What comes out when I try to write fiction

1: “You can’t base a story on a movie that was originally based on a story.”

2: “Unless the original story can be improved upon. Why else would they have made the movie? Think Devil Wears Prada. Awful book, great movie.”

1: “Not an awful book, just poorly written.”

2: “whoa. I think my socks were just knocked off. You’ve read it? And you liked it? That first whoa? Gonna have to repeat it.”

1: “As a pop culture specialist I have to be on top of my chick lit.”

2: “So you’re a pop culture specialist now? I feel like I don’t know you at all.”

1: “Sometimes I like to shop at Enigmas ‘R Us.”

2: “Seriously? Did you seriously just say that? Please please never ever do that again.”

1: “Don’t pretend like you didn’t like it.”

2: “No pretending here love. O, did you hear that? Love! I think she just decided that I’m British! British… I didn’t realize it but I was hoping I would be British. Though Brazilian would have be fun too.”

1: “Naw, Brazil’s too cool to be cool nowadays.”

2: “Yea, you’re right. Funny how a whole nation is suddenly trendy.”

1: “Yea. Remember when it was Jamaica? Whatever happened to that?”

2: “o yea. Hmm, this would be a good time for her to have us discuss afro-spiced Caribbean culture and it’s exoticification throughout the world.”

1: “Don’t get ahead of yourself there. That would move us towards themes of race, politics, globalization and God knows what else. We still don’t know if she’s basing us on a movie or a book or some recycled combination of both.”

2. “True.”

1. “So what do you think? Are we gonna be hackneyed?”

2. “Maybe? I don’t know. I do know that this dialogue’s not strong enough to stand without adjectives. What’s she doing?”

1. “Without adjectives? What do you mean?”

2. “You know the whole, ‘He said with a smirk’ or ‘She said with mock distress’. I don’t think we’re witty enough to do without them.”

1. “Speak for yourself. I for one thrive on stand-alone quotes. Also, as a pop culture specialist you should know that dialogue without adjectives equals hipness. And I’m willing to forgo wit for hipness any day.”

2. “Style over substance, eh? Typical.”

1. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

2. “Nothing, nothing.”

1. “Come on, tell me. I want to know what you were going to say.”

2. “But I don’t think I want to tell you.”

1. “Seriously? I hate it when people do that! Insinuate something about you and then refuse to complete the thought. I thought you were better than that.”

2. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

1. “See? She said with a smirk.”

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"

Spoken by the inimitable and inspirational Mae West. I love her for the quote above and for the ones that follow.



"All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else."

"Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly."

"Don't keep a man guessing too long - he's sure to find the answer somewhere else."

"Keep a diary and one day it will keep you."

"I believe that it's better to be looked over than it is to be overlooked."

"I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing."

"Look your best - who said love is blind?"

"Love isn't an emotion or an instinct - it's an art."

From Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers

Memorable passages:

"I wish I could make out Stone's students better. I can see how they disturb him. But I just can't see them in any detail. They're hiding in the sullen, shine performance of youth." The narrator's attempt to describe the youth in the protagonist's creative writing class (page 7).

"From where I sit, the whole human race did something stupid when young-- pulled some playful stunt that damaged someone. The secret of survival is forgetting. If evolution favored conscience, everything with a backbone would have hanged itself from the ceiling fan eons ago, and invertebrates would once again be running the place." (page 19)

"As they talked, the counselor's words turned playful, to match the immigrant's. Something contagious about the Algerian. Her delight was irresistible: like being seven, and ten hours from turning eight. Like being eighteen, out on the highway when a tune with a hook like resurrection came on the radio for the first time. Like being twenty-nine, and having the doctor tell you that company is coming." On delight, (page 86). I like this for two reasons 1) My best friend often has a similar effect on people, one of the many reasons why I love her and 2) great use of simile here, each evocation of delight he employs would resonate strongly with almost anyone.

