Hum

On a different note, I love this interview with Mary Oliver. Even though it's by Maria Shriver. Even though it's on Oprah.com.

I know a bleeding-heart plant that has thrived
for sixty years if not more, and has never
missed a spring without rising and spreading
itself into a glossy bush, with many small red
hearts dangling. Don't you think that deserves
a little thought? The woman who planted it
has been gone for a long time, and everyone
who saw it in that time has also died or moved
away and so, like so many stories, this one can't
get finished properly. Most things that are
important, have you noticed, lack a certain
neatness. More delicious, anyway, is to
remember my grandmother's pleasure when
the dissolve of winter was over and the green
knobs appeared and began to rise, and to create
their many hearts. One would say she was
a simple woman, made happy by simple
things. I think this was true. And more than
once, in my long life, I have wished to be her.

-The Bleeding-heart

Went there, came back

Egads, I forgot to celebrate my 1 year anniversary of escaping DC last Sunday! Remember when I did that? Like a whole year ago when I gave two weeks notice at Robotech and had a moving Pod come and haul all my stuff back home to here? No more metro hell? Happy anniversary to me!

Second thing is that we had a snow storm today which, if you are counting, is merely 1 day after it was 65 degrees and sunny when my girlfriend Rachel Maddow came to town and I guess people in the bar were too loud or something and no one could hear her on the TeeVee which I relate to because I was stuck outside on the porch and couldn't hear a damn thing she was saying either but she looked good so there's that.

(Tell not my old English teachers about the previous run-on sentence. It's called 'experiential writing', Mrs. Fetters).

What else? I'm starting to have to attend more dinners and functions as "The Offical Girlfriend" which means best behavior or something. And lots of questions. So what do you do? Uh huh. How'd you meet? Dinner on Sat being a prime example. And a trip to Dallas for a family thing with parents and sister and such. I was honestly hoping to fly under the radar a bit more but what can you do.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my bathroom? I would marry it if I could but now that the Republicans are back in charge in this state, fat chance of that. Why must they ruin everything? Soon I may have to do a news moratorium.

I think that's it. Main point: What a difference a year makes! Second point: It's all good.

Can I buy a Vowell?

Bed and breakfast

-- Sarah Vowell animated by Susan Chien

Promises: The musical!

Well the inevitable has happened: My Promises bunkmate Viv has been kicked out of Yaddo (again) for trying to sneak a Skidmore co-ed into her room after curfew (again). Apparently Patty Highsmith's detailed instructions about such activities are no longer legible on the gin-soaked napkin my dear friend keeps tucked in her bosom. Pity.

But Yaddo's loss is our gain! Yes, your friend and mine has chosen to summer this weekend in the District. With Lilo and Sam in NYC this weekend, V felt it best to escape the media circus that would have ensued upon her return -- it is a little known fact that Linds' infamous cokepants were in fact a pair of Vivvy's capris she had indiscreetly left behind in Sam's dj booth last year. Quel le scandal!

Our tour schedules have been so hectic, it's been quite impossible to coordinate brunch and such. So this visit should finally allow us to finish our much delayed screenplay Hoboken or Bust for the annual Promises Reunion Talent Show. [FYI, we are currently casting and are seeking a Charo - must love coochie (coos). Interested parties please send headshot and guitar demo. Thanks.]

So yes, I have prepared my literary hero her own writing studio complete with a brand new bottle of Stoli, candy gauloises, and a framed photograph of Anais Nin's bare bottom. That should do the trick. Wish us luck!

ETA/FYI: This pretty much defined our weekend.

Chapter 1

Apparently, everyone is reading or trying to read books these days and blogging about it. To wit:

Mimi Smartypants is reading books about transgender and passing, China, and India.

Win is reading about LA, shame, and Latino-American characters named Papi.

and my literary girlfriend Vivian Darkbloomis not reading about post-World War II Italy.

What have I read lately, you ask? That question implies that I've unpacked a box containing these things called "books" and then opened one to process what are called "words" on paper. Yeah, hasn't happened. I have managed to make it through every subscription issue of Harpers magazine lately. That is all I I can say. Sad, but true.

I think I would be interested in and be able to read an engaging piece of fiction right now. But as I may have mentioned, I have this total aversion to reading bad fiction and as such, I am weirdly reluctant about just picking a book up and starting it. Which makes it hard to, you know, read. It's really gay, but it drives me crazy to begin a book and then have some quirky writing style thing ruin it for me. I never know what will do it either and that makes it hard for me to choose fiction.

I mean I'll wade through a non-fiction book about turnips, but Barbara Kingsolver? I'd rather rip my eyes out. I always pick on Kingsolver for some reason, but some friend loved her and recommended her so I picked up that book with pigs in the title and I could only read the first two chapters before I realized I hated how she wrote - I think it was that I thought she wrote present tense poorly and it totally threw me out of whatever was going on in the story.

Unfortunately, like with art or music, I only know what I like when I see/hear/read it and that makes it a challenge to just randomly try fiction. I am not adventurous when it comes to reading b/c I don't want to get irritated if I pick a shitty book so I avoid reading any book b/c I don't want to get irritated. It's a vicious and silly/stupid cycle that I am having a hard time breaking the last several years.

