The First Step
⎯C. P. Cavafy
(trans. Evangelos Sachperoglou)
The young poet Eumenes complained
to Theocritus one day:
“Two years have passed since I began to write,
and all I’ve composed is just one idyll.
It is my only completed work.
Alas, it’s high, so I see,
the stairway of Poetry is so very high;
and from the first step, where I stand,
miserable me, I’ll never climb higher.”
Theocritus said: “These words
are blasphemous and unbecoming.
Even though you stand on the first step,
you still ought to be proud and happy.
To have come so far is no small matter;
to have done so much is great glory.
For even this first step is still
by far above the common people.
In order to set foot upon this step,
you must be in your own right
a citizen in the city of ideas.
It is both difficult and rare
to be made a citizen of that city.
In its agora you come across Lawgivers
that cannot be deceived by any opportunist.
To have come so far is no small matter;
to have done so much is great glory.”
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
Cannery Row
I read this book many months ago. I loved this book. I loved the way it meandered around in it's setting, got lost in anecdotes on characters, anecdotes that went off on tangents, before the story eventually settled on something resembling a plot, dropped it for a while and picked it back up in the end. That plot? Mack and the boys throwing a party for Doc, such a nice guy.
Are stories allowed to do that anymore? Some novels, maybe, but what about short stories? Stewart Dybek comes close in his collection I Sailed with Magellen. Look at "Blue Boy". It's the kind of fiction that punches out a large space for itself, a space larger than needed for the plot that drops in. Or he makes it seem that way. The story is roomy, yet every word counts. I guess the opposite of this, the more commonly accepted story, is one we describe as "tight". Granted, a novel has more room to be loose than a story does, but couldn't there be more loose stories? And what makes them loose? Their focus on setting? Is it that no one cares to read them that much, journals have no room for them, or editors have no patience for them? Or all three? Or any combination of the above?
I suppose the purpose of this post is to ask whether any of you robots could suggest stories similar to those described above, or authors who write such stories. Much appreciated.
Are stories allowed to do that anymore? Some novels, maybe, but what about short stories? Stewart Dybek comes close in his collection I Sailed with Magellen. Look at "Blue Boy". It's the kind of fiction that punches out a large space for itself, a space larger than needed for the plot that drops in. Or he makes it seem that way. The story is roomy, yet every word counts. I guess the opposite of this, the more commonly accepted story, is one we describe as "tight". Granted, a novel has more room to be loose than a story does, but couldn't there be more loose stories? And what makes them loose? Their focus on setting? Is it that no one cares to read them that much, journals have no room for them, or editors have no patience for them? Or all three? Or any combination of the above?
I suppose the purpose of this post is to ask whether any of you robots could suggest stories similar to those described above, or authors who write such stories. Much appreciated.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
From Baxter
I know all of you who took Nancy's workshop still have Charles Baxter's Burning Down the House. I dusted off my copy to revisit a few of his gems. Here's one of 'em from On Defamiliarization that addresses emotion in fiction:
"The fallacy of much fiction is that in any particular moment we are feeling one emotion, when in fact we are feeling many emotions at once, many of them contradictory, such as lust and gloom. But of course lust and gloom often go together, as do depression and cheerfulness. What is a bored ecstasy like? What does one feel in the midst of pessemistic hope? Is there such a thing as furious tenderness? Why are so many psychopaths lovable? The monsters we have all known in our lives are monsters almost by definition because they are often not monsters, and we expect them to be one way, and they turn out to be another. That's why we admitted them into our lives in the first place.
"Psychopaths, afterall, are great charmers. Bad people are good people who have gone on a sort of lifelong spiritual vacation, and who remember to be decent from time to time.
"....Instead of making our narrative events and our characters more colorful, we might make them thicker, more undecidable, more contradictory and unrecognizable."
"The fallacy of much fiction is that in any particular moment we are feeling one emotion, when in fact we are feeling many emotions at once, many of them contradictory, such as lust and gloom. But of course lust and gloom often go together, as do depression and cheerfulness. What is a bored ecstasy like? What does one feel in the midst of pessemistic hope? Is there such a thing as furious tenderness? Why are so many psychopaths lovable? The monsters we have all known in our lives are monsters almost by definition because they are often not monsters, and we expect them to be one way, and they turn out to be another. That's why we admitted them into our lives in the first place.
