Ugh, slushy snow. We had grits with parmesan, garlic, and parsley tonight along with our Korean-style grilled tuna; they were pretty good, although I am disappointed at the rather small fiber content per serving (2 g). I am fascinated and determined to achieve the level of daily fiber that Dr. Weil suggests: 40 grams. I think I usually get about 20, and that's with eating high-fiber oatmeal for breakfast (7 g). Oh well. Speaking of food, I signed up for beginning conversational German through the CCBC continuing ed program and while I was talking to to woman signing me up, she recommended a "Moroccan" place in Northeast Baltimore. A few of my friends and I went Saturday night. It was okay; it was in a strip mall, a little overpriced for what you got, and they actually billed themselves as an Egyptian place, although they seemed like a hybrid most of all and served brick-oven pizzas and such.
Snow and slush, blech! The weather has been miserable for my skin, although not as bad as normal on my mind, since I've been exercising pretty routinely for over a year now. It's strange how you gradually become to accept exercise as a routine part of your life, just like eating. I never thought I'd say that.
I'm about 100 pages into the Mandela autobiography. I must admit, I really like it! I didn't think I would at all. There's something about this prose, very clear and simple, along with his modest accounting of his life, that's very appealing. I thought I would get bogged down on the African names and places, but he makes everything, from the small village of his birth to the "metropolis" that was Joannesburg in the 1950s, seem so vibrant and alive. You know that author has done his or her job as storyteller when you have a desire to wrinkle time and visit, to be alive and experience the same things the author has experienced. If I can be half of that as a writer, then I'll be happy.
I've been listening to a Death Cab for Cutie cover of Secret Star's "Wait." It sounds as if DCFC had written it. No surprises. Speaking of music (a big leap here, I know), can someone tell me the history of the word Pinkerton? Aside from being the title of a Weezer album, does it have a literary reference (some Sinclair Lewis-esque) or perhaps it is similiar to the concept of Levittown? Inquiring minds (at least mine) want to know.
More snow, although today it falls gently, beautiful, white. The sound of silence. I had a dream that last that I was playing soccer in high school as a goalie. Class was almost over, although my brother and I wanted to intermural the boys and girls. Failing this, we walked over the fields to the city. I wondered how such a hick town (Delmar, MD, the town I spent my high school years) could be situated so close to a major city. As I waited to cross the street at a major intersection, an SUV drove by. On its back window, in letters created by shoepolish, was "YOU W LIVE FOREVER." I got angry and thought to myself, "That's bullshit. You don't live forever." Why I assumed the incomplete word was "will" and not "won't," I'm not sure. Just then an older relative caught up with me and said that I had to come back outside (I had entered the glass lobby of a hotel/school, something). I thought he was going to tell me my aunt died (a fictional aunt potrayed by Rose on the Golden Girls) when I met up outside and noticed my Aunt Rose was there, along with my Aunt Blanche (also from GG) and my brother. I asked them what was wrong, trying to figure out who had died if it wasn't my Aunt Rose (who was wearing a lovely white and pink-striped sweater), when Aunt Blanche said, "honey, your mother took ill suddenly, and she died." I said, "you're kidding!" before I woke up.
I still worry a lot about my mom's health since her close call five years ago. I was elated when she told me the other day that she was joining Curves, although I secretly fear that she will probably die younger than she should because of her almost dying before. Still, exercise is exercise. Now, if only she would eat better....speaking of fitness, I finally went back to kickboxing on Wednesday. I had a pretty bad hamstring pull (my second in five months), and I feared that the recovery would take much longer. I hate getting old.
I finished "Comfort Foods" and will probably put it up soon. It came to me, as I said before, because of waking up next to my grandmother in bed, but it might be taken a little from my mother too. I was thinking about my family again because my aunt wanted to go visit my mother for a week. I immediately thought of the fact that it would be the four of them living together again (mom, aunt, grandmother, grandfather), just as they had for so many years, and maybe it is this subconscious desire, for safety and simplicity, that fuels my aunt's desire to visit. It would be an interesting play as well for the family to grow up and apart but then come together again as age and fears and disappointments and the fading of sour memories all come together in them and they are back in the safe, "known" incubator of their family. I guess the title of the play and running theme would have something to do with the girls raising a chick in a homemade incubator when they were small and what happens to the chick when they release it too soon. I think this will be a back-burner play because it will take me awhile to work out the logistics. Something more pressing might come to me in a dream or in passing in the meantime. I wait with baited breath for the next spark.
Will the snow ever go away? I am already thinking of our (warm) trip to New Orleans in April, hoping for a supernatural and odd experience. I've been reading a book on ghosthunting (when I should be finishing the Mandela autobiography for the book club) and it suggests purchasing a digtial voice-activated recorder as a means of getting entities on tape. The woman who wrote the book actually left her recorder by her bed and had conversations with a seemingly maleviolent entity. I have no desire whatsoever to find out whether ghosts are having conversations in our bedroom while we sleep. Somewhere else, maybe, further away, like New Orleans. I think our house is pretty clean anyway. I don't get the creeps here at all. It's mostly a quiet, happy house. Now, watch some psychic come and tell us there was a murder in it somewhere.
Speaking of ghosts, I am going to begin a short story about someone who has died and does not quite know it (yet). I've always wondered how certain earthbound spirits cannot know that they're dead, but I suspect their reality is much like the reality we experience when waking up from dream sleep and immediately falling back into it. I often discover I have been thinking hard, often intricately about something, before I wake up, so much so that my head hurts and I cannot remember about what I was ruminating. I think it has something to do with my ambitious, obsessive personality making plans while I sleep. Anyway, that seemingly logical dreamy sequence of thought is what I imagine spiritual earthbound intelligence to be like. Sometimes I wonder how I would discover I was dead if I didn't immediately know. For instance, if I came home and K. didn't answer me when I spoke to her, I would just assume she was mad at me, and therefore it might take me a few hours (or days) to discover that she really couldn't hear me.