I'm sure there are many more in this book but I stopped noting the interesting passages pretty early on because I began doubting the author's perspective pretty early on. Towards the end of the book I came to believe in him again but by then it was too late to go back and re-mark things that might have been interesting to my re-engaged self.

Page numbers from the first hardcover edition, published in 2009 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Link to Generosity's Powell's page: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780374161149-0

Generation Y? Z?

I think young people are more poetically inclined, i think-- you see it on the internet, that they really want to connect. Connection is what being alive is, they want to feel seen and, they want to create a sense of themselves and intimacy with others. My advice to them would be exactly the same, it's just to educate yourself, figure out who you are. The other really strong thing that is really needed is you need to build up your enthusiasm so that it is higher than your fear.

~Jane Compton, director of Bright Star on poetry and how to be alive as youth in our day and in that of John Keats. Makes me want to see her new film

Swedish proverb

Love me when I least deserve because that is when I truly need it.

From The Art of Seduction

Sounds about right:

Our personalities are often molded by how we are treated: if a parent or
spouse is defensive or argumentative in dealing with us, we tend to respond
the same way. Never mistake people's exterior characteristics for reality, for
the character they show on the surface may be merely a reflection of the
people with whom they have been most in contact, or a front disguising
its own opposite. A gruff exterior may hide a person dying for warmth; a
repressed, sober-looking type may actually be struggling to conceal uncon-
trollable emotions. That is the key to charm—feeding what has been
repressed or denied.

"People are becoming more and more accustomed to not taking responsibility for their actions"

The quote in the title line comes from an article in the Sunday New York Times that attempts to answer the question of whether or not happiness is a contagious condition. This post will have nothing to do with the subject of that article but only with the quote, by a 75-year-old woman named Eileen, that rang true to me. That quote strikes me as particularly poignant and perhaps the cause of much of what is wrong with the world according to progressives from coast to coast. Eileen was referring to American obesity in this particular instance but this causal analysis could also be applied to global warming, excessive human waste, increased levels of violence, increasing passivity of civil society, and even such social phenomena as racism, classism, and sexism. Studies are increasingly coming out that show links between factors external to the self and bad habits/ negative traits that allow people to excuse their behavior as the result of their inferior childhoods, predisposed genetic traits, or even ignorance, etc.* This is happening as the internet simultaneously provides unprecedented opportunities to separate one's self from one's self (there's probably a psychological term that could communicate this idea more concisely... maybe something akin to "cognitive dissonance"). Less stringent religious practice is probably also a contributor to the state of affairs that Eileen describes (not that I think that this is at all a negative thing).

* Saying that people blame negative behavior on ignorance needs explanation. Information is more easy to come by than ever but it is this very availability that makes it easy to claim ignorance. People often do not want to contend with the intimidating wealth of knowledge (from competing sources) that make up our information sources.

Update: Upon re-reading I'm not sure if any of the above makes sense but I'm going to leave it because, why not? It felt profound at the time of writing...

There were 8 of them. Their uniforms were from different military branches but all shared a common spirit in tailoring: clean lines, two colors, cut to accentuate hard angular bodies. The men's faces matched their uniforms. In fact, every detail of their persons matched all others. Their faces were firm, their mouths were set lines, their spines were erect, their legs moved precisely and their eyes focused on nothing but the air in front of them. They were one body as every movement made was mirrored by all others at precisely the same time and in precisely the same way. They were each other, they were no one at all. They were only men in that moment; they were timeless and nameless, they were servants of their country holding up a man who had been the same.

While watching American servicemen hold up Senator Ted Kenendy's coffin at his funeral this past weekend, I suddenly understood the mindset of those who decide to join the military. I'm one of those people who takes my individuality seriously. Growing up I remember countless times when I would feel viscerally violated when I thought my freedom to self-determine was being infringed upon. If I wanted to do something unconventional (like run around shirtless like the boys though I was elementary school-, not toddler-aged) then I did and passionately defended my position to anyone who thought I should act differently. I've always been the kind of person who takes pride in doing what I want to do, regardless of societal pressures or immediate consequences. Because of my personality, I had always been dumbfounded by any man or woman who would willingly give up any semblance of personal freedom to join an organization that made them physically uncomfortable and psychologically servile.

