Always too busy for more than a snapshot:
Read: Driver’s Seat by Muriel Sparks, Yes, Yes, Cherries by Mary Otis, Pastoralia by George Saunders.
Listened to: Regina Spektor’s Far, again and again and again, Matthew Dear and Max Richtor and more Girltalk.
Ate: too many burgers, not enough broccolis, wine, wine, and late-night cheese.
Saw: A tree with basketball-sized warts pimpling its trunk, a pair of abandoned shoes on the sidewalk of 26th Street (flats, mud-worn), yellow leaves, a three-legged dog, and Twilight, for the fourth time.
Heard: Teri Hatcher has swine flu. Screams from my neighbor's 3:00 am flip-cup tournament.
Looking forward to: New York in two weeks, Thanksgiving in three.
Loved: everything, a lot.
What joy it is, every single day. Sometimes, in the morning, I must clamp my hands over my mouth, to hold in the squeal.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
October
21 days! A thousand apologies, mon petit chatons. Time is a strange dance these days. Weeks slip by in the space of a sneeze! It was winter for a second here, complete with snowy roads and mornings spent huffing over the windshield with an empty cd case because I cannot find the damned ice scraper anywhere and did not expect to have to deal with winter until at least November.
Then just as suddenly it was warm again, and yesterday we marveled at the fact that we were only wearing one thermal and one hoodie, and the sun pooled at our feet like orange sherbet. Hello, October! And goodbye.
Now, onto the very important things. First, you must pick up Lorrie Moore's new novel, A Gate At the Stairs, and since it's been ten years since you first read it, please give Birds of America another glance, too. Spend some time lying on the couch, marveling. Refute all claims that lying on the couch marveling is a form of laziness--lies! You may be supine, your feet may be propped on a pillow, there may or may not be an afghan spread across your chest. But marveling involves the heart, and sleep is never able to approach matters of the heart.
Also, I got to watch this baby chick stumble about for his first few moments of life. He took a step or two, flinging one tiny foot in front of the other. Then he collapsed, exhausted!
Living is hard work. But worth it, to this chick, worth getting up and trying again.
Then just as suddenly it was warm again, and yesterday we marveled at the fact that we were only wearing one thermal and one hoodie, and the sun pooled at our feet like orange sherbet. Hello, October! And goodbye.
Now, onto the very important things. First, you must pick up Lorrie Moore's new novel, A Gate At the Stairs, and since it's been ten years since you first read it, please give Birds of America another glance, too. Spend some time lying on the couch, marveling. Refute all claims that lying on the couch marveling is a form of laziness--lies! You may be supine, your feet may be propped on a pillow, there may or may not be an afghan spread across your chest. But marveling involves the heart, and sleep is never able to approach matters of the heart.
Also, I got to watch this baby chick stumble about for his first few moments of life. He took a step or two, flinging one tiny foot in front of the other. Then he collapsed, exhausted!
Living is hard work. But worth it, to this chick, worth getting up and trying again.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
3 Things
Today this happened:
I was walking across the kitchen with an ink pen in my mouth, cigarette-style, and a stack of papers in my arms, when I stopped by the oven to reach my free hand out to grab dinner (cold pizza slice), and in my hunger I shoved the piece of pie in my mouth immediately, only to push the ink pen in as well, and plastic and cheese and peppers all mixed together and moved dangerously close to my throat. I coughed loudly (as one does in these situations), and dropped all of my papers on the floor. A tomato slice fell on top of the pile.
Yesterday this happened:
I drove into the parking lot of a nearby drugstore so I could buy some soda to go with my hot pizza. As I pulled down an aisle to secure a parking spot, the car heading toward me suddenly swerved over so as to block my passage. He flashed his brights a few times at me, and I moved my car from side to side, trying to get around him, but he backed up and mirrored my movements, preventing me from getting any farther into the lot. Finally I sat and waited. After a moment, he pulled up next to me and leaned out of the window.
"This is a ONE WAY aisle," he screamed.
"Okay," I said. "Thanks."
"NO," he insisted. "It's NOT okay. Because you are WRONG."
"Oh, okay," I said. "Thanks."
And then I did that passive aggressive thing where I smiled brightly at him, and I am pretty sure he went home and had a massive stroke.
When I was in kindergarten this happened:
Snow came early in the year, and I had to wear six layers of protective clothing so as not to crack open like ice when I walked outside. At the end of a particularly exciting day of school (Happy Meals for everyone who could write their address and phone number), I found myself in the knotty conundrum of wearing all six buttoned-up layers as we waited for the bell, and having to pee very very very very badly.
There was a private bathroom in the back of the classroom, because kindergarteneers can't be trusted to carry a full bladder all the way down the hallway without leakage, and so I rushed into the toilet and began clumsily working with the zippers and snaps, shifting my weight back and forth from one Ked to another.
