The New Oxford Book of English Verse

Awareness...

2009-02-12T18:31:00.001-05:00

is a brutal thing.

Watching a moment pass, immersed in it, and feeling nostalgia for the event before it's even over.

Start

2009-01-15T23:18:00.001-05:00

Getting started is the hardest part.

Actually, scratch that: I have no earthly idea whether or not getting started is, in fact, the hardest part, because I find getting started so difficult that I never start.

If I could be the writer of aphorisms, ala Twain or Bierce, I would be sought after. Throngs would flock to my readings and wait for hours for me to mount the stairs, clear my throat, and, as a hush descended over the multitudes, utter such profundities as, I don’t know, nothing’s springing to mind, but let me assure you- it would be good. Wilde good.

I’ve always been a big believer in brevity. Brevity isn’t such a virtue, though, when it comes to novels. They have to be longer than a page, novels.

What I should do is work up to it. Train like an Olympian marathoner. Start out doing sprints, and then as I get faster and faster on the 100 word dash, take it up a notch and do a 400 word essay. Before you know it, I’m off to the races, being published in all the big magazines.

The truth is, I only find the contents of the inside of my head interesting when there’s no possible way to write- I don’t have a pen, I’m on the treadmill, walking, trying to fall asleep…my God, I’m pithy then. When conditions are ripe to write- nada. When the house is quiet and the sun is slanting through the window just so, when the computer is humming and I’m practically wearing tweed…there’s nothing in there. A blank. It’s maddening.

And sustaining an idea, when one finally comes! Jesus! I can stretch an argument, but still- I can sum it up with the best of them! In school, you know, you have to write those ten page research papers, and mine were always like nine and three-quarters of a page- I just felt that if my argument was right, and if I could choose the right words, I didn’t need to belabor the point. I could say what needed to be said in five pages. Is that so wrong?

Of course, I’m also a product of my society. (Blame it on MTV.) The jump cut! The pundit! The sound bite! Who wants to draw it out?

I’m loath to begin. Another project, another start without finish, another idea on the sand pile. It’s discouraging. The discipline is all, and I got none.

Liveblogging a Night with Nothing to do!

2009-01-13T20:31:00.004-05:00

8:32: Just got back from the diner with a belly full of disgusting frozen meatloaf that may or may not be giving me salmonella
8:33: Checking the spelling of the word salmonella
8:34: Wondering if this is how Wonkette got her start...hey! Wonkette is on the Approval Matrix in New York Magazine this week!
8:36: Actually starting to worry about the meatloaf situation
8:37: Turning on the TV...ah, Nova. Something soothing about chemistry and archeology
8:38: Checking the spelling of the word archeology
8:38: Knitting?
8:39: Nah.
8:39: Cat sneezed in the other room
8:50: Looking at craft blogs instead of attending to the 97 projects already in the works
8:52: Some earnest white guy on Nova is very sad about the life of Pocahontas and American History in General
8:54: Ooooh. A documentary on the housing crisis is coming up next. There's a British narrator. I may have to watch this

Introducing the True Life Definitions Series

2009-01-13T20:28:00.002-05:00

Hubris:

Going to a diner and having a little voice in your head tell you, "Don't order the meatloaf.", and then ordering the meatloaf anyway.

Goodbye, Christmas.

2009-01-11T21:44:00.000-05:00

Description

2009-01-11T21:20:00.002-05:00

It looks like a ship. It looks like a ship, and if the weather is right and you've had too many cigarettes and not enough sleep, it feels like a ship, the porthole lighting and the stories like decks, and the wrap-around porches and the metal railings. Leaning against that railing on the highest floor, with the sky above, and the concrete dizzying below, you have the feeling of flight, of flying, or the possibility of flying, or the possibility of greatness. There's a seediness, too- the green kudzu overgrowth, a trailer in the background. Cigarette butts, hastily smoked and hastily discarded, burning down slow and steady on the cement leaving cylinders of ash, ready to be blown away by any passing movement.

It's a place like any place, but the romance of youth and the veil of remembering make it mythical, inhabited in equal portion by heroes and demons. Rusty and divine, hallowed and left to rot, a ship, a soft place to land, a tower of learning, a proving ground, an arena where Christians met lions and lions met lions, and lions laid down with lambs and the elephants were brought down by a flea and then they all laid down together.