"Psychopaths, afterall, are great charmers. Bad people are good people who have gone on a sort of lifelong spiritual vacation, and who remember to be decent from time to time.
"....Instead of making our narrative events and our characters more colorful, we might make them thicker, more undecidable, more contradictory and unrecognizable."
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Congratulations for Peter
I'm doing my part to revive this damn thing because I miss all of you folks, and I wish we conversed more. I read over at the blog-that-shall-not-be-named (because several of us lurk there) that Peter Ho Davies is on the long list for the Booker Prize. Congratulations to Peter!
And here are pieces of a poem (I know that's probably sacrilege to cut a poem into pieces and post it, but I can't help it) by Michael Ondaatje called Burning Hills that I'm posting in the hope it will jump-start this place.
So he came to write again
in the burnt hill region
north of Kingston. A cabin
with mildew spreading down the walls.
Bullfrogs on either side of him.
...
What he brought: a typewriter
tins of ginger ale, cigarettes. A copy of Strangelove
of The Intervals, a postcard of Rousseau's The Dream.
His friends' words were strict as lightning
unclothing the bark of a tree, a shaved hook.
The postcard was a test pattern by the window
through which he saw growing scenery.
...
There is one picture that fuses the five summers.
Eight of them are leaning against a wall
arms around each other
looking into the camera and the sun
trying to smile at the unseen adult photographer
trying against the glare to look 21 and confident.
The summer and friendship will last forever.
Except one who was eating an apple. That was him
oblivious to the significance of the moment.
Now he hungers to have that arm around the next shoulder.
The wretched apple is fresh and white.
Since he began burning hills
the Shell strip has taken effect.
A wasp is crawling on the floor
tumbling over, its motor fanatic.
He has smoked five cigarettes.
He has written slowly and carefully
with great love and great coldness.
When he finishes he will go back
hunting for the lies that are obvious.
The older of the two Karens told me that when I moved from Ann Arbor, I would miss that community of writers, my friends, that I had become a part of. And she was right. I do. So post, damnit!
And here are pieces of a poem (I know that's probably sacrilege to cut a poem into pieces and post it, but I can't help it) by Michael Ondaatje called Burning Hills that I'm posting in the hope it will jump-start this place.
So he came to write again
in the burnt hill region
north of Kingston. A cabin
with mildew spreading down the walls.
Bullfrogs on either side of him.
...
What he brought: a typewriter
tins of ginger ale, cigarettes. A copy of Strangelove
of The Intervals, a postcard of Rousseau's The Dream.
His friends' words were strict as lightning
unclothing the bark of a tree, a shaved hook.
The postcard was a test pattern by the window
through which he saw growing scenery.
...
There is one picture that fuses the five summers.
Eight of them are leaning against a wall
arms around each other
looking into the camera and the sun
trying to smile at the unseen adult photographer
trying against the glare to look 21 and confident.
The summer and friendship will last forever.
Except one who was eating an apple. That was him
oblivious to the significance of the moment.
Now he hungers to have that arm around the next shoulder.
The wretched apple is fresh and white.
Since he began burning hills
the Shell strip has taken effect.
A wasp is crawling on the floor
tumbling over, its motor fanatic.
He has smoked five cigarettes.
He has written slowly and carefully
with great love and great coldness.
When he finishes he will go back
hunting for the lies that are obvious.
The older of the two Karens told me that when I moved from Ann Arbor, I would miss that community of writers, my friends, that I had become a part of. And she was right. I do. So post, damnit!
Thursday, July 26, 2007
SPRING
The loveliest
thing:
a man
moves slowly
through the crush
holding a full
trimmed sheet cake
above his head.
--Susan Hutton
thing:
a man
moves slowly
through the crush
holding a full
trimmed sheet cake
above his head.
