Tonight there is going to be a low of 39 degrees, and I am sitting here in my puffy jacket because there is no heat in my apartment. We're in the process of moving, so it's only a temporary arrangement. But in the mean time, I am so grateful for a little invention called the hot water bottle. The hot water bottle is ingenious in its simplicity. It's even better if you have an electric kettle to boil up hot water in a jiffy. You know how when you get into bed, it takes a few minutes for the chill to wear off the sheets? Not so with the hot water bottle! Just tuck it in while you change into your pajamas, brush your teeth, and then snuggle up beside it. Not only will you have the warmth from the bottle itself but the spot where it was sitting will remain cozy and hot. It's all you can do to not say, "Ahhhh," I promise you.
It's funny how it's not really necessary to improve upon some things. The guy who invented this rubber incarnation of the hot water bottle at the turn of the last century got it right. I had to look him up. His name is Slavoljub Eduard Penkala. Apparently he is the same guy who invented the mechanical pencil and the first solid-ink fountain pen. He had over 70 patents! Well done, Slavoljub. My chilly old bones thank you.
Speaking of cold, does anyone remember the following poem from high school English class? Right now I'm finding the "blueblack cold" easy to identify with- it's such a great description. It's taken for granted, but the simple act of getting up and facing that cold, starting the fire so his family can be warm, is a tremendous act of love by the father. It makes your heart ache as you realize along with the speaker what love is truly made of.
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
I know this much is true.
Look, I'm just going to say it: Jurassic Park is the best movie ever. It was on TV this weekend, and I watched it. And when it was over, I watched it again. I ask you, is there a better opening scene than a guy getting eaten by an unseen creature in a crate? Is anything scarier than velociraptors in the kitchen? Is there a better line delivered in a British accent to said velociraptor than "Clever girl"? These are all rhetorical questions because clearly the answer is "no."
Watching Jurassic Park in the theater in the summer of 1993 was one of the defining moments of my life. It completely changed the way I saw movies. If there was a job that consisted of bringing dinosaurs to life, I wanted in. Think of the power! That's what fascinated me about movies. I knew that if I wrote scripts, I could see creatures in my imagination become real. It was an intoxicating and terrifying idea. Of course, it could be done badly. After Jurassic Park finished airing on the SyFy channel, they showed some made-for-TV movie called Triassic Attack about dinosaur skeletons attacking people. I realize they must have been working within a budget, but dinosaur skeletons? Weak.
Now I have a bad habit of writing action scripts and putting the characters in sticky situations just so I can introduce something like a sharkmeleon (that's a shark that's a chameleon) to create a diversion and help them escape. It blends in with the skyline and then *CHOMP* OMG IT ATE THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE AND EVERYONE ON IT.
Awesome.
To Help the Monkey Cross the River
by Thomas Lux
which he must
cross, by swimming, for fruits and nuts,
to help him
I sit with my rifle on a platform
high in a tree, same side of the river
as the hungry monkey. How does this assist
him? When he swims for it
I look first upriver: predators move faster with
the current than against it.
If a crocodile is aimed from upriver to eat the monkey
and an anaconda from downriver burns
with the same ambition, I do
the math, algebra, angles, rate-of-monkey,
croc- and snake-speed, and if, if
it looks as though the anaconda or the croc
will reach the monkey
before he attains the river’s far bank,
I raise my rifle and fire
one, two, three, even four times into the river
just behind the monkey
to hurry him up a little.
Shoot the snake, the crocodile?
They’re just doing their jobs,
but the monkey, the monkey
has little hands like a child’s,
and the smart ones, in a cage, can be taught to smile.
Watching Jurassic Park in the theater in the summer of 1993 was one of the defining moments of my life. It completely changed the way I saw movies. If there was a job that consisted of bringing dinosaurs to life, I wanted in. Think of the power! That's what fascinated me about movies. I knew that if I wrote scripts, I could see creatures in my imagination become real. It was an intoxicating and terrifying idea. Of course, it could be done badly. After Jurassic Park finished airing on the SyFy channel, they showed some made-for-TV movie called Triassic Attack about dinosaur skeletons attacking people. I realize they must have been working within a budget, but dinosaur skeletons? Weak.
Now I have a bad habit of writing action scripts and putting the characters in sticky situations just so I can introduce something like a sharkmeleon (that's a shark that's a chameleon) to create a diversion and help them escape. It blends in with the skyline and then *CHOMP* OMG IT ATE THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE AND EVERYONE ON IT.
Awesome.
To Help the Monkey Cross the River
by Thomas Lux
which he must
cross, by swimming, for fruits and nuts,
to help him
I sit with my rifle on a platform
high in a tree, same side of the river
as the hungry monkey. How does this assist
him? When he swims for it
I look first upriver: predators move faster with
the current than against it.
If a crocodile is aimed from upriver to eat the monkey
and an anaconda from downriver burns
with the same ambition, I do
the math, algebra, angles, rate-of-monkey,
croc- and snake-speed, and if, if
it looks as though the anaconda or the croc
will reach the monkey
before he attains the river’s far bank,
I raise my rifle and fire
one, two, three, even four times into the river
just behind the monkey
to hurry him up a little.
Shoot the snake, the crocodile?
They’re just doing their jobs,
but the monkey, the monkey
has little hands like a child’s,
and the smart ones, in a cage, can be taught to smile.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
That little horse is so darn cute.
Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
-Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
This poem always evokes images of the holiday season for me. It brings to mind the frantic planning, the travel, the shopping and just general noise of the outside world. Of course none of that is in the actual words Frost wrote, but we sense it because the woods are so quiet in the snow, the horse's harness bells ring out. There's a special kind of quiet when the world is covered in snow, isn't there? It's almost like everything is padded in a sound-proof room.
This traveler is expected someplace, yet he wants to linger. Maybe he has to visit his in-laws and he wishes he could stay in the woods forever. When I read this poem it feels like taking a deep, calming breath. Next time I am standing in the security line at LAX, I'll think of it and try to forget the "miles to go before I sleep."
Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels.
-Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
This poem always evokes images of the holiday season for me. It brings to mind the frantic planning, the travel, the shopping and just general noise of the outside world. Of course none of that is in the actual words Frost wrote, but we sense it because the woods are so quiet in the snow, the horse's harness bells ring out. There's a special kind of quiet when the world is covered in snow, isn't there? It's almost like everything is padded in a sound-proof room.
This traveler is expected someplace, yet he wants to linger. Maybe he has to visit his in-laws and he wishes he could stay in the woods forever. When I read this poem it feels like taking a deep, calming breath. Next time I am standing in the security line at LAX, I'll think of it and try to forget the "miles to go before I sleep."
Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Blankety-blank-blank
I get so aggravated when I see an ad for a movie that has a generic title. If it's vague and tells me nothing specific about the plot, then I don't want to see it. Examples that immediately come to mind are The Core, The Happening, The Fighter, You Again, Everybody's Fine, Life as We Know It, and pretty much every Harrison Ford movie ever. Even Inception's title was enough to put me off seeing it until I heard the positive reviews and felt assured that it was worth my $14.
As a kid, I took issue with restaurants that were named after the owner or some cultural representative of the type of cuisine. I was incensed at the lack of imagination displayed by Mario's, Molly's or Don Jose's. Maybe this resentment of lazy movie titles is residual of that, but come on, people. You're writers! I know titles are tricky, but unless you're adapting a board game you have no excuse.
Now I'm going to step down off this soap box, and let you Analyze That. If I catch you doing That Thing You Do again, I'll have the G-Force on you in 88 Minutes. Trust me, It Could Happen to You.
so you want to be a writer?
-Charles Bukowski
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
As a kid, I took issue with restaurants that were named after the owner or some cultural representative of the type of cuisine. I was incensed at the lack of imagination displayed by Mario's, Molly's or Don Jose's. Maybe this resentment of lazy movie titles is residual of that, but come on, people. You're writers! I know titles are tricky, but unless you're adapting a board game you have no excuse.
Now I'm going to step down off this soap box, and let you Analyze That. If I catch you doing That Thing You Do again, I'll have the G-Force on you in 88 Minutes. Trust me, It Could Happen to You.
so you want to be a writer?
-Charles Bukowski
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
But the sauce brings the dish together!
My sister was in town over the weekend. We didn't do much except eat food and hang out with old ladies we're related to. Now every time someone comes over to my grandmother's house, she hands them this book about how to never be sick again. She presented it separately to me and my mother. Now it was my sister's turn. At one point, my grandmother was watching football and I got up to take a phone call, so my sister was left with the book. When I came back, she had sped-read half of it and glanced up only to inform me that eating protein and starches together will kill you and fruit should not be eaten with anything else or it will turn it into a toxin.
My sister was totally into it. She said in Italy this is why they have the pasta course separate from the meat course. I was like, but how far apart do you have to eat them? Is it 20 minutes like swimming? Do I eat the gnocchi first or the chicken marsala? Does that mean no tomato sauce? She said she didn't know, but the tacos I ate at lunch were currently rotting in my intestines.
Here is what else she told me: Drinking non-organic coffee means I'm consuming 200 pesticides*, over-the-counter pain relievers like Advil are poisoning our bodies, and I'm not getting enough Vitamin D. I refuted that last point. I am nothing if not diligent about taking gummy multi-vitamins for adults every morning with my pesticide-ridden coffee.
I guess I am pretty resigned to the fact that everything good in life causes cancer, so the next time she visits me, I told her I'm making a four food group pilaf.
In restaurants, there's nary a clue
of the mine field on the menu.
But quarantining your meats
away from your wheats,
leaves your insides like new and not goo.
*This may be an exaggeration. The pesticides are making my brain foggy.
Monday, November 22, 2010
I'm just saying.
When you live in an apartment building, it's not uncommon for you to get other people's mail. Sometimes your neighbor's mail finds its way into your box, sometimes it's an envelope addressed to a previous resident, and now there's apparently a third scenario in which you start receiving a subscription to Entertainment Weekly under someone else's name. This is my current situation. The magazine is addressed to my apartment, but there is no one in the building who has the name on the subscription. To my knowledge, there's never been anyone called Marcus Mungiole in our apartment, and we've been here for 3 1/2 years, so it's a little strange that these magazines just started coming a few weeks ago.
I'm not complaining. If anyone can appreciate a free subscription to an entertainment magazine, it's us, but it does seem highly suspect coming straight out of the blue like this. Somewhere there have to be strings attached. It doesn't seem like it could be a mistake because we have a very distinct address and the building only has 4 units.
Who are you, Marcus Mungiole? Reveal yourself and I will turn over back issues of the magazine you ordered. Also, maybe look into getting a facebook page because a google search of your name revealed nothing.
This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
I'm not complaining. If anyone can appreciate a free subscription to an entertainment magazine, it's us, but it does seem highly suspect coming straight out of the blue like this. Somewhere there have to be strings attached. It doesn't seem like it could be a mistake because we have a very distinct address and the building only has 4 units.
Who are you, Marcus Mungiole? Reveal yourself and I will turn over back issues of the magazine you ordered. Also, maybe look into getting a facebook page because a google search of your name revealed nothing.
This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Take two and call me in the morning.
Last night I tried something new. I went to a dance class that was more than a dance class. This one had a live DJ, the steps were really easy to follow, and you do not stop moving for an hour and a half. For all you LA people, it's called Groov3. Check it out. The instructor, Benjamin Allen has a really great philosophy about dance improving your life, I have to say that I agree. When you're stressed and overwhelmed with life, spending a chunk of time learning dance moves and trying to look cool busting them out in front of a large group of people can really take your mind off things. Plus, I think by now we can all agree that music soothes the soul (and uplifts it).