Easter 1987

2009-01-11T21:00:00.003-05:00

1.

I can't find the eggs.
Kathy has like a million of them in her basket, and James has a bunch too, but I can't find any. I really want to cry, because I really want to find one, but if I do I know they'll make fun of me and Mom will get mad. I looked behind the couch once already, but I look again, to make sure, and while I'm on my knees behind the couch, Kathy jumps up on the cushions, and looks too, and right above my head on the windowsill there's one, behind the curtain, and she grabs it. She grabs it, and I say, "It's not fair!" And she says, "It is too fair- I found it." "You didn't let me look there, you should have let me look." "Stop being a crybaby. I found it. Go look somewhere else."

I really want to cry now, big time, because I'm the littlest and this always happens. They're bigger and faster and they don't give me a chance and I hate it and they get all the good stuff and it's not fair.

2.

The rain taps gently against the picture window. The forecast on Channel 5 called for scattered showers and the one on Fox Action News said it would be partly sunny, so Beth had vacillated between taking the risk and having the Easter egg hunt outside or playing it safe. In the end, inside was the best decision, clearly, but it took some of the fun out of it, didn't it, thought Marge.

She sat in the velveteen armchair where she had been settled by a too-thoughtful Martin and watched the children tear around the living room. The smallest one was close to tears, as her siblings snatched up every egg, leaving none for her. Her lower lip was starting to tremble, and she fidgeted with the plastic grass in her basket, trying to regain her six-year-old composure.

Then Marge spotted a sliver of blue behind a decorative plate on the sideboard. She stared hard at the child, willing her to look up. As if on cue, the little girl did, and she looked at Marge with her big red eyes. Almost imperceptibly, Marge shifted her cane toward the sideboard and raised her eyebrows, The child turned and looked, and a wash of realization went through her. Not wanting to call attention to the newly discovered egg, and with all the subtlety a tiny girl can muster, the child sidled with a casual air over to the massive oak sideboard and grabbed the prize.

A warm feeling infused Marge, and the smile of triumph she shared with her smallest grandchild began to make up for all of the indignities of the afternoon- being picked up late from the nursing home, all the family so obsequious and pandering, speaking too loudly to her, as if she couldn't understand them...the grateful child made up for them all.

Penny Dawson woke and heard something moving furtively in the dark bedroom.

2009-01-11T20:39:00.003-05:00

She lay there, silently as possible, not daring to breathe. She felt as though ants were rushing through her veins and a sharp pain in her midsection as the terror gripped her, hard.

Silence. Nothing.

Penny opened her eyes a slit, experimentally, and she saw the light from the motion sensor over the garage outside filtering through the blinds. She could see nothing, and it was still silent.

Then a wet, furry snuffle came from across the room. Her heart leaped and she snapped her eyes closed, willing the sound gone with all her might. She promised every deity she could think of that she would be good, stop smoking, stop secretly hating Brenda at the office, who was so nice but was always wearing holiday-themed sweaters...

She could picture where the sound was coming from: the corner between the closet and the door to the bedroom. If she wanted to get out, she would have to go past whatever that thing was in the corner. There was a pile of clothes there, and other sundry things, things laying where she'd dropped them on her way to bed or the shower. She cursed herself for not cleaning up- it was almost like the laundry had come alive, or that the pile of clothes had proved irresistable to some terrifying creature looking for a nest...

She felt hot tears leaking from her clenched eyes. The tension of holding herself so still was making her ache all over, and the noise just wouldn't go away. That's all she wanted. She quietly bargained with the noise- she wouldn't try to find out what it was, she would just lay there if it would go away, but as soon as she started to relax, it would snort again. The silence was almost worse than the noise- at least when she could hear it she knew where it was.

She laid there for what felt like hours, and then with seemingly no conscious decision, she leapt up screaming and hit the light switch. She screamed with a blind fury backed by the hours of sleepless tension, snapping like a bowstring, ready to strike at whatever was in the room.

