weekend's here again

shades of grey

"No matter how powerful we get around here, they can still just draw a cartoon," she sniffs. "So all you've done is prove to them that I'm a meaningless secretary and you're another humorless bitch." - Joan, Mad Men "The Summer Man"

I got into an argument with a coworker about the mexican journalist and lockerroomgate. Sure, she was wearing tight pants. Sure, she ruined her case by then taking back that she was offended. What's interesting to me is that men can't see how precarious it is to be a woman in the workplace. Using wording like 'asking for it' and 'deserves' starts down a daisy path that gives me chills. My coworker's argument was that she was looking for a husband or a sugar daddy. The assumptions in that made me uncomfortable. Is every girl in tight pants looking for a free dinner? Maybe she got dressed for herself or for her boyfriend or hell for her GIRLFRIEND. Maybe she works damn hard for that body and fuck if she doesn't want to show it off.

"If a woman who’s marketed in a sexual context was noticed in a sexual context, then what’s the big problem?" - Fox Sports coverage of Ines Sainz

She was marketed in a sexual context? You mean because she's an attractive tv personality? How is that different from any woman you see on television? When was the last time you saw an unattractive female on tv? So you notice her body, but what gives you the right to remark on it? Especially when the remark is a power play, when it says, that's for me to notice, that's mine/could be mine/you need my approval. The male does the seeing and the woman is the object of such views.

It makes me want to reach for my muumuu. Some men think attractive women have it easy and no doubt I'm sure there are perks. But that said, it's also limiting. First and formost, you are THAT. And god forbid you want to be something more. There is also that fine line about how to react to sexual connotations and discussion of female bodies at work. You think we want it to be a big deal? We want to be one of the guys. Peggy wants to be down. There are always going to be situations that test the limits of good humor.

GENERATION ME

"Life for young American college graduates is a festive affair. Free of having to support their families, they mostly have gay parties on rooftops where they reflect at length upon their quirky electronic childhoods and sometimes kiss each other on the lips and neck."
— Gary Shteyngart (Absurdistan)



"During emerging adulthood, Arnett says that young men and women are more self-focused than at any other time of life, less certain about the future and yet also more optimistic, no matter what their economic background. This is where the “sense of possibilities” comes in, he says; they have not yet tempered their ideal­istic visions of what awaits. “The dreary, dead-end jobs, the bitter divorces, the disappointing and disrespectful children . . . none of them imagine that this is what the future holds for them,” he wrote. Ask them if they agree with the statement “I am very sure that someday I will get to where I want to be in life,” and 96 percent of them will say yes. But despite elements that are exciting, even exhilarating, about being this age, there is a downside, too: dread, frustration, uncertainty, a sense of not quite understanding the rules of the game."

- ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG "What Is It About 20-Somethings?" NYTIMES MAGAZINE 8/18/10

long weekend away

happy escape from the city.

TO THE EAST:




and then because its always been perfect to me.

the esctasty of influence

with a view of the mountains

the older woman who sat next to me at the wedding told me about her son moving home. she said she was happy to have him back again, after the ten years he spent on the east coast finding a bride and pursuing his career. there's something of a mother's pride in having her children close. I can't say I exactly understand it. after commenting on how lovely the bride, she offered that souvenir meant 'memory' in french.

"that's so nice, isn't it? a perfect word for it." she smiled and I nodded absently.

later I thought of dave berman and one of his poems, about how the only thing a souvenir reminds you of is the moment you bought it.

never look back

Light in August

The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

-Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

all the personality of a paper cup

In the gap between what one wants to say (or what one perceives there is to say) and what one can say (what is sayable)

When do we get enough time to do all the things we mean to? I've got lists of places to travel to, all these postcards to send. Here's one of the dark steel exterior of a library in Omaha, NE. When I found it, I thought of you. I was going to tell you about what the libraries of the future will be like when books are obselete. We will miss the microfiche, the open stacks fingerprinted with their past lives. Information will be a stream of electrons on handheld devices viewed in gleaming white rooms. There is a story to tell on the back of this postcard. One of these days, look for it in the mail.

modern modes of masculinity

summer in the city

"I want to be free of cities and sexual entanglements. Heat. This is what cities mean to me. You get off the train and you are hit with the full blast. The heat of air, traffic and people. The heat of food and sex. The heat of tall buildings. The heat that floats out of the subways and the tunnels. It's always fifteen degrees hotter in the cities. Heat rises from the sidewalks and falls from the poisoned sky. The buses breathe heat. Heat emanates from crowds of shoppers and office workers. The entire infrastructure is based on heat, desperately uses up heat, breeds more heat."

