Picking Through

I found this file of nonsense the other day, it's over a year old. Some of it I actually like and will now copy and paste here. Wish I remember writing it.

I am typing on a Thursday. I am trying to listen to Terry Gross interview the guy who played Stringer Bell on The Wire but I am typing, and my brain is actually confused. Now I am not listening to Fresh Air. Now I am ear bud-less, wishing for stories that will never be. It would be nice to set my sights on a tangible. A tangiggle. Typing as if it means something as if what I have to say is more than simply dogswaddle. Cockamamie craptastic cookaloo. I would like, desperately, to be made of stronger stuff. Stronger stuff. Stronger stuff that breaks and bends and bullies and belts and blisses and belies and burdens and believes and blesses.

And then there was this little passage. Just all these little pieces.

She is like a bird. A bird that has been dipped, repeatedly, in oil, so she constantly has this wet hair plastered to her skull—which you can make out quite well. I write what I write when I write it and I say what I say without thinking twice. Except that I think three times, or more, afterwards. And I cry over my imperfections, cry on the inside…all quiet-like. All secret pain. All demons and hellfire and taking the path of least resistance and being salty when I should be sweet and being silent when I should be loud and being deafeningly annoying when I should be smartly aloof. I have all the characteristics of a winning personality, but they never quite come out in the order necessary to win anything other than a great distance between me and those with whom I’d like to be close. If only I was dead sexy these flaws would be easier to swallow. It’s simply a fact. You can be loved more easily if you are beautiful. People are willing to put up with a lot more when they like looking at you and like knowing that others like looking at you too.

And finally.

Her arm trailed behind her, her hand a dim-witted anchor brushing up against the bricks of the building’s wall. They were not old, these bricks, not filled with some sort of history she could pick up through the coarse bristle of the mortar on her fingernails. No colonial tang of dirt and sweat.

Reading

New prompt responses should probably trickle in throughout the day. Mine is already up. I like it. It's kind of dirty. Kind of.

Pretending

Months back I went through a serious Of Montreal phase. Their song Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games, in which there is a line that I really liked, was particularly appealing to me (I realized later that this was, in part, because Outback Steakhouse had appropriated the song...with changed lyrics...for an ad campaign a while back, so it seemed familiar). Meanwhile, I was thinking about pick up lines and boys (if you can imagine) and began to like the idea of writing a series of vignettes from the perspectives of women, and maybe men, who are all approached by the same man. Here is the first, and only, vignette I have written, just to mix things up (and make me feel like I still write sometimes).

Let's Pretend We Don't Exist, Let's Pretend We're In Antarctica

I didn't know any better. I didn't know it was a line in a song. He said it to me and I pictured us under a mountain of blankets, an unseen tundra's worth of pure frigid air being pushed around our small pocket of burning cozy warmth. A bump. A tiny bump on the horizon, which wouldn't count in the greater scheme of things … that would barely, if at all, exist. A warm spot in a cold map, a tiny little red blip one millionth of a millionth of the size of a speck of dust. I thought he was asking me to nest. To make it about us at the cost of all others, or something. I didn't really want to exist as I was, and winter was coming…and so I kissed him.

Turns out he did this frequently, quoting song lyrics to see if those around him were able to pick them out and identify them. My kissing him was not the right answer to the test to which he was subjecting me. But it wasn't wrong either. It's like those fill in the blanks that are subjective; the teacher knows what they expect the answer to be and most all the students either write that assumed response or guess wildly but, on occasion, a child will come at the question from such a wholly new direction that admiringly, or begrudgingly, the teacher must give them full credit … and rewrite the question for the next year's class. In our version of this situation, of course, I didn't realize it was a test, nor did I realize the possibility of next year's class.

It was a nice kiss. Though initiated by me, he quickly took the lead. This made me more certain that I understood the purpose of his phrase, the meaning of his glance, the slight curl of his lips, the tightening of his cheekbones' skin and overall lift of his brow: he was asking me to spend forever with him, staying warm.

Wine c/o WineO

Last week A.S. and I went to WineO. J., the Bard grad I met at the Dollar Store Reading, emailed me to let me know that a friend of his, and others, were reading at the establishment, and I thought that would be a properly literary thing for me to do. We sat at the bar for a littl while and had a nice enough Pinot Grigio.
I photoshopped the hell out of this photograph.
The reading itself was, well, I'm thankful that J. contacted me because I do want to get out there and get a little more connected to people writing things I like...but this was really just not it. It was also more of a members-only event, specifically designed (as far as I could determine) for the Temple MFA program. Every one has their own vision. Every one has the right to write whatever they like. I guess I just felt, rather strongly actually, that the three different readers we heard were still working on perfecting their voices and stories in rather major ways (which is not to say that I am not still perfecting my voice and story nor that there comes a moment when that impulse should be extinguished). Sigh. I had other thoughts or feelings, but I realize that they were all negative. Also, the bartenderess was a bit off-putting.

