do I want to “browse into the future”? how can I say no?
can I have a time/space machine while we’re at it?
colonize me
netflix hates insomniacs
3 a.m. is the cruellest time to throttle streaming video. they must know it, the sadists.
sitting watching the percentage load count up, ever so glacially, leaden seconds ticking on– 1%… 2%… 4%… 5%… 8%…
and then half the time it gets to 100% and hangs.
the truth is I resent being buffered ever, in any fashion. buffering, bah. it’s just more grueling in the small hours.
In which I own my love for the Mighty Boosh
Chris, a tireless and intrepid YouTube explorer and fan of Adult Swim, gets me hooked on all sorts of wacked-out video he digs up online, which I’d likely not tumble to left to my own wits– such as the whole Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace / IT Crowd / Mighty Boosh constellation of actors and writers.
The Mighty Boosh in particular is pretty far right-brained entertainment, which took me a few episodes to catch the love for. but I’d have to call myself something of a Vince-groupie now– and Howard is just so doggone human, the lovely lummox, I’ve rather developed a soft spot for him as well.
And when I ran across this feature on the Vox sign-in page, I had to wonder whether Naboo’s resemblance to Hanuman was strictly coincidental. I’m somehow doubtful.
Chick porn by any other name
I can’t deny it.
reading lately
: people who actually MAINTAIN their blogs (unlike some of us– quelle notion).
my favorite thing lately is this low impact means of catching up with long distance friends via their delightfully unique/beautiful/hilarious blogging about kids and mates and other life stuff.
Jen’s BabyX2: my tiny friend not only managed to carry to term and deliver two beautiful babies but also blogs about their developmental and fashion progress in typically hilarious style.
Sarah’s Quince and Quire: Sarah, a poet and book artist friend, consistently renders and reflects on her life in gorgeous, precise, and lovely patterns and hues.
Wilson’s Mate Expectations: an engaging and wryly honest narrative about coming to terms with the order in which life dictates events must unfold.
Doctor Who
My darling, whose mind works in weird and delicious ways, grew up on episodes of Doctor Who, which surely contributed to those thinking patterns I adore–and which I’d never seen until he introduced me to it just this week.
Last night we watched the episode “Blink“, which scared the bejebus out of me, delightfully. So great. What a treat to discover something new to enjoy.
the problem with facebook
Sarah Townsend
… is feeling bittersweet, conflicting emotions as she views one niece’s posted photos of the eldest niece’s wedding this past weekend, which sarah herself was unable to attend.
… experiences a moment while brushing teeth in which the mirror face comments, sotto voce but unmistakeable, so-called bloom of youth vanished.
… ‘s boyfriend tickled her out of bed rather than allow her to wallow indefinitely in a weepy slump.
… often feels overwhelmed by the myriad glimpses of other people’s lives and psyches crushed together in the virtual realm.
… isn’t entirely certain to what extent she continues to “know” people she was once friends with in a different time and place.
… doesn’t altogether recognize, in a real, concrete sense, family members and other loved ones, when seeing them or reading them in decontextualized slivers.
… has an unsettling array of uncertainties and questions.
… is hyper-aware that depressives are a serious drag.
… settles too often for the too-familiar, too-human unspiffy personal truth.
… is mushing forward, struggling to feel okay.
quotidian thrash
another fine book with “dog” in the title (no mystery why these jump off the shelf at me): a three dog life by abigail thomas– memoir most gracefully arranged.
my head is full of shards that poke me awake at three and four a.m.– at which point I’ll get out of bed, fed up with it, meander aimlessly from bathroom to kitchen, alight on the couch and sit staring, full of unreconcilable noise, simply fraught in the dark, until eventually exhaustion wins out and back to bed.
saturday we spent entirely out, unusual for habitual homebodies– downtown among the shamrock throng– we pursued our own parallel and unrelated course from cell phone store to lunch to art museum to secondhand shops to bar and so on, weaving through and among all those drunken costumed babies– girls crying into cell phones, boys hollering, singing, peeing in doorways– loud and incidental to our own daylong adventure.
we’ve decided to stay put for now, though spring is tweaking me– it’s the good choice, pull ourselves together in all the right ways for planned rather than haphazard forward momentum. practicing patience is uncomfortable. my mind hounds itself with buts and ifs, and it’s difficult to keep still and steady. my heart craves large, marked and decisive gestures, but is unable or unwilling to settle on a single direction for momentum and so thrashes against itself, pushing this way and that until it’s simply worn out.
the time has changed, so days are brighter and seem longer, which lifts my mood across the board– regardless the prospect of another year confounds.
what a good book should do
There’s a fairly short list of books I truly love, by which I feel gratefully reshaped while reading them—and I’ve just added one more title to their number: The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst. I don’t even quite know yet what I want to say about it… only to testify to this feeling of awe, of gratitude and grace for the experience of something so utterly moving and beautiful and bittersweet. It hurts exquisitely to read how well Parkhurst writes of Lexy’s anguish, as imagined through her husband’s eyes after the fact—there are two or three pages right near the end where the describing of the experience of despair is so pitch-perfect, accurate and immediately recognizable, that it feels as if my own heart, in its most private and awful moments, has been written onto the page and published and printed in the thousands by a complete stranger—it’s the oddest combination of intimacy and the public—which I suppose is also the pith of my secret heart. I want to hold the feeling this book has created inside me, not to let it slip away into daily whatevers—that’s really why I write about it. I dearly don’t want this exquisite feeling of graceful recognition and my own amazement to end. O the tragedy of the final page. So the inclination to talk about such books with others in classrooms and coffeeshops and book circles. But when a book comes printed, as this one does, with prepared discussion questions for groups of readers, well, I appreciate it, take it as a sign of the book’s power to move, but still can’t bear to glance at them for awhile—they feel, in their candor and baldness, at first like a cheapening of that magical, intimate, transported moment. The great power of a work of fiction to reach into exactly you in your most personal heart to create a there quiet chemical explosion, this is the wondrous gift of certain writers. If I could accomplish the same for other