Sing Cuccu

Words to the wise

A brilliant moment in an otherwise lackluster Torchwood episode:

I would wear these words on a T-shirt: “Innovative. Bordering on the avant-garde.” And I don’t usually wear T-shirts.

(Just that first bit—I used Splicd to isolate the clip. It starts where it’s supposed to, but doesn’t cut off at the end of the scene.)

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One of [Peter] Altenberg’s many…

One of [Peter] Altenberg’s many young loves had tearfully protested that his interest in her was based only (nur) on sexual attraction. Altenberg asked, “Was ist so nur?” (What’s so only?)

• Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts, page 17 • Comments

That’s what history is: the…

That’s what history is: the story of everything that needn’t have been like that. We also have to grasp that art proves its value by still mattering to people who have been deprived of every other freedom: indeed instead of mattering less, it matters more.

• Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts, page 15 • Comments

Reading

In my quest to write a lot of crap, I realized that my reading consists largely of non-fiction, with a small sprinkling of fiction.

While there’s nothing wrong with that, I intend to aim for a bigger helping of fiction. I get kind of wound up inside myself on the subject, however; while I love reading, somewhere along the line I got the idea that I’m wasting my time if I read a book I don’t like, and I’d rather not waste my time. I like to finish books I start; I can think of only one book I’ve never finished: The Wings of the Dove, by Henry James, and I’m not sure anyone could pay me to give it another go. This is one time I was grateful for the movie.

Related to the Wasting My Time Problem is the A Prayer for Owen Meany Problem. A Prayer for Owen Meany is a book John Irving will never be able to top. I held onto this opinion for years, and it kept me from reading anything he wrote afterwards. I kept telling myself that not only was the idea complete nonsense, it’s a burden no writer should ever have to carry. Two years ago I broke down and read Until I Find You, and it was good. It doesn’t hold the same place held by A Prayer for Owen Meany, but it was good.

Here and there I’ll read a recommendation for a book and then I’ll add them to my list; both Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and Bel Canto (which I’m still reading) came to me that way.

I’m still taking recommendations, but I’m also going to start checking out more fiction from the library.

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Worth asking

If anyone is still subscribed to this feed, would you drop me a note in comments? I’d love to know who’s still out there.

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In Between

Six weeks ago, we left for our family vacation, one of the best we’ve ever had.

On the Monday I returned to work, I got fired.

"I can think of a thousand better ways to start the week," I said through the swirling haze forming in my head.

"Well, it was a toss-up between before your vacation or after your vacation," he said. Thanks, buddy.

In so many ways, getting fired sucks. My self-image took a hit; we lost our (very good) health insurance; future employers want to know why you left your last job. "Can we contact your old boss?" they ask, and I don’t know how to answer them; he wasn’t the one who fired me.

In so many other ways, getting fired was one of the best things that happened to me in a long time. I love getting enough sleep every single night; I exercise most days now; I’m even thinking about writing again (see this? I can tell you why nothing has been written since that day, and it has everything to do with a job I mostly liked yet took a lot of my mental energy).

My unemployment got approved today, thereby giving me some freedom to wait for the right job, and also to write. I have tried very hard in the last few weeks to give myself space, space to obsess, space to rest, space to stretch. In the last week I’ve begun to develop a routine that will serve me during this transition and into that future job, which in fact we need. I had a brief period of fantasy about working part-time, but health insurance is a priority, and we like eating, so that got swatted down pretty quickly.

But the writing will begin again. Not the screenwriting yet; I need something less ambitious and more manageable. If necessary, I intend to write thousands of words of utter crap. However, not all of it will be crap. Some of it I will like, a lot, and will eventually see the light of day.

And in two years, much in my life has changed. Those writing projects? Much of them still stands, but what and how I think about life has undergone a radical change. So may they.

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No misty water-colored memories here

I found an old journal while going through some boxes in the garage. There were only a few entries, all from the middle years of my first marriage.

