Everyday Life – Page 93

Well-Fancied Choices

January 28, 2011 by John 9 Comments

[Video: “custom movie trailer” for the 1945 film Detour. A piano player hitchhikes across the United States to be with his girl. On the way, he crosses paths with The Wrong Woman…]

From whiskey river:

Bees

In every instant, two gates.
One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.
Mostly we go through neither.

Mostly we nod to our neighbor,
lean down to pick up the paper,
go back into the house.

But the faint cries — ecstasy? horror?
Or did you think it the sound
of distant bees,
making only the thick honey of this good life?

(Jane Hirshfield, The Lives of the Heart [source])

…and:

What we have deduced about the Big Bang is almost exactly wrong. Instead of a Big Bang, the genesis of the universe consisted of the uneventful, accidental, hushed production of a single quark.

For thousands of millennia, nothing occurred. The solitary particle floated in silence. Eventually it considered moving. Like all elementary particles, it realized that its direction of travel in time was arbitrary. So it shot forward in time and, looking back, it realized that it had left a single pencil stroke across the canvas of space-time.

It raced back through time in the other direction, and saw that it had left another stroke.

The single quark began to dash back and forth in time, and like the individually meaningless actions of an artist’s pencil, a picture began to emerge.

If it feels to you that we’re connected by a larger whole, you’re mistaken: we’re connected by a smaller particle. Every atom in your body is the same quark in different places at the same moment in time. Our little quark sweeps like a frenetic four-dimensional phosphor gun, painting the world: each leaf on every tree, every coral in the oceans, each car tire, every bird carried on the wind, all the hair on all the heads in the world. Everything you have ever seen is a manifestation of the same quark, racing around on a space-time superhighway of its own invention.

It began to write the story of the world with sagas of war, love, and exile. As it spun out stories and allowed the plots to grow organically, the quark became an increasingly talented storyteller. The stories took on subtle dimensions. Its protagonists engaged in moral complexity; its antagonists were charming. The quark reached for inspiration into its own history of loneliness in an empty cosmos: the adolescent with his head on the pillow, the divorcee staring out the coffee shop window, the retiree watching infomercials — these became the prophets of the quark’s text.

(David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives [source])

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An old 1960s TV program called Checkmate featured a striking title sequence: as the credits displayed on-screen, the background showed what appeared as a pool of swirling paint of multiple contrasting colors. (I say “appeared” because in those pre-color television days, the paint actually displayed as shades of gray. You can see it here, in the midst of a bunch of other old shows’ openers.)

It used to fascinate me to watch how each color remained itself, especially at the core of its own smear, but also subtly changed at every point where another color butted up against it. And, of course, that other color also changed…

Regular readers here probably know by now that good friend a/b, which is to say Ashleigh Burrows, is — when not wearing that bloggerly persona — known in real life as Susan “Suzi” Hileman. And that name (at least for readers in the US) will probably set off another wave of associations: Suzi Hileman was one of the most seriously wounded survivors of the Tucson shooting a couple weeks ago. Indeed, she’s the one most in the news lately, as the neighbor who accompanied nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’s meet-and-greet.

Here’s Suzi on last night’s NBC Dateline:

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Paying Attention to, Well, Everything

January 22, 2011 by John 9 Comments

[Image: photograph, Rock of Ages #15, by Edward Burtynsky: “Active Section, E.L. Smith Quarry, Barre, Vermont, 1991.” Click image for larger view.]

This Paying Attention series of posts has recorded, intermittently, one or another aspect of writing (mostly) the novel which I’m now calling Seems to Fit. Every now and then I remember something important which I’ve forgotten, in the flush of creation (or re-creation); and I want to “bookmark” it, so to speak, lest I forget it again. (By “it,” I don’t mean a fact or a plot point. I mean something about the writing or the writing process itself.)

I’d laugh to think of these as “writing tips,” because I have no idea if they’re important to anyone else — or (if so) just how important. (And yes, I know — I often use the second person in them: You need to do this and that, and so on. Just talking to myself, see?)

But it’s been a while since the previous Paying Attention post, and I’ve almost completely shut off the tap of posts about Seems to Fit in general. In part, this stems from what’s going on in the book at the moment: each main character gets his or her own “final” chapter in preparation for the book’s gigantic next-to-last one; so in these chapters — which I’ve been working on for two-three months — I’m sort of saying good-bye to these people, in a book that I’ve lived with, one way or another, for twenty years. (Do not assume from that sentence, btw, that I’m bumping them off.) So to me it feels like an extended private moment, between them and me.

