arresting
There are some sounds to which I fall silent and still.
present
The key is to appear clearly to yourself and think, "Here I am. Here's what I'm doing." And not have to shy away from either.
pretense
He makes the "both sides are wrong" copout. Yes, both sides have flaws - but for one side, it's a few typos, while for the other side it's the equivalent of ungrammatical chicken scratch handed in on toilet paper.
ribs
I'm imprisoned in the stories I tell about myself.
soggy
Rain puddling under a bench where we sit and share a bag of peanut butter cups.
soreness
Damp and tired, feet chafed, after a long walk in the park with inappropriate footwear.
version
Change the narratives then. Cobble together some new ones. Find out who you are after years of not listening, of treating yourself as second-rate.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Why my digital avatar is a tree
Trees might not appear to move or change much, but they're teeming with life, inside and out, and changing all the time. Sometimes in obvious ways, other times in secret - the roots spreading underground, the life circulating under the stiff bark.
The roots can penetrate deeper and travel wider than expected, picking their way through soil and rocks, away from the light.
At the same time they spread towards the light.
They are steady and can possess great resilience. They might take on surprising forms, and reveal their beauty and usefulness in unexpected ways.
They are always dancing.
Why did I post this today? It's Tu B'Shevat, the New Year for trees in Judaism.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Week in Seven Words #243
collected
I love her look - black jeans, black blouse and vest, a fedora on springy curls of hair. An attitude of cool self-possession.
enticingly
A bright warren of books and tables for two.
seitan
Sometimes it's meat-like and meat-flavored. Other times it's like a rubber ball sliced up and well-seasoned.
spongy
What's left of the plant is brown, sponge-like matter crumbling on a sunny window.
streamers
The paintbrush releases ribbons of color into the water.
trending
She has the look of someone who works in a social media company. Sleek and tan, her nimble fingers dancing across a tablet. Like a creature sprung fully grown from an iPhone.
viscid
Green pulpy whirly gunk in a blender.
I love her look - black jeans, black blouse and vest, a fedora on springy curls of hair. An attitude of cool self-possession.
enticingly
A bright warren of books and tables for two.
seitan
Sometimes it's meat-like and meat-flavored. Other times it's like a rubber ball sliced up and well-seasoned.
spongy
What's left of the plant is brown, sponge-like matter crumbling on a sunny window.
streamers
The paintbrush releases ribbons of color into the water.
trending
She has the look of someone who works in a social media company. Sleek and tan, her nimble fingers dancing across a tablet. Like a creature sprung fully grown from an iPhone.
viscid
Green pulpy whirly gunk in a blender.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
M (1931): How Beckert Throws Society Off-Balance
Title: M
Director: Fritz Lang
Language: German
Rating: Not rated
Towards the end of M, a child murderer asks an assemblage of criminals, "Who knows what it's like to be me?"
It's a line from one of the most well-acted monologues I've ever watched on-screen, delivered by Peter Lorre - an actor usually best known for playing disturbing individuals. In this case, his character forces people to consider the limitations of earthly justice.
Lorre plays Hans Beckert, a small man, boyishly plump, who for much of the movie strolls the streets of a German city anonymously. He's responsible for a series of child murders (it's also all but explicitly stated that he has a sexual interest in his victims). The crimes remain off-screen. What we see is Beckert passing through the city, whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King" in the presence of children he wants to prey on. He lures them with toys, candies, and balloons. What we also see is a mother, waiting for a child who never returns from school. And there are scenes of the city in a panic, people pointing fingers at each other and sending letters to the police that accuse their neighbors.
Director: Fritz Lang
Language: German
Rating: Not rated
Towards the end of M, a child murderer asks an assemblage of criminals, "Who knows what it's like to be me?"
It's a line from one of the most well-acted monologues I've ever watched on-screen, delivered by Peter Lorre - an actor usually best known for playing disturbing individuals. In this case, his character forces people to consider the limitations of earthly justice.