- Don Delillo White Noise

Murray's always been a favorite character of mine. He likes the way it sounds when intelligent women cross their legs.

love qua love

"If I overdwell on this it can't be helped: love is important and the reasons you get it or fail are important. The number of women in my generation who in retrospect anyone will apply the term "great love" to, in any connection, is going to be minute. I needed to know if I had a chance here. Love is strenuous. Pursuing someone is strenuous. What I say is if you find yourself condemned to wanting love, you have to play while you can play. Of course it would be so much easier to play from the male side. They never go after love qua love, ever. They go after women. And for men love is the distillate or description of whatever happened with each woman that as not actually painful in feeling-tone. there is some contradiction here which I can't expel. What was moving me was the feeling of being worth someone's absolute love, great love, even. And to me this means male love whether I like it or not. C'est ca. Here I am, there I was. I don't know if getting love out of a man is more of a feat of strength now than it used to be or not, except that I do: it is. It's hideous. It's an ordeal beyond speech. When I'm depressed I feel like what was meant by one of his favorite quotations: A bitter feast was steaming hot and a mouth must be found to eat it. Men are like armored things, mountainous assemblages of armor and leather, masonry even, which you are told will self-dismantle if you touch the right spot, and out will flow passionate attention. And we know that this sometimes does happen for one of our sisters, or has happened."

- Norman Rush Mating

Stuck in my head no matter what:

It is June.
I am tired of being brave.
- Anne Sexton

CLAWED CURLED BLACKENED + CEASED

From "Death of a Moth"
by Annie Dillard

One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when the shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspread, flapped into the fire, drooped abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, and frazzled in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, like angels' wings, enlarging the circle of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine; at once the light contracted again and the moth's wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke. At the same time, her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burnt away and her heaving mouthparts cracked like pistol fire. When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone, gone the long way of her wings and legs. Her head was a hole lost to time. All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax---a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle's round pool.

And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth's body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the shattered hole where her head should have been, and widened into a flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like an immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two winding flames of identical light, side by side. The moth's head was fire. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.

BLUE SKIES

FUCK ME LIKE FRIED POTATOES

Fuck me like fried potatoes
on the most beautifully hungry
morning of my God-damn life.

- Richard Brautigan from "Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork"



Short Talk on Hedonism

Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.

- Anne Carson

More Thoughts on the Cat & Mouse

"Someone was saying the worst thing in the world would be to wake up alone. For a long time, I didn't care about being alone: weeks, maybe months, years even. I could imagine being alone forever, living the life of the Unibomber. I'd have my cabin, maybe a dog, a manifesto about how humanity had spurned me, how I was better off in the wilds of Montana.

Now I'm not so sure. Does this sound troublingly earnest? I have trouble admitting how much I enjoy the company of others; that there is joy, a simple & true joy, in just being with people."

buses, trains, in airplanes

Sleeping
by Raymond Carver

He slept on his hands.
On a rock.
On his feet.
On someone else's feet.
He slept on buses, trains, in airplanes.
Slept on duty.
Slept beside the road.
Slept on a sack of apples.
He slept in a pay toilet.
In a hayloft.
In the Super Dome.
Slept in a Jaguar, and in the back of a pickup.
Slept in theaters.
In jail.
On boats.
He slept in line shacks and, once, in a castle.
Slept in the rain.
In blistering sun he slept.
On horseback.
He slept in chairs, churches, in fancy hotels.
He slept under strange roofs all his life.
Now he sleeps under the earth.
Sleeps on and on.
Like an old king.

