Don't get me wrong, I'm breathing just fine, but there is a sense of suffocation in my life; there are too many people in the world. I mean it, there are too many babies and toddlers and tweens and teens and college students and dropouts and middle agers and too many old folks. I have nothing personally against any but one of them, it's not that I want anyone to die, I am just worried that we are too many books on a table whose legs are silently, slowly giving out.
I imagine my tiny little life in the upstairs left of a four-plex, with my one little dog and my husband, and we grow a little bit of our food and try hard to buy locally when possible. Then I multiply that by seven billion and I get worried that we're overwhelming the ecosystem. Even if we are okay, as in, even if we can afford all our bills and we're getting along just fine and the dog is in good health, there's still the fact that we are too many books on a table whose legs are silently, slowly giving out.
More specifically, I'm suffocated by the feeling that I cannot think any original thought. That's a horrible thing, isn't it; not being able to invent some twist on the existing, some new form of the old? What if everything I'm writing has been written before, or is being written right now, by someone more charming and more marketable than me? That a person is pondering the same questions, drawing the same conclusions, right now, somewhere else, is a frightening prospect that I can't seem to shake. I feel like a speck.
Also, I was recently rejected from the English Master's program I applied for, and so of course that makes me feel specky too. Rather than take it in stride, cry a bit and move on, I'm handling this is in the healthiest way I can think of: taking it as a personal insult and searching madly for justifications to give up on the whole enterprise of writing for the rest of my life. I lost the magic, the strange spiritual halo that surrounded me and kept me always being honored and praised for work I hardly lifted a finger to complete. Everything must be different now, now that I'm old and overgrown and past the stage for new beginnings. I serve tables, and I don't even have much of a reputation for succeeding at that. I'm 26. This must be the end.
Listen here. I did always know that I wasn't magic, and the work I did was probably much harder than I like to think. I'll never give up writing, I can't. I think as a writer and I can't stop thinking, even when I try. I'm a child, in age and experience, and I'm probably pretty good at my job. I've got a whole knapsack of flaws strung over my shoulder, but I'm deeply committed to working on them. I've been lethargic because I'm afraid of the mistakes I've made, the wrong directions I've taken to marching off in. In a search for peace, I've found quiet and I need the noise back in my life. In my quest to separate myself from friends I've had who were a danger to themselves, myself and others, I've run off to solitude, preferring my little family and a pen to the world around me. I'm overcorrecting. I need to straighten out.
So instead of shopping and laundry and the tired anxiety I maintain toward my messy house, I need to focus on telling stories. I do. I really need to sharpen my glaring inadequacies and stab the page with them, slicing it's flesh and spilling the literature I'm so damn scared I might let out. I'm not a normal girl. I'm not a little speck among the billions, suffocating with generic experiences. I grew up strangely, in a family that wandered to the beat of some angry, maniacal drum off in the distance. My infant self never developed a sense of object permanence. I never believed that what was gone would return, and as such I missed out on almost all forms of trust. In the first grade, I tried desperately to outsmart God before deciding, in the end, that sadly, he is false. Also, I am way more annoyed by daily life than a normal human, so that's original. And I'm going to New Zealand in a week. All of that rolled together should create some kind of literary burrito that might possibly result in the taking seriously of my dreams.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!! [confetti] You have just used your 10,000,000,000th comma!
I have to develop and evolve. Even if everyone else is doing it too.
4.25.2011
3.29.2011
room
I've seen a movie called "The Room" which was really quite painful to see and now to think of again.
The book I just read, called "Room" by Emma Donoghue, conjured up a similar type of emotional reaction, though it wasn't from comical incompetence the way the former did. I'm feeling the sense of overwhelmed hypocrisy represented by the narration of the 5 year old boy in the story, Jack, and finding myself paranoid about small spaces, even not wanting to get in the car with my dog. I'm glad to have read the story, but I'm glad it's over.