Lorre plays Hans Beckert, a small man, boyishly plump, who for much of the movie strolls the streets of a German city anonymously. He's responsible for a series of child murders (it's also all but explicitly stated that he has a sexual interest in his victims). The crimes remain off-screen. What we see is Beckert passing through the city, whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King" in the presence of children he wants to prey on. He lures them with toys, candies, and balloons. What we also see is a mother, waiting for a child who never returns from school. And there are scenes of the city in a panic, people pointing fingers at each other and sending letters to the police that accuse their neighbors.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Week in Seven Words #242
backyard
Cut a path across planks, past muddy furrows, pitted grass and cables coiling snake-like.
confection
A pink cake on a purple plate and a stew of plastic spiders are what he serves me from his waist-high kitchen.
disruptive
A pleading grown-up, a giggling child. The red clock on the microwave marking a wasted lesson.
hole
There's a well of misery in her. From time to time, she peeks into it, maybe sticks her head part-way in (the echoes of 'not enough,' 'not enough' are stronger in there). But for the most part she ignores it, even though its emanations and stagnant contents affect much of what she does.
listen
As a younger child gets read to, older ones hang around and listen in. The pleasure of hearing a story out loud, and sharing its delight with another person, doesn't have to fade.
rear-ended
A bewildered, apologetic face behind a windshield.
vibrant
Their happy shrieks and laughter mix with the shimmer of the swimming pool.
Cut a path across planks, past muddy furrows, pitted grass and cables coiling snake-like.
confection
A pink cake on a purple plate and a stew of plastic spiders are what he serves me from his waist-high kitchen.
disruptive
A pleading grown-up, a giggling child. The red clock on the microwave marking a wasted lesson.
hole
There's a well of misery in her. From time to time, she peeks into it, maybe sticks her head part-way in (the echoes of 'not enough,' 'not enough' are stronger in there). But for the most part she ignores it, even though its emanations and stagnant contents affect much of what she does.
listen
As a younger child gets read to, older ones hang around and listen in. The pleasure of hearing a story out loud, and sharing its delight with another person, doesn't have to fade.
rear-ended
A bewildered, apologetic face behind a windshield.
vibrant
Their happy shrieks and laughter mix with the shimmer of the swimming pool.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Three Short Stories About Waking Up Later in Life
Title: New-Wave Format
Author: Bobbie Ann Mason
Where I Read It: American Short Stories Since 1945
The main character, Edwin, is a 40-something man in a relationship with a woman about twenty years younger. It works, at least at the start, because he hasn't changed much since he was her age. He's drifted through life in a kind of stupor, with little awareness of the world and understanding of himself.
Interestingly, it's his new job as a bus driver for developmentally disabled adults that pushes him to develop. (And this story isn't sentimental about his growing understanding and affection for them, and their attachment to him. It feels real.) As he gets to know them better and take responsibility for their safety when they're on his watch, he wakes up a little - and with this new maturity and awareness comes pain. The author doesn't shy from the pain of growing and the loss which comes with re-evaluating one's life and relationships. There might be healing but also a regret for the years, even decades, that have slipped by unnoticed.
Where does the 'new-wave format' come into this? Edwin plays music on his bus - first only oldies and then experimenting with newer more electric and frenetic music - while pretending to be a disc jockey. Music connects him not only to his passengers, but to different parts of his life. The older music, listened to in a new context, helps him revisit and better understand a past he's slept through. He ages mentally on that bus; the music helps to bring him up to date. In different ways, both the old and new music push him to the present moment and underscore the way he relates to his passengers. At the end, he's more mature - but this also means he can't slip back into the comfortable sleep that's cushioned him over the years.
Title: Revelation
Author: Flannery O'Connor
Where I Read It: American Short Stories Since 1945
O'Connor's stories sting; they're thoughtful and sharp, and sometimes funny in a dark way. Even when a character experiences some kind of redemption, the moment isn't necessarily hopeful. There's no easy redemption in her stories. This one begins in a doctor's waiting room, a good setting for bringing together people from different levels of the social hierarchy and pressing them into a confined space, forcing them to breathe each other's air; the setting also suggests that the people occupying it are in need of a cure of some kind, not necessarily medical.
The main character, Mrs. Turpin, is a woman who lives by social distinctions. She's a respectable white woman who knows exactly where she fits in relative to everyone else. Hers is an ordered world, and it feels like a gift she received for being the spotless creature she is. It's only proper that she command respect and own land with her husband.