Photo Errors

Well, I was going to post the fireworks photos I just spent half an hour photoshopping, but supposedly they have internal errors, which I think is a lie.

Mr. Ass came by for an impromptu dinner on Friday, the contents of which I will keep a secret since it will eventually have its own post, and asked me (as he always does) if I was writing. I said no, not really. That I had plenty of ideas with potential, but the actual sitting and writing of them escapes me, and has done so for months and months and months and months. He asked me what conditions were best for me writing and my first answer was this: 9 am, three years ago. It was a glib answer, but not entirely untrue. I have always written or had ideas for projects for my own pleasure and brain, but the school environment has proved itself to be where I am most productive. This, of course, suggests I'm a better student than I am a writer.

Years and years ago I acquired a photo album of a family from Chicago, most of the images from one of the two sons' younger years up through high school. The ebf, at a later point in time, bought the companion album to the first, with photographs of this young man as an older son. Something about the fact that these albums ended up in a junk store in Farmville, Virginia struck me. There had to be a story about how how this, seemingly loved, boy who, like them all, must have grown up to be a man didn't have any one to care about keeping this record of his youth. It was also clear that his mother was French, and I conjectured that his parents met through the war. So, I began to construct a story about the mother before she married an American and moved to Chicago. That, in turn, led me to begin the process of researching that era. To see if what I wanted her life to be would make sense with the actual conditions of time and place. I started her narrative in the first person, never sure how it would lead to what I considered the main thread: the boy. And I continue to do research and look at these images, but the narrative, the actual prose on paper or in the computer, doesn't exist.

My novel. The beast. So topical, four years ago, is quickly becoming less and less so. What I considered the whole story, I now feel, is in some ways just the beginning of another story, another story I don't know how to write. Not to mention the gaps in the existing document that need to be plugged. It is a sinking ship. A sinking ship that I love, and don't want to let go of because I see its merit, I see its worth, I see how much it could be if only I could get my act together.

Then there are the essays about photography and memory. K. and C. were in town Saturday until an hour ago, and when they first came I showed them my room and pointed out where they were in the mosaic of photographs and images I have pinned to one of my walls. I also mentioned that I had plenty of photographs from our college and post-college years, in nice little photo albums, for their perusal if they wanted. They were excited and I don't know if it was C. or K., but one of them used the descriptive label of archivist to my person. And that is certainly true, I do archive things (perhaps not up to a librarian's standards) but at what cost? Because, lately, I have been feeling that my memory and my insistent need to remember people and places is, at this point in time, working against me. This was something I touched on in an essay back in grad school, but more in terms of my days as a more creative/precise/driven photographer.

Things I'm thinking about, pretty much the same things I've been thinking about forever but getting nowhere with. And the feeling of getting nowhere, on so many fronts, has, I think, been wearing me down for so long that I think it's funny. Except, really, I think it's sad. And the obvious thing to do, in every aspect I am thinking of (writing, reading, meeting people, losing weight, publishing etc) is to just get on with it. Just start changing. And yet, my need to remember my past (successes and/or failures) takes up so much time and energy...that and I am quite stubborn and lazy when it comes to the present.

Cousinly Salon

A cousin of mine hosts what I like to think of as a literary internet salon type dealy...I'm not actually sure how she would categorize it...and you can read an essay I wrote a while back there. Many long time readers probably already have. But newer readers might like to read my Veronica Mars essay...especially because I've started a second installment...but it will be a Buffy inspired trek.

Sunday

Sunday was beautiful...it seems it was also beautiful in New York and Chicago...and I can only assume it was beautiful in Key West too, the bastards. At some point in the afternoon I borrowed T. and C.'s car and did a few errands (groceries, resume paper etc). It has been quite a while since I drove a car. Last time was in North Carolina and that was driving to a dentist's appointment. It felt good, if a little nerve racking, to be driving on such a warm (we're talking definite low 60s) day. It was the kind of day, back in college, that I would definitely drive to the Dunkin Donuts order me a huge iced coffee and then drive around the country roads of the mid-Huson Valley region. So I went through a Starbucks.
Then took my computer out back and did a little writing, a little sipping. I wasn't alone...in the sitting...I don't think C. sipped nor wrote.
Casper was a good lying down outside dog.

Working On It

The latest "unit" in the monstrous and unyieldy photo essplorationay.