Short Fiction- apologies to Randy

2009-01-11T20:22:00.002-05:00

There's a smell to him. You know what I mean- an unidentifiable back-of-your-throat kind of smell.
It absolutely emanates from him, and if you get too close, it envelops you in this cloud of Randy and you smell like him all day. Last week I got caught in an elevator with him, and his smell coated me in this sticky film and I couldn't scrub it off in trip after trip to the corporate bathroom using that drippy pink soap they have in the dispensers. I tried some Handi-Wipes I found in my desk drawer, but those were no match for the Randy smell either. Co-workers were actively avoiding me- taking the long route to the water cooler rather than walking past my desk; emailing me instead of coming by to talk to me. I spent a miserable day, and at the end of it, I bolted from the office and drove home with all of the windows rolled down. I went directly to the tub, and even considered adding bleach to the water, but I thought better of it at the last minute.

It's this appalling odor- like garlic mixed with cheese, but assuredly not in a Le Bernadin sort of way- like old socks and coffee left in the pot too long. The way a little kid smells after they've been playing outside for hours- of snot, and dirt, and little kid sweat. Ozone. Iron. Worms. That's Randy.

I hate Randy, and I know it's unfair, but my nostrils rebel when it comes to Randy and all of my democratic ideals about equality and the nobility of man crumble into worthlessness in the presence of the smell of Randy.

Eve

2008-12-31T10:29:00.002-05:00

Dreary out- supposed to get colder tonight. People massing in Times Square already. I love the human impulse to head to the place where there are the most people. It seems built-in, biological. Marketers on NY1 talking about the "Nivea Kissing Booth" and the "Milky Way Wishing Wall". City closing down all of Midtown.

Happy Birthday, 2009.

Sad Fact

2008-09-10T10:47:00.002-04:00

I was reading a book on evolutionary psychology, and there was a little baby factoid right at the margin of a paragraph, barely remarked upon by the author: People who watch a lot of TV tend to rate their satisfaction levels with their friendships higher than people who don't watch TV. According to the authors, the human brain isn't all that great at distinguishing between an image of a person and an actual person, so while you're watching, say, Gossip Girl, your brain is saying, "These are my friends". And, the the more often you watch a show, the closer your brain thinks you're becoming with those people: Best friends!

I find this slightly disturbing from a philosophical standpoint. What do you mean we can't differentiate between people and images of people? Does this mean that in the future, we'll be able to sit in front of a screen and have a stomach tube and be contented without interacting with the world? (Is that an entirely bad thing, based on our record of interacting with the world?)

Strange Days

2007-11-02T12:10:00.000-04:00

The scene: Riding the subway home on Halloween night...packed from 8th avenue on. People in elaborate and disparate costumes, in high spirits. I (miraculously) get a seat, and am filled with the warm and fuzzy feeling one gets from being in the midst of a New York crowd on a holiday.

A huge group of teenagers gets on at Union Square and starts shouting unintelligable nonsense at another group of teenagers. Typical. I am reading, and only look up when the shouting reaches a zenith- one teenager, dressed as a pirate, launches himself at another teenager, half a car away, dressed as a giant baby. They start throwing punches at each other. A guy in a huge foam gingerbread man outfit gets involved, but he is clearly drunk and impeded by his huge head, so he doesn't do much for the fight. Zombies and sexy schoolgirls get into the brawl, and it becomes a melee of violent silliness.

Why would I live anywhere else?

Trendsetter

2006-12-19T23:51:00.001-05:00

Everyone I know secretly thinks they've started a trend. Or two. Or not so secretly.

One example: someone I once knew contended that the phrase "Too cute to shoot" was actually started by him back in the early '90s, or so. This is, of course, unverifiable, as neither myself nor anyone else I'm acquainted with has ever heard that phrase outside of the context of a conversation about catchphrases, but nevertheless this certain someone remains proud of this (dubious) achievement. (see FN)

I myself will never be convinced that it was not I that brought the word "hipster" back into wide usage. (All me, people.)

Also, in seventh grade, I started wearing Birkenstocks, for which I was widely derided as being "too hippieish", or alternatively, for "thinking I was Jesus or something". By ninth grade the entire population of Clinton High School had at least one pair of Birkenstocks, and I had moved on to Gene Simmons-style platform boots and thick black eyeliner. A trend in a microcosm, but a trend nonetheless...a sad trend featuring ugly (if comfortable) shoes, but...

