BB King blues and someone is using a table saw outside and the train coming by
pork loin cooking
and a tiny little bit of a breeze wafting in
Sun has set but it's still blue outside; a little bit of sunset remaining
everything feels okay...
puts me in mind vaguely of being a little kid in the apartments and maybe someone's cooking out
and it's still light out, so I don't have to go to bed yet
things are cool just sitting and listening and soaking up the evening
The stereo playing songs that are like favorite uncles and aunts come over to visit
it's got the groove and the funk and rock and melody,
the chillness of the fun 70s sound -
horns and drum and upbeat with a smooth voice and joyful-sounding backup singers and it makes me imagine
hippies in jeans in a public park or remember sitting with my family on a blanket in a park at dusk listening to a concert
- music coming from a bandshell inside the park and our bikes are laid out on the grass near us, and we have a snack that we brought with us
but mostly tonight makes me feel like a grown-ups' party/cookout is getting started and they forgot to send us kids upstairs for it
The excitement and expectation of something, we know not what, only that it surely will be the pinnacle of fun!
and loneliness and boredom
held at bay for awhile
I'm parked in the parking lot of a local church, just temporarily, on my way home. There's soy milk in the trunk but it will keep a little while, and none of my other purchases have to be put in the fridge. I'm on my way home -- close, in fact -- but I don't want to be on my way home.....not because I don't love my husband, not because I don't like our condo, not because I don't love our kitty cat, not because I don't like eating sous-vide steak ......because I'm afraid of the monster that awaits me at home:
me.
I am the thing that I fear. I am what holds myself hostage A part of me hates the rest of Me Part of Me holds the rest of me back held hostage by my fears and insecurities and Dread and denial and trying to run from things so much that I am by now in a tiny and ever tinier box.
A long time ago.... (A decade, even)... there was a website of miscellaneous written stuff called I Drank What?, which featured many things written by, among other people, Cindy Sites Wooley (only Sites back then, a decade or more ago), who had worked on and written for Tangents magazine, and Chris DeLisle (two awesome people, both of whom Facebook now helps my slack ass to keep up with; thank you FB!)
BTW, Tangents went away at one point but now is back again - hooray!! Here is the NEW iteration: http://tangentsmag.blogspot.com/ Anyway, I also wrote some stuff for IDW: mainly poems, a few articles, a story or two, and the occasional review. Not many reviews, though. For, you see, I am long-winded -- or rather, long-typed?/keyed? Yeah. In college, I *wanted* to be able to write the 8-9 page papers we were assigned, but in my OCD way I'd end up with 14 pages, still only 2/3 of the way finished with what I wanted to say, at 4 am, glaring at my peacefully sleeping roommate who double-spaced her paper to bring it up to 8 pages. So. very. maddening.
Thus, it came as no surprise to me that I could not for the life of me write a paragraph-long review of ANYTHING. My fellow writers (and happily, also the editors), however, were very very surprised nigh unto alarm. This is one of them, although not, I believe, the longest one. (The longest one, a paen to Die Hard, actually made their eyes glaze over and their faces sag a little. But I can't locate it right now.) This review is from July 2001. ___________________________________________________ Exhibit Review: “Mi Barrio/My Neighborhood” at Gallery L
One of the latest things to go cosmopolitan in Charlotte is the Main Library uptown. In recent months, I’ve noticed a big change there, namely that the big room that used to be the Virtual Library has now become a seriously suave gallery, with the ultra-hip, New York-style name of Gallery L. So far, I’ve seen two pretty neat things there: a Warhol exhibit, and the exhibit I’m reviewing here, called “Mi Barrio/My Neighborhood”. It’s an exhibit of a graphic novel and various other art created by 13 teenagers in a predominantly Hispanic part of Hendersonville.