I am on E's left. We are standing in front of my Volvo under Crash Landing's driveway. I am wearing a grey visor. You can't exactly make out the orange letters, but it says GAP with frayed edges along the outside of each letter. I called it my ironic visor. I liked wearing it on long car rides and at other times that seemed appropriate. I think I look like I'm about to laugh or that I just said or was about to say something I thought was funny. I'd like to imagine that when the photograph was taken I was thinking that, though it was awkward for my mother to be taking a photograph of E and me, it was a good thing as well. I think I was happy. I didn't know E. that well, still, and the sex wasn't as good as it was going to get. We were a preliminary couple. He is smiling, showing teeth. He still has the eyebrow ring I hated that was always getting infected. We drove to his home in Virginia after the photograph was taken. We took adderall for the drive and E matched me cigarette for cigarette for a large portion of the trip. At the time the fact that he did this wasn't strange to me, I can't remember if I'd seen him smoke a cigarette ever before. Looking back it was a very strange thing for him to do. Something he never did again. He took to pretending to eat my cigarettes and throwing packs into the street or onto the floor.

On that trip, I think, I told E that I loved him accidentally. I remember being surprised when I realized what I said. I wasn't entirely sure it was true. I tacked on a 'you're so funny' to try to take it back. He had said something funny. It's a shame I can't remember what he actually said. It would be handy to have the ability to see if the comment was worth a declaration of love.

A few months after the photograph was taken, my mother sent me a package. In it were two identical frames with identical photographs of E and me in Tennessee about to drive off to Virginia. At the time of the photograph we had been dating for four months. So perhaps we had reached the sixth month mark before the frames arrived, I don't know. I felt funny about the two frames, one for me and one for him. It seemed too soon for physical objects especially matching ones provided by my mother. I told E about the two frames, I think, but I didn't give him his. I took the photograph out and gave it to him but kept the frame. Though I felt uncomfortable giving E that kind of keepsake, for fear of seeming to be moving too fast, I did keep my framed photograph intact. And when I moved into a new apartment it was on my mantelpiece, I think. Then in Chicago it was placed in both living rooms we shared. We look young, the two of us, and amused. The frame now is in the second drawer of a dresser in the dining room. It is full of envelopes, shitty pens and out of date stationery.

I eventually filled the other frame with a photograph of L, E and me in the Bard College studio arts building, the night before L and I graduated. R.S. took the photograph. L is wearing a 1980s prom dress monstrosity and a hot pink wig. It looks like E was just holding her and she's sliding off or she's hoisting herself up. I am moving towards the camera, one hand grabbing at it, my mouth in mid-syllable. I didn't want R taking the picture, I didn't have many very left (before the digital age became omnipresent, if you can believe it) and R seemed to be a little cavalier in his framing. It turned out to be the perfect representation of that night and many other nights like it. We drank too much, partied too hard and, in this specific instance, I almost missed graduation because of it, but the night was a lot fun. Or I think it was. I don't quite remember the very end of it, of course.

Can I always remember the nuances of context and my thoughts if given a photograph as a reference point? Perhaps not. But I can look at a framed image and know that (at least half of the time) the people within the image are lost to me now. Often enough that is a sad thing but not always. The first year after graduation I stuck around the Bard College area. I did this, in part, because E was still in college down the road and I wanted to stay near him, I wanted to give "us" a chance. But another reason I didn't pack up and drive away from the area was because I had no idea where to go or what to do and so staying in a small town, working at a suffering restaurant and then a sheep farm seemed to make sense. Of course most of my classmates and friends did move away from the area with diplomas in hand. This led to a social vacuum that I filled by inviting acquaintances (and remaining friends in the area) to my house once a week (Mondays, I believe) for 'adult macaroni and cheese night'. Adult because the dish included five kinds of cheese and didn't come in any shade of bright orange. Each week I would make this dish, buy a bottle of vodka, orange juice and lemonade and each week 4-10 people would show up and eat the food and drink the vodka. I have hundreds (literally) photographs of these nights and their ever rotating participants. One night we ended up going to a nearby bar after the food was consumed. T, the bowtied bartender, took a photograph of that week's crew: me, E.S., I.M., K.M., A.R. and R.P.M (actually he's not in the photograph but I really feel like he should be). We all look more sober than we were (though, upon closer inspection we all have water in front of us...so maybe we weren't entirely 'schnockered') and just as entertained as we were. When I look at this framed image I don't feel sad. I don't really feel like I especially miss any of the people in the photograph. They are simply people of the past. Drinking buddies, social fillers and former neighbors. But that is unkind because I remember that general time period, or at least those Monday night get-togethers, fondly. Though I don't actively miss any of the people in the frame, I do appreciate what they brought to my life at the time: fun, silliness, drunkenness, conversation and distraction. How long does it take to know someone? Forever. It's about whether you like who YOU think they are as you continue to get to know them.

