August 22nd, 2007

Nostalgia for Now

Here I sit at the library info desk, watching bright-faced new students of every age and stripe try to find the student card office. I sit behind a sign with directions on it, but they still like to ask me personally. When I point at the sign they announce: “I’ve never been in this building before. I’m a *new student*,” as if no one had every gotten an acceptance letter before. This is technically quite annoying, but I try to remember that they are *excited*, that for most students this is not a quick administrative errand but the kick-off to a major life change, symbolically their passport to independence, academic or personal or whatever, and certainly very exciting. I felt that way when I came to get *my card, 26 or so months ago. The actual picture on the card is of a very grim Rebecca (my friend John once commented on the pic: “You look like you just got out of juvie!”) but in fact I was as exuberant as any of the 18-year-olds who float past me today. I can’t explain that picture. It was a great day.

And now I’m at the other end of the experience, three days away from letting my university job, gym membership, library privileges and life lapse. I’ll be moving on to other exciting things, natch, but now I’m hanging around winding down at my old job while the whole rest of the university community kicks into high gear. I can’t go hang out at my new office in an attempt to wind *up* to the new stuff, because I don’t have the free time (I said almost this exact sentence to someone I don’t know well, who looked at me *extremely* oddly at this point) and because that’d be a weird thing to do. I’m just going to have to go in semi-blind Monday morning, newborn yet again.

In the midst of all this woebegone schoolgirlishness, I tried to go shopping for some grownup office clothes. I didn’t *need* to, since I have plenty of grownup office clothes from the last time we did this. I just like clothes, and thought also it might help with morale.

But you know what’s in style for ladies this fall?

Pinafores.

I have enough trouble feeling age-of-majority without dressing like an elderly waif. I’m going to try again, but I’m not feeling too optimistic about my wardrobing options for fall. Throwbacks to 2005, here I come.

And speaking of 2005…remember the last time I freaked out in August? Next post from my old diary!

Seein’ her reflection in the knife
RR

August 20th, 2007

Time Budgeting

One of the worst things about writing (someday I’ll do a post on the best things about writing, I promise) is the impossibility of correctly allocating time to any writerly endeavour. For instance, yesterday I scheduled myself an hour in the morning to clean my apartment, and by the end of the appointed time, my apartment was very clean. Sometimes my schedule for these chores is a little off, but I can guarantee that at least I’ll have made progress towards my goals, and a clearer idea of how to proceed with the rest. With writing, there is no such guarantee–in time allocated for a given project, I might make no progess at all, or even move backwards. For example, I spent most of last week revising a story from workshop notes. Friday evening, I left myself about three hours to give a final solid edit to a story. By the time I went to bed, I had decided the whole thing sucked, even though it no longer had any stupid prose in it, it also had no tension, no plot, no point. By Saturday night, which I had planned to spend on a different project entirely, all the characters were angrier and the piece had a completely different ending that I wrote from scratch. Yesterday was given over to yet more revisions. From three hours to three days. How did that happen?

Possibly because there is no grunt work in writing. When you mop the floor, if you half-ass it, it’ll still get done. If you clean with your mind on other matters, you might miss a spot or take longer, but all you are doing is moving your hand across the floor. Writing needs you to get your whole head in the game–no half-assery allowed.

Hmmm. I hate that hypothesis! I think it is absolutely not true, yet I put it here because well, a lot of people think it, it might be true for some of them. I hate that hypothesis for two reasons: one it implies that only smart people write, while dumb people do things which they can do while you are half awake, which isn’t true. Attentive is attentive, and focused is always better, in my opinion, driving, doing dishes, programming the space shuttle. I think you need some sort of talent to write, absolutely, but that talent must also be refined by study and craft and repitition and showing up. Who said that 90% of life is showing up? And what were they talking about? Well, I think they were right about writing.