So...maybe I will take a baby step on my road to recovery and ask for suggestions? I'd love something that is quirky, funny, not-plodding, not-SF, not too heavy/not too light, engaging/escapey, and has a female protagonist if possible. I ask for the world, I admit.

not dead yet

I have returned to Dumb City with a cold and a shitty attitude, therefore I shall only say a few words so as not to come off as the bitter, sick shrew I feel like today:

1. Happy B-day (yesterday) to my literary girlfriend and Promises bunkmate, Miss Vivian Darkbloom. Who shall ever forget the soiree we had for her in 1978? It rivaled Capote's Black and White party, only we called it the Sequins and Nude party. Were it not for a ridiculous call to the fire department and an unfortunate misunderstanding between María del Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza de Rasten (aka Charo) and George Hamilton, that party would have gone down in history. C'est la life. (Also a happy belated bday to Pip and Winny! Libras will rule the world one day, I am convinced.)

2. My visit to my dad's was lovely. Perfect weather. Pontoon. A sunburn. Fishing. And I had the pleasure of having breakfast in what some people would call a small-town diner, but I would call a bait store/gambling parlor that serves eggs and fried potatoes on the side. Good times. I also drove a practically blind, speech impaired, hard of hearing drunken old man around on his golf cart. His name was Pooch. One time, Pooch, after a long day and many Natural Lites, mistook the gas for the break and drove his golf cart into the porch of his trailer, narrowly missing the propane tank. Pooch was also wearing shorts that no man of his age and/or weight should wear. Good times, good times. Gotta love the Hoosier state.

3. I am just now reading the last Harry Potter book which has been making my Metro commute falsely appear shorter. Somehow I've remained unspoiled and am enjoying it. However, not to sound all sunny-happy-days-are-here-again, the 8 mile drive down I-95 is going to kill me before the end of this week. Every day, morning and night, it has inched along. I have lost all patience with people and their stupid cars and their stupid whatevers -- I engaged in some primal scream therapy this morning when I saw the backup again. Somehow, shouting the MF word over and over again did not help. I wonder if I should try shouting something more positive? Any suggestions?

And thus, I bring the shrew full circle. I wish I could get it up to be excited that today is Wednesday or that I had finally worked for and achieved world peace, but alas and alak, all I can do is buck up like a good soldier! Enough of this bullshit! Come on now!

JeanCon 07 = Be There/Be Sqaure

Thank god, it's not too late to sign up for Jeansperience 07!

ppss.

I love how Pamie meets S.E. Hinton and gets her book signed and it says "Stay Gold". I'm really jealous.

Oh now I see...

I found this just for you, cheet. ;)




ETA: I recently found out that my literary hero Jean Teasdale is
Not One of Those People.

The Green World

I had occasion to look up a Mary Oliver poem this evening and I hopped over to her Wiki entry and discovered an interesting connection I had never known about:

As a teenager, she lived for a brief while in the home of the recently-deceased Edna St. Vincent Millay, where she helped Millay's sister Norma organize the papers Millay left behind

I may be the only one who thinks that is amazingly cool and it makes me wonder how influential ESVM's poetry was on MO. I can certainly see how MO would have read Renascence and been struck with its deeply natural world imagery. I would like to think it helped informed her own poetry with its emphasis on such elements. Anyway. Cool to me.

Coup de Ville

Perhaps you might be wondering what I've been doing the last month. Perhaps, instead, you've been wondering where you've misplaced your keys. Or maybe you have March Madness. Perhaps you have been working hard in your cubicle or office, doing very important things, maybe even saving the world, but deep down, if you let yourself think about it, you know you are pushing proverbial paper in the never-ending quest to make life matter, to find meaning in your daily existence, to know that you are doing something, anything, to pass the time between birth and death in such a way as to make waking a pleasure, or at least not a burden, and maybe it's just the simple joy of breathing or rather, the inevitable act of breathing that keeps you moving forward towards something or nothing, depending upon your viewpoint. In the end, it matters not the particulars. A great big Oooohhhmmmm, if you will. No beginning, no end.

But wait! Hark! There was a beginning and there now, finally, is an end! Infinity reborn! Reading this has occupied my last month and I hope it will yours as well. Six +/- years is but a short flicker of time to wait for the planets to align and my hero, Miss V, to complete her masterpiece. Enjoy!

Venezia

ps. With Viv's latest excursion to Italy, I can only hope she comes back inspired with more of something like this story, my all-time favorite.

But I'll also take more of this or this or this. Heck, I'll even take some of this, with a side of this.

Not only am I the president of Hair Club for Viv, but I'm also a client!

Metropolitan Life

I'm glad to see one of my literary girlfriends hasn't succumbed to consumption yet. This from Gawker Stalker:

"Bar Pitti, outside under the scaffolding, 8pm: Fran Lebowitz, looking no older than she did the last time I saw her, at the Rainbow Room (seriously) ca. 1985. When not making conversational points with her cigarette, she held it, characteristically, in her right hand with the thumb of that hand attached to her temple. Weirdly, in this age of gentrified Bleecker Streets, she seems to be a refreshing bit of Old New York. Practically Henry Jamesian."