When I was in college, a couple friends and I would meet in our dorm common room to take a dance break from studying. For some reason I can only recall us dancing to Weird Al and Space Jams. Surely there was more to the playlist? Napster had just come on the scene and I think we were all learning to harness it. Anyway, try it sometime. Instead of a smoke break, take a dance break. Do it in traffic. It will probably bring joy to the people around you, as they will count themselves lucky to have witnessed such an exuberant display.
The Dance
In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies, (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess
This poem was written by William Carlos Williams about a scene in a painting called The Kermesse:
When I was in college, a couple friends and I would meet in our dorm common room to take a dance break from studying. For some reason I can only recall us dancing to Weird Al and Space Jams. Surely there was more to the playlist? Napster had just come on the scene and I think we were all learning to harness it. Anyway, try it sometime. Instead of a smoke break, take a dance break. Do it in traffic. It will probably bring joy to the people around you, as they will count themselves lucky to have witnessed such an exuberant display.
The Dance
In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies, (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess
This poem was written by William Carlos Williams about a scene in a painting called The Kermesse:
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Page-turner
Various people kept telling me to read a trilogy of books called The Hunger Games. They were supposedly about a post-apocalyptic world in which the Capitol of 12 districts demands a tribute of two children from each one to do battle to the death in a public arena. I was dubious- maybe it's because it's so taboo to show the murder of a child on TV, but their battling to the death seemed really unrealistic. Now I am obsessed. The books are so well-written, so fast-paced, I stayed up through the night to read the second one.
Now I am on the third and final book, and I was thinking about how the author, Suzanne Collins, must have come up with this idea. I don't think it is giving anything away to say that it almost seems to be modeled on the story in Casablanca- the love triangle, the oppressive occupation of the districts, the rebellious spirit of the people. The Capitol Peacekeepers have all the qualities of Nazis to me, so maybe that's why a story that sounds so fantastical in a two-sentence description actually reads quite realistically. Whatever it is, I highly suggest that you pick up a copy.
LXX
(from The Book of Questions)
What forced labor
does Hitler do in hell?
Does he paint walls or cadavers?
Does he sniff the fumes of the dead?
Do they feed him the ashes
of so many burnt children?
Or, since his death, have they given him
blood to drink from a funnel?
Or do they hammer into his mouth
the pulled gold teeth?
-Pablo Neruda
Now I am on the third and final book, and I was thinking about how the author, Suzanne Collins, must have come up with this idea. I don't think it is giving anything away to say that it almost seems to be modeled on the story in Casablanca- the love triangle, the oppressive occupation of the districts, the rebellious spirit of the people. The Capitol Peacekeepers have all the qualities of Nazis to me, so maybe that's why a story that sounds so fantastical in a two-sentence description actually reads quite realistically. Whatever it is, I highly suggest that you pick up a copy.
LXX
(from The Book of Questions)
What forced labor
does Hitler do in hell?
Does he paint walls or cadavers?
Does he sniff the fumes of the dead?
Do they feed him the ashes
of so many burnt children?
Or, since his death, have they given him
blood to drink from a funnel?
Or do they hammer into his mouth
the pulled gold teeth?
-Pablo Neruda
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Does anyone ever say "no" when asked if they like music?
I am a sucker for strangers suddenly becoming united through a shared experience, especially when it involves music. Stopping to witness a busker outside a subway station playing classical pieces on a set of crystal water glasses or getting a karaoke serenade by an undercover Jewel, these equally thrill me. In this case (yes, it is a T-Mobile commercial), it's the welcoming of new arrivals at Heathrow airport with spontaneous singing.
It's just something that makes people pause in their everyday lives and connect with each other. It often results in the quick draw of a camera phone, but it also makes you glad to be alive.
In honor of the upcoming holiday season, here is a "Random Act of Culture" brought to you by the Opera Company of Philadelphia. (Did you know that their Macy's has the largest pipe organ in the world? )
The Guitar
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.
-Federico GarcÃa Lorca
It's just something that makes people pause in their everyday lives and connect with each other. It often results in the quick draw of a camera phone, but it also makes you glad to be alive.
In honor of the upcoming holiday season, here is a "Random Act of Culture" brought to you by the Opera Company of Philadelphia. (Did you know that their Macy's has the largest pipe organ in the world? )
The Guitar
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.
-Federico GarcÃa Lorca
Monday, November 15, 2010
Keep calm and carry on.
Many of you may have heard of the following poem before. It has one of those often quoted refrains. The author wrote it for his dying father, but he (the author) died quite shortly after publishing it. It is a good reminder for anyone going through a tough time- illness, economic loss, heartbreak- to "rage, rage against the dying of the light." I myself received some bad news over the weekend, and I don't know why but somehow these words are powerful enough to make me feel better.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Air - Color TV
There is a sign on Olympic Blvd that I have passed hundreds of times, and each time it fascinates me. It's nothing special to look at. In fact, it's kind of ugly. Behold:
I love it because it advertises color TV as if that is still a major selling point. It makes me wonder what else this motel could brag about: a remote control connected by cable, hot water, deadbolt locks? I realize that this sign must be pretty old, a relic of days when a color TV was something new and special, but these days I think a 15" black and white TV would merit more of a mention.
I was curious to see when color television sets really came into wide use. I found a nifty "invention of television" timeline that laid it out. Apparently, the first color television broadcast was in 1946. By 1967, most broadcasts were in color. And by 1972, half the TVs in homes were color. So I'm going to guess that this sign is left over from the late '60s or early '70s.
The motel itself has only one review that I can see online, and it is scathing. I don't expect I'll be recommending it to any visitors, but I'm glad it's still around just the same.
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Thursday, November 11, 2010
In a world where James Franco still has two arms and "Howl" is a movie . . .
I've been trying to figure out for a while now how to work Allen Ginsberg's seminal poem "Howl" into this blog. I didn't want to just drop it at the bottom of an entry as a way of emphasizing some other point. "Howl" is so crucial to who I am as a writer that it deserves the spotlight.
