in the same way a misplaced and vital document (say, a Passport) refuses to retreat from consciousness until it is either searched...
“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into...”
– Woody Allen (via thechocolatebrigade)
James Allen
“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.”
wrapping up
Tomorrow morning I am leaving Kansas and heading back to Texas. There will be eight hours in a car and time for reading Faulkner aloud and listening to This American Life and New Yorker fiction podcasts and playing cow poker, maybe.
It will be a winter drive and a long one, but it will take us both to the same state, and it will take me home. I have been entertaining lingering memories of my...
Gloria Naylor
“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
decades
Some things I liked in 2000 but do not maintain/enjoy in 2010:
The Real World reality television program
Abercrombie 8 and Hollister Co. perfumes
The movie Armageddon
Spaghetti-strap tank tops, engineered to show off unnecessary bra straps
Choker necklaces
Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour magazines
And some things I liked in 2000 and STILL maintain/enjoy in 2010:
Flannel
Top 40...
heavy drapes
Driving past houses and peering in at heavy, unattractive drapes makes me heartsick. It’s even worse when the windows are West- or South-facing, and I know the heft of the fabric serves the express purpose of reducing sunshine. I picture lonely kitties wandering around bereft of sunbeams.
It’s even worse in the winter.
Coco Chanel
The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.
“Don’t you know you can’t do anything about people?”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (via nevver) (via libraryland) (via setmysights)
2010
I resolve to write five days a week and that starts today, no matter what comes out. He is bringing back Fiji water and the squirmy cat has just been thrown out of the room. It is nine a.m. and we are hungover, but last night was one of the better New Years Eves.
You know, the ones where no petty arguments break out and no one loses a shoe and more pictures are taken with disposable than digital...