Another person in the waiting room, a sullen, bookish teenaged girl named Mary Grace, takes a savage dislike to Mrs. Turpin. Their violent confrontation shakes Mrs. Turpin's complacency, her perception of her own goodness and the idea that the social hierarchy in the world around her somehow mirrors what's in Heaven.
From what I remember of the story, Mary Grace's mother is much like Mrs. Turpin; perhaps Mary Grace strikes out at Mrs. Turpin as an indirect blow to her mother as well - and a blow against everyone who maintains a society based on polite fictions, with genteel manners substituting for kind sincerity. Mary Grace's anger isn't misdirected and strange; it's the rage of someone who can see the lies but can do little to change anything. Nonetheless, she helps transform Mrs. Turpin, who takes Mary Grace's attack as a personal spiritual message.
Mary Grace and Mrs. Turpin are also similar (Mary Grace might as well be Mrs. Turpin's daughter, or maybe the teenaged version of her in an alternate life). Mary Grace's attack unleashes some of Mrs. Turpin's personal fierceness, which is usually masked by gentility and expressed in petty ways. When Mrs. Turpin's world gets turned upside down, her ordered world smashed, she rages. She shouts questions at Heaven. She has a kind of savage strength in her, and her faith is no longer a complacent feeling of well-being but more a cry of anger and fierce questioning.
Title: Rosendo's Tale
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Translator: Norman Thomas di Giovanni
Where I Read It: World Literature: An Anthology of Great Short Stories, Drama, and Poetry
The narrator's voice in this one pulls you into the story. He's a man who has killed someone in a knife fight and gets recruited, via a corrupt police force, to intimidate voters at the behest of corrupt politicians. He does this for years; a life where manhood isn't defined by near-constant physical violence seems unimaginable. And then at some point he sees the senselessness of it, including a key moment where he sees himself mirrored in another man - what he must look like himself as a brute. Could he have had that moment of recognition at any time in his life, or did he have to get worn away a bit by the passage of years?
[Edited 2/2015]
Author: Bobbie Ann Mason
Where I Read It: American Short Stories Since 1945
The main character, Edwin, is a 40-something man in a relationship with a woman about twenty years younger. It works, at least at the start, because he hasn't changed much since he was her age. He's drifted through life in a kind of stupor, with little awareness of the world and understanding of himself.
Interestingly, it's his new job as a bus driver for developmentally disabled adults that pushes him to develop. (And this story isn't sentimental about his growing understanding and affection for them, and their attachment to him. It feels real.) As he gets to know them better and take responsibility for their safety when they're on his watch, he wakes up a little - and with this new maturity and awareness comes pain. The author doesn't shy from the pain of growing and the loss which comes with re-evaluating one's life and relationships. There might be healing but also a regret for the years, even decades, that have slipped by unnoticed.
Where does the 'new-wave format' come into this? Edwin plays music on his bus - first only oldies and then experimenting with newer more electric and frenetic music - while pretending to be a disc jockey. Music connects him not only to his passengers, but to different parts of his life. The older music, listened to in a new context, helps him revisit and better understand a past he's slept through. He ages mentally on that bus; the music helps to bring him up to date. In different ways, both the old and new music push him to the present moment and underscore the way he relates to his passengers. At the end, he's more mature - but this also means he can't slip back into the comfortable sleep that's cushioned him over the years.
Title: Revelation
Author: Flannery O'Connor
Where I Read It: American Short Stories Since 1945
O'Connor's stories sting; they're thoughtful and sharp, and sometimes funny in a dark way. Even when a character experiences some kind of redemption, the moment isn't necessarily hopeful. There's no easy redemption in her stories. This one begins in a doctor's waiting room, a good setting for bringing together people from different levels of the social hierarchy and pressing them into a confined space, forcing them to breathe each other's air; the setting also suggests that the people occupying it are in need of a cure of some kind, not necessarily medical.
The main character, Mrs. Turpin, is a woman who lives by social distinctions. She's a respectable white woman who knows exactly where she fits in relative to everyone else. Hers is an ordered world, and it feels like a gift she received for being the spotless creature she is. It's only proper that she command respect and own land with her husband.