I thank my 10th grade creative writing teacher, Ms. Garrison, for introducing Ginsberg to our class. We read "Howl" out loud and it has stuck with me ever since. I will always be grateful to Ms. Garrison for having faith in her students the way that no other teacher I ever had did. She challenged us to interpret the poem and even take a stab at imitating Ginsberg's style with our own attempts at poetry.
The reason I bring all this up now is that there is a movie called "Howl" that came out in very limited release (New York and San Francisco) in September. It's about the obscenity trial following "Howl"'s publication and Ginsberg's explanation of the poem. There's also an animated part that takes you through the imagery of the poem itself. James Franco plays Ginsberg, and it's got an all-star cast including Jon Hamm and Mary Louise Parker. Here is the trailer:
It looks like the movie could get a wider release sometime in the near future, but until it does, there are still special screenings being held all over the country. Check out this link to see if it's going to be showing near you. And of course, there's always Netflix. I will be on the look out for it, and I hope you will, too. Yes, James Franco is a little ubiquitous right now, but it could be a great way to introduce a new audience to this poem.
Howl was first published in 1956. It is written in three parts with an additional footnote at the end. Below is Part I, which is probably the best known. Notice how Ginsberg repeats the word "who" as a way to keep the rhythm, and think about how the "best minds" of his generation were really societal outcasts.
Howl, Part I
for Carl Solomon
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels
staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkan-
sas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes
on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in
wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt
of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or
purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and
endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind
leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunk-
enness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring
winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of
mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy
Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain
all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat
through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the
crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue
to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire
escapes off windowsills of Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and
anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with
brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous
picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of
China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wonder-
ing where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward
lonesome farms in grandfather night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah
because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels
who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural
ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse
of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or
soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but
the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in
fireplace Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts
with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incompre-
hensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze
of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and
undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and
wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before
the machinery of other skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for
committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and
intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof
waving genitals and manuscripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and
screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of
Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of
public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whom-
ever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind
a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to
pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew
of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the
womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass
and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom.
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a
package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued
along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with
a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of con-
sciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and
were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of
the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C.,
secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy to
the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner
backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or
with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings
& especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys
too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a
sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams
& stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks
waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-
heat and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hud-
son under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy
bottom of the rivers of Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions
and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to
build harpsichords in their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the
tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in
the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming
of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next
decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and
were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were
growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue
amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regi-
ments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertis-
ing & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down
by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked
away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown
soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window,
jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the
street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph
records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whis-
key and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears
and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to the each other's
hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you
had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver
& waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver
is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salva-
tion and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a
second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals
with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang
sweet blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha
or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with
their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently
presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with
shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instanta-
neous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity
hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & am-
nesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table,
resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and
fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns
of the East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the
echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to
stone as heavy as the moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the
tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 a.m. and the last
telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room
emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper
rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary,
nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination--
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the
total animal soup of time--
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash
of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the
vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images
juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual
images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of
consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens
Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before
you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet
confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his
naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here
what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow
of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love
into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered
the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies
good to eat a thousand years.
I thank my 10th grade creative writing teacher, Ms. Garrison, for introducing Ginsberg to our class. We read "Howl" out loud and it has stuck with me ever since. I will always be grateful to Ms. Garrison for having faith in her students the way that no other teacher I ever had did. She challenged us to interpret the poem and even take a stab at imitating Ginsberg's style with our own attempts at poetry.
The reason I bring all this up now is that there is a movie called "Howl" that came out in very limited release (New York and San Francisco) in September. It's about the obscenity trial following "Howl"'s publication and Ginsberg's explanation of the poem. There's also an animated part that takes you through the imagery of the poem itself. James Franco plays Ginsberg, and it's got an all-star cast including Jon Hamm and Mary Louise Parker. Here is the trailer:
It looks like the movie could get a wider release sometime in the near future, but until it does, there are still special screenings being held all over the country. Check out this link to see if it's going to be showing near you. And of course, there's always Netflix. I will be on the look out for it, and I hope you will, too. Yes, James Franco is a little ubiquitous right now, but it could be a great way to introduce a new audience to this poem.
Howl was first published in 1956. It is written in three parts with an additional footnote at the end. Below is Part I, which is probably the best known. Notice how Ginsberg repeats the word "who" as a way to keep the rhythm, and think about how the "best minds" of his generation were really societal outcasts.
Howl, Part I
for Carl Solomon
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels
staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkan-
sas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes
on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in
wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt
of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or
purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and
endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind
leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunk-
enness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring
winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of
mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy
Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain
all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat
through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the
crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue
to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire
escapes off windowsills of Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and
anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with
brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous
picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of
China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wonder-
ing where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward
lonesome farms in grandfather night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah
because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels
who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural
ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse
of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or
soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but
the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in
fireplace Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts
with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incompre-
hensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze
of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and
undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and
wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before
the machinery of other skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for
committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and
intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof
waving genitals and manuscripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and
screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of
Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of
public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whom-
ever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind
a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to
pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew
of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the
womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass
and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom.
