Some things are just too entertaining and… unclassifiable not to pass around. Hence: “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.”
[Hat tip to Eileen of Speak Coffee to Me, temporarily coming out of… well, you know.]
What You’ll Never Know
This utterly breaks with the whiskey river Fridays tradition here. But the most recent post there seems to demand passing around among ourselves. From whiskey river:
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’tyou can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write
(W. S. Merwin)
For what it’s worth, the above are the closing stanzas of his “Berryman,” which you can read in full here, courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac.
Real-Life Dialogue (Awkward Moments Edition)
[The scene opens in the waiting room of Super Mega Giant medical center in a mid-sized city in northern Florida, USA. He is a middle-aged male, and has been for some time. This report includes two Shes: A, a medical assistant; and J, a nurse practitioner.]
A: Mr. He?
He: Right here.
A: Very good, come with me. [She leads him to an alcove with a scale, weighs him, makes note on chart.] All right, now, here’s the exam room you’ll be using. [Extends hand.] My name is A, and I’m Dr. B’s new medical assistant.
[He does not know what a “medical assistant” is, or where people with that title reside on the medical hierarchy, but believes He will be able to guess from what follows. He is right.]
A: Let me just take your blood pressure and your pulse…
[She does so, then moves to computer, sits down, and asks series of very basic questions about His medical history as she keys in His answers. He concludes she’s some sort of trainee. She checks computer screen.]
A: Okaaay… Looks like you’re due for EXAM* today, is that right?
[He wasn’t expecting it. He never is; its various surprises, after all, are essential features of EXAM.]
He: Um, I guess, sure.
A: Well, I’m pretty much done here. I’m not sure if J will do EXAM or if Dr. B will. I’ll let them sort that out. J will be in in just a minute. Nice to meet you!
[She exits. Five-ten minutes later, J, the nurse practitioner, enters.]
J: Good morning. Mr. He, nice to see you again.
[She sits at computer terminal. Asks him many questions about his prescriptions’ status. Asks if he has any questions about his lab results.]
He: Nope, I think I understood what I was looking at.
J: [Standing up.] All right then. I’ll just take care of this one last thing…
[She approaches the table on which He sits. He dismounts from the table, turns to face it, unfastens his belt and pants, lowers his pants—]
J: Wait! What the hell are you doing?!?
He: Uh, well, A said that either you or—
J: Oh, she did, did she? Well I’ll just straighten her out!
[She leaves exam room. He waits perhaps a minute and concludes that he should refasten his pants.]
[Five-ten minutes more, J re-enters exam room.]
J: Now, as I started to say, let me just get this stethoscope off the wall here so I can check your heart and lungs…
He: Ah. So then you aren’t going to, umm, do EXAM?
J: [Shakes head violently, makes “time-out” sign with both hands.] NO. Dr. B will be in when I’m done and he will take care of you.
He: You have to admit, this is pretty funny—
J: [Says nothing, but shudders exaggeratedly, and leaves.]
_____________
* Details of EXAM need not be spelled out, need they?
Get to Know What Real Is
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
People don’t realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature... I think a person finally emerges from all this nonsense when he becomes aware that his life has a much larger meaning he has been ignoring — a transcendent meaning. And that his life is, at its most serious, some kind of religious enterprise, not one that has to do with the hurly-burly of existence.
(Saul Bellow, from Conversations with Saul Bellow [source])
…and:
I
Don’t trace out your profile —
forget your side view —
all that is outer stuff.II
Look for your other half
who walks always next to you
and tends to be who you aren’t.
(Antonio Machado, Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs)
…and (paired with the Bellow quote above):
That it doesn’t strike us at all when we look around us, move about in space, feel our own bodies, shows how natural these things are to us. We do not notice that we see space perspectively or that our visual field is in some sense blurred towards the edges. It doesn’t strike us and never can strike us because it is the way we perceive. We never give it a thought and it’s impossible we should, since there is nothing that contrasts with the form of our world. What I wanted to say is it’s strange that those who ascribe reality only to things and not to our ideas move about so unquestioningly in the world as idea and never long to escape from it.
(Ludwig Wittgenstein)
The Object of My Affectation
[Alfalfa, of the Our Gang comedies, sings of his love for sweet little round-faced, soft-focus Darla. And yes, I know: the song title doesn’t have that extra syllable in it. :)]
Whom, exactly, do you try to impress?