The novel uses a combination of drawings, some black & white, some color, and photos. There aren’t many words: mostly a collage of pictures and images loosely tell a story of gang life, from riding high to dying. This is then followed by a page that declares women to be “Man’s Best Hope for Peace” and shows some of the girls that were involved in the project. Some comics and miscellaneous collage-style pages follow, including a really cool one about the “New Girl Order”. The novel is in Spanish, reading from one side, then when you flip the book over, the words are in English, which is a really good way to do it. The kids have done an amazing job of integrating the drawings and the photos, and the composition and placement is excellent, like when there’s a line-drawing of a man pasted into a photograph of a rear-view mirror. I also like the way certain drawings, like the buildings, are repeated throughout the comic so skillfully, with different portions of a larger drawing in different sizes. Although the gang story is really simple and almost stylized, it works well that way, and artistically it is really well-done.
Various pages from the novel were put up on different walls of the gallery, so it really hits you first with the collective atmosphere of it all, of gang life and teen life in general. And since the gallery is laid out so that you have to walk around walls and partitions to see it all, the pages were shuffled even more so you therefore had to pay more attention to each frame, which enhances the experience. Copies of the novel are provided free at the entrance, though, so you can then read it in order and see it the way they put it together. Besides the novel, the walls of Gallery L held some more collage-type pictures, and a lot more miscellaneous pieces of art by the kids who worked on this project: such as self-portraits, neighborhood scenes, some drawings of a more religious or mystical/fantastical nature, and even a few comic strips.
Out of the miscellaneous art, most was really good and impressed me with the kids’ talent – and a few drawings actually blew me away with the skill in technique and composition. But the creativity of all of it, especially the graphic novel and collage pages, really impressed me in and of itself. This exhibit reminded me of how it was in high school, of the kids who were into art and whose talent I admired and envied. There is often so much talent in the kids around you, and so it’s really important for teachers, counselors, and society as a whole to not let down kids. Everyone needs to encourage and listen to kids, to recognize how unique and impressive they are, and how important it is for them to feel pride in accomplishment. This exhibit reminded me how cool most kids already are, at that age – at any age – as people who matter.
“Mi Barrio/My Neighborhood” runs through July 22nd, and it’s definitely worth a trip up to Gallery L.
Okay, so....Hola, to whoever? whomever? may be reading this.
(giggle -- sounds like the following sentence should be "If you're reading this, it means the monster caught me and devoured me with his slavering fangs. Tell my mother I love her....")
Anyway, I used to enjoy (or I remember it that way, at least) the school assignments wherein the teacher would require us to keep a journal for a week or whatever, and we either had to write a minimum of (2? 3? I don't remember the number...) paragraphs -- OR if you wrote a poem, it counted as a complete journal entry -- per day. I had half entertained using this idea for / as my blog, but then I quailed at the thought of making people bored or something. So many bloggers are so productive, prolific, and witty on a daily basis, you see, or at least a weekly basis...it's intimidating.
However, eff that line of thinking. For one thing, as a friend of mine typed on his most excellent blog The Ramen Stand, "Who cares if nobody reads this thing, ever. This is for me...Never feel as though I HAVE to post. Relieve pressure. This is for fun." So, thank you, Nate Bezner, for inspiring me to give blogging another shot!
So, I guess I'm sort of proclaiming, at least to myself, that writing something in this blog and posting it, hopefully daily but at least once a week, will be mainly what this is all about: writing exercise + therapy. But also, a place to store a few links or lists or random reminders about things, here and there. We'll see.
Thoughts in my head one minute, blank slate the next moment...ADD is not helping me be a writer right now.
However, I always wanted to do random things on a blog (a decade or so ago, I dreamed of having my own website - but this is MUCH easier). I wanted to make lists of things, recommendations of things, etc.
Here are a few things I highly recommend that you, dear reader, check out / try, etc.
~ Listen to old radio detective shows, like Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Pat Novak For Hire and Line Up. A) they totally RULE, and B) they are great company / background for when you're doing chores, or walking around the block, or driving, or trying to fall asleep, or wrapping gifts when it's Christmastime, or waiting for an appointment, or whatever. I especially particularly recommend the following Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar episode "The Royal Street Matter".
* Put blueberries in your chocolate ice cream - tastes great, especially if it's dark chocolate flavor.
> Any time you're near a fountain (of reasonably large size - not a water fountain that you drink from), especially if said fountain shoots streams of water in arcs, try to keep your eyes on one droplet of water from the moment it shoots out of the nozzle, up into the air, over the top of the arc, and down again into the pool of water. Of course, you can't really latch your eyes onto just one droplet of water without binoculars - but do try to keep your eye fixated one piece of the water's stream, as specifically as possible, up and over.