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a
package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued
along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with
a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of con-
sciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and
were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of
the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C.,
secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy to
the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner
backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or
with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings
& especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys
too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a
sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams
& stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks
waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-
heat and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hud-
son under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy
bottom of the rivers of Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions
and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to
build harpsichords in their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the
tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in
the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming
of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next
decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and
were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were
growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue
amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regi-
ments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertis-
ing & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down
by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked
away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown
soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window,
jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the
street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph
records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whis-
key and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears
and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to the each other's
hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you
had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver
& waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver
is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salva-
tion and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a
second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals
with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang
sweet blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha
or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with
their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently
presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with
shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instanta-
neous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity
hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & am-
nesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table,
resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and
fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns
of the East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the
echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to
stone as heavy as the moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the
tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 a.m. and the last
telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room
emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper
rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary,
nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination--
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the
total animal soup of time--
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash
of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the
vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images
juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual
images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of
consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens
Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before
you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet
confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his
naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here
what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow
of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love
into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered
the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies
good to eat a thousand years.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Rich man's problem
Somehow I have amassed a collection of aprons. I say "somehow" because it is not something I ever thought of doing. It just happened. A couple of years ago my roommates and some friends of ours decided to do our very own version of Top Chef, except it was more like Iron Chef and The Next Food Network Star all rolled into one. We called it Next Top Iron Chef. There were two teams of two and I was the sous chef on my team. My chef friend and I took it very seriously. The secret ingredient was egg, and my team won. During the competition my chef friend had let me borrow one of her aprons so we could look all business. When it was over she let me keep it. This is what it looks like:
Simple, straight-forward, practical. I used this apron consistently when I made dinner, especially after coming home from work so I wouldn't mess up my clothes. Over the course of the next year, my friend who had given me that apron moved to New York. I was sad to see her go because she is awesome and I missed her. On my birthday, she surprised me by sending me a new apron. What?! I was so excited to have such a wealth of aprons. This one had a little more pizzazz:
I tended to gravitate more to it for cooking and the other for baking. I didn't want to get flour all over my new apron. Then on my birthday this year, a different friend gave me a brand new home-sewn apron that was a little more girly and frilly than the others. It's so pretty! I couldn't believe my good luck. I wear it when cooking for guests:
But now, my dear friend Angela has upped the ante. She embroidered me an apron that is so darling that frankly I don't know what to do with it. I'm actually afraid to use it. It's dainty and reminds me of those old-fashioned pinafores that women used to wear. I hate the thought of getting grease or chocolate all over it (don't you want to know what I'm cooking). I even had trouble figuring out the best way to photograph it in order to do it justice. I'm still not sure I did:
My apartment is from the 1920s, so there's an old ironing board built into the wall in the kitchen. I thought it would be a nice match for the apron. Now I just need to figure out the perfect occasion to wear it (the apron, not the ironing board).
Why I Am Not a Painter
-Frank O'Hara
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
Simple, straight-forward, practical. I used this apron consistently when I made dinner, especially after coming home from work so I wouldn't mess up my clothes. Over the course of the next year, my friend who had given me that apron moved to New York. I was sad to see her go because she is awesome and I missed her. On my birthday, she surprised me by sending me a new apron. What?! I was so excited to have such a wealth of aprons. This one had a little more pizzazz:
I tended to gravitate more to it for cooking and the other for baking. I didn't want to get flour all over my new apron. Then on my birthday this year, a different friend gave me a brand new home-sewn apron that was a little more girly and frilly than the others. It's so pretty! I couldn't believe my good luck. I wear it when cooking for guests:
But now, my dear friend Angela has upped the ante. She embroidered me an apron that is so darling that frankly I don't know what to do with it. I'm actually afraid to use it. It's dainty and reminds me of those old-fashioned pinafores that women used to wear. I hate the thought of getting grease or chocolate all over it (don't you want to know what I'm cooking). I even had trouble figuring out the best way to photograph it in order to do it justice. I'm still not sure I did:
My apartment is from the 1920s, so there's an old ironing board built into the wall in the kitchen. I thought it would be a nice match for the apron. Now I just need to figure out the perfect occasion to wear it (the apron, not the ironing board).
Why I Am Not a Painter
-Frank O'Hara
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The trouble with mice
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that Stuart Little is a mouse born to humans? Yesterday I got into a heated discussion with two friends who were adamant that E.B. White's character Stuart was simply adopted or somehow found by the family. I said, no, he's a mouse and his mother, Mrs. Little, brought him home from the hospital. He is the biological son of human parents. We consulted that beacon of reliability, Wikipedia, and that seemed to be enough to verify that yes, he was a mouse with maybe some recessive human genes. That's cool? E.B., where did you come up with this?
I get that the book Stuart Little is a story of independence and the pursuit of beauty. I also love me some E.B. White (The Trumpet of the Swan is a favorite), but I'm getting the impression that E.B. had a bit of a fascination with mice that went beyond inspiration. It seems like they were the symbol for something that plagued him. I was reading a little bit of his biography where it's mentioned that he struggled with "nerves" when he wasn't happy with his writing. He went to see a doctor in 1944 about his head, "as there seems to be a kite caught in the branches somewhere." He also likened it to a battery getting overcharged after a long drive. He wrote the following poem that same year about his troubles.
Vermin
The mouse of Thought infests my head.
He knows my cupboard and the crumb.
Vermin! I despise Vermin.
I have no trap, no skill with traps,
No bait, no hope, no cheese, no bread–
I fumble with the task to no avail.
I’ve seen him several times lately.
He is too quick for me,
I see only his tail.
(Sad fact: E.B. White died in 1985 of Alzheimer's.)
I get that the book Stuart Little is a story of independence and the pursuit of beauty. I also love me some E.B. White (The Trumpet of the Swan is a favorite), but I'm getting the impression that E.B. had a bit of a fascination with mice that went beyond inspiration. It seems like they were the symbol for something that plagued him. I was reading a little bit of his biography where it's mentioned that he struggled with "nerves" when he wasn't happy with his writing. He went to see a doctor in 1944 about his head, "as there seems to be a kite caught in the branches somewhere." He also likened it to a battery getting overcharged after a long drive. He wrote the following poem that same year about his troubles.
Vermin
The mouse of Thought infests my head.
He knows my cupboard and the crumb.
Vermin! I despise Vermin.
I have no trap, no skill with traps,
No bait, no hope, no cheese, no bread–
I fumble with the task to no avail.
I’ve seen him several times lately.