--Susan Hutton
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
What It Looks Like Here
I was just rereading the brilliant and heartfelt conversation you robots (hello! dear robots! I miss you!) were having awhile back about sentimentality and emotion in fiction. I'm on hold with the insurance company that's taken 6 weeks to decide if I'm eligible, meanwhile I'm paying an arm and half a leg and a few toes for medication I need, dear god do I need it. Anyways, the insurance company is not the point, though in a way it is relevant in the way that it represents the soulless writing that is out there without a soul and lacking souls and stuff. I can't bear to read that stuff--who can?--and do anything to avoid it to the point of wanting to read the saddest possible words with saddest possible music on the record player (Songs: Ohia, anyone?)... just to feel something, already. Lately I've been working on putting together a poetry manuscript for my dear friend who died 2 years ago and came across a spontaneous journal-like passage about not wanting to write sad poems, not wanting to write about death. (Yes, it's striking that she would say such a thing considering what happened--all her poems are like this, eerie and sad and prescient.) It reminded me of a moment in the prison workshop a couple summers ago when one of the inmates asked me why my poems are so dark. I didn't know what to say, though I did know that my poems are often kind of dark, if not expressly so, then suggestively. I'm not such a sad person--I like to think of myself as relatively positive, considering the state of the world--but my default emotion in my poems seems to be sadness, or some sort of grief, something darkly dark. What I'm wondering is--why is this my default emotion? I'm not looking for psychoanalysis, though lord knows it might be helpful. I guess I'm just curious as to whether or not sadness is the easiest thing to approximate in poems and/or fiction, and if it's the easiest thing to respond to, or the easiest emotion we recognize in ourselves and therefore in the writing we read. I too want to weep, sob even, at the end or beginning or anytime in a novel and though it happens less in poems, I think, I gravitate toward the poems that leave me feeling a little hollow or sad... What's interesting here, of course, is that there are many kinds of sadness and sometimes the tears at the end of something are more about the beauty or the happiness or just the depression of having to pick out a new book. Housekeeping is perhaps the most memorable book to have had this effect on me--I was paralyzed for days by it and couldn't put my finger on what was so crushing about it. And perhaps, or of course, that was why it was so moving. BUT there was sadness there... And I'm more often than not crushed or moved by the expression or imagining of that emotion in anything I read than anything else. I'm also interested in what my friend Greta said: She didn't want to write about death. But she did, and so have I and I'm willing to bet we all have, even it's just been in failed attempts that seem sentimental or unreal. And some of us (I include myself among you) feel a little morbid in this sense, fascinated with literal and physical death and the grief that accompanies it. I don't necessarily want to write about death, either, but maybe I could forgo this and be more comfortable with it if I understood my compulsion to do so...
Thursday, May 03, 2007
She slips her cool bouquet of fingers into my hand.
Well hello dead blog! Hello blog on life support, and no I am not doing anything in my power to resuscitate, so it goes! You go on limping, I go on limping, we go on limping together but in separate hobbles to the same distant, unreachable sunset! The sunset that is so mournfully glorious! The sunset you don't want to end but you need to, because if it didn't it would just be a bruised and lame day. All of you, it would be a bruised and lame day.
No, I am not drunk! I am not drunk yet!
But what I do have to report is this: there is so-so story full of the kind of language that makes you long for the days when this language we all speak was new on our lips, and everything we said was for the first time. I mean this--
Now how about that? Even my impending return to San Francisco, nearly hobbled by weepy dreams yes weepy dreams where I, as Spiderman, weep at the thought of flinging spiderwebs from my wrists onto the next building because five moments after I do I'll be floating in an arc in full sight of the Bay, of the Bridge, of any number of hills that last summer, in the full and warm light of the love that was then blossoming in my heart for that inanimate city--I was crying, in my dreams as Spiderman I was crying because I would see her again, this City I've been away from for so long--even now, at this incipient moment, my heart is stayed by the writing representative of which is the above paragraph. A section of this story begins with this paragraph, and ends with a paragraph that begins with,
Hoo boy. Check out this month's Harper's. As the Olde Windbag is of course now gone...
No, I am not drunk! I am not drunk yet!
But what I do have to report is this: there is so-so story full of the kind of language that makes you long for the days when this language we all speak was new on our lips, and everything we said was for the first time. I mean this--
Now it's dark. This is an instant when the carnival lights have finally bullied the sun away, and the sky glows the colors of infection. The egrets notice, and all at once they flee the drainage canal behind the parking lot. They settle, pale and watchful, in the high limbs of the live oak trees behind the Giant Wheel, but they cannot sleep with the midway lights on them. For a time, the trees are whitely restless with the labor of the egrets stowing and unstowing anxious wings.
Now how about that? Even my impending return to San Francisco, nearly hobbled by weepy dreams yes weepy dreams where I, as Spiderman, weep at the thought of flinging spiderwebs from my wrists onto the next building because five moments after I do I'll be floating in an arc in full sight of the Bay, of the Bridge, of any number of hills that last summer, in the full and warm light of the love that was then blossoming in my heart for that inanimate city--I was crying, in my dreams as Spiderman I was crying because I would see her again, this City I've been away from for so long--even now, at this incipient moment, my heart is stayed by the writing representative of which is the above paragraph. A section of this story begins with this paragraph, and ends with a paragraph that begins with,
The felonious old electricity crackles in my groin.