That's how I felt until I saw these 8 men hold up a senator last week. While watching their rigid stature and focused gazes as they held up a flag-covered coffin, I sensed what had confounded me about the military until that point. These men had given up themselves, their earthly semblances of individuality (which more often than not seem arbitrary) for a more tangible sense of shared humanity. These men gave themselves up to be a part of something that, to them, is bigger than individual will. From their clothes to their hair, from their posture to their language, these men were each other, each others' fathers, and each others' grandfathers. As I watched them, I saw how they might find comfort in learning to become mirrors of the men around them. I saw how the military could be a manifestation of the idea of equality. I had always got that many people find honor, truth and a sense of purpose in serving; I got that they felt that being in the military is to serve a greater good and, judging by the number of bumper stickers, that they must get an almost spiritual comfort from military service. But seeing the men who carried Senator Kennedy's coffin, I understood a deeper reason for donning a uniform: serving brings a daily comfort of being freed from being an individual. I sensed that military men must get personal comfort in giving up the pressure of personality, the all too difficult act of fashioning a self that separates one from the selves of others.

Looking Back

I wish I could go to college now that I am a full person and not a shell of mistrust and uncertainty. Yes, because I think I would have made a far superior academic showing now than I did then and yes, because I would have taken classes and taken advantage of resources that suited my real interests rather than interests that I thought I should have. But mostly because college is an unparallelled opportunity to get to know people who are different than one but who are, by virtue of their age and station in life, at their most committed to getting to know others at a deep level. Or even at a not so deep level. Either way, merely being in the presence of others at a time of mutual openness is a beautiful thing. If one accepts that knowing others is the richest part of being alive then college is almost decadent in its offerings of people to know and love. I miss it.

From On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Memorable passages:

"Here were people, friends. A boy called Ron, of delicate build whose movements were tidy and ironic, who liked to be clean, who liked things Japanese. A girl called Daisy, tall and solid like a swimmer, with an all-American ingenue face, sandy hair and more of a salty manner than she required, given her looks. Daisy liked eighties romantic comedies and Kevin Bacon and thrift-store handbags. Hannah was red-headed and freckled, rational, hard-working, mature. She liked Ezra Pound and making her own clothes. Here were people. Here were tastes and buying habits and physical attributes." (page 210-- There's a side of me that feels that this description detailing the lightness of individual ego rings true)

"And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared." From page 211, when Zora joins her friends after travelling to meet them, alone.

"He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away." Jerome, on his siblings (page 236). The sentiment could be extended to parents as well. I love this and on my least alienated days, I feel this towards my own towers of absolute love.

"It is on journeys like this-- where one is so horribly misunderstood-- that you find yourself longing for home, that place where you are entirely understood, for better or for worse. Kiki was home. He needed to find her." page 307. exactly what I feel about romantic love. A good articulation of what I'm searching for as I search for my Kiki.

Page numbers from the 2006 Penguin edition with the pink cover

Atlanta

Am immediate burst of humidity and the overwhelming smell of family were the unneeded clues that hinted at today's big event: I am home.

From Anaïs Nin

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

Random thoughts: 7.15.2009

*"Go Deep" by Janet Jackson is a GREAT going out song. Also her hair is hawt


*I like the British journalistic style more than the American. It's more honest and quite a bit more fun to read as the author doesn't try to remove herself from the article-- it is assumed that the author's views are critical companions to the piece itself. There also seems to be more snark and humor in the British press-- they acknowledge the inherent gossip-yness of the whole enterprise of writing and thus don't take themselves as seriously as we do on this side of the Atlantic. Maybe in a few years blogs and snark will have accomplished a similar humbling in the American press.

*A good story is nothing without strong control over the release of information. Good storytellers have mastered the art of knowing when to tell, when to keep silent and how much to tell over the course of a story's unfolding. I think I am a decent writer but I struggle with being a good storyteller.