You have to work on things you want to be good. Some people don’t need to write as many drafts as I do (three, at least) and some people need to write more. And maybe there are some people who are good, perfect, right out of the gate. I guess anything’s possible. But I really think for a certain amount of hours one has to be there with the text: playing with it, moving it around, deleting huge swaths of it and then going back to saved drafts. It’s digging for gold–it helps to study the maps, to know where others have struck payloads, to sharpen your pick, but it helps most of all to dig.

Perhaps I am saying this mainly because I want to believe I did not waste my weekend (I didn’t in any case, since I played candy poker and hung out with some hooligans!) But I truly think the story is better now, though maybe not as good as I imagined it would be last week, before I’d gone through all this. But if I *had* stopped where I’d imagined I’d stop, at bedtime Friday night, it would’ve been a shambles.

Also, if you see a black cardigan lying on Wellesley, could you please grab it and return it to me. You will recognize it because it is faded to that warm-water-wash gray and because a whole under the left sleeve has been repaired in blue thread.

Thanks!

She was thinking about her father whom she very rarely saw

August 17th, 2007

This Linkable Life II

Most websites and even blogs have a link-list of the owner’s favourite and/or most visited sites on the web, sources of news, information, entertainment, pornography, whatever. Other than my personal friends , and publications I’ve been involved with, I have no such list. Not that those lists aren’t content-rich in their own rights–the book reviews at Pickle Me This and music at Idle Tigers are worth your time even if you have no idea how charming Kerry and Ross are personally. And all of the journals there are primarily content purveyors that I am really only marginally involved with. I can spend an amazing amount of time waltzing around The Danforth Review and The New Quarterly especially.

But non-literary, non-personal links? There are zero. I surf for journals and Facebook and email and blogs now. That’s it. It wasn’t always that way. I used to read a lot on the ‘net. I wonder what happened to those sites I used to like, back in the day… (if this were an episode of Scooby-Do, the screen would go wavy now…

In first year university, I got my own computer and whippet-fast internet in residence, and discovered there was more you could do than email and pathetically try to contact your friends in Winnipeg via IRC on *dial-up* (I was an idiot as a kid, ok?) and crash the computer and have your dad yell at you. I found out about websites in 1997. Is that sad?

Anne-Michelle (of no internet presence) recommend Prehensile Tales to me. Their motto was “stories that grab you”–get it? Like prehensile *tails* on monkeys. Ahahaha. Erm. Now, when I check back, the motto is “stories to make you soil yourself,” which, in my opinion, is less funny. The site’s no longer being updated, but the old content is still archived, included much from after I stopped reading, when apparently things were largely given over to critiques of pornography. But the creator, Halcyon, who back in 1997 was just an amusing and oddly hot web designer with too much free time, is now apparently sort of famous. I had no idea! He has his own tv show, Cocky Bastard TV, and billions of websites that this linkable life will not be linking, as they all proliferate off the one above. After following an endless link trail, I eventually got to what Halcyon was up to as of last week, nearly 8 years after I was last paying attention to his words. It’s a weird feeling:

“But with the help of Spotman, John The Grease Angel, GriffinOne, and my Mom, I have adopted and transformed this neglected Winnibago into a pink chariot of love.”

It’s a really weird feeling.

I forget who suggested I might enjoy The Shaaazay Cafe (yep, three As) but they were right. It’s an *NSYNC parody/humour site, which hasn’t been updated since 2004, apparently. It looks like after I stopped reading it went downhill with the departure of KD and WD, the Swedish and Midwestern (respectively) webmistresses and snarkheads.

“4. What worries you most about running an NSYNC humor site?

KD: That I might get bored and lose interest. OR! That people I respect might find out.”

What was I *doing* during undergrad? Not a lot of work, apparently.

Oh, man, it’s just as well I don’t much bother with the web-world now. The lit journals and friends mentioned before refer me to good stuff much of the time and the rest of the time…well, it’s clear I’m not good at making my own decisions. I think I’ll not pursue this trip down memory lane any further, as it is getting embarrassing. People I respect, indeed!