Hoo boy. Check out this month's Harper's. As the Olde Windbag is of course now gone...
Monday, March 19, 2007
oh no!
when i signed in (as robotdinosaurswithhumanhearts--i was hoping to change our blog colors in an attempt to re-reinvigorate discussion) blogger requested an 'upgrade' to google or something. i foolishly complied and now a bunch of stuff is missing--including some of our fine robotdinosaurs! these people:
knee hi mink, Big_Concrete, glass as selves, sefket, ray-ray, mother of bear, many copies, Kinky McDoogle, Esq., !devotchka!, DeusExMachina, party of my heart, Toochi-toochi
are missing from the sidebar! i will try to fix this, but maybe the quickest route to figuring out what's wrong would be all the above lovelies posting. why not just tell the other robotdinosaurs some good news. or tell us where you live, what you're reading, what you had for lunch.
knee hi mink, Big_Concrete, glass as selves, sefket, ray-ray, mother of bear, many copies, Kinky McDoogle, Esq., !devotchka!, DeusExMachina, party of my heart, Toochi-toochi
are missing from the sidebar! i will try to fix this, but maybe the quickest route to figuring out what's wrong would be all the above lovelies posting. why not just tell the other robotdinosaurs some good news. or tell us where you live, what you're reading, what you had for lunch.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Or I could just eat wasabi....
This is sort of related to Toochi-Toochi's post below and I could've posted it as a comment but I am feeling exhibitionist, which is rare, so I thought I'd seize the feeling and run with it.
I'm not going to blame MFA programs because I don't think they're the only, or even the main, cause of this phenomenon but so much recent stuff I read is oh-so-clever, such smooth talk, such lithe vocabularies, and so little else -- it's been so long, so very long, since I've read anything recent that made me cry. Is it just me? Am I just not finding the right books? This has been an obsession of mine for a while. I keep coming back to it; I may have already posted about it here but I am too lazy to scroll down and see if I did and anyway almost no one posts on here so it's not like I'm taking up space that someone else wanted and besides only 3 (three) people still read this thing so it's not like I'm taking up too much collective time either.
I like to cry when I read. At the ends of books, in the middle, even at the beginning if it feels earned (actually, if it doesn't feel earned, I *don't* cry, so I guess I don't need to qualify that). I cry while reading *children's* books, not just the obvious ones like Charlotte's Web and Watership Down (homeless bunnies! Who doesn't cry for them?), but even The Railway Children, The Wind in the Willows, certain bits of The House at Pooh Corner. So it's not like I'm a hard sell. But more and more it seems that sentiment has gone out of fashion, or that all sentiment is dismissed as melodrama, or that emotion can only be approached with irony. Maybe it's the South Asian in me -- maybe I'm hard-wired to love emotion writ large, on the Bollywood scale: loud, wet tears, sadness that kills, fury that makes people gasp. Oh, don't get me wrong, I think Bollywood simply transcribed makes for ATROCIOUS fiction, and there are a few writers who do write like that, all of whom I despise, yes, despise. But the other extreme seems like such a poor and dry place. I'm tired of tongue-in-cheekness and McSweeney's and stories from the point of view of quirky misfits doing strange and quirky things that don't change anyone's lives.
I'm feeling curmudgeonly, it's true. But on a less curmudgeonly note, I looked at P. Ho D.'s novel, just at the dust jacket, and it left me feeling hopeful. I haven't read it yet but I am hopeful that it might make me cry. Has anyone here read it? I am a total sucker for wartime romance. It almost always makes me cry, all that impetuousness and fatalism. I cried and cried and cried when I read _The Heat of the Day_ (Elizabeth Bowen, you must read it if you haven't) and I cried at _A Very Long Engagement_, which almost everyone else hated and the critics panned for being cheesy. So maybe PHD's book will make me cry, and then I will feel better about the state of contemporary literature.
If you've read anything lately that made you cry, let me know. I'm making a list.