March 5, 1994

Writing my thoughts will not be easy. I have a tendency to run away from myself and from whatever is difficult in my life. I have put a great distance between myself and how I live, and finding out who I am and where I am going will be a long and difficult task. I am nearly twenty-seven years old, my marriage is falling apart (something that I cannot comprehend, even though I am told it is so; I find it equally difficult to comprehend the fact that I am married, since I rarely feel married. My marriage seems like something that is not a part of me, although I could not live without it.), and I am not reflective. ... God exists, but he does not seem to affect my life in any meaningful way. I work for him anyway, because I believe that I am accomplishing some good.

March 7, 1994

Tonight my husband said that we are two different people, and that he’s not going to fight anymore. I said nothing, but I wanted to throw all the dishes and glasses out the window or against the wall. I imagined that they would make a satisfying crash that would adequately represent my marriage falling to pieces. Except that it seems that no one will be around to pick them up. I had the very clear sense that he has given up on our marriage. His ultimatum that he will leave me if our marriage doesn’t improve hasn’t helped my state of mind. ... I don’t know what happened. I am not the same person anymore. Tonight, when I have finished writing, I am going to sleep on the living room floor. I felt such coldness from him tonight, although it wasn’t as bad as the night before he left to go to America. That was total rejection, and I don’t know why I didn’t sleep on the couch that night. What must I do?

September 14, 1995

Here I am again, trying to make sense of myself and my marriage. Right now I am feeling pain, and I don’t know how to stop it. My mental state has improved since yesterday. I’ve managed somehow to pull myself together. Yesterday I was so distraught that I almost told C everything.

September 18, 1995

I had a dream that I could fly. But it wasn’t like my usual flying dreams. It was difficult. It was more like swimming through the air.

September 24, 1995

Not going to counseling this week was a wise move. I had time to pull myself together, and I feel more able to face the counseling session this week. I decided that [he] should have his way about the porn tapes. I’m not sure whether my principle about this has changed or not, but I can psychologically accept it. ...

"Run!" I shout to her through the years. "Run away as fast as you can!"

Not hearing me, she hangs on until the sad, bitter, grinding end.

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Running through the village…

Running through the village
embracing everyone she meets,
she laughs in ecstasy.
People call her mad.

“New eyes!” she cries.
“I have been given new eyes!”
And it is true.
For the scales which had previously blinded her
are gone now, erased
revealing such utter glory
that her mind took flight,
leaving only a rapturous heart
in an old, weathered body
racing through the streets
on fire with love.

• Jasmin Cori • Comments

As you work, don’t fear…

As you work, don’t fear the God of Authenticity, for he is a weak god, a fraud, a fake, and—for all his posturing—completely irrelevant. Do your job, and your goddess will protect you and bless you. She is your mashooq, this One who is always absent. You know who she is, this One you follow always, the One who is untidy, elegant, blowsy, impossibly glamorous. She is the goddess Beauty, who has been frozen in liquid oxygen by the party bosses on Mount Restoration of the Righties, who has been declared dead in the Lost Valley of the Lefties. But you know your mashooq, and you can feel her power and her grace, how alive she is. She will always elude you, but you must risk everything for her. At the end of each day of work, the only question she will ask you is, did you write well today? And if you can honestly say, yes, I wrote well today, she will come a little closer to you, and you will sense her presence, and as you caress your mashooq, as she ravishes you with pleasure, you will know how absolutely real she is, this shape-shifting phantom. Then she will flee again. This absence is the only true grace you will ever know, or need. Believe in your mashooq, lose yourself in the dream of Her, and you will be Indian, a good artist or an adequate one, local and global, soft as a rose petal, and as hard as thunder, not this, not that, and everything you need to be. You will be free.

• Vikram Chandra, The Cult of Authenticity • Comments

Spirituality is the intentional attention…

Spirituality is the intentional attention we give to our journey of becoming more of who we really are, of connecting more deeply with others, with God, and with our world. So seeing ourselves as an intimate part of the human family, recognizing our solidarity with people’s lives which includes their suffering, is a deeply spiritual experience.

• Greg Nelson, Second Wind • Comments