I may also revisit my ELF-like terrorist organization/Chuck Palanuik novel. I feel weird not writing a novel now that I've finished The Accidentals. It was always something to work on between stories, so maybe I'll treat the ELF novel the same way and the research/development won't seem so intimidating.
You've been rather slow submitting to the spring issue of JMWW. I've made up some fliers (call for submissions) to tack onto various boards throughout the city, and I need to explore cheap online advertising. (I'm thinking of more guerilla-like tactics of going onto the discussion boards of other online journals and asking posters to submit here.) I have a feeling once this journal does get started it will consume more of my life than I'd like it to, but, well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Onto more mundane topics. I have worn one of my last pairs of boxer shorts that I sleep in. They lasted almost eight years (actually, they were K's). What's the longest time you've owned and worn something? I have a couple of t-shirts from college that I still own but rarely wear, so they don't count. Anyway, I must go to the store and buy some sleepwear, but I hate pant sets because I get hot and they get twisted in bed. I feel the same way about nightgowns. Maybe I just need to learn not to toss and turn so much.
L's birthday dinner party was a lot of fun last night. It reminded me of being ten years younger, in my twenties, in college or just freshly out, invincible, better alcohol tolerance, more maudlin and easily swayed by the jukebox, feeling that friends and good times were the most important things in the world. And they are, of course; beer commercials do not lie. Of course, we all had a little too much to drink at the bar afterward and it became a strange orgasmic grope/grind fest, a nipplepooloza if you will. I wonder how we looked to anyone sober!
Not feeling quite so hungover today, just a little tired and lazy. Can't wait to get back into the routine tomorrow, with kickboxing and such. Tuesday night is my ushering shift at Center Stage for The Miser. I think, ironically, that I revel in the routine so that I'm too busy to notice the monotony of my life. Frantic busyness covers up the uneasy feelings that something undescribable is slipping away.
I sent out a few submissions last night for Slipping Through. The Missouri Review rejected it; I can never figure out what it is they want. Therefore, I immediately sent it to No Fixed Genre because, ironically, I knew it wasn't their genre and that they'd reject it. However, they often offer good feedback, and I wanted to find out what, if anything, was wrong with the story before I sent it out again. In my immediate rejection e-mail, the editor said, "This is an excellent story, very perceptive, and I'm sure that anyone who has lost a parent can relate to the narrator's struggle to redefine her relationship with her father after the loss of her mother. However NFG is looking for stories with a little more kick, "writing with attitude," and I felt that this piece was just a little too understated and quiet for our tastes. Thanks for the read. I'm sure you won't have any trouble placing this elsewhere." I hope he's right; I also feel it's a little understated and that a lot of journals (Missouri Review included) are looking for bright, hip, quirky-to-the-point-of-irrelevance vignettes. Is that what they're teaching in the writing programs these days? I think my disgust with that sort of edginess for the sake of edginess led me to create this online journal.
Now that I've raged against the new hip establishment writing, I tried my hand at a new hip establishment piece last night. It's more of an exercise for me than anything, a fun little nonsense story about a female kickboxing champ from East Missouri (everyone likes quirky white trash these days) called "Enter the Dragon." I'll put it up whenever it's finished; for now, here's Comfort Foods as promised.
Submissions have been drizzling in for the spring issue of JMWW. Thanks all! Remember, there are only two of us (and one doesn't even know it yet) working on this, so give us a little time to get back to you. Oh, and I thought I'd put a little writing exercise up for you (I sometimes give myself these just to keep my imagination sharp). Write a story about how this guy managed to not notice his brother was dead for 18 months in their shared trailer: Exercise. I'll publish the best one in my next blog.
We were going to see Monster today at the Charles but I didn't realize they played revivals at noon on the weekends so Monster wasn't showing when we were there. We decided to go to the Pet Expo instead. For eight dollars, it was pretty disappointing. There were a lot of food vendors, a couple of cutesy critter things (bandandas and such by the bolt, leashes, dog cookies, the works), some exotic pets (K wouldn't let us go near the snakes, but she found a strange affinity for the parrotlet, the smallest parrot known to human. Check out their society. Oana, perhaps your friend knows a parrotlet or two?) I had to ask K how to spell parrotlet because even though I make a living as an editor, I can be a piss-poor speller
Which brings us to the next order of business, the documentary Spellbound. Anyone seen it? It was interesting, but I kept feeling, from the camerawork to the music, it just felt funded by PBS or something. K and I agreed that in our spelling bee documentary, we'd have to include footaage of the infamous Charlie Brown spelling bee, where contestants who spelled words erroneously were popped like zits off the screen. Somehow, I'd like that fate better than the walk of shame off the stage, wouldn't you? I so want to make a documentary! But I don't know of what. I remember the last documentary we saw, "Capturing the Friedmans," we debated for a long time afterward the documentary we would make. K won with sports mascots. What would your documentary be?
Ahh, just back from a relaxing weekend at the ocean. K and I have both decided we want to install a jazucci tub as soon as possible. And maybe a claw machine while K gets over her addictive personality disorder (how many quarters did you and V spend at Marty's Playland)? There was once a time when I identified deeply with the ocean and thought I'd return to the ocean because the ocean is deep and tempestuos and murky and shiny and restive, but as I've grown I realize that perhaps I am the air (light, clear, free). Maybe I vacilliate between the two, but I identify with the air much more these days than the ocean. Haven't written much lately; I need to get started again. Haven't dreamt about much lately except the dead. Well, I'm sick of just seeing you guys; either tell me something if you have to or give me my dreams back.