Also, lightning is attacking New Orleans tonight, which is creating a wonderfully rainy breeze. The swamplands are soaking it up, and so are my peppers. I'm delighted by the wet aesthetics of my view- the shiny leaves and healthy soil, and a shabby layer of cracking paint on the balcony that seems put there to remind me that this house is not my own.
So I have this messy house which is a perfect sanctuary from the wind and rain, complete with a strangely comforting soundtrack of videogame noises from the other room and dreamy whelps from my sleeping dog. Aside from the sneaking suspicion that my laundry isn't bustling away sorting and washing itself, and the subconscious fear of an unseen divide from my family and home, it's all just a slow midnight drift off into night wondering, where I suspect I'll imagine myself in a confined space.
The book I just read, called "Room" by Emma Donoghue, conjured up a similar type of emotional reaction, though it wasn't from comical incompetence the way the former did. I'm feeling the sense of overwhelmed hypocrisy represented by the narration of the 5 year old boy in the story, Jack, and finding myself paranoid about small spaces, even not wanting to get in the car with my dog. I'm glad to have read the story, but I'm glad it's over.
Also, lightning is attacking New Orleans tonight, which is creating a wonderfully rainy breeze. The swamplands are soaking it up, and so are my peppers. I'm delighted by the wet aesthetics of my view- the shiny leaves and healthy soil, and a shabby layer of cracking paint on the balcony that seems put there to remind me that this house is not my own.
So I have this messy house which is a perfect sanctuary from the wind and rain, complete with a strangely comforting soundtrack of videogame noises from the other room and dreamy whelps from my sleeping dog. Aside from the sneaking suspicion that my laundry isn't bustling away sorting and washing itself, and the subconscious fear of an unseen divide from my family and home, it's all just a slow midnight drift off into night wondering, where I suspect I'll imagine myself in a confined space.
3.22.2011
How is a Basil Sprout like a Writing Desk
I particularly like the part of evening when the sun pours onto the streets at a dramatic angle and signals it's intent to depart. I suppose it does something similar in the morning, but I'm not often around to observe it. Except on the rare occasion that I am, and then I particularly like that part of the morning as well.
It's interesting; as the world gets bigger by way of my own education and then instantly smaller by way of a text message, I wonder how the dramatic angles of the sun affect writers and noticers of things in other parts of the world. And then there is the balance that swings wildly between my obsession with gratuitous things and my desire to live simply that others may simply live. None of these things, however, are really all that central to the point.
The point, in his case, has something to do with how to reconcile the two following facts: 1) I am certain that nothing even remotely interesting has ever been written about a garden or plants or plans to plant plants in a garden and 2) All I want to write about these days is my garden.
I want to write about petunias and how they grow together like a zany band of silent, cartoon trumpets and the way my ivy leaves are stubbornly yellowing no matter how much I protest. In fact, I want to convince you that my garden is the product of a zoo of characters and wills, and how I must pander to each of these finicky creatures as individuals in order to keep them happy, healthy and pure. I want to capture the fugacious first day of spring in a beginner's space, in which generations of seasonal blooms are passing tales and rituals down to the buds who will bloom in summer and must carry on the righteous traditions of impatiens past.
YAWN
It's like telling incidental stories about your ridiculous cat to people who have a child; or like telling incidental stories about your ridiculous child to other people who may or may not have their own ridiculous children. It's personal, and unless personal information is scandalous, it's dull, and I can't imagine I'll find much scandal in the young, sprouting cucumbers or the slowly wilting tendrils of my overgrown boston fern.
I never really considered the British old lady demographic as a viable audience (not that there's anything wrong with British old ladies.)
So, it's not that I haven't been inspired to write in the past 13 months, it's that I can't stop thinking about how hibiscus flowers represent truth and I can't write about things like that and still take myself seriously as a writer.
It's interesting; as the world gets bigger by way of my own education and then instantly smaller by way of a text message, I wonder how the dramatic angles of the sun affect writers and noticers of things in other parts of the world. And then there is the balance that swings wildly between my obsession with gratuitous things and my desire to live simply that others may simply live. None of these things, however, are really all that central to the point.