I'm not going to blame MFA programs because I don't think they're the only, or even the main, cause of this phenomenon but so much recent stuff I read is oh-so-clever, such smooth talk, such lithe vocabularies, and so little else -- it's been so long, so very long, since I've read anything recent that made me cry. Is it just me? Am I just not finding the right books? This has been an obsession of mine for a while. I keep coming back to it; I may have already posted about it here but I am too lazy to scroll down and see if I did and anyway almost no one posts on here so it's not like I'm taking up space that someone else wanted and besides only 3 (three) people still read this thing so it's not like I'm taking up too much collective time either.
I like to cry when I read. At the ends of books, in the middle, even at the beginning if it feels earned (actually, if it doesn't feel earned, I *don't* cry, so I guess I don't need to qualify that). I cry while reading *children's* books, not just the obvious ones like Charlotte's Web and Watership Down (homeless bunnies! Who doesn't cry for them?), but even The Railway Children, The Wind in the Willows, certain bits of The House at Pooh Corner. So it's not like I'm a hard sell. But more and more it seems that sentiment has gone out of fashion, or that all sentiment is dismissed as melodrama, or that emotion can only be approached with irony. Maybe it's the South Asian in me -- maybe I'm hard-wired to love emotion writ large, on the Bollywood scale: loud, wet tears, sadness that kills, fury that makes people gasp. Oh, don't get me wrong, I think Bollywood simply transcribed makes for ATROCIOUS fiction, and there are a few writers who do write like that, all of whom I despise, yes, despise. But the other extreme seems like such a poor and dry place. I'm tired of tongue-in-cheekness and McSweeney's and stories from the point of view of quirky misfits doing strange and quirky things that don't change anyone's lives.
I'm feeling curmudgeonly, it's true. But on a less curmudgeonly note, I looked at P. Ho D.'s novel, just at the dust jacket, and it left me feeling hopeful. I haven't read it yet but I am hopeful that it might make me cry. Has anyone here read it? I am a total sucker for wartime romance. It almost always makes me cry, all that impetuousness and fatalism. I cried and cried and cried when I read _The Heat of the Day_ (Elizabeth Bowen, you must read it if you haven't) and I cried at _A Very Long Engagement_, which almost everyone else hated and the critics panned for being cheesy. So maybe PHD's book will make me cry, and then I will feel better about the state of contemporary literature.
If you've read anything lately that made you cry, let me know. I'm making a list.
Friday, February 02, 2007
A Salon Letter from an MFA student about her doubts about an MFA program has set off a ton of blogochatter, from the sincere to the angry to the snarky to the MFA-programs-produce-a-lot-of-third-rate-poo-poo. Original post here: http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/02/02/graduate_schools/index.html
Monday, January 29, 2007
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Nonfiction
Hey all,
I was in the middle of reading Jesmimi's interesting post below, particularly struck by the aside,(Perhaps that was too much information for you--sorry.), when my mother's instant message popped up and blocked Jesmimi's text. Well, before that instant message popped up, I was thinking, Why the apology? Don't we love hearing the heretofore unspoken, private memories of our friends, acquaintances and total strangers? As readers we relish experiencing them, understanding them or, conversely, being left baffled by them. As writers, ditto. There should be more of that. More of the personal—our confidential moments willingly made public.
If you think this is leading to me posting nude photos of myself taken by bathroom mirror reflection, please rest assured. It’s not.
Instead, I thought I’d post the chat I had with my mother just now, give you a taste of the material I haven’t yet let fully into my writing (for those of you from the workshops). I just don’t know how to neatly get all the mess in, or neatly take the pieces out and pin them under the microscope like some foreign bacteria when, really, in this example, she’s no germ: she’s my sister. And tied up in my sister are all these conflicts that eventually branch out to me, intertwine with my conflicts, and suddenly I’m dissecting myself again instead of making up shit about a girl who is deservedly diagnosed with an incurable case of DUMB ASS by her very own mother.
mowdy1948: hey
joelbmowdy: hello
mowdy1948: what are you doing up so late?