Sweet lady
RR

August 16th, 2007

This Linkable Life

I’ve realized that many of the blogs I admire have lots of lovely links embedded in the posts, which save me the trouble of Googling the books, music, events and information that they mention. Not that it’s not easy to Google, or that I really want to see a picture of *every* book cover or celebrity mentioned, but sometimes I do and it’s so *friendly* that someone’s bothered with the HTML to make my life just that much easier.

I’ve been really lazy with the links here, but that’s all about to change!!

As summer winds up, I’ve been a bit spinny with all that needs to get done, but many nice things are also afoot. I bought a couple new (to me, not to the world) cds to celebrate…well, to celebrate having money in my pocket, basically. I haven’t bought cds in ages, all part of my grad-school shopping embargo, so these are especially delightful. One is Get Behind Me Satan by the White Stripes, which is kickass, except I haven’t quite figured out what to do with it yet. It’s not running music, it’s not writing music, it mainly seems to be sit-and-listen music, which I don’t have tonnes of time for. It used to be proofreading music, when I discovered the White Stripes on the shared drive at my old work (that’s so Canadianese, isn’t it? “my work” as a place?)

On the other hand, Blood on the Tracks is all-the-time music. There’s nothing on this album that isn’t intensely hummable, funny and bizarre. Possibly why it’s often referred to as one of the greatest albums ever! I’m sorry it took me my whole life to listen, but whatever, it’s good. Unfortunately, Mr. Dylan is not the *nicest* guy in the world, and his tendency to be snarky is not so soothing in my current state of high anxiety. Nevertheless, I have taken to listening to “Idiot Wind” every morning before I leave the house. That can’t be good.

More links soon, promise promise.

You better take that diamond ring / you better pawn it babe
RR

August 14th, 2007

Rebecca Writes Non-fiction

Not as weird as it sounds–the article is basically a personal essay, a little more organized than a typical Rose-coloured post, but along the same lines. Still, if you feel like checking out my thoughts on ethnicity and assumptions, go on over to Diaspora Cafe. Even you aren’t interested in what my small-town self has to say on the subject, the site is building up a wealth of blogs and articles on our increasingly global globe, written by people with really serious experiences of the same. It’s pretty cool.

Got no place to stay / Got no coat
RR

August 13th, 2007

About my writing…

All that I have to say is to tell you that the
lantern is the moon, I the man i’th’ moon, this thorn
bush my thorn bush, and this dog my dog.
(Starvling, V.i.252-254, A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

August 10th, 2007

Order and Reality

Those are two things we probably need more of or less of, respectively or in concert. I’m not sure. Those who know me know that I’m a far bigger fan of the first than the second: I know where all my books are, even those I haven’t and won’t need in years. I could probably guess how much money is in my wallet within a dollar or so, how much food is in my fridge to the nearest onion, whose number I have in my phone book, etc. I like being on top of my game, such as it is, knowing what’s going on. The more knowledge I have of my little world, the more I feel the world is manageable, and therefore ok.

So it is curious, then, how much I do not like to read nonfiction. I want to read and write novels and short stories about other people’s little worlds; I do not want to read about the big world as a whole. My current theory as to why is because I’m never going to get a grasp on everything in the whole big world. I’ve got complete control over my hard-drive, my spice rack and my wallet–they are available to me to be exhaustively known, and then confidently ignored. Possibly, there is a feeling in the back of my head that if I tried to read about, say, the oil trade, I would not be able to understand more than a near tenth of any article, and then my obsessive tendencies would take over and I would be found a year from now, body crushed under an avalanche of back-dated New York Times.

Perhaps not. But I do know I like manageable things that I can completely consume. And that is why the one form of non-fiction that I let into my life is The New Yorker. Let’s be honest, it’s where I get all my information on the world that I don’t glean from conversation or fiction. I don’t watch television, I don’t read the newspaper and I change the radio station when the talking comes on.