So- I've decided to try and start a new one. GREEN FINGERNAIL POLISH. It's the next big thing, people. I'm telling you. Right now all the starlets are wearing BLACK fingernail polish, which seems just a tad Cure fan circa 1991 to me, (not that there's anything wrong with that), so I took it a step to the left and went green. Green! Like Sally Bowles! Cabaret! "Start by admitting from cradle to tomb, it isn't that long a stay: life IS a Cabaret, old chum, if you have a little green nail polish on!" All y'all just wait and see. I say give it a month, and then pick up a copy of Vogue.

Footnote: "Too cute to shoot" may actually deserve a, shall we say, "surgance", (as there is no record of the phrase having made much headway in it's original go round, I think "resurgance" may be too strong a term). Think about it. I hearby submit a short play to demonstrate usage:

TCTS
by J.S.

Man: Darling!

Woman: What?

Man: You look marvelous in that gren nail polish! You're too cute to shoot!

FIN

Star Cookies Are Here

2006-12-06T01:13:00.000-05:00

At this time of year, in this part of Brooklyn, signs start going up: "Star Cookies". What are these cookies? They are simple, unremarkable, COMPLETELY ADDICTING little cookies shaped like stars- natch. There are boxes of said cookies piled to the ceilings of most stores in my neighborhood, honest to god.

I suspect that these cookies may have magical powers.

I was feeling a little blue today: it was 2 in the afternoon, and I hadn't left my apartment yet, and I decided to head out for a stroll. A store was selling star cookies in smaller boxes for (sic:) "ONLY 1 DOLAR" so I bought a box. Got a cup of coffee, went home, ate half the box of cookies AND IMMEDIATELY FELT GREAT.

I discovered today what native Brooklynites have appartently known for years: star cookies are the answer for the wintertime blues.

Nothing to say

2006-12-01T00:42:00.000-05:00

Now I have a forum. Somewhere to write, and you know, MAYBE someone might read it, SOMETIME...and I have nothing to say.

I was going to write something about ambition and how it's ruining these United States, and I was maybe going to write something about Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant (Grant had panic attacks!) and maybe something about the Maury Povich show, which I seem to be viewing on a daily basis, but I don't really have it in me.

Blah blah blah.

Postmodern Poetry

2006-11-22T01:46:00.000-05:00

Okay.

Is it just me, or is junk email starting to get really...beautiful?

From an item in my junk mail the other day, attached to an advertisment for various penis-enhancing drugs:
"Then he slowly rolled over on his side and began the terrible job of getting to his knees again.
The next clipping was from page one of the Bakersfield Journal.
Or at the end of Chapter 9, Fiery Doom, he'd be tied to a chair in a burning warehouse."

What?

Sort of awesome and evocative, right?

Now, I know that they just have to attach text to get through junk filters, but that's really pretty.

I sort of half-remember a story from the '30s or so, maybe even earlier, when "Modern" poetry was starting to be a real movement, and there was this whole debate amongst the critics about whether or not some of these poets were expressing themselves legitimately and artistically, or if the whole movement was more or less a gimmick, and just crap. Some critic wrote a poem with words pulled at random out of the dictionary, and submitted it anonymously to a literary journal that specialized in modern poetry- it was, of course, accepted and published and recieved quite a warm review, and then the critic who submitted the poem unveiled his trick and then there was more debate, etc...

Well, what if there is a poet somewhere out in the world who is in an opposite position: a legitimate poet who is sending out junk emails to pay the bills, but in place of the gibberish that usually is tacked on to those things, he or she is putting exquisite little poems into the emails, in the hope that someone out there actually reads them?

I've also noticed that all of these drug-related junk emails I get have the words "Tora! Tora! Tora!" across the top of the page, which is kind of weird, too.

Is it all some big literary conspiracy? Are there poets and history buffs in Asia trying to improve our sex lives through illegal Viagra? What's up with that?

Navel-gazing

2006-11-20T23:41:00.000-05:00

I've been spending a lot of time on my computer recently: I finally got a MySpace account, (for reasons much too pathetic to get into), have been emailing like a motherfucker for my day job, and dealing with evites, and this and that and whatever, and blah blah blah in cyberland, and I don't think, despite my definite web presence, that I have really joined the e-revolution.