*From The Minotaur by Barbara Vine, "It was all so remote from anything I had ever known," [Kirsten] declares of the Cosways' social rituals, "that I was defeated by it." Could just as well be a description of my social interactions at my place of employment. SO much autism and awkwardness!

*Optimism and belief in a better version of humanity is probably the changemaker's most potent tool

*Is google trying to replace the personal desktop? It seems like they're aiming to make teh personal desktop accessible from anywhere in the world as long as you have your login. Hence gmail (email), google docs (word processor), calendar (outlook), quicklinks (safari), igoogle (desktop)

*Interesting idea: "It really comes down to a confidence issue. So much of your day-to-day life really works to erode your confidence and that's another reason you need to flirt, to build up your own confidence."
I agree.

Fro-spiration

Film review: Up

Up touched me to my core. It matched the final episode of "Six Feet Under" in its ability to move me to irrational tears whose Niagara-ish onslaught were cathartic in their force.

The relationships in this film were incredibly depicted. The subtlety of their depiction made them all the more powerful because they felt true-- there were no larger-than-life epic overtones that are typical of Disney relationships from the last century. Instead all we got were real connections and shared moments of tenderness between people who had lived their lives together in one instance and the substance of love between old and young in the other.

One sequence showing the beginning, progression and eventual end of a shared life between Ellie and Karl was particularly wonderful. It was simple and its message (one among many, really) hit home with me: truly loving and living with someone in good faith and appreciating the simple pleasures of existence (sunshine, picnics, a cozy chair and full indulgence in the warmth of a home) are enough to constitute an adventurous life. We do not need to see the ends of the earth or have adrenaline-fueled adventures. We just need to find someone to love and find adventure in living inside that love.

Great film, visually beautiful and very funny (both wittily and goofily so). I doubt anyone could watch this movie and not find something to love. My confidence in making the previous statement speaks to the universality of this film and for me that is one of its strongest points. I do so love to watch a film that all would love to see.

Daddy's Little Girl

Jack Radcliffe loves his daughter. That much is clear. Who is Jack Radcliffe, you ask?

Check out this gallery of photos that a father took of his daughter's life: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Alison/49837. Though obviously arresting and beautiful, there is something very unsettling about them. Maybe it's the complexity of the life depicted? Or maybe it's the intimacy of each picture? There is something eerily complete about seeing a person's life so neatly summarized through pictures.

...wiser?

London (harder, better, faster, stronger) from David Hubert on Vimeo.

In this video, scenes from cosmopolis are paired with the relentless bass of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" for an arresting combination. Londoners are seen walking, climbing, driving, drinking-- ever moving, moving, moving towards places unknown. One among the things I like about this piece is how, intentionally or not, the filmmaker illuminates the frantic nature of 21st century life (cue Sam Sparro here) as lived by Anglo-Saxon dominated cultures. We are driven ever onward but the journey is more about pace and intensity than arrival.

Ramblings: Wandering Towards Sesame Street

Jezebel has a great piece up of Sesame Street clips whose hundreds of comments indicate how impactful the show was to many of my generation. Even now as I watch clips of the hijinks of the muppets and their human friends, I find myself smiling uncontrollably and at points even feel tempted to sing along (especially to that dentist llama joint).

I must say that the smiles and songs are bittersweet--they remind me of how intensely affected I used to be by merely being alive. I used to feel life in everything-- even simple pleasures were charged with meaning. For example,as a child I distinctly remember being enchanted by one Sesame Street clip that showed how crayons are made (embeded below). Prior to watching the clip, all I knew was that someone somewhere somehow managed to put all the world's colors into one deceivingly simple 64-count box and the the colors were so rich and ready to do my bidding that if I only dared rub them along a white page, works of wonder were sure to appear. (Aside: while drawing with crayons was its own kind of magic, crayon activity was secondary. Crayons were at their most powerful when they had just been purchased, were unwrapped moments before and were now standing still side by side, a picture of diversity before I knew colleges commissioned them; at attention in their pointy glory and freshly smelling of paper and wax.)