But my attempts at unzipperage were unsuccessful. I peed my pants. Mrs. Dunn knocked on the door and came in, and though I was thoroughly humiliated to have disgraced myself in this way, she seemed unsurprised by the mess and merely suggested I blot the outside of my pants with paper towels before heading home.
I don't remember her exact words, but it was something like, "Shit happens."
I was walking across the kitchen with an ink pen in my mouth, cigarette-style, and a stack of papers in my arms, when I stopped by the oven to reach my free hand out to grab dinner (cold pizza slice), and in my hunger I shoved the piece of pie in my mouth immediately, only to push the ink pen in as well, and plastic and cheese and peppers all mixed together and moved dangerously close to my throat. I coughed loudly (as one does in these situations), and dropped all of my papers on the floor. A tomato slice fell on top of the pile.
Yesterday this happened:
I drove into the parking lot of a nearby drugstore so I could buy some soda to go with my hot pizza. As I pulled down an aisle to secure a parking spot, the car heading toward me suddenly swerved over so as to block my passage. He flashed his brights a few times at me, and I moved my car from side to side, trying to get around him, but he backed up and mirrored my movements, preventing me from getting any farther into the lot. Finally I sat and waited. After a moment, he pulled up next to me and leaned out of the window.
"This is a ONE WAY aisle," he screamed.
"Okay," I said. "Thanks."
"NO," he insisted. "It's NOT okay. Because you are WRONG."
"Oh, okay," I said. "Thanks."
And then I did that passive aggressive thing where I smiled brightly at him, and I am pretty sure he went home and had a massive stroke.
When I was in kindergarten this happened:
Snow came early in the year, and I had to wear six layers of protective clothing so as not to crack open like ice when I walked outside. At the end of a particularly exciting day of school (Happy Meals for everyone who could write their address and phone number), I found myself in the knotty conundrum of wearing all six buttoned-up layers as we waited for the bell, and having to pee very very very very badly.
There was a private bathroom in the back of the classroom, because kindergarteneers can't be trusted to carry a full bladder all the way down the hallway without leakage, and so I rushed into the toilet and began clumsily working with the zippers and snaps, shifting my weight back and forth from one Ked to another.
But my attempts at unzipperage were unsuccessful. I peed my pants. Mrs. Dunn knocked on the door and came in, and though I was thoroughly humiliated to have disgraced myself in this way, she seemed unsurprised by the mess and merely suggested I blot the outside of my pants with paper towels before heading home.
I don't remember her exact words, but it was something like, "Shit happens."
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Freedom
Ten days without a peep from me, and do you know why? I downloaded Freedom for my laptop. It's an application that disables your computer's networking abilities for certain periods of time, so you can actually write that Great-Fucking-Fantastic American Novel in peace, without getting sidetracked by the endless seduction of Facebook and Gchat and Sarah Silverman's twitter.
There's a certain amount of anxiety that comes with the inability to check your friends' status updates for 120 minutes at a time, but you can channel that existential isolation into the GFFA Novel's intricate plot twists; also, you will look around and become struck by the realization that you have all these objects filling the apartment but you only ever pay attention to one.
Etc, etc.
Last night we went to an Indian restaurant which featured an outdoor patio and a very distinguished Indian mouse who scuttled across the patio every few minutes in search of dropped bits of paneer, and even though we all hooked our shoes on our chairs, I thought it was so fantastic that not one person screamed. Then a drunken frat boy in a polo shirt leaned on our table and wanted to know how we were doing on this fihne autrumn evhening, and he picked up our plate of roti and swiveled away with it, down the sidewalk and off into the night. We got a 60% discount off our final bill for that.
And, real quick: A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker was beautiful, The Name of the World by Denis Johnson was eh, and I wonder did you hear that the new chick on Saturday Night Live said the f-word in her first skit last night? I did, and it was probably responsible for my biggest smile of the day.
There's a certain amount of anxiety that comes with the inability to check your friends' status updates for 120 minutes at a time, but you can channel that existential isolation into the GFFA Novel's intricate plot twists; also, you will look around and become struck by the realization that you have all these objects filling the apartment but you only ever pay attention to one.
Etc, etc.
Last night we went to an Indian restaurant which featured an outdoor patio and a very distinguished Indian mouse who scuttled across the patio every few minutes in search of dropped bits of paneer, and even though we all hooked our shoes on our chairs, I thought it was so fantastic that not one person screamed. Then a drunken frat boy in a polo shirt leaned on our table and wanted to know how we were doing on this fihne autrumn evhening, and he picked up our plate of roti and swiveled away with it, down the sidewalk and off into the night. We got a 60% discount off our final bill for that.
And, real quick: A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker was beautiful, The Name of the World by Denis Johnson was eh, and I wonder did you hear that the new chick on Saturday Night Live said the f-word in her first skit last night? I did, and it was probably responsible for my biggest smile of the day.
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