mowdy1948: my mic is still not working...been buusy doing other stuff
joelbmowdy: I had to make lesson plans for my classes that start on monday
joelbmowdy: been working on it all day
joelbmowdy: and grading I was putting off
mowdy1948: your sister Brittany is a dumb ass
joelbmowdy: uh huh
joelbmowdy: what now
mowdy1948: long story short
mowdy1948: she left her friend dominique watching thte kids on Wed. night...i was a t work til 11 and came home to find her here...said Britt would be home by 12:30
joelbmowdy: ok--well, so far this is better than I thought. I thoughtyou were going to tell me she's pregnant again
mowdy1948: Dom comes in my room and wakes me up at 1 and says Britt had car trouble...she went in to NYC with Bradley...some ass hole from around here..young ..no teeth drives a Mercedes Suv
mowdy1948: she was going to go get her dad...call britt back and go and help them
joelbmowdy: mmhm
mowdy1948: Dom couldn't get in touch with her so figures that they were ok and went home
mowdy1948: Britt never arrived home..I had to go to work...no one to watch kids..kept Brianne (youngest sister) home..Britt's cell phone wasn't working but I had Bradley's#
mowdy1948: kept caling...no answer til arond 11:30
mowdy1948: got a man on the phone ..asked for her..he said she wasn't with him...he was Brad's uncle...had picked up his phone from the vehicle cause they had been arrested and he was on his way to court to bail them out
mowdy1948: Brooke (another sister) informed me that she heared they were going into NYC to get fake ID
joelbmowdy: oh that's smart.
mowdy1948: anyway..still no call from her..he would all me when he heard anything
mowdy1948: wait gets better
mowdy1948: so Shannon (another sister) goes online around midnight ...finds out where she is being held...calls and finds out it is for possession with intent to sell
mowdy1948: she didn't go before a judge til fri at 10:30 AM
mowdy1948: her charges were dropped, but bradley is on his way to rikers.
mowdy1948: here is her version...see if you can find the holes
joelbmowdy: This is terrible
mowdy1948: they were in the city and got a flat and couldn't find a tire store and yada blah blah blah
mowdy1948: they finally got it fixed and were just sitting in the car minding their own business when a bunch of plain clothes police rushed the car with guns drawn
mowdy1948: they were initially arrested because a guy in the back seat had an open bottle of beer.
mowdy1948: when the car was searched the police found a bottle of about 100 pain pills with Bradley's name on the rx bottle but they charged them anyway..oh and they confiscated the $6000.00 that he just happened to have on him because he had just sold his other car
joelbmowdy: this story you're telling has an interesting contrast to the profile picture of you smiling in mid dance step.
mowdy1948: Brittany said he takes these pills for back pain ( she thinks) and there were a lot because it is supposed to last 6 weeks
mowdy1948: i wasn't dancing...just sitting at my desk being tired....oh can you find the holes?
joelbmowdy: In his mouth? Wasn't the last boyfriend on pain killers, too?
joelbmowdy: You look like you're dancing.
mowdy1948: let me give the holes to you and see if you concur...oh by the way Bradley drives an expensive car "because he owns a pool company with his uncle"...did I mention he has few teeth?
joelbmowdy: Finiding the holes isn't the problem. I'm looking for the solid ground. Why all the guys on pain killers?
mowdy1948: I guess dating Brittany is a painful experience
mowdy1948: ok here goes..mastic beach+ ...young .+.drives expensive car = drug dealer....yuh think?
joelbmowdy: Bradley's been investing in the wrong kind of grill.
mowdy1948: uh...if you own an expensive car...do you not have roadside assistance or perhaps a spare tire?
mowdy1948: didn't have time to put his stash of cash away?
joelbmowdy: Maybe he was going to the dentist.
mowdy1948: It is illegal to dispense more than a month supply of controlled substance
mowdy1948: and if he was indeed taking that much in a month should he be driving?
joelbmowdy: The L.I.E. is a stressful stretch of road.
joelbmowdy: How are her kids?
mowdy1948: anyway..gotta go ...Brianne is vomiting and crying...we got a new puppy too. tell you more later
mowdy1948: her kids are great...they didn't even miss her.
joelbmowdy: Tell Brianne I hope she feels better.
joelbmowdy: soon.
mowdy1948: I had to take off from work to watch them...oh and I found 8 western union receipts...she has been sending the other asshole (other gut on pain killers) money in jail so he can call her
mowdy1948: bye for now.....love you!!
joelbmowdy: Love you, too.
joelbmowdy: bye
mowdy1948: she is a DUMB ASS
joelbmowdy: She'll learn, or she won't. It's out of your hands. Try not to let it kill you.
For all the wealth of material, it might be better to just leave the family unexamined, keep searching out the scraps I can get from friends, the anecdotes from acquaintances, the sideways looks at strangers on the bus, and let the family sneek in in dribbles as they always eventually do, making the work, somehow, though they are rendered unrecognizable, faintly about them anyway.