He is too quick for me,
I see only his tail.
(Sad fact: E.B. White died in 1985 of Alzheimer's.)
Monday, November 8, 2010
The worst
For 30-some hours last week, I stayed in the hospital with a family member who was ill. I've never spent the night in a hospital before, at least not since I can remember. It struck me how much like a prison it is, not only in the sense of being trapped in the building but of being seized by fear and anxiety.
There is an old saying that you don't go to a hospital in order to get rest. This is true. Though you may arrive there at 4:30 in the morning, there is no sleep on the horizon. First you are worried about how soon you can be seen in the emergency room. If you are lucky, it could take less than an hour, but if it is busy, you could be there for four, five, six hours just waiting. In our situation, the next step was triage. Then you have to wait for a room to become available before you can even get treatment. Apparently the quickest way to secure a room is to uncontrollably vomit. This will bump you to the front of the line.
Once you are in a room, you have to wait for the doctor to come in. The nurses are in and out, they check your vitals, but they can't do anything really productive without the doctor signing off on it. Here is what I've discovered about ER doctors: their treatments are tentative at best. I don't know if they're scared of being sued for malpractice or if our doctor wasn't exactly grasping the problem, but things only got worse in the ER rather than better. This necessitated full admittance into the hospital and a move up to an actual room in the observation ward. What we thought was going to be a few hours was now turning into an overnight stay.
The observation nurses are amazing. I don't think this is something that every hospital has, but at this one they dedicate all their time to patients that just need to be monitored. They seem to have a better idea of what treatments are necessary and they contact the doctors and explain each case to them. Things started to turn around for us in this ward. At this hospital, family is encouraged to stay with the patient, so they very thoughtfully provided a chair/bed for me to sleep in. This makes a huge difference because you can be on constant alert for your family member and get the nurses really fast if you have to.
All through the night, they wake you up every few hours to change the saline bag for the IV or check your blood sugar. The main nurse assigned to us was really great about being quiet and just getting the job done, but sometimes you wonder how certain people fell into the line of work they're in. One nurse seemed to be in her 20s, and she was so loud. You could hear her voice all through the ward and at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, the last thing you want to hear is a shrill call about which room the beeping noise is coming from.
We were lucky that we were able to leave the next day. Of course you have to wait for the doctor to come and agree to discharge you. Naturally they are busy, so this could take hours. The worst feeling besides fear and anxiety is helplessness. At the hospital, these seem to be the trifecta of emotions. You are always waiting to react to some kind of news. You have no control over your body, over who prods at you, or what the test results are going to say. You can't get up without dragging an IV machine behind you, and you can't shower or brush your teeth- even after you vomit.
Hospitals. You're lucky if you get a good one, and the people working there make all the difference.
This is a poem written by Elizabeth Bishop about visiting the poet Ezra Pound in a mental hospital after he was arrested for treason and judged to be insane. The poem is modeled on the nursery rhyme "This is the house that Jack built," which gives it an eerie quality sort of fitting for a psychiatric hospital.
Visits to St. Elizabeths
[1950]
This is the house of Bedlam.
This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the time
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the roadstead all of board
reached by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the old, brave man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls of the ward,
the winds and clouds of the sea of board
sailed by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the cranky man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
beyond the sailor
winding his watch
that tells the time
of the cruel man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a world of books gone flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
of the batty sailor
that winds his watch
that tells the time
of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is there, is flat,
for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
waltzing the length of a weaving board
by the silent sailor
that hears his watch
that ticks the time
of the tedious man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to feel if the world is there and flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances joyfully down the ward
into the parting seas of board
past the staring sailor
that shakes his watch
that tells the time
of the poet, the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
There is an old saying that you don't go to a hospital in order to get rest. This is true. Though you may arrive there at 4:30 in the morning, there is no sleep on the horizon. First you are worried about how soon you can be seen in the emergency room. If you are lucky, it could take less than an hour, but if it is busy, you could be there for four, five, six hours just waiting. In our situation, the next step was triage. Then you have to wait for a room to become available before you can even get treatment. Apparently the quickest way to secure a room is to uncontrollably vomit. This will bump you to the front of the line.
Once you are in a room, you have to wait for the doctor to come in. The nurses are in and out, they check your vitals, but they can't do anything really productive without the doctor signing off on it. Here is what I've discovered about ER doctors: their treatments are tentative at best. I don't know if they're scared of being sued for malpractice or if our doctor wasn't exactly grasping the problem, but things only got worse in the ER rather than better. This necessitated full admittance into the hospital and a move up to an actual room in the observation ward. What we thought was going to be a few hours was now turning into an overnight stay.
The observation nurses are amazing. I don't think this is something that every hospital has, but at this one they dedicate all their time to patients that just need to be monitored. They seem to have a better idea of what treatments are necessary and they contact the doctors and explain each case to them. Things started to turn around for us in this ward. At this hospital, family is encouraged to stay with the patient, so they very thoughtfully provided a chair/bed for me to sleep in. This makes a huge difference because you can be on constant alert for your family member and get the nurses really fast if you have to.
All through the night, they wake you up every few hours to change the saline bag for the IV or check your blood sugar. The main nurse assigned to us was really great about being quiet and just getting the job done, but sometimes you wonder how certain people fell into the line of work they're in. One nurse seemed to be in her 20s, and she was so loud. You could hear her voice all through the ward and at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, the last thing you want to hear is a shrill call about which room the beeping noise is coming from.
We were lucky that we were able to leave the next day. Of course you have to wait for the doctor to come and agree to discharge you. Naturally they are busy, so this could take hours. The worst feeling besides fear and anxiety is helplessness. At the hospital, these seem to be the trifecta of emotions. You are always waiting to react to some kind of news. You have no control over your body, over who prods at you, or what the test results are going to say. You can't get up without dragging an IV machine behind you, and you can't shower or brush your teeth- even after you vomit.
Hospitals. You're lucky if you get a good one, and the people working there make all the difference.