With no words and using only a grainy steadycam, the Sesame Street treatment showed crayon origins in a way that increased their value rather than diminished it by over-explaining. Sesame Street gave the unparalleled gift of showing crayolal birth set to gently whimsical piano music. That clip emphasized what I'd already known before watching: Crayons=joy+transportation to other realms. Inspiration, thy face art this starry-eyed blogger 18 years back.



Though I may no longer be capable of fire-y enchantment of the crayolal-inspired, another SS clip proved that I'm still very much capable of sappy sentimentality. Someone in the Jez article's comment section linked to a clip of the song "I don't want to live on the moon", which, though I don't specifically remember watching as a child, brought me to tears as I watched it a moment ago and felt its meaning the same way I would have when home was a radius around my mother's lap. I don't know why I cried. Maybe I just tapped into my inner child. Maybe this is simply a well-written song for a children's show whose lyrics would touch anyone, adults and children alike. Or maybe it's the 70s-era brown-tinged images of a muppet playing on the moon while knowing his bed is just inside a window below.

Something about grainy images from decades past add a magical quality to video. It was with these images that I first began to dream and see worlds apart from my own. Whenever I see video from the 70s through the early 90s, they are instantly imbued with charm, cheeriness and optimism for the people occupying the frames. The closest visual analogy would be to say that they sparkle. I mean really glow with otherworldly warmth. Even now at a wizened 23 years old I feel close to their lives in a way that I don't feel when watching HD images on high definition screens. Maybe it's because they still hold the glamor that televised peoples everywhere hold to the eyes of a child.

Plus the 70s and 80s just seem soooo badass compared to today. (Random tangent: I watched El Cantante recently and fell head over heels for the glammed out wardrobe that Jennifer Lopez rocked throughout. I love how cool straight-up, unironic, fabulousity was back then. Balls out looking good was in and people took fashion seriously. Halter top jumpsuits, platform heels, mini skirts, print dresses, feathered hair and bold gold jewelry?! Yes please!)

I wonder if my love for 70s media means that maybe childhood never really leaves us after all.

Bottom line: Sesame Street is a phenomenal show and I miss it.

Like that scene in Amelie when she sinks her hand into a bucket of beans

The sound the little trash bin icon makes when you move an erstwhile useful file into it is pitched perfectly for the action it confirms. It is so satisfying that sometimes, if my macbook is on mute, I will turn the sound on just so I can hear that clickety crush that means my files have been safely disposed of. A toast to you, Apple sound engineers!

I like this

I have a thing for trees. I also have a thing for books. And though not acknowledged nearly as often, I have a major thing for neglected spaces whose stories are a breath away from being forgotten. I want to wander around in whatever photoshopped world this picture exists in because to do so would be to walk around in my innermost self. On my most introspective of days, this place feels like home.

Almost Happy

The first time I heard “Almost Happy” by K's Choice, I was in a Toulousian attic dreaming of Atlanta suburbs that my parents thought I hated. In that first listen, the Belgian band's lyrics caught my heart and held it and all I could think was how I wished I were almost anything but lonely.

My host sister had put the album on in place of our usual silence as we packed for the weekend’s adventures: we were going to her family’s mountain home for a little bit of skiing and a lot of nature communing. All French families have country homes, Michelle, my host mother, had smugly explained. A Frenchman does not feel complete without une deuxieme maison, Serge, my host father, had confirmed. Thus the mountains of Les Midis-Pyrenees cradled the second home my school teacher host mother and civil servant host father had purchased for weekend escapes from la vie de la ville. The well-turned if dubious pages of my mental guidebook that detailed correct behavior for a young exchange student americaine dictated that I feign excitement for a weekend where my host family and their mountains would be the only company. As I packed, however, I felt nothing but resignation.