Are you going to stop reading this blog?

Please don’t. I like you.

The New Yorker is a truly fantastic magazine, and it covers political, environmental and cultural issues about as exhaustively as a WASPy American weekly ever could. It’s quite dense for 90 pages a week, but if I read seriously on the cross-trainer an hour a day, I can read every word of every article and review (I skip the capsule reviews of live shows in “Goings on about Town,” because there’s no way I’m going to see them). Then the magazine is fully consumed, I know as much as I’m going to know about the world that week, which is actually not all that much in the scheme of things. But I know everything about The New Yorker that week. I like that.

This strangeness was driven home to me yesterday when I turned to Elizabeth Kolbert’s article. Normally Ms. Kolbert writes about global warming and other environmental issues. She is very thorough and passionate, but sometimes I find her writing a little…technical. I seem to recall her describing molecules. Fascinating, but not my bag. And then this week, our relationship changed (I feel very close to all the regulars at the magazine. This probably also not a good sign about my personality). Her article “Stung” is about an obsession of mine that predates TNY or having my own spice rack or wallet or anything: bees.

As a child, I loved bees and ants. An incipient obsessive, I loved learning about their perfectly ordered societies, rigid life roles and hierarchies. They lived in little cells! They had life roles assigned to them from larval stage and they *never did anything else*. (You know what else I liked as a child? Feudalism.) As I devoured the article, I thought fondly of my illustrated insect guides, my “pet” ants (country children do not have ant farms; I played with ant hills in the yard). Kids are weird, kids are obsessive. Some grow out of it, some don’t. At least I don’t wish I was a bee anymore. Much.

Possibly this is all twitter, and definitely self-involved, better left to for a consciousness-raising seminar (uck, how I would hate that–so unmanageable). But reading matters a lot on this blog and it has long been a sticking point for some (hi, Scott!) that I don’t read nonfiction ever. Isn’t it interesting that there is a solid psychological reason why not?

Or maybe it’s just that I’m actually an insensitive person and don’t care about global warming. Either way, you should really read the bee article. It’s interesting and bees are awesome and Kolbert, when she’s not writing about the end of civilization, is hilarious.

I can’t stand up / for falling down
RR

August 9th, 2007

News from the Land of No News

I’m like some sort lizardy creature who thrives in the sunshine but, when there is a higher than average humidity rating, can barely function just lying on her rock. I even started to hate my rock a little during the nadir of the Civic weekend, when the sky was one colour all day and hair just never dried post-shower. Eventually I mopped the floors of my rock (abandoning simile), which is good since I’m hostessing a dinner party tonight. Also because it improved morale. But really, as holiday weekends go, this one was subpar.

You know who else hates humidity? The main character in Douglas Coupland’s JPod. I’m just mentioning it because that doesn’t come up in fiction a lot. Also because that book was funny. Silly, actually–a big hodgepodge of invention and gags and mess, not your typical CanLit. Jolly good fun, I thought. Even though it probably killed my Canadian satire essay. Oh, well, that essay had lots of problems, really.

You know what’s weird: I might never write an essay again. What a strangely awful thought. Also weird: the fact that it is now cold and humid. Why does this city seem to be perpetually clammy? More weird: girl who just walked into the library looked just like the “this one time? at band camp?” girl from the American Pie movies.

I have nothing to say. I am groggy and damp and tense. The minor-celebrity-doppleganger might be the highlight of my morning. Maybe not. I maintain hope, though minor, that things will improve before noon. The afternoon will definitely be better, because I can go to the gym and be mindless, followed by meeting Kerry to mindful and literary, and then my very literary dinner party. It’s a good thing I know so many smart people–they can fill in the blanks when I am like this. Whatever this is–I can’t think of the noun right now.

Tomorrow will be better
RR

August 4th, 2007

Quick poll

Do you know what Jenga is?