I was in the middle of reading Jesmimi's interesting post below, particularly struck by the aside,(Perhaps that was too much information for you--sorry.), when my mother's instant message popped up and blocked Jesmimi's text. Well, before that instant message popped up, I was thinking, Why the apology? Don't we love hearing the heretofore unspoken, private memories of our friends, acquaintances and total strangers? As readers we relish experiencing them, understanding them or, conversely, being left baffled by them. As writers, ditto. There should be more of that. More of the personal—our confidential moments willingly made public.
If you think this is leading to me posting nude photos of myself taken by bathroom mirror reflection, please rest assured. It’s not.
Instead, I thought I’d post the chat I had with my mother just now, give you a taste of the material I haven’t yet let fully into my writing (for those of you from the workshops). I just don’t know how to neatly get all the mess in, or neatly take the pieces out and pin them under the microscope like some foreign bacteria when, really, in this example, she’s no germ: she’s my sister. And tied up in my sister are all these conflicts that eventually branch out to me, intertwine with my conflicts, and suddenly I’m dissecting myself again instead of making up shit about a girl who is deservedly diagnosed with an incurable case of DUMB ASS by her very own mother.
mowdy1948: hey
joelbmowdy: hello
mowdy1948: what are you doing up so late?
mowdy1948: my mic is still not working...been buusy doing other stuff
joelbmowdy: I had to make lesson plans for my classes that start on monday
joelbmowdy: been working on it all day
joelbmowdy: and grading I was putting off
mowdy1948: your sister Brittany is a dumb ass
joelbmowdy: uh huh
joelbmowdy: what now
mowdy1948: long story short
mowdy1948: she left her friend dominique watching thte kids on Wed. night...i was a t work til 11 and came home to find her here...said Britt would be home by 12:30
joelbmowdy: ok--well, so far this is better than I thought. I thoughtyou were going to tell me she's pregnant again
mowdy1948: Dom comes in my room and wakes me up at 1 and says Britt had car trouble...she went in to NYC with Bradley...some ass hole from around here..young ..no teeth drives a Mercedes Suv
mowdy1948: she was going to go get her dad...call britt back and go and help them
joelbmowdy: mmhm
mowdy1948: Dom couldn't get in touch with her so figures that they were ok and went home
mowdy1948: Britt never arrived home..I had to go to work...no one to watch kids..kept Brianne (youngest sister) home..Britt's cell phone wasn't working but I had Bradley's#
mowdy1948: kept caling...no answer til arond 11:30
mowdy1948: got a man on the phone ..asked for her..he said she wasn't with him...he was Brad's uncle...had picked up his phone from the vehicle cause they had been arrested and he was on his way to court to bail them out
mowdy1948: Brooke (another sister) informed me that she heared they were going into NYC to get fake ID
joelbmowdy: oh that's smart.
mowdy1948: anyway..still no call from her..he would all me when he heard anything
mowdy1948: wait gets better
mowdy1948: so Shannon (another sister) goes online around midnight ...finds out where she is being held...calls and finds out it is for possession with intent to sell
mowdy1948: she didn't go before a judge til fri at 10:30 AM
mowdy1948: her charges were dropped, but bradley is on his way to rikers.
mowdy1948: here is her version...see if you can find the holes
joelbmowdy: This is terrible
mowdy1948: they were in the city and got a flat and couldn't find a tire store and yada blah blah blah
mowdy1948: they finally got it fixed and were just sitting in the car minding their own business when a bunch of plain clothes police rushed the car with guns drawn
mowdy1948: they were initially arrested because a guy in the back seat had an open bottle of beer.
mowdy1948: when the car was searched the police found a bottle of about 100 pain pills with Bradley's name on the rx bottle but they charged them anyway..oh and they confiscated the $6000.00 that he just happened to have on him because he had just sold his other car
joelbmowdy: this story you're telling has an interesting contrast to the profile picture of you smiling in mid dance step.
mowdy1948: Brittany said he takes these pills for back pain ( she thinks) and there were a lot because it is supposed to last 6 weeks
mowdy1948: i wasn't dancing...just sitting at my desk being tired....oh can you find the holes?
joelbmowdy: In his mouth? Wasn't the last boyfriend on pain killers, too?
joelbmowdy: You look like you're dancing.