The point, in his case, has something to do with how to reconcile the two following facts: 1) I am certain that nothing even remotely interesting has ever been written about a garden or plants or plans to plant plants in a garden and 2) All I want to write about these days is my garden.
I want to write about petunias and how they grow together like a zany band of silent, cartoon trumpets and the way my ivy leaves are stubbornly yellowing no matter how much I protest. In fact, I want to convince you that my garden is the product of a zoo of characters and wills, and how I must pander to each of these finicky creatures as individuals in order to keep them happy, healthy and pure. I want to capture the fugacious first day of spring in a beginner's space, in which generations of seasonal blooms are passing tales and rituals down to the buds who will bloom in summer and must carry on the righteous traditions of impatiens past.
YAWN
It's like telling incidental stories about your ridiculous cat to people who have a child; or like telling incidental stories about your ridiculous child to other people who may or may not have their own ridiculous children. It's personal, and unless personal information is scandalous, it's dull, and I can't imagine I'll find much scandal in the young, sprouting cucumbers or the slowly wilting tendrils of my overgrown boston fern.
I never really considered the British old lady demographic as a viable audience (not that there's anything wrong with British old ladies.)
So, it's not that I haven't been inspired to write in the past 13 months, it's that I can't stop thinking about how hibiscus flowers represent truth and I can't write about things like that and still take myself seriously as a writer.
12.24.2009
12.15.2009
really being married...
i didn't expect a bottle of champagne at my uptown new orleans house tonight, so imagine my surprise at finding TWO. my roommates; an impromptu bachelorette party; the congratulations i was looking for....
thank you sarah warner
thank you erin wallus
thank you molly fleder
between our dreidel drinking game and the broken bordeaux glass we promised wouldn't happen:
a thousand thank yous for the exact celebration i was lementing having missed
and a thousand thank yous for cementing that our flagstaff decision was perfect. i love you (and him)
thank you sarah warner
thank you erin wallus
thank you molly fleder
between our dreidel drinking game and the broken bordeaux glass we promised wouldn't happen:
a thousand thank yous for the exact celebration i was lementing having missed
and a thousand thank yous for cementing that our flagstaff decision was perfect. i love you (and him)
12.13.2009
12.08.2009
the ghosts who found me
i am grateful for my beautiful life and partly convinced that i don't deserve it.
anyway last night was an incredible collaboration of human souls united under one intention and i was ohso cordially invited. sometimes i appreciate people so much that i'm not sure how to handle myself in their presence.
perspective is overrated
anyway last night was an incredible collaboration of human souls united under one intention and i was ohso cordially invited. sometimes i appreciate people so much that i'm not sure how to handle myself in their presence.
perspective is overrated
12.03.2009
theory
nothing is EXTRA in heaven
what i mean is that all the toothpaste will come out neatly and none will be left in the tube. the tube itself, you fill back up. everything will feel sustainable; in heaven, there will be no trashcans, no waste.
what i mean is that all the toothpaste will come out neatly and none will be left in the tube. the tube itself, you fill back up. everything will feel sustainable; in heaven, there will be no trashcans, no waste.
one sevenbillionth
[i am just a fraction of the the oversoul!]
i work in a palace-- and my house is like aladdin's: beautiful views
i have all my limbs and access to most of my mind, a great mom and dad (albeit separately) and wonderful siblings. i'm lucky to have found my favorite person and for him to like me too, to be an american with a computer, a car and a bike, an ipod, multiple pairs of warm shoes and coats, electricity, fine linens, soft pillows, etc. i have my youth and my vision and the clarity to see it all for what it seems. my blessings are overwhelming.
anyway aside from being bestowed all the luck of the universe, i am having a lovely afternoon and looking forward to my sister's visit.
i work in a palace-- and my house is like aladdin's: beautiful views
i have all my limbs and access to most of my mind, a great mom and dad (albeit separately) and wonderful siblings. i'm lucky to have found my favorite person and for him to like me too, to be an american with a computer, a car and a bike, an ipod, multiple pairs of warm shoes and coats, electricity, fine linens, soft pillows, etc. i have my youth and my vision and the clarity to see it all for what it seems. my blessings are overwhelming.
anyway aside from being bestowed all the luck of the universe, i am having a lovely afternoon and looking forward to my sister's visit.