In a larger sense, though, my silence about Seems to Fit flows from something which I think has distinguished my blogging from my writing of fiction: carefulness.

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Seen Everything? Look Again.

January 21, 2011 by John 4 Comments

[An “impossible triangle” sculpture in East Perth, Australia. For more information,
see the note at the bottom of this post.]

From whiskey river:

Welcome

if you believe nothing is always what’s left
after a while, as I did,
If you believe you have this collection
of ungiven gifts, as I do (right here
behind the silence and the averted eyes)
If you believe an afternoon can collapse
into strange privacies —
how in your backyard, for example,
the shyness of flowers can be suddenly
overwhelming, and in the distance
the clear goddamn of thunder
personal, like a voice,
If you believe there’s no correct response
to death, as I do; that even in grief
(where I’ve sat making plans)
there are small corners of joy
If your body sometimes is a light switch
in a house of insomniacs
If you can feel yourself straining
to be yourself every waking minute
If, as I am, you are almost smiling…

(Stephen Dunn, from New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994 [source])

…and:

Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is — in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet. We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were deaf and blind, as if He were in a space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.

One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.

(Henry Miller, Nexus [source])

…and:

Seriousness

Driving the Garden State Parkway to New York, I pointed out two crows to a woman who believed crows always travel in threes. And later just one crow eating the carcass of a squirrel. “The others are nearby,” she said, “hidden in trees.” She was sure. Now and then she’d say “See!” and a clear dark trinity of crows would be standing on the grass. I told her she was wrong to under- or overestimate crows, and wondered out loud if three crows together made any evolutionary sense. I was almost getting serious now. Near Forked River, we saw five. “There’s three,” she said, “and two others with a friend in a tree.” I looked to see if she was smiling. She wasn’t. Or she was. “Men like you,” she said, “need it written down, notarized, and signed.”

(Stephen Dunn [source])

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Book Review: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

January 15, 2011 by John 6 Comments

I’ve (finally!) posted my review of Nabokov’s Lolita, over at The Book Book.

It certainly made for a discomfiting read, on some levels. Anyone with a niece or daughter, as young as the title character or simply once that young — and, I’d bet, any one who herself was once that young — will find in its pages plenty to squirm over.

And yet, there are all those other levels: the annoyingly hard-to-resist charms of the voice of the narrator, the protagonist, Lolita’s stepfather (and abuser) Humbert; the lavish stylistic flourishes; the mounting tensions — leading first to the central “Will he or won’t he?” answer and, later, finally “…will he really kill? kill whom?”

Of course I’m writing here as a guy — a middle-aged guy, at that — and maybe this alone invalidates all my disclaimers to the contrary. But I have to admit that even while being most horrified, I could also feel a little frisson of titillation from time to time. This was especially true early in the book, before the “Will he or won’t be?” question got its (maybe inevitable) answer. It was like inspecting close-up the carapace of what looks from a distance like a beautiful beetle: the ugly hairs and horrible eyes jump out at you, and you almost can’t wait to back off again. It’s a grotesque parody, in a way — a Bruegel‘s-eye-view of infatuation.

(Of course the publisher knows and is quite willing to trade on, to toy with this. Just look at that cover from the book’s 50th-anniversary edition. Do you see the horrors of pedophilia there? I don’t, either.)

Anyway, obviously there’s a lot to feel ambivalent about. If you don’t mind ambivalence and messy morality, love language, and of course haven’t read Lolita, you might want to give it a try. Just don’t be surprised if, like me, you can’t imagine yourself ever reading the book again — and being grateful to have read it once.

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One Fine Day

January 14, 2011 by John 6 Comments

[Video: time-lapse film of an entire year in a wooded area, over “One Fine Day,” by David Byrne and Brian Eno (lyrics in the note at the end of this post)]

From whiskey river:

The Storm

Now through the white orchard my little dog
romps, breaking the new snow
with wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
until the white snow is written upon
in large, exuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
the pleasures of the body in this world.

Oh, I could not have said it better
myself.

(Mary Oliver [source])

…and:

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. Life is now, every moment, no matter if the world be full of death. Death triumphs only in the service of life.

(Henry Miller [source])
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Real-Life Monologue (Anthropomorphism Edition)

January 11, 2011 by John 15 Comments

[For information about this photo, which doesn’t precisely relate to the post,
see the note at the bottom.]