Another person in the waiting room, a sullen, bookish teenaged girl named Mary Grace, takes a savage dislike to Mrs. Turpin. Their violent confrontation shakes Mrs. Turpin's complacency, her perception of her own goodness and the idea that the social hierarchy in the world around her somehow mirrors what's in Heaven.
From what I remember of the story, Mary Grace's mother is much like Mrs. Turpin; perhaps Mary Grace strikes out at Mrs. Turpin as an indirect blow to her mother as well - and a blow against everyone who maintains a society based on polite fictions, with genteel manners substituting for kind sincerity. Mary Grace's anger isn't misdirected and strange; it's the rage of someone who can see the lies but can do little to change anything. Nonetheless, she helps transform Mrs. Turpin, who takes Mary Grace's attack as a personal spiritual message.
Mary Grace and Mrs. Turpin are also similar (Mary Grace might as well be Mrs. Turpin's daughter, or maybe the teenaged version of her in an alternate life). Mary Grace's attack unleashes some of Mrs. Turpin's personal fierceness, which is usually masked by gentility and expressed in petty ways. When Mrs. Turpin's world gets turned upside down, her ordered world smashed, she rages. She shouts questions at Heaven. She has a kind of savage strength in her, and her faith is no longer a complacent feeling of well-being but more a cry of anger and fierce questioning.
Title: Rosendo's Tale
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Translator: Norman Thomas di Giovanni
Where I Read It: World Literature: An Anthology of Great Short Stories, Drama, and Poetry
The narrator's voice in this one pulls you into the story. He's a man who has killed someone in a knife fight and gets recruited, via a corrupt police force, to intimidate voters at the behest of corrupt politicians. He does this for years; a life where manhood isn't defined by near-constant physical violence seems unimaginable. And then at some point he sees the senselessness of it, including a key moment where he sees himself mirrored in another man - what he must look like himself as a brute. Could he have had that moment of recognition at any time in his life, or did he have to get worn away a bit by the passage of years?
[Edited 2/2015]
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Week in Seven Words #241
fissure
The photo of a canyon, blown up and stretched wide, looks like a marvelous chasm in her wall.
hacked
When people substitute an ideology for self-knowledge, they talk and act as if parts of them have been carved out.
hued
Dresses draped all over the closet like colorful skins she has shed.
inhibitions
Does writing in a journal help? I think it can, as long as you're honest with yourself. I know that over the years, growing up and even a little into adulthood, I forced cheer and optimism into some of what I wrote - writing things as I wished they were or as I thought people would want them to be were they ever to discover the journal. Sometimes I just wrote, uninhibited, but it didn't come easily. It's important to write freely, especially when writing to myself. Though looking back at past entries I've also learned some key things about my younger self from what I omitted or how I spun a certain event.
prioritize
As his grandmother raises questions about the bill, he leans towards the waiter and whispers, "Can I have chocolate milk?"
renovating
Their house is littered with power tools, the cabinets gaping and furniture stacked in the front room. They look forward to the day when order will emerge from the obstacle course.
sinking
His speech is a series of smooth white pebbles that sink slowly to the bottom of a pond.
The photo of a canyon, blown up and stretched wide, looks like a marvelous chasm in her wall.
hacked
When people substitute an ideology for self-knowledge, they talk and act as if parts of them have been carved out.
hued
Dresses draped all over the closet like colorful skins she has shed.
inhibitions
Does writing in a journal help? I think it can, as long as you're honest with yourself. I know that over the years, growing up and even a little into adulthood, I forced cheer and optimism into some of what I wrote - writing things as I wished they were or as I thought people would want them to be were they ever to discover the journal. Sometimes I just wrote, uninhibited, but it didn't come easily. It's important to write freely, especially when writing to myself. Though looking back at past entries I've also learned some key things about my younger self from what I omitted or how I spun a certain event.
prioritize
As his grandmother raises questions about the bill, he leans towards the waiter and whispers, "Can I have chocolate milk?"
renovating
Their house is littered with power tools, the cabinets gaping and furniture stacked in the front room. They look forward to the day when order will emerge from the obstacle course.
sinking
His speech is a series of smooth white pebbles that sink slowly to the bottom of a pond.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)