If I used it as a verb–he had a stack of tapes Jenga’d in the corner–would that make sense to you?

Insights appreciated. I thought everybody in the world knew and loved Jenga, but perhaps I am mistaken.

It’s impossible bliss
RR

August 3rd, 2007

Heavyweight Reads

As you may recall from earlier posts, I read a lot. I have to: to write, to have something to talk about, to have something to do on the subway and at work and at the gym. Also it’s the only thing that makes me feel smarter. I am a fairly serious reader, too, I like to think–I think about form and craft, context and history, as well as just how entertained I am.

But a big big concern when I choose books is how much they weigh.

Sorry. I would like to be above such shallowness, especially in our weight-conscious culture. But I leave the house early on the morning and hike around the city all day and the book has to go too, often sharing bag space with lunch, gym clothes and a laptop. Ideally, I’d like to be able to hold it in one hand when I have to hold a subway pole in the other. If it causes finger pain to hold, or shoulder pain to carry, we’re already sort of talking about a drawn-out literary experience, because I’m going to wind up reading only at home, where I rarely am.

This makes for silliness. Like when someone recommends an author to me and I walk down the aisle of the library looking for the skinniest thing that person wrote. I know a number of folks in the publishing industry who devote themselves seriously to making beautifully bound, durable books, which I heartily applaud and almost never read. I can read a 500-page mass market easily, but even a 200-page hard-cover is a burden.

This is so sad! Maybe someday I’ll own a car (seems unlikely, doesn’t it?) or get a manservant to carry my bag (even more so) and then this won’t be an issue. And in the meantime, I still make exceptions. The exception of the moment is what has me currently thinking about this issue–The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman. This author was recommended to me by a number of respected sorts, but I don’t know why I chose a giant hardcover collected stories. Generally I don’t read those, hardcover or otherwise, because I like to see how a group of stories work together in an organic collection.

And yet here we are, a small horizontal bruise on my left thigh from where the book-in-bag bangs. A hand cramp. But no regrets. Because the recommendations were warrranted and I’m glad I have such a wealth of good stories to read. I don’t know of BJF is to everyone’s taste, but his middle-aged Jewish male neuroses in every possible guise is absolutely brilliant, funny and incomparably warm and sad too.

Here, I’ll share, so maybe you can get sucked in and wind up carrying the bloody thing around yourself. This is from a police procedural called “Our Lady of the Lockers,” my favourite of the first three quarters of the collection:

“They found her body in locker three hundred fifty-seven at Jack La Lanne’s Gym and Health Spa on East Fifty-fifth Street. Also in lockers three hundred fifty-eight through three hundred sixty-one. I heard about it on a small island off the South Carolina coast where I was failing to enjoy my first vacation in five years. The highlight of my social activity (not including a little something with the girl at the desk) was a barroom conversation with a stockbroker who spent a great deal of time telling me why would not go to Elaine’s restaurant in New York.”

[he is forced to cut short the vacation, returns home to New York]

“I took down my “Beware, Scarlet Fever Victim” door sign (with Spanish translation) and went straight to the plants, which I was happy to see were hanging on gamely. I turned off WRVR and thought for a moment of all the wasted Paul Desmond and John Coltrane (designed to fake out pillagers and looters) that had poured out into an empty room. What happened to all that music, where did it go and what a nifty riddle to pose to my Civilization and Philosophy Seminar at Hunter on Thursday night (paid for by Mayor Beame and all you nice taxpayers out there).

“Everything was as I had left it; my framed Police Academy diploma, machete collection, indirectly lighted train set, freezerful of Frankie and Johnnie steaks, which the boys were kind enough to send over as a door prize for the Homicide Cruise (canceled due to budget-cutting). Gently cursing myself for forgetting to pick up fresh garlic at Gristede’s, I commenced to whip up a Caesar salad. And then I noticed that my clue box was missing.”

See? Worth the shoulderache, I think.

Rich men wanna be king
RR