Here's the problem: I don't understand the acronyms, I can't type incomplete sentences, I can't even send a text message without proper grammar and punctuation. I tend to get really wordy. If brevity is the soul of wit, I have neither. Or am neither. Whatever.

But is it just me? Doesn't anyone else write too much? (Women Who Write Too Much?) Am I an email email laughingstock?
When I write people, I just get carried away. And I sometimes get a little annoyed with people who dash off cryptic, one-line replies to my carefully thought-out missives. I like to write. I do. I like to write TO people. And I want to engage in some kind of thoughtful/funny/sentimental exchange with people. Think of those hard covers in the New Yorker book reviews: "The Letters of Satre and Camus". "The Correspondence of Henry Miller and Anais Nin." What will the boutique presses publish in the next century? The email exchanges of me and some guy?

Despite my Freinsdter, MySpace, Evite, and Blogger accounts, I'm a Luddite at heart. And a little pretentious. Let's be honest.

2006-11-19T21:36:00.000-05:00

I finally gave in...come on up and see me sometime...on MySpace.

No, Really.

2006-11-19T20:15:00.000-05:00

Okay.
No one will believe me, but this is absolutely a true anecdote:

My friend Todd and I were walking from the Lower East Side to West 4th Street the other night, and when we approached 7th Ave, we saw a cavalcade of emergency vehicles blocking the street and an army of cops- some of them in riot gear, with body armor and the works. They'd blocked off the Christopher station of the 1/9, and there was a big crowd of people around. Todd and I kind of sidled into the crowd to see what was going on, and a woman next to us tapped a cop on the shoulder and asked what was going on. "Alligator.", he said. "No, really.", the woman said. "Alligator in the subway.", the cop said again.

What's next? The proverbial 300 lb goldfish in the sewer?

Only in New York, kids.

2006-11-15T22:20:00.000-05:00

One of the most profound things I've ever seen....I was drunk at the time, but it still never fails to move me in some way, drunk or sober.

Tonight: 1st Avenue and 4th Street

2006-11-15T21:23:00.000-05:00

A Youngish Woman walks down the street. She is carrying several bags, at least one of which seems really heavy. Light, misty rain.

A VERY OLD WOMAN: HHHHHAAAAAAAA-aaaaaaaaAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!!
(She is leaning heavily against a fence. She has a cane.)

Youngish Woman: (stops; looks around) Yes?

Very Old Woman: Excuse me, could you help me cross the street?

Youngish Woman: (This is really too cliched for words.) Sure. Yeah, of course. (Not knowing what, precisely, to do.)

Very Old Woman: C'mere. (Gestures with cane, rather awkwardly.)

Youngish Woman: Um...kay. (Walks towards her.)

Very Old Woman: You'll have to put your bags on that side, so I can hold on.

Youngish Woman: Oh, yeah, okay. (Painfully shifts bags.) How's that?

Very Old Woman: Hold your arm stiffer, so's I can hold on. C'mon.

Youngish Woman: Oh. Like this?

(The Youngish Woman has to hunch over a bit- the Very Old Woman is much smaller than she is. This hunching, coupled with the very heavy bags gives her a curious, shuffling gait much closer to that of the Very Old Woman. They walk.)

Very Old Woman: Great. I have to go to seventh street.

(This is bad news. The Youngish Woman was only in this for the street crossing, and now she's committed to several blocks with this aged stranger leaning on her arm.)

VOW: Do you live in the neighborhood?

YW: No, I, uh, live in Brooklyn.

VOW: Oh. Which train do you take?

YW: The L. At fourteenth street.

VOW: Oh. Where do you live in Brooklyn?

YW: In Williamsburg.

VOW: That's a Polish neighborhood.

YW: Parts, yes.

VOW: Well, that's nice. Polish. Safe, huh? And you like it?

YW: I do.

VOW: Lots of Polish.

YW: And pierogis.

VOW: Oh! Yes. You like those too.

YW: Yeah...

VOW: Where are you from?

YW: Iowa.

VOW: Ireland?