This will freeze the water for a surreal few seconds, and it will feel like you're looking at stop-motion photography -- but in real time. Like this!
It may sound goofy, but if you try it, I'll bet you'll find it diverting and possibly even fascinating, as I do.
+ If you like the book Jane Eyre, and you are at all geeky or a fan of fantasy or sci-fi, then you owe it to yourself to read Jane Slayre. It is SO well done, and I really enjoyed looking through both books simultaneously and seeing which parts of Jane Slayre were word-for-word the same as the source material, and which bits were much the same but slighly altered to fit the situation.
Also, if you were always a little (or a lot!) turned on by Mr. Rochester, I suggest you check out the book Jane Eyrotica. Yep, it's what it sounds like. ;D
* Any Bryan Ferry and/or Roxy Music fans in the metaphorical house? You should know, if you don't already, that the Bryan Ferry Orchestra put out a CD of many Ferry and Roxy songs RE-DONE AS 1920s JAZZ TUNES. Yes. They. Did. The CD is called The Jazz Age, and it is SO awesome!
To wit:here is "Virginia Plain", by Roxy Music:
and here is "Virginia Plain, by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra:
So...there are a ton of other things that I notice and enjoy, which I'm not sure that everyone has taken the time to notice and enjoy. I plan to revisit this topic quite a bit. (I'm also one of those people who delights in using a jukebox to play Amateur DJ to the entire restaurant.) When will the next post be? Who can say? To quote Dirk Gently: "Pray God I am not too soon!"
(Okay...wrote this one actually today, unlike the other two I posted today, which were not actually written today. It appears that I sort of wrote it once before already (entitled I Hope Perfectionism Falls Down the Stairs and Gets Gout). Well, too bad. I wrote it today (okay, technically, since it is after midnight, it was in fact yesterday...) and I'm posting it not-today-but-feels-like-today-because-I-haven't-gone-to-bed-yet.
Ah, OCD...it makes for some interesting sentences.)
So....
I have some things I have to "work
out", personally, and I always mean to get around to writing,
and I think better when I can write it down, so...
"Problem solved!"
It may not be interesting to ANYONE but
me, however, writing it here and there results in
= collecting paper = too much, so am
now going to be doing sort of diary/website/etc
on this blog. Probably no-one reading
anyway; suits me fine if it's just me & maybe a friend or two
peering at it.
The thing is...
when I am away from a screen or paper
(really I hardly ever have written anything on a screen, only some
poems in the college computer lab a lifetime ago --
still, as mentioned b/f, there is too
much paper)
anyway, I come up with insights, minor
"voila"s, etc, bits of things -
so many thoughts and it's hard to hold
them if i don't type with closed eyes they will disintegrate
i will get hung up b/c the thoughts
they are such a tide
so yeah, I was upstairs and having
thoughts i wanted to put into a blog, like
"indecision kills"
Grr - I came straight downstairs and
started typing, with my eyes closed == but I had already lost the
thoughts as I began to type.
I know that perfection is my enemy, and
so is form and expectation (and sometimes self-in(tro)spection)
I wonder if i am the only one who write
(types) "blind" - out of sheer necessity?
i know the distraction element is so
incredible in my mind at any given time
One thing I listened to was radio remix
- tonight's show informed it somehow but how?
I remember that the in between times of
life informed was what i was going to type about yesterday
all swept away now by new thoughts but
what were they? they are leaking out of my head the more seconds pass
that i am away from their original conception
radio the man was talking about bit
bits various flotsam and jetsam and puts them together well that is
what this blog is going to be b/c that's what
it was meant to be
we'll see
but anyway there are things in the
emails to retrieve
and yesterday I was thinking about the
in between moments of everyday life and maybe how I am, when in those
in-between moments? But I can't remember exactly.
GAH! so frustrating!!!!!
I've written a thousand opening
sentences for blogs, in my head, but they never stay long enough for
me to put them IN the blog.
This will be the next blog entry anyway
- screw it.