"Sleeping" by Raymond Carver from Ultramarine. © Vintage Books, 1986.

Billy the Kid Rides the Greyhound

I start losing my mind waiting for the bus. The frantic hurry to the gate with the anxiety of one espresso kicking in & suddenly I'm slick with sweat, my shirt darkened and sticking to my back. I nervously fidget shifting from one foot to another, hands shaking. Two women behind me are happily chatting & I eye them, all their good cheer offending my visible disarray.

I called my mother to say I was on my way to her house and despite my best intentions, all the words came out in clipped jerks. She said she'd made pasta and chicken for me; the only response i could muster was an impatient "okay" uttered under my breath. Only hours earlier I'd looked forward to seeing her. I'd walked to Brooklyn Larder to buy her bread and cheese, hoping to brighten her mood.

Thinking on this stark change in attitude, I start to wonder if there is something wrong with me. My anxiety about traveling, my impatience with crowds & heat. These have translated to a strange urge to flee, to throw down my bags, & find some fresh air away from the dank bowels of Port Authority.

There are times when I board a subway card and feel trapped. A moment before I was fine but now I can't handle the space and the people bearing down on me. When this happens I forget all semblance of courtesy or my surroundings, I start to push my way on or off the car. In these dark seconds, I find myself pushing mothers with strollers, getting ahead of the eldery with their canes, forcing myself through what I no longer see as humans but just the masses in my way.

Desert Trees Bent and Burned

PR: Are you a "nostalgist"? What time period would you prefer to live?

VN: In the coming days of silent planes and graceful aircycles, and cloudless silvery skies, and a universal system of padded underground roads to which trucks shall be relegated like Morlocks. As for the past, I would not mind retrieving from various corners of time-space certain lost comforts, such as baggy trousers and long, deep bathtubs.

- Paris Review's interview with Vladimir Nabokov

"Newly arrived and totally ignorant of the Levantine languages, Marco Polo could express himself only with gestures, leaps, cries of wonder and of horror, animal barkings or hootings, or with objects he took from his knapsacks- ostrich plumes, pea-shooters, quartzes- which he arranged in front of him..."

- Italo Calvino Invisible Cities

Without a sense of humor, life's pretty boring.

Still, if you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. It's essential for our democracy.

And so too is the practice of engaging in different experiences with different kinds of people. If you grew up in a big city, spend some time with somebody who grew up in a rural town. If you find yourself only hanging around with people of your own race or ethnicity or religion, include people in your circle that have different backgrounds and life experiences. You’ll learn what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes, and in the process, you will help make this democracy work.

- Barack Obama's speech to U. of Michigan graduates

WEEKEND READY

NAH NAH NAH NEXT LEVEL

Day After Day I Think of You as Soon as I Wake Up.

PAT SAJAK LOOKS LIKE A BADGER

This story made my morning. The rest of the story is lovely, equally hillarious, and quietly sad. DFW has Trebek wear a button that is the title of the blog post.



"'My favorite word,' says Alex Trebek, 'is moist. It is my favorite word, especially when used in combination with my second-favorite word, which is loincloth.' He looks at the doctor. 'I'm just associating. Is it OK if I just associate?'

Alex Trebek's psychiatrist says nothing.

'A dream,' says Trebek. 'I have this recurring dream where I'm standing outside the window of a restaurant, watching a chef flip pancakes. Except it turns out they're not pancakes- they're faces. I'm watching a guy in a chef's hat flip faces with a spatula.'

The psychiatrist makes a church steeple with his fingers and contemplates the steeple.

'I think I'm just tired,' says Trebek. 'I think I'm just bone-weary. I'm tired of the taste of my teeth in my mouth. I'm tired of everything. My job sucks string. I want to go back to modelling. My cheek muscles ache, from having to smile all the time. All this hair spray is starting to attract midges. I can't go outdoors at night anymore.'"