This is a poem written by Elizabeth Bishop about visiting the poet Ezra Pound in a mental hospital after he was arrested for treason and judged to be insane. The poem is modeled on the nursery rhyme "This is the house that Jack built," which gives it an eerie quality sort of fitting for a psychiatric hospital.
Visits to St. Elizabeths
[1950]
This is the house of Bedlam.
This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the time
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the roadstead all of board
reached by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the old, brave man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls of the ward,
the winds and clouds of the sea of board
sailed by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the cranky man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
beyond the sailor
winding his watch
that tells the time
of the cruel man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a world of books gone flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
of the batty sailor
that winds his watch
that tells the time
of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is there, is flat,
for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
waltzing the length of a weaving board
by the silent sailor
that hears his watch
that ticks the time
of the tedious man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to feel if the world is there and flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances joyfully down the ward
into the parting seas of board
past the staring sailor
that shakes his watch
that tells the time
of the poet, the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
(But she still doesn't like Paul Pierce.)
My 87-year-old grandmother got me into basketball. Back when the Lakers were in this year's finals against the Celtics, I happened to be visiting her. I knew she enjoyed the occasional football game, but I guess I never realized just how avid a sports fan she really was until that night.
It was the last game and it was one of the most exciting things I've ever seen in my life. Up until that point, I don't think I had ever seen a full basketball game before, even in school. My grandmother knew all the players. She complained about Paul Pierce and the way he always "knows how to get fouls." Glen Davis was a big baby. And she thought Pau Gasol deserved MVP over Kobe. Boy, I learned a lot that night.
Now, I'm back visiting at her house, and the only thing we could agree to watch was the Bucks vs. the Celtics. Another nail-biter of a game, it went into overtime that was way past Grandma's bedtime. She got fed up with 1 minute, 6 seconds left on the clock and went to brush her teeth. As soon as she walked away, the Buck's Delfino made a 3-point shot. That gave the Bucks 100 against the Celtics' 101. Ironically, my grandmother was rooting for the Celtics this time around. "But, Grandma," I said, "I thought you hated the Celtics. Remember the Lakers championship game?" She told me she was just going for the underdog. Wait, the Celtics are the underdog here?
One minute later they won 105-102. Aha. Grandma just likes to back a winner.
Slam, Dunk, & Hook
It was the last game and it was one of the most exciting things I've ever seen in my life. Up until that point, I don't think I had ever seen a full basketball game before, even in school. My grandmother knew all the players. She complained about Paul Pierce and the way he always "knows how to get fouls." Glen Davis was a big baby. And she thought Pau Gasol deserved MVP over Kobe. Boy, I learned a lot that night.
Now, I'm back visiting at her house, and the only thing we could agree to watch was the Bucks vs. the Celtics. Another nail-biter of a game, it went into overtime that was way past Grandma's bedtime. She got fed up with 1 minute, 6 seconds left on the clock and went to brush her teeth. As soon as she walked away, the Buck's Delfino made a 3-point shot. That gave the Bucks 100 against the Celtics' 101. Ironically, my grandmother was rooting for the Celtics this time around. "But, Grandma," I said, "I thought you hated the Celtics. Remember the Lakers championship game?" She told me she was just going for the underdog. Wait, the Celtics are the underdog here?
One minute later they won 105-102. Aha. Grandma just likes to back a winner.
Slam, Dunk, & Hook
Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's
Insignia on our sneakers,
We outmaneuvered to footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost
Last forever, poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters.
A high note hung there
A long second. Off
The rim. We'd corkscrew
Up & dunk balls that exploded
The skullcap of hope & good
Intention. Lanky, all hands
& feet...sprung rhythm.
We were metaphysical when girls
Cheered on the sidelines.
Tangled up in a falling,
Muscles were a bright motor
Double-flashing to the metal hoop
Nailed to our oak.
When Sonny Boy's mama died
He played nonstop all day, so hard
Our backboard splintered.
Glistening with sweat,
We rolled the ball off
Our fingertips. Trouble
Was there slapping a blackjack
Against an open palm.
Dribble, drive to the inside,
& glide like a sparrow hawk.
Lay ups. Fast breaks.
we had moves we didn't know
We had. Our bodies spun
On swivels of bone & faith,
Through a lyric slipknot
Of joy, & we knew we were
Beautiful & dangerous.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The perfect murder
I have always been fascinated by murder mysteries, detective stories, law and order. There's a sense of excitement and anticipation in knowing that I'm about to be in for a roller coaster ride of twists and turns but that hopefully the storytelling hands are capable and will lead to a satisfying ending.
Sometimes I like my mysteries to have a supernatural twist because it opens up limitless possibilities in the world of my imagination. In fact, the first story I ever wrote was a supernatural murder mystery called "Queen Elizabeth's Revenge." I must have been in 4th or 5th grade when I wrote it, and all I can remember now is that it involved Queen Elizabeth I and an emerald ring that had special powers and made the finger that was wearing it fall off her dead corpse. I also remember scaring my sister quite heartily with it.
Anyway, I haven't ever been able to get past my fascination with the macabre, and this still plays into my creative process. As I've mentioned here in the last few weeks, I've been trying to piece together a perfect murder that would stump everyone involved. This is for a script I'm working on. At first I thought it would be a piece of cake because of my vast research into the subject (i.e. years of watching Colombo and Hitchcock films and reading Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen mysteries). However, I quickly got myself into trouble by trying to be far too clever for my own good. The catch-22 of good writing is that you want to write yourself into a corner because that way your audience will be on the edge of their seats wondering how you're going to get your characters out of this mess. The problem with that is you also have to figure out a plausible way to escape the corner yourself. While I think I've finally got a handle on the situation as far as my script goes, I thought it might be fun to put some things I've learned into poetical form.
The perfect murder
In cop shows, it's always
the person you least expect,
someone you meet
in the first 10 minutes,
quickly so
that you can forget.