YW: No...IOWA. Although, well, kind of Ireland. A few generations ago. (lame joke.)

VOW: Oh. The sweaters. They make beautiful sweaters.

YW: They do. The Aran sweaters. That's...do you knit?

VOW: The cables.

YW: Yeah.

VOW: I...I have a balcony. I live over there on fourth. I used to live on St. Marks, after I got married, in '47...we had a room, and do you know how much we paid for rent?

YW: Oh, don't...

VOW:(Stops. Looks at YW.) Seventeen dollars.

YW: OH. Wow. That's amazing.

VOW: Yes. We were on the top floor. I made sure to carry things down or up when I went, you know, so's I wasn't going up and down all day...

YW: Yeah.

VOW: And we shared a bathroom down the hall with the neighbors. But then the law changed. And you had to have your own bathroom.

YW: Hmmm....I...(Thinking of a place she looked at in the East Village not too long ago..)

VOW: Now I have a balcony. AND THE PIGEONS.

YW: Pigeons?

VOW: (in a whisper.) They SHIT all over the balcony.

YW: Oh?

VOW: All over. (Nods, bangs her cane on sidewalk for emphasis.)

YW: Are they noisy?

VOW: Yes. Very annoying. I filled a bucket the other day with water and Clor-Ax, and I scrubbed so hard at all of their SHIT. Some of the water got on the neighbor's balcony. She's Chinese. Her balcony is covered in shit, too. But now mine's clean. Hers is covered in SHIT. (Gives the YW a meaningful look which the YW cannot decipher.)

YW: Oh.

VOW: I scrubbed and scrubbed.

YW: Uh-huh.

VOW: I'm going to meet my friend at MacDonald's. I heard it was supposed to rain later.

YW: I heard that too. It's getting...

VOW: I'm Rose, by the way.

YW: Oh. Nice to meet you Rose. I'm Jordan.

Rose: Nice to meet you too. Thanks for helping me. I shout and yell, and so many people just run away.

Jordan: Oh...

Rose: It's like they think they'll never get old.

Jordan: (forced laugh, thinking of mortality.)

Rose: (stops. Another meaningful look.) I'm eighty-four.

Jordan: Well, you....

Rose: Maaaaaaaarrrrrriiiiieeeeeeee! There's my friend. Maaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiieeeeeee!!!!

Jordan: Oh...

Rose: Where are you going?

Woman across the street: (Unintelligible)

Rose: Hang on! (to jordan) That's my friend. She's a holy-roller. You can't imagine. Maaarrriiiieee! Stay there! We're coming over!

(The two women shuffle across the street to meet Marie and another woman.)

Marie: Oh, God bless you, young lady.

Jordan: Oh, it's fine- no problem...

Other woman: God bless, God bless...

Rose: (gives another meaningful look to Jordan) Thank you, very much. No one else stopped...

Jordan: (shifting bags off of her very sore shoulder) It's fine. Really, no problem. Have a good night....

(Jordan walks away amidst repeated thank you and God blesses, feeling proud of herself.)

Blog Blog Blog

2006-10-31T20:27:00.000-05:00

So. I guess I need a mission-statement of sorts. Why a blog? I make fun of people who have blogs. Blogs seem to me to be both the height of narcissism and the natural extention of 21st Century life, (which may or may not fold narcissism into it's definition)...Of course people put their most private thoughts and feelings out into the world while at the same time they feel unable to interact with actual human beings. I feel the same way.

I've also been reading a lot of Johnathan Franzen and Montaigne recently though, and there's something about the ESSAY that I'm intereted in. The Essay. That bane of high-school seniors, the refuge of the high-falutin'...I want to write essays. Weird, huh? ...And one would think that I could do so, write an essay, and keep it to myself- just write it down and put it in a drawer...but that seems dumb. Writing is communication, right? Why write except to communicate something TO someone...(Frankly, I've never been good at journaling- it seemed so POINTLESS to me, which probably points to a basic flaw in my psyche, I know.)

So. I'm sure my hero Franzen would think less of me, (not that he knows me from Adam anyway), but nevertheless, here's MY BLOG. My way of putting something out into the world. Some communication. Some insight. Some bitching. Here goes.