'Spection

Reading:
"V." by Thomas Pynchon (sometimes a little complicated, sometimes a little mumbled, sometimes beautiful, always earthy. my approach: hang on, don't let go)

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver (sweet, slow, and thick like molasses. perfect for on the train or bus or between people-watching at the park)

"Cast the First Stone" by Gwendolyn DeRosa (a tangy, bittersweet, and raw reminder of what it's like to grow up, and the kind of teenager I wish I'd been but never had the balls to be)

"Of Human Bondage" by M. Somerset Maugham (it's Maugham, what can I say? Pithy, perfect, rending, complete with adolescent humiliation, spiritual browbeating, and unrequited love)

Writing:
Short stories that may someday become a semi-autobiographical collection (theme: love, as always)

Novel editing will commence as soon as I work up the nerve

Some bad poetry

And I need to go back to the story i started in January about a child and mother who don't want, yet need, each other.

Doing:
Running, a lot. I logged 24 miles last week, 10 of which was actual running.

Eating, a lot. Due to running a lot, I can't seem to stay full (great side effect of running!)

Practices for Rollercon (a roller derby convention in Vegas at which the Jeerleaders will compete in the second annual Rollercon Cheerleading Competition)

Trying to find people to do all of the amazing free cultural things in NYC with me, and failing mostly


Thinking about:
School. The new idea is to take the GRE this fall and apply for MA/PhD programs in English and become a professor (while the current, or a new, company pays for it)

Road trip. I am in desperate need of some fresh country air and some time with the people who know and love me best. Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Pittsburgh are calling me. I think I might rent a car and visit all four places over a couple of weeks in August/September.

Loneliness. I miss companionship. I miss being around people who really "get" me. I love New York, but I haven't really found that here.

Jobs. I may start looking for a new one that will pay me better so that I can accomplish some long-term financial goals a little quicker.

a little poetry...

firstly, a quote: “A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful implanted in the human soul.” --Johann Wolfgang Goethe

nextly, a poem about a lemon by Pablo Neruda, who i am in love with.

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
the harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Some things i thought of today

First, that everyone dies of heart failure. I went to Easter dinner at a friend's mom's house somewhere in "this looks a lot like Western Pennsylvania" Long Island, and she is a pediatric ICU nurse who takes care of babies who most likely will die, and she said to me, over dinner, that everyone dies of heart failure. which is true because it's the last thing to go before you die, regardless of why it's going (and where...). But it didn't hit me until today, when i was editing some slides at work (yup, the glories of my job. i know, i know, you wish you were me, but you can't be. because i am.) for a drug that cannot be named because it would probably land me in jail (facetious, i don't really care, but these drug companies are super super anal about their drug names, anywhooo), and it's a drug for something called ACUTE heart failure, which is when heart failure gets really bad. (side note: i always thought that it was weird to call a disease "heart failure" as it implies a one-time deal, as in, my heart failed, and now i'm dead, but no, it's a disease people live with all the time until the LAST time their heart fails. and THEN they're dead.) And THEN, I remembered what my friend's mom said at Easter dinner: Everyone dies of heart failure. And then i started thinking about the relationship between heart failure and a broken heart, and whether there was one, because a friend i was talking to recently said that he didn't want to get into a relationship with a girl he was interested in because he was, (and he didn't come out and say it, but i inferred, and i assume correctly) afraid of her breaking his heart, or him hers. To which i wisely responded: "But it doesn't kill you. Everyone's heart has been broken. And it hurts, but it doesn't kill you. So why don't you just go for it?" But then you have the stories about people who love each other so much that when one partner dies, the other follows closely behind, like with Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. And people like to say that Johnny Cash died of a broken heart because he loved June Carter Cash so much that he didn't want to live if she wasn't living too, but really, he didn't die of a broken heart. He died of heart failure.

I'm thinking about writing a story that explores those concepts a little more deeply. Though, it looks like i might have just done that. Humph. Oh, well.

The second thing I thought today was: "All I need is a baby golden retriever (what are those called? those have a special name? What is it? Oh yeah! Puppy!). All I need is a golden retriever puppy, and i could be in a J.Crew catalog. Well, that and skinny legs." Because i was wearing my new navy sailor mini chino skirt with a blue and white striped button down and a brown cardigan and those brown knee-high riding boots. i was very proud of myself for putting together such a typical and WASPy outfit. I felt like i thoroughly fit in with myself. Also, that it has been a LONG time since men last saw knees and lower thighs. A LONG TIME, friends. In the last 26 years combined, my legs have not had that much attention. If Tom Robbins were to write a book about me (and I hope he does, starring a not nearly as gross older perverted man as in his other books for me to have sex with), it would be titled "Fat Knees and All." No joke.