Note that I’m not asking about classes or groups of people. Most of us would like to be regarded favorably by our families and friends, our co-workers, the critics and audiences, and maybe even — ha ha — total strangers on the bus and in, ahem, Genuine Joe’s coffee shop (little in-joke there). And I know we’re not all “on” all the time, even the most determined poseurs among us: everyone has moments of utter un-self-consciousness, when our guard is down, we’re at our easiest and most natural, and we’re not actively evaluating what someone might think of us.
No, I’m just wondering, well…
Right Looking
[Image of Fay Ray, by William Wegman (1988), found here, as well as elsewhere
on the Web (e.g., Style Me to the Moon)]
From whiskey river:
My Hand
See how the past is not finished
here in the present
it is awake the whole time
never waiting
it is my hand now but not what I held
it is not my hand but what I held
it is what I remember
but it never seems quite the same
no one else remembers it
a house long gone into air
the flutter of tires over a brick road
cool light in a vanished bedroom
the flash of the oriole
between one life and another
the river a child watched
(W. S. Merwin, The Shadow of Sirius)
…and:
And now here’s the thing. It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore your heart has been, and, moreover, all the while you thought you were going around idle terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moiling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself? Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.
(Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March [source])
Super Powers for the Rest of Us
[‘Super Powers,’ by Mark Stivers. Click to view the full set of six.]
Given a choice, I think the caption below my portrait — in ten words or less — would say something like writes brilliant stories one hour at a time*. (My Kryptonite: the Internet.)
Yours?
_______________
* Edit to add: Just to make it plain — this is not a super power I have. (The operative words above: given a choice.) God, no. It’s a super power I’d love to have — a super power I’d have if I were my ideal superhero.
Edit to add, 2: Now that I’ve read all these other great ideas, I think maybe the super power I already have is something like: can spot important trends with 20/20 hindsight.
BlogIt
Every year around now, a large chunk of blogosphere real estate is turned over to posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, and Flickr albums about a gathering called BlogHer. As the conference title suggests, the focus in on women who blog — it’s apparently attended by a number of guys, as well — and for the several days of BlogHer, attendees take in workshops and panel discussions, attend parties, and go out with friends to take in the sights of that year’s city. (This year, earlier this month, it took place in New York City.)
I’ve never gone to BlogHer, and never expect to, although I follow and admire the bejeezus out of maybe a half-dozen of the BlogHerers (?) with wide name recognition (Maggie, The Bloggess, Kelly…) and make occasional trips through the takeout windows of another half-dozen or so.
There are a few reasons while I’ll probably never get there:
Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
My review of this book is now up over at The Book Book.
So is another reviewer’s, as of yesterday — and we’re just following on the heels of the first, from a year ago. Clearly a book that draws reviewers like flies!
I liked the book very much although (as you can see from the review) just why sort of escapes me. You’ve got to get out of the gate fast with a grabber of an opening, we’re told, or no one will buy your crime story/mystery/thriller (and probably your collection of baby names). This one doesn’t start that way; nor, throughout, does it share the sort of propulsive arc which the vast majority of such stories have.
In a way, it’s something like being at the ocean shore, watching the waves. Those six were sort of interesting, weren’t they? And then, oh boy, here comes the seventh!…
…and then suddenly you notice the water is being drawn away from you, towards the horizon, and waaaay out there is a narrow line growing gradually thicker, and then you remember what all these symptoms mean and you think:
Holy crap, a tsunami!
At which point you start looking around frantically for an exit which, alas, does not exist.
If you think you can get used to this rhythm, absolutely give Dragon Tattoo a try. Even if you think you can’t, well, if you’re comfortable with crime stories/thrillers/mysteries/baby-name books in general, it still might be worth a look. It might catch you by surprise, as it did me.
Surprised by What You Want
[Video above: “Rio,” by Hey Marseilles. Lyrics at the foot of this post.]
From whiskey river:
I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball.
(Annie Dillard [source])
…and:
Born Thirty Years Ago
Thirty years ago I was born into the world.
A thousand, ten thousand miles I’ve roamed,
By rivers where the green grass grows thick,
beyond the border where the red sands fly.
I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting,
I read books, I sang songs of history,
and today I’ve come home to Cold Mountain
to pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.
(Han-shan, Cold Mountain [source])
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