The scene: A suburban home in northern Florida, USA. He is trying to get the household denizens out the door promptly in the morning. He has walked and scooped up after The Pooch. He has fed The Pooch; He has fed The Cat. He has prepared the snacks/lunches which He and She will need during their respective workdays. The Pooch, at the gate to the kitchen, tosses her paper plate in the air, signaling breakfast done-age and, hence, ordering a second course. He ignores her. He sets out the various daily medications which He and She take. The Pooch barks. He ignores her. He brings the newspaper in. The Pooch noses her empty plate around on the tile floor. He ignores her. He gets His water bottle from the refrigerator. The Pooch barks again.

He (to The Pooch): Jesus Christ, all right already, I hear you! You think you’re the only person in the house?!?

_________________________

About the photo: We have a wet bar in the living room, and after we get home from work at the end of the day one or the other of us will usually go there to make a drink. We stock the bottles of sweet-and-smoky-smelling liquids in a cabinet below the sink, as you can see at the right of this photo. About eight of every ten times we do this, The Pooch comes to her water bowl to drink, as shown (here wearing her red Team Woof hoodie). This completely cracks us up.

Tucson Shooting and a/b

January 9, 2011 by John

No politics or ruminations or jokes or YouTube clips or, well, much of anything to say at this point except to extend best wishes for a speedy recovery to our friend “Ashleigh Burrows,” who styles herself in comments here as “a/b.” She was apparently one of those injured in yesterday’s shooting in Tucson. According to another RAMH favorite, Nance, a/b was hit by three bullets, which did not hit any organs but did shatter her hip. She’s awaiting surgery on Wednesday, as we understand it.

Quite possibly she likewise awaits — almost as eagerly — the arrival of an Internet-connected keyboard, so she can say something pithy about the whole experience.

If you get a chance, stop by at The Burrow and wish her well.

[Thanks again, Nance!]

[Update 2010-01-12: Comments are now closed on this post.]

____________________

P.S. In a slightly not-quite-macabre coincidence, at the time I learned about a/b I’d already begun reading this article at the NY Times — about what happens to your cyberself after your earthly one moves on. May be something to think about, if you haven’t already.

What Are You Getting At?

January 7, 2011 by John 4 Comments

[Image: “Mean,” 2007, brass sign by Danish artist Kasper Sonne. (Original here.)]

From whiskey river:

Dew Light

Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age

(W. S. Merwin [source])

…and:

As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.

(Stephen Fry, from Moab Is My Washpot)

…and:

Can we have the aspiration to identify more and more with our ability to recognize what we’re doing instead of always identifying with our mistakes? This is the spirit of delighting in what we see rather than despairing in what we see. It’s the spirit of letting compassionate self-reflection build confidence rather than becoming a cause for depression.

(Pema Chödrön, from Taking the Leap)

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“Why Do You Like to Write?”

January 5, 2011 by John 2 Comments

Writers don’t talk about this question too much. Much more fun and entertaining, after all, to complain about the difficulties and pains; who doesn’t like people to feel sorry for them? But the quote below (with my emphasis added) excerpts an answer from Jon Fosse, at the Poetry International Web (sorta awkwardly translated by May-Brit Akerholt, in my opinion, in comma-spliced and run-on form):

…when I write something I feel is well written, something new has come into the world, something that wasn’t there before, I have, as it were created existence, and this, the joy of writing people and stories, yes, whole universes no one knew about, not even I, before I had written them, surprises me, and gives me joy. No one knew about this, not before I wrote it. And where does it come from? I’ve no idea, because it is new to me as well. I probably hadn’t thought about it before. Writing, good writing, will therefore always be a place where something unknown, something which didn’t exist before, is given existence. And that, writing as a state where something, yes in a sense even a whole new universe, is created and given a kind of existence for the first time, is perhaps what I enjoy most about writing. A whole new universe comes into being every time you write well. Because all good texts, yes poems too, are in a certain sense a new universe, which did not exist before, but which is created in good writing.

I’ll add: for me, one of the great joys of reading good writing lies in experiencing, vicariously, the writer’s delight at the moment something unexpected happened on the page or screen. I think I sense this sort of exclamation-point moment in books and other “formal” writing, but I’ve also seen it between the lines in casual text: text messages and chat sessions, one-off blog posts, and yes, even some Facebook status updates and Twitter posts.*

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* Sorry, Froog. :)