The grieving widow,
the childhood best friend,
the special guest star,
all guilty,
all fueled
by love, greed or revenge.
It's clear they were
too full of passion
they could never get
away with it.
You can't hide
a thing like that.
The prerequisite
of a perfect murder
is
a void of emotion,
a cold calculation.
The perfect murderer craves
no credit for his crime.
He does it to feed a monster.
He doesn't care
for the world outside.
He needs only
the barest of tools:
a bit of rope,
a locked room,
the perfect alibi.
And when he's finished,
it hardly seems like
murder at all.
This model criminal
casts just enough doubt
as to make it seem possible
that something
supernatural,
some higher power,
came to collect
this "victim,"
this person
whose time was up.
And the dectectives
will scratch their beards
or mustaches
and bumble and
wonder if maybe
they shouldn't
be meddling
with such things.
Sometimes I like my mysteries to have a supernatural twist because it opens up limitless possibilities in the world of my imagination. In fact, the first story I ever wrote was a supernatural murder mystery called "Queen Elizabeth's Revenge." I must have been in 4th or 5th grade when I wrote it, and all I can remember now is that it involved Queen Elizabeth I and an emerald ring that had special powers and made the finger that was wearing it fall off her dead corpse. I also remember scaring my sister quite heartily with it.
Anyway, I haven't ever been able to get past my fascination with the macabre, and this still plays into my creative process. As I've mentioned here in the last few weeks, I've been trying to piece together a perfect murder that would stump everyone involved. This is for a script I'm working on. At first I thought it would be a piece of cake because of my vast research into the subject (i.e. years of watching Colombo and Hitchcock films and reading Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen mysteries). However, I quickly got myself into trouble by trying to be far too clever for my own good. The catch-22 of good writing is that you want to write yourself into a corner because that way your audience will be on the edge of their seats wondering how you're going to get your characters out of this mess. The problem with that is you also have to figure out a plausible way to escape the corner yourself. While I think I've finally got a handle on the situation as far as my script goes, I thought it might be fun to put some things I've learned into poetical form.
The perfect murder
In cop shows, it's always
the person you least expect,
someone you meet
in the first 10 minutes,
quickly so
that you can forget.
The grieving widow,
the childhood best friend,
the special guest star,
all guilty,
all fueled
by love, greed or revenge.
It's clear they were
too full of passion
they could never get
away with it.
You can't hide
a thing like that.
The prerequisite
of a perfect murder
is
a void of emotion,
a cold calculation.
The perfect murderer craves
no credit for his crime.
He does it to feed a monster.
He doesn't care
for the world outside.
He needs only
the barest of tools:
a bit of rope,
a locked room,
the perfect alibi.
And when he's finished,
it hardly seems like
murder at all.
This model criminal
casts just enough doubt
as to make it seem possible
that something
supernatural,
some higher power,
came to collect
this "victim,"
this person
whose time was up.
And the dectectives
will scratch their beards
or mustaches
and bumble and
wonder if maybe
they shouldn't
be meddling
with such things.
Monday, November 1, 2010
NaNoWriMo
Do you know what November is? Well, it is the threshold of Fall and Winter. It is a month that houses Thanksgiving and Black Friday. It is a time for politics and last-minute mudslinging. It is also National Novel Writing Month!
I first heard about it maybe five years ago from a coworker who had signed up on the official NaNoWriMo website and undertook the project of writing a 50,000 word novel (175 pages) by the end of the month. Maybe you have a great fiction idea that you jotted down years ago but never found the time to pursue. Or maybe you didn't know how to pursue it. Does the idea intimidate you? Do you feel someone else would do better writing it? Well, stop thinking that way! The point of this undertaking is not to write the Great American Novel. The point is to start writing something and finish it. Quantity, not quality. It's a kamikaze approach to writing, and it forces you to plow through because you don't have time to stop and edit yourself. You have to finish by November 30th. And don't worry if you don't have an idea already in storage. Just start writing and see where it takes you. Wouldn't it be great to be able to call yourself a novelist by the time December rolls around?
Technically this project began at midnight this morning, but it's not too late. Last year 30,000 people around the world started and completed their novels in the month of November. Check out the official website for more info.
As for me, I think I've finally got the perfect murder on lock-down. Back to it I go.
my answer
-Charles Bukowski
"why does he have to use words like that
in his writing?"
"words like what, mother?"
"well, like 'motherfucker.'"
"some people talk like that, mother."
"people he knows?"
"yes."
"but why does he associate with
people like that?"
because, mother-in-law, if I only associated with
people like you
there'd be nothing to write about that
the motherfuckers would care to
read.
I first heard about it maybe five years ago from a coworker who had signed up on the official NaNoWriMo website and undertook the project of writing a 50,000 word novel (175 pages) by the end of the month. Maybe you have a great fiction idea that you jotted down years ago but never found the time to pursue. Or maybe you didn't know how to pursue it. Does the idea intimidate you? Do you feel someone else would do better writing it? Well, stop thinking that way! The point of this undertaking is not to write the Great American Novel. The point is to start writing something and finish it. Quantity, not quality. It's a kamikaze approach to writing, and it forces you to plow through because you don't have time to stop and edit yourself. You have to finish by November 30th. And don't worry if you don't have an idea already in storage. Just start writing and see where it takes you. Wouldn't it be great to be able to call yourself a novelist by the time December rolls around?
Technically this project began at midnight this morning, but it's not too late. Last year 30,000 people around the world started and completed their novels in the month of November. Check out the official website for more info.
As for me, I think I've finally got the perfect murder on lock-down. Back to it I go.
my answer
-Charles Bukowski
"why does he have to use words like that
in his writing?"
"words like what, mother?"
"well, like 'motherfucker.'"
"some people talk like that, mother."
"people he knows?"
"yes."
"but why does he associate with
people like that?"
because, mother-in-law, if I only associated with
people like you
there'd be nothing to write about that
the motherfuckers would care to
read.
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