The doorbell rang. Soon a pounding voice filled all three floors of our narrow townhouse. It belonged to Pascal, the model-esque blonde superwoman who lived next door. "Ti-phan-ieee!" she screamed up the stairs, "Je veux te voir avant que les Amiels t'attrapent dans les montaignes!" I smiled and prepared myself with a quick glance in the mirror. Hair, face, clothing-- check, check, check. One could not enter the Presence of Pascal without a minimal amount of preparation.

I walked down to the first floor common room that dominated most of the house's activity. That room held the television where one day after school I watched CNN International with trepidation as the twin towers fell. It was also where I watched children’s cartoons every Saturday morning, first because they were all I was able to understand but then because I found the adventures of Titeuf so peculiarly filthy that French cartoons became my favorite thing on television. In addition to the tv, the common room also housed the telephone on which I weekly spoke to parents and friends who were forever anxious to hear fabulous tales of French life. I would animatedly recount what to me seemed like dull days, usually the only time I’d speak English all week, then after hanging up (and assuring Serge that I had used a phone card), I would spend the rest of the night dreaming of my mom's chicken and broccoli casserole. Besides the tv and the phone, the room also held the dining room table where we held awkward conversations that were initially dominated by a giant French-English Larousse. That room was the launching pad of my diplomatic career; it is where I tried my best to play the ideal guest despite my sense that my hosts could not wait for the curtain to fall. And now Pascal was standing in the middle of it.

Kiss, kiss, obligatory head to toe silent critique of the other's outfit. Our greeting complete, she looked at me with an expression not unlike the ones she gave her paintings in progress. You are more beautiful now than you were when you first arrived, she says. I laugh. I banter to get more compliments. I ask her if she thinks I was ugly before.
Not ugly, always pretty. But France has made you beautiful.

I liked Pascal. I liked that, unlike most people I met that semester, she never pressured me with politics and her thoughts on US foreign policy. I liked how, when teaching me to paint, she attempted to (seriously) make blue out of green and yellow. I liked how she always corrected my grammatical errors without ruining the flow of conversation. I liked her lack of pretension, her earthy jokes, how she took my host sister and me to bars and discotheques and was never out of place but ruled the dance floor like no one our age ever could. I liked how one day we rode with the top down in her vintage Renault singing 70s music at the top of our lungs for all of Toulouse to hear. I liked how she was never an audience appreciating the performance of The Girl Taking Part in a Wonderful Experience. I liked how she named my loneliness beauty.

That weekend in Les Midis Pyrenees I skied on mountains, strolled through valleys shying away from autumn in favor of winter’s cold embrace, listened at night to the not-so-distant wilderness, ate hearty food, drank hot chocolate and moaned to myself about how alone I felt with all the fervor my fifteen years could summon. Only later did I realize I was almost happy in my almost home, almost happy in loneliness turned beauty.

I don’t know what you want cause you don’t know so what’s the point of asking
And you’re almost happy, almost content
But your head hurts
Far too many ways to go
You learn so much you never know
Where to look or when we should stop looking
~K’s Choice, "Almost Happy"

Anxiety

I don't want the world to lose its magic. I think that's my biggest fear; that we are just robots, mechanical beings existing according to rules and codes that were programmed into us. The world is only exciting to me when there is mystery and beautiful happenings that cannot be understood. I'm scared that if I think too much about the human experience it will become formulaic and the intoxicating charm of the unknown will be lost to me. Nothing seems otherworldy anymore. I don't want to be jaded!!!!

Of hearts, breaks and plates

Thought I'd bring this blog back for a number of reasons: 1) so it can serve as a repository for creativity I come across and 2) it's about time I start writing for others again. (More on number 2 later). Not that anyone reads this but I thought I might as well throw it out there for wandering souls visiting my little corner of the net. Here, for your viewing pleasure, a dope Gnarls Barkley song and video on how it feels to be a broken heart

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1517481432?bclid=1515735711&bctid=1691067831

*I wasn't able to embed it but it's definitely worth checking out. Just copy and paste the link above into your browser