Not Food

I've been picking up and reading then putting down The Eleventh Draft for a few weeks now. Every time I start reading an essay about "craft and the writing life from the Iowa Writers' Workshop" I find a little nugget that makes sense to my own 'process' then I get a strong desire to write and then sometimes I do.

This morning I read this little nugget by Jayne Anne Phillips:

"Writers do chastise themselves, with seriousness and skill...Some turn with relief to letter writing or diaries, free of the pressure of perfection, choosing words to entertain or communicate. Happy at the prospect of a wholeheartedly interested listener, the writer engages a distant correspondent or some version of a private, non-artist self."

I used to write a lot of letters but as email became less and less vogue and more and more just the way, I lost the majority of correspondents. So blogging became my letter writing though without one particular reader (let alone a wholeheartedly interested one) and leaving out a good majority of my private life and thoughts. I was a very good journal writer up through college though my production level in recounting the small details of my daily life also dried up as I became a bit jaded about why it mattered in the first place. So now blogging is the main way I record my life. It is true that I can go back through my archives to any post and usually can remember more than just the meal or movie, usually I remember the larger context in which it was written...how I was feeling, what I was really thinking. I also can see what was about to come that I didn't know about.

This morning I woke up on time but was having such a wonderful/strange/vivid dream I hit snooze and then, because the dream was so good I refused to wake up again and managed to hit off instead of snooze at some later alarm interval. I still had/have plenty of time before work to make a cup of tea, get dressed, check my email, read a little, smoke one of my (now 8) cigarettes of the day and blog. I could just as easily have made the tea, dressed, smoked the cigarette and written a bit of my novel but I didn't. Then I read a bit of the aforementioned book and thought, well I still have an hour perhaps I should get down to it...but instead I decided I would blog.

There was another quote from another essay that I liked from Ethan Canin's Smallness and Invention:

He's talking about trying to write awesome, perfect stories for his Iowa thesis.

"Nothing, of course, came of my attempts. I sat frozen at the keys for hours at a time, imagining not only completed stories, but stories already on their swift flight to acclaim. I saw readers moved, as I was, to inexplicable tears. In this manner I wrote four, five, six beginnings. Then I gave up. As it turns out, the only thing that saved me was the despondency that finally forced me to abandon grandiosity and start once again with a small event...I had no idea where the episode would go, but I started by imagining a man whose neighbor wants to cut down his elm tree. Nothing more. No hopes. No messages. No finale. The only way to circumvent the pressure was to sneak in around it, I discovered, to trick the mind, which so easily runs ecstatically or dismally ahead of itself, onto a path of small invention. That path, it seems to me, is a maze, and the writer is not above it but inside it."

I am currently trying to decide if the next step in my own maze is having one of my characters meet a man with a dog in an isolated area, two teenagers looking to get high in an isolated area or a scary homeless man in an isolated area. I have written the guy with the dog scenario. Before she meets any of these versions, she is convinced that the footsteps and voice(s) she hears will lead to her own death...she's scared but she's had a bad couple of weeks and is perversely expectant about it. She's not going to die, I don't think, but I'm unclear as to whether all the fear and emotion she's let build inside would best be dealt with by guy with dog/teenage hoodlums/homeless guy. I have a sinking suspicion that I'm going to have to write all three possibilities out. This is altogether unappealing. The outcome for each is the same: she lives and goes back to her apartment to find a phone message from another friend. But what, exactly, happens and how that effects her specific emotional story arc is unclear. I take the baby steps. I don't go into writing with a grand concept of "what it all means". All's I'm trying to do is write a good story for goodness sakes. But when even the baby steps seem like giants' strides, well, Ethan Canin, what do you do then?

I guess you blog and leave the novel file unopened.

So I'm Writing A Novel

So I'm writing a novel. I've been writing it for a while. I think the last time I really mentioned it on the blog I was pleased to find I had 95 pages. Now I'm pleased to have 134 pages. I'm also pleased that I have a bit of a game plan for the novel. I don't know how it's going to end but I know that I'll have a complete rough draft by my birthday (end of November, you are all welcome to send me presents...though I won't be giving out my address so, hmmm, guess no presents for me). Yesterday I wrote this line. It's gross but I kind of like it...my character's taking a walk along a sewage-like creek in Silver Spring, Maryland and she sees a used condom:

"The reservoir tip swelled with a stranger's semen and resembled a surrealist's depiction of a pimple aching to be popped. Did they use it twice?"

Yup. Novel. Writing one. It must be finished.