A Handful of Answers
As called out by The Amazon Iowan in her post of many questions (I’ve gone on a bit… it just happened, quite beyond my control really, so it’s all after the break): Read the rest of this entry »
It’s In The Stars, Baby
Somewhere around last weekend I hit 16K-ish on The Pomegranate Bride, which I’m NaNoNoveling so as to make maximum progress. Since then? Bupkiss. I’m a sprinter, not a marathon runner, and I knew this but hoped it applied mostly to my quadriceps rather than to my writermuscleps. After all, consistency is the hobgoblin and all that wot wot… better to be typetive than typed on. Something.
Per The Bard
65 by William Shakespeare
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
I Need A New Pen
Why don’t I read Faster Than Kudzu every day? Because then I would know this already. Sheesh. I need to pay more attention.
Refrigerator Poetry
The company I contract for has changed its business model with resulting upset amongst both the noble and common populace of its fair Santa Monica Cubicle Kingdom. Some while ago, a noble long since lost to a diplomatic incident with another Cubicle Kingdom tossed a couple of packages of Refrigerator Poetry magnets up on the refrigerators in the Castle Kitchen. The mood is relentlessly grim above the salt, and the peasants are revolting - bitter, angry, mournful and otherwise emo messages are scattered in staccatto black and white all over the hummy boxes that hold food.
I am tired of the negative vibe. I get it, sometimes I share it, but it damned sure doesn’t make me wanna go to work to earn my ducats. So today I did my part to move a little energy around the space while I waited for the other half of Monday’s lunch to heat up in the cleaner microwave. Since all my poetry seems to be about sex or death and I wanted to lighten the place up a bit, and also because the world needs more refrigerator poetry, I offer my effort:
refrigerator poem #1
drunk on need
and
luscious red wanting
my languid tongue
your
iron will
raw juices run
honey
smeared over
your skin
the urge
to watch you
ache
rock
sweat
scream
under me
Not sure if I should actually number it, as that is both pretentious and implies there will be more. While pretentious in this context could be interpreted as mildly ironic in a post-deconstructionist sort of way, I may not want to write (stick, assemble, manipulate?) any more refrigerator poems. At least not in the office, if I’m going stick to my usual themes. And our dogs will peel and eat anything remotely reachable on our refrigerator at home. On the other hand, a limerick about a serial killer who sticks his victims in abandoned refrigerators might be kinda fun for #2 - switch it up a bit, zazapow!
Blogging Without Obligation
I get stuck in perfectionism procrastination - if I can’t get something right, whatever “right” looks like in my head, I freeze up and put it off until later, letting uh…. um… gah…. nevermind take over rather than letting whatever it is I’m murgling about be better late than never. Frex, I’ve had about a dozen blog entries swirling around in my head in the last month, and have realized that I put myself on a deadline to get them typed up and posted, and if I miss that deadline I don’t bother.
My rationalization for not bothering is that I’ve missed the window, the ship has sailed, there’s no point in even trying as eventually the earth will fall into the sun and my blog post ain’t gonna do shit to stop that. Which is essentially giving into existentialist despair. Over blogging. But not really over blogging. Blogging (properly / ontime / underbudget / brilliantly / insightfully / worldchangingly / pulitzerprizewinningly) or the lack thereof, is just one facet of the sparkling dark jewel of perfectionism I ceaselessly seek to polish (had to toss in a bit of goth emo phrasing, really I did). The phrase “polishing the knob” extends rather nicely from this - if in my case as a woman the use of “knob” could be a feministing sort of reclamation of a normatively male euphemism for penis, or a placeholder for the poetic jewel of wine-sodden 12th century poetry. To remain in the realm of the conceptual, polishing this particular jewel (no, not the one that broke that last vibrator) amounts to mental masturbation.
See? Grandma was right! If you do it too much you will grow such thick hair on the palms of your metaphorical hands that you will no longer be able to grasp the point of an argument! You will go intellectually blind and will no longer be able to see the semantic forest for the syllogistic trees!! God will kill conceptual lolkittens and strew their bodies along the left-hand path of your amygdala!!!
My point, and I do have one beyond asserting that my clitoris is a sparkly jewel of ancient wine-soaked poetry, is that ain’t nothing ever gonna be perfect, no matter how hard I grind my brain against it. The double-negative in that last sentence is the devil’s advocate picking its fingernails whilst muttering through a cloud of brimstone that it just might be possible to make something perfect if I obsess over it long enough. The devil’s advocate needs a manicure and to fuck off, so I’m gonna let stand as-is, imperfect grammar and all, and stick a graphic up here now:
Jocularity, Jocularity…
NaNo began today. My totem animal for the duration:
No, I am not writing about pirates. But for NaNo 2006, I vow to write in the spirit of an ungainly little creature who manages to hold its wrinkled snout high in dignified fashion, despite being dressed in an unbecoming, foppish, and cheap costume by a cruel master. Whatever the hell that means. If I spin it right, it totally counts toward my word total for the month. Hey, did you see how long that damned sentence went on for? Waste not, want not. ARR!
Out And Into The Girls In My Basement
Lots of traveling in meatspace, hurling my body to Denver, Atlanta, New York for sundry dayjob and writing conference purposes. In the meanwhile, stuff’s been going on inside.
The Girls have created their own space in my Basement.
They’ve dug out a deep round room with a sunken firepit in the center, and lined it all around the inside with a single, circular fountain. Waves of sea water flow over walls tiled in charms, amulets, and precious and semi-precious gemstone inscribed with prayers and quotations in every language. Strange things swim in the fountain’s moat; some glow, others flicker like fireflies longing for summer love.
I love what They’ve done with the place. Swathes of richly hued silk draperies and cushions are scattered everywhere and candles and oil lamps glimmer and shimmer their light across every surface. Lush ferns push their way up through the floor, thrusting their trunks between the tassels of piled silk rugs. Wind chimes of bone dangle from the ferns’ delicately curled tendrils, stirring to announce the passage of birds to and from the Underworld. The occasional tinkling of the chimes rills counterpoint to drums beating and flutes whirling and violins swaying and cellos bowing, as the mood suits - always, the sound of the waves in the walls stays closer than a lover’s heartbeat. Pale mist flirts with jungle vines dangling from the heavy cedar roof and swirls into the richly scented smoke rising from the flames in the middle of the room. I think They might have burned a writer’s heart or two as sacrifice, turning it into perfume for their own pleasure.
The Girls have collectively assumed the aspect of Clothos and are knitting, crocheting, weaving… one is working on a tatted lace wing-warmer for her pet bat… while passing around a flask of something yummy and chuckling about what happens next. I feel their laughter bubbling through my branches; the rhythm of their passage in my brain reverberates through my roots into the cosmic soil. Every so often they’ll pause and hold something up between them for me to see, at which point it is my mere mortal responsibility to draw down the moon from their flame, call the story from its dancing path of fire, and channel it into many-dimensional words on two-dimensional paper before They get bored with the holding and carry on.
We’re having fun.
Feminist Readings
The Carnival of Feminists XIII is up over at I See Invisible People. Lots of crunchy, informed goodness. Go read now.
See, It’s Not Just Me
According to WRITTEN LIVES by Javier Marías, writers are odd, as a quote from his book review at the Washington Post illustrates:
“The one thing that leaps out when you read about these authors,” writes the acclaimed Spanish novelist Javier Marías, “is that they were all fairly disastrous individuals; and although they were probably no more so than anyone else whose life we know about, their example is hardly likely to lure one along the path of letters.”
Ha. So there. It ain’t just me. Wait, double negative…