mowdy1948: let me give the holes to you and see if you concur...oh by the way Bradley drives an expensive car "because he owns a pool company with his uncle"...did I mention he has few teeth?
joelbmowdy: Finiding the holes isn't the problem. I'm looking for the solid ground. Why all the guys on pain killers?
mowdy1948: I guess dating Brittany is a painful experience
mowdy1948: ok here goes..mastic beach+ ...young .+.drives expensive car = drug dealer....yuh think?
joelbmowdy: Bradley's been investing in the wrong kind of grill.
mowdy1948: uh...if you own an expensive car...do you not have roadside assistance or perhaps a spare tire?
mowdy1948: didn't have time to put his stash of cash away?
joelbmowdy: Maybe he was going to the dentist.
mowdy1948: It is illegal to dispense more than a month supply of controlled substance
mowdy1948: and if he was indeed taking that much in a month should he be driving?
joelbmowdy: The L.I.E. is a stressful stretch of road.
joelbmowdy: How are her kids?
mowdy1948: anyway..gotta go ...Brianne is vomiting and crying...we got a new puppy too. tell you more later
mowdy1948: her kids are great...they didn't even miss her.
joelbmowdy: Tell Brianne I hope she feels better.
joelbmowdy: soon.
mowdy1948: I had to take off from work to watch them...oh and I found 8 western union receipts...she has been sending the other asshole (other gut on pain killers) money in jail so he can call her
mowdy1948: bye for now.....love you!!
joelbmowdy: Love you, too.
joelbmowdy: bye
mowdy1948: she is a DUMB ASS
joelbmowdy: She'll learn, or she won't. It's out of your hands. Try not to let it kill you.
For all the wealth of material, it might be better to just leave the family unexamined, keep searching out the scraps I can get from friends, the anecdotes from acquaintances, the sideways looks at strangers on the bus, and let the family sneek in in dribbles as they always eventually do, making the work, somehow, though they are rendered unrecognizable, faintly about them anyway.
It's 4 AM, and I'm up
Hi everyone. I think this is only the second time I've actually posted an original post instead of a comment on this board, but since it's been a little quiet around here lately, I figured I'd clear my cyberthroat and say something. (This is almost as nerve wracking as commenting in workshop. My God.)
Anyhow, I recently purchased a new copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and when I thumbed through it, I remembered that I'm in it. Stay with me; I know this sounds weird. Anyhow, I read it for the first time when I was in high school, and around page 240 or so, a Buendia is introduced that seems to be...me. I swear. First, the character's name is Meme; my nickname is Mimi. Teenage Meme has a rigid, strict, authoritarian mother and an indulgent father: ditto for Mimi. Meme secretly rebels against her family and falls in love with a young greasy mechanic that no one approves of, and she sneaks him into her house at night for trysts. He is caught on his last night with her, shot in the back by a guard, and spends the rest of his days incapacitated and mute; as a teenager, I also snuck my rebel paramour into the house and was caught by my shotgun wielding mother who pointed a rifle at him and told him to get out of her house. Thankfully, she didn't shoot, but I'm sure that scarred him in some sort of way. (Perhaps that was too much information for you--sorry.) There are other weird characteristics we share, but I'll spare you the details.
Has anyone else ever encountered a character in a book that bore a weird resemblance to his or herself? Or am I the only delusional one?
(crickets chirp)
Anyhow, I recently purchased a new copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and when I thumbed through it, I remembered that I'm in it. Stay with me; I know this sounds weird. Anyhow, I read it for the first time when I was in high school, and around page 240 or so, a Buendia is introduced that seems to be...me. I swear. First, the character's name is Meme; my nickname is Mimi. Teenage Meme has a rigid, strict, authoritarian mother and an indulgent father: ditto for Mimi. Meme secretly rebels against her family and falls in love with a young greasy mechanic that no one approves of, and she sneaks him into her house at night for trysts. He is caught on his last night with her, shot in the back by a guard, and spends the rest of his days incapacitated and mute; as a teenager, I also snuck my rebel paramour into the house and was caught by my shotgun wielding mother who pointed a rifle at him and told him to get out of her house. Thankfully, she didn't shoot, but I'm sure that scarred him in some sort of way. (Perhaps that was too much information for you--sorry.) There are other weird characteristics we share, but I'll spare you the details.
Has anyone else ever encountered a character in a book that bore a weird resemblance to his or herself? Or am I the only delusional one?
(crickets chirp)
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