AND THEN, me and Toya went to a meeting way up on the 7th floor where the executives have their kegs and dancing girls while we minions toil and sweat in the windowless abyss that is the 5th floor (more like toil and shiver, actually, but that's just semantics) to hear a very cute and very nervous Maria Von Trapp look alike (pixie hair cut, ugly jacket) tell us about how we can volunteer at a camp for families affected by AIDS and that the company will LET US HAVE A FREE WEEK OF WORK OFF THAT DOESN'T COUNT TOWARD OUR VACATION. And I was like, "Hmm, be at work...be playing with kids. Be at work...be playing with kids." I believe I will be playing with kids. And also because I want to volunteer to help people who are affected by AIDS. And also because the most beautiful boy i have ever seen in my entire life up to this point including celebrities was sitting in that room today, and do you know what happened, friends, when he opened his mouth? An accent happened, that's what. An Australian accent. And do you know what I did when the meeting lady said "Yes, Jason?" I wrote down his first name on my meeting information sheet so that i could somehow stalk him later with only his first name to go on. And do you know what I did the entire rest of the meeting? I drooled all over my meeting information sheet while i took in his perfectly sculpted jawline and the muscles that bulged oh so subtly through his fatigue-colored button-up. And i said something to Toya, most likely too loudly (because i was titillated AND nervous) like "Kill me now. Or is it 'take me now?'" I AM GOING TO THAT CAMP AND I AM GOING TO STALK THAT BOY AND I AM GOING TO FORCE HIM TO LOVE ME AND MARRY ME AND HAVE MY CHILDREN. All because I want to help families affected by AIDS.

Amy Hempel

Let me begin by saying this: Amy Hempel is a goddess.

And this: at the risk of sounding trite, or like i'm lying, I have just added her to my list of women that I would go gay for, should the opportunity arise. Here is my list:

1. Maggie Gyllenhal (of course)
2. Angelina Jolie
3. Amy Hempel

From my vantage point in the "Lillian somethingorother Writer's House" (about halfway back a narrow room, behind a doorway, sans doors, that used to lead from what i assume was the drawing room into what i imagine was the parlor), I watched as Ms. Hempel took her place behind a small podium with a microphone. I sat a few chairs away from the speaker, set on one of those old wooden folding chairs. She has thick white hair, but as I watched her read from (the scarcest book i've ever tried to buy) her collection of short stories ("The Collected Stories") I swear, she wasn't a day over 26. She was breathtaking. I witnessed this transformatory magic as her words swelled toward, and then enveloped me. I was in love.

She writes short stories and what she calls "short shorts" that are only a page or two long. I am in awe of her brevity. And how much meaning she packs into every. single. word. Let me find you an excerpt. Here's one, the end of a short story about a friend who dies.

"I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign to her newborn.
Baby, drink milk.
Baby, play ball.
And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby, come hug, fluent now in the language of grief."

Fuck me. This woman is a genius.

After the reading (which could have gone on for hours, in my book), the guy (an NYU professor with prematurely gray hair and a high voice), asked her some questions before they opened it up to the audience. I always hate that part, cringing with (I assume) the writer every time a precocious 19-year-old asks a stupid question. Yet, i never have the nerve to ask one of my own. I'm strangely timid at readings. I go alone. I sit in the back. I take notes. I buy the book if i have the money. I leave, taking a good long look at the writer's face before I do. I suppose I'm looking for whatever it is that I hope I have, too.

Although I loved her writing, i was a little disappointed with her answers. I don't just go to readings to try to glimpse the writer's soul or hear them read: I go because I want them to teach me something about writing that will help me write. She said a few helpful but relatively clicheed things, that beginning writers should "be obsessed," that successful writing is not about talent but about will and wanting it most, that you should "do the thing that unglues you." But when it came down to discussing her process, she was...a bit flighty. The most interesting thing she said was that most writers write about the "main event" but that her stories often look to the side, at what is happening beside that event. She said that she writes a story already knowing the first and last lines, but that she doesn't think of them: they come to her. She says that she doesn't edit after she writes: it COMES OUT THAT WAY. She said, when asked how she writes that way, "Oh, it's really a lot like magic." MAGIC?? ARE YOU KIDDING ME, MAGIC? I CAN'T DO MAGIC! my insides screamed. "That's it. I'm fucked."

She reminded me a lot of Sarah, whose spiritual/other-worldly sense is probably stronger than her other five combined. I bet Sarah would have understood what Amy was talking about. But I didn't, and I wish I had. I try to not even rely on physical things i can touch; can you imagine relying on magic?

Though, maybe there's something there. The something that you can't always put your finger on about the literature that moves you. I guess you could call that magic. Maybe we all have the magic, and it's just a matter of letting it out. Maybe it was that magic that i was looking for as I left quietly, gazing at her face.