12.01.2009
a slow motion montage
some days are the hosts of significant events; some days are just placeholders, useless-- this was neither.
a whole gaggle of events came and went, waddling. inane. things you don't care about. ennui. a montage. putting objects in various places. looking into the mirror and unconsciously making silly faces. staring. trying to remember and organize. forgetting. walking right by. today was made up of things that have no place in a movie.
and i was making a case, like we do, in my developing theory of the universe. humanity is basically good. exhibit A: a line of cars stopped at a red light and no one coming. exhibit B: friendly greeting while buying toilet paper.
REVISE THEORY
humanity is basically good when resources are plentiful. exhibit C: i wanted the newspaper without the crinkles in it but the other guy reached under the top one to get the last.
and inasmuch, as i was thinking of my place in cosmic history, i wondered: ˆwhat do you suppose makes a person more valuable than the people around them?ˆ naturally, i discovered in this thought experiment that my boss and all his little boss type drones were certainly NOT more valuable than the people around them, ME, or anyone else for the matter. quite the contrary, i discovered, we are all worth just about the same. revise theory! humanity is basically good when resources are plentiful and the manager isn't being a lunatic.
exhibit D: making espresso is a ∫huge∫ pain in the ass.
then i was riding my bike home, like we do, and i imagined, benignly, firebombing all of the rich houses in the lower garden district. the faces, i could see them all running out in little white lace nightgowns and curlers-- the faces looking just the same as panicked faces running out of slums-- the same as my face. faces all the same but lives all different: can you pick out the first class passengers on the plane just by the pitches in their screams as they crash in a fury or do all the classes together make an alarming cacophony of symmetry, transcending even the starkest contrast in 401ks?
exhibit E: there isn't irony in my intentions when i wear a fedora.
i also wondered if the whole human project hadn't been abandoned after the Crusades like a little kid's early-blown volcano model under the stuffed animals in the closet, & if we all didn't maybe represent the overly-analytical maggots eating on the sugar lava and making a horrible stink, and just as i was wondering what would happen when the kids mom finally found our god-forsaken universe, cameron reminded me to refill the iced tea on table 152 and i realized that: my life is either a waste or it's my mind that's surplus. i hoped for the former case, but wouldn't bet on it.
revise theory: humans are basically thirsty. exhibit F: all the water glasses in the whole station are empty. exhibit G: 49.88 hours this week. overtime. tired. final theory for tuesday, december 1 2009: humans are basically good except in conflicts for resources and when surrounded by lunacy and bad music. exhibits H, I and J: my roommates.
a whole gaggle of events came and went, waddling. inane. things you don't care about. ennui. a montage. putting objects in various places. looking into the mirror and unconsciously making silly faces. staring. trying to remember and organize. forgetting. walking right by. today was made up of things that have no place in a movie.
and i was making a case, like we do, in my developing theory of the universe. humanity is basically good. exhibit A: a line of cars stopped at a red light and no one coming. exhibit B: friendly greeting while buying toilet paper.
REVISE THEORY
humanity is basically good when resources are plentiful. exhibit C: i wanted the newspaper without the crinkles in it but the other guy reached under the top one to get the last.
and inasmuch, as i was thinking of my place in cosmic history, i wondered: ˆwhat do you suppose makes a person more valuable than the people around them?ˆ naturally, i discovered in this thought experiment that my boss and all his little boss type drones were certainly NOT more valuable than the people around them, ME, or anyone else for the matter. quite the contrary, i discovered, we are all worth just about the same. revise theory! humanity is basically good when resources are plentiful and the manager isn't being a lunatic.
exhibit D: making espresso is a ∫huge∫ pain in the ass.