- David Foster Wallace Little Expressionless Animals

Note: This is fiction and where real proper names are used here, they denote only objects of public perception and record, not persons alive or deceased.

canadian tuxedo cat

I watched the Ice Storm too many times this weekend. The cold greyness has slipped into my week.

the texture of dreams

end scene

Comets

There are comets
that flash through
our mouths wearing
the grace
of oceans and galaxies.

God knows,
we try to do the best
we can.

There are comets
connected to chemicals
that telescope
down out tongues
to burn out against
the air.

I know
we do.

There are comets
that laugh at us
from behind our teeth
wearing the clothes
of fish and birds.

We try.

- Richard Brautigan

It's a Complicated Dance (This Thing we call Life)

Sad Steps

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

-Philip Larkin

Like New

Welcome to Spring.

Can You Dance to It?

IT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL

"That's just the power of Music."

In elementary school I'd sometimes sneak downstairs after my bedtime. Some nights I'd find my dad sitting alone in the dark of the living room drinking by himself. In my memories he's always listening to Tom Waits + I can tell he's been crying.

Thinking about it brings back all the hurt of loving someone but not being able to do anything to save them.

Sudden Sweetness

"I was gushing and I knew it. I surprised myself with my eagerness to please, felt myself saying too much, explaining too much, overinvolved and overexcited in the way you are when you're a kid and you think you've found a soul mate in the new boy down the street and you feel yourself drawn by the force of the courtship and so act as you don't normally do and a lot more openly than you may even want to."
— Philip Roth (The Human Stain)

(i feel like that far too often, that sickening yearning to be liked by someone you already like very much. there is that fear that the other person can sense your enthusiasm + adoration, the girlish-boyish zeal in your eyes, and thus will be disgusted by you and your pathetic earnestness, but ahhh you can't help yourself!)

Dark Dayz.

In my head, The Night Porter was going to be a Southern Gothic. I was wrong. Set twelve years after World War II in Vienna, it's the twisted story of a SS officer and his obsessed victim. S&M, ballet, caberet, and lots of Nazis. The victim, a very beautiful and frail Charlotte Rampling longs to be victim and object again. She ends up locked up in a hotel room, bound and gagged. The Night Porter tried for some seriously high minded stuff but didn't pull it off and settled for some fucked up sex instead. Upsetting viewing fare for a Tuesday night when I'd considered watching Caddyshack. I recently watch The Swimming Pool and yeah, that Charlotte Rampling has a taste for a certain sort of psychological thriller.

He was promising...

"O.K., I'm a rock critic. I also write and record music. I write poetry, fiction, straight journalism, unstraight journalism, beatnik drivel, mortifying love letters, death threats to white jazz critics signed "The Mau Maus of East Harlem," and once a year my own obituary (latest entry: "He was promising..."). "

- An Instant Fan's Inspired Notes: You Gotta Listen" (1980), from Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000, ed. Peter Guralnick (Da Capo Press, 2000, ISBN 0306809990), p. 100

Daring as Daring Do

"Q: Pick five words that describe yourself.
A: Oh, The Seven Deadly Sins."
— Leonard Cohen answering a query put forth to him in a 1994 Q Magazine article

Elegy for a Fellow Recluse

"You take a look around your college campus, and the world, and politics, and one season of summer stock, and you listen to the conversation of a bunch of nitwit college students, and you decide that everything's ego, ego, ego, and the only intelligent thing for a girl to do is to lie around and shave her head and say the Jesus prayer and beg God for little mystical experience that'll maker her nice and happy."
- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

I read Franny and Zooey a few times over in college. I had a bit of Franny in my brain, thinking about poetry, ego, and, of course, boys.

David Mamet: No One Said It Would Be Easy

IT IS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO KNOW THE ANSWERS, BUT IT IS YOUR, AND MY, RESPONSIBILITY TO KNOW AND TO ASK THE RIGHT Questions OVER AND OVER. UNTIL IT BECOMES SECOND NATURE.

I'm definitely of the school of thought that anything easy isn't worth doing. In my brain it ends up mashed and deluded until it's become: to do something worth doing, you must suffer.