Driving in my car

Sometimes driving is good.

Took a long drive to Columbus and back (a 6-hawk trip!) today for an inspiring meeting. On the way down and back I got to listen to CDs and reflect on a lot of great stuff.

Wordy stuff, like some funny Wait Wait Don't Tell Me bits (Michael Pollan and the Japanese high tech toilet quiz, for instance), and pieces from Chuck Palahniuk's book of short nonfiction pieces, Stranger Than Fiction, and the first couple of chapters of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. And musical stuff too, like the David Bowie Reality Tour live album (I recommend it) and the Pretenders' first album. (I also had Scissors Sisters and Preservation Hall Jazz Band CDs that I didn't get to listening to.)

The introduction to Palahniuk's book he read himself for the recording. It is a personal essay about the cycles of loneliness and connection, fact and fiction in his work and in American culture in general. He makes this interesting point about the American dream being one of self-isolation and how a lot of his writing is about the anti-American dream: isolated people trying to find connection. And then fiction writing being another form of self-isolation -- retreat into the fiction world that you control. Still mulling.

The Pretenders' first album is a good (not quite great, but very good) album (and very of its time ... more referential to other bands when I listen to it now than I would have heard then), yet I always come away from hearing the Pretenders feeling like I should like Chrissie Hynde more than I do. Maybe it is just the quote from her "advice to chick rockers" that I read once, about not moaning about feminism and "shave your legs, for chrissakes" which kind of made me never want to listen to another thing she's recorded ever. Does that make me shallow?
.
Reading: Yes, this Anshaw book is a real "what comes after the terrible moment of tragedy" book, and she set up the before the tragedy really well. That and shifting POV stuff is interesting to me - though "tragedy" is not really the right word for the moment of no return I am writing about.

Writing: Yes, 45 minutes in the morning ... like collage with words -- bits and pieces here and there.

Dinner: Yes, veggie-might sauce over marfala. (Yesterday, for kids cook night, they made "sticky chicken wings" - sauce or orange juice and soy sauce and steamed broccoli).

Soundtrack: In addition to the above ... I have had a thing this week where I hear the opening to a song and I am sure it will be a Joy Division song, and then it is not. Like ... 6 -7 times this week. Really. And none are actually Joy Division songs.

Random thing: My friend Anna compared my busy life to the piled up Weasley house.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sick Days

Image
I'm on day 2 of being sick, after spending a day with a sick O, and I am fighting terrible feelings of self-doubt and lurking failure. This is a normal way to be when sick, I suppose, but it comes at a time when I was already struggling against despair. Why despair? Because I am genetically predisposed? Because I am working too much and I'm worn out? Hormones? Yes. Yes. Probably. Because the BiP is more a fantasy than a reality at this point? (For those keeping track, NaNoWriMo feels to me more like NoNeGoWriMo ~ Not Never Gonna Write More.) The last is probably the clincher. Whenever I lose track of my writing I get desperate. This is an ongoing dance I do with myself. Commit to the writing ~ do the writing ~ neglect the writing ~ hear the writing whispering recriminations ~ avoid the writing ~ loathe self and others ~ eventually get back to the writing (repeat). Wouldn't it be nice if we could lose steps 3, 4, & 5? Hope in a Prison of Despair , pre-raphaelite painting...
Read more

Bait Fish

Image
David made fun of me when I told him, two weeks ago, that I had "started writing the first post" for this blog. "You don't get it, do you?" he asked, knowing perfectly well that I do. I probably threatened to throw something at him. I erased that fragment of first post. It was too mannered and laborious. It was all about what I want this blog to be about. It was all about my anxiety of influence re certain other writers (namely George Eliot), and about the wonder of coming upon a manuscript of Middlemarch in the British Library about 5 million years ago, and the little paperback reproduction of her quotation-filled blotter I bought in the gift shop. The paperback looks like this. (I haven't actually read it.) Miraculously, I was able to find it in less than 5 minutes, despite the shocking disarray of my bookshelves ... it was on the attic stairs. ( more on bookshelves in some other post ) In the intervening two weeks, I have made a list of possible topics fo...
Read more

Under 20, dammit

Image
Anita Loos photographed by Edward Steichen presence of photo explained below, as though a picture like this requires an explanation. This exercise in blarg-- blerg-- uh, blogging is enjoyable, but I think I have been breaking my 20-minute rule rather regularly. So, the challenge now is to keep it under 20. And, somehow, it took me 2 minutes to write that first sentence. No wonder it is taking me so long to write the tome of tomorrow ... that's my official new name for it. Tome of Tomorrow, or ToT for short. No more of this BiP or E(ndless)BiP or what have you. Reading: Continuing on with the Lurie. Looking forward to beginning something new tomorrow. Also, the writing letters chapter from Bird by Bird Writing: Muchly, at the hospitable Donkey. Dinner: O and I made a nice succotash with shallots and a splash of half and half to perk up the frozen limas and corn. My mom made a second night of Yorkshire pudding, because she could. If you have bothered to render suet, you might as wel...
Read more