then i was riding my bike home, like we do, and i imagined, benignly, firebombing all of the rich houses in the lower garden district. the faces, i could see them all running out in little white lace nightgowns and curlers-- the faces looking just the same as panicked faces running out of slums-- the same as my face. faces all the same but lives all different: can you pick out the first class passengers on the plane just by the pitches in their screams as they crash in a fury or do all the classes together make an alarming cacophony of symmetry, transcending even the starkest contrast in 401ks?
exhibit E: there isn't irony in my intentions when i wear a fedora.
i also wondered if the whole human project hadn't been abandoned after the Crusades like a little kid's early-blown volcano model under the stuffed animals in the closet, & if we all didn't maybe represent the overly-analytical maggots eating on the sugar lava and making a horrible stink, and just as i was wondering what would happen when the kids mom finally found our god-forsaken universe, cameron reminded me to refill the iced tea on table 152 and i realized that: my life is either a waste or it's my mind that's surplus. i hoped for the former case, but wouldn't bet on it.
revise theory: humans are basically thirsty. exhibit F: all the water glasses in the whole station are empty. exhibit G: 49.88 hours this week. overtime. tired. final theory for tuesday, december 1 2009: humans are basically good except in conflicts for resources and when surrounded by lunacy and bad music. exhibits H, I and J: my roommates.
11.29.2009
a case for telling lies
the bills will still come due (of course) and i will be annoyed.
the positive--
the regular
and the unfortunate--
all true
BUT i DO NOT want to SIT around and CALCULATE why my happiness is overcast
instead just enjoy the drizzle
<<< a focus on the UPbeat, while the downBEAT doesn't move. >>>
but what I'm really getting at IS THIS: this is all;
there is the good the bad and the beautiful all coming straight at me like emersonian cosmic bullets...
(no clarity was ever achieved from a sentence involving the words *emersonian cosmic bullets* )
and if i stare into the firestorm i can see which ones to dodge
this is a way of saying that really we have to lie away the ugly to keep ourselves afloat
but that's okay because
the honesty of cynics is not a virtue after all<<<<<<<
the positive--
the regular
and the unfortunate--
all true
BUT i DO NOT want to SIT around and CALCULATE why my happiness is overcast
instead just enjoy the drizzle
<<< a focus on the UPbeat, while the downBEAT doesn't move. >>>
but what I'm really getting at IS THIS: this is all;
there is the good the bad and the beautiful all coming straight at me like emersonian cosmic bullets...
(no clarity was ever achieved from a sentence involving the words *emersonian cosmic bullets* )
and if i stare into the firestorm i can see which ones to dodge
this is a way of saying that really we have to lie away the ugly to keep ourselves afloat
but that's okay because
the honesty of cynics is not a virtue after all<<<<<<<
11.24.2009
thankstaking
WHO ARE YOU thanking?
and why don't you mean it? every single time you open your american mouth and shove into it the spoils of whatever war, why; we buck the sincerity of gratitude? how, with all that white and dark meat and sugared cranberries, can the generalized other, not find the extra calories to recognize that, really, it's all not that bad? our jobs don't really suck and our voices aren't really being ignored? i am thankful _for_
WHO ARE YOU thanking?
and why don't you mean it? why don't you--
i am thankful _to_
i am thankful
(what if you are the surplus population. you are extra. you will be thrown away.)
i am thankful for the minutes i have in each day.
[i am the sharpest spire on your church. i am the brightest blast of your opponent's cannon. i am the obvious intellectual hero of your fantasy and the coldest chill that runs down your spine. i am the eye of the robot.]
and why don't you mean it? every single time you open your american mouth and shove into it the spoils of whatever war, why; we buck the sincerity of gratitude? how, with all that white and dark meat and sugared cranberries, can the generalized other, not find the extra calories to recognize that, really, it's all not that bad? our jobs don't really suck and our voices aren't really being ignored? i am thankful _for_
WHO ARE YOU thanking?
and why don't you mean it? why don't you--
i am thankful _to_
i am thankful
(what if you are the surplus population. you are extra. you will be thrown away.)
i am thankful for the minutes i have in each day.
[i am the sharpest spire on your church. i am the brightest blast of your opponent's cannon. i am the obvious intellectual hero of your fantasy and the coldest chill that runs down your spine. i am the eye of the robot.]
stock images
he advised that i don't take anyone's advice and instead make a new way with a kitchen knife or a hacksaw.
i'm okay with that.
but a new recipe for my life gumbo involves going to the roof of your building- and being up there. looking down, what is the gap between your imagined life and the one you live?-- i like to imagine that i have my own life and it's amazing.
when i see james I imagine he is the man who wants to marry me. i imagine a beautiful diamond ring on my finger. i imagine a deck off my room and a bed with curtains surrounding it that has it's own window to the world. i imagine a stately staircase and a couple of crazy people who live where i live, and i imagine having a cool job.
i imagine that i have grown into an interesting 24 year old woman whose skin has managed to stay relatively smooth. she lives near a huge banging clock tower-- she entertains guests from dc and australia and washington state-- she is on a first name basis with mardi gras and jp sartre, and can easily list the best vintage clothing stores within a casual ride on her white cruiser. she pays absolutely no attention to her cat, and has met some of the best alternative artists in the city. her room is a haven loft and she listens to pink floyd. on vinyl.
i eat good food at the best restaurants and have sat for hours, had fine dialogue and read great literature at the coolest coffee houses and cafes in our little version of paris. i can navigate the potholes in uptown new orleans, swerving around corners on the same streets ignatius c reilly knew, and i look into the windows and realize: wholeheartedly: this is the life I hoped I'd have when I grew up.
is this the life? or was it all along?
i'm okay with that.
but a new recipe for my life gumbo involves going to the roof of your building- and being up there. looking down, what is the gap between your imagined life and the one you live?-- i like to imagine that i have my own life and it's amazing.
when i see james I imagine he is the man who wants to marry me. i imagine a beautiful diamond ring on my finger. i imagine a deck off my room and a bed with curtains surrounding it that has it's own window to the world. i imagine a stately staircase and a couple of crazy people who live where i live, and i imagine having a cool job.
i imagine that i have grown into an interesting 24 year old woman whose skin has managed to stay relatively smooth. she lives near a huge banging clock tower-- she entertains guests from dc and australia and washington state-- she is on a first name basis with mardi gras and jp sartre, and can easily list the best vintage clothing stores within a casual ride on her white cruiser. she pays absolutely no attention to her cat, and has met some of the best alternative artists in the city. her room is a haven loft and she listens to pink floyd. on vinyl.
i eat good food at the best restaurants and have sat for hours, had fine dialogue and read great literature at the coolest coffee houses and cafes in our little version of paris. i can navigate the potholes in uptown new orleans, swerving around corners on the same streets ignatius c reilly knew, and i look into the windows and realize: wholeheartedly: this is the life I hoped I'd have when I grew up.
is this the life? or was it all along?
11.08.2009
now for something completely the same
it's not what i thought it was going to be
it's not special
but this is the moment that i decide to make something of my 88 pages
it's not special
but this is the moment that i decide to make something of my 88 pages
10.13.2009
that pivotal question
a fantastic gravitational pull of the my:sterious
meaning nothing to any/
one but me, having no bearing on the depth of reality, giving up...
only in the absence of perfect finality,
divided
loyalty
between the primal and gloriously civilized... permanent choices between the huge and the tiny and
totally irrelevant
made by positively semi-permanent people.
>>>>what right do we have to decide for or against the determined fates?
meaning nothing to any/
one but me, having no bearing on the depth of reality, giving up...
only in the absence of perfect finality,
divided
loyalty
between the primal and gloriously civilized... permanent choices between the huge and the tiny and
totally irrelevant
made by positively semi-permanent people.
>>>>what right do we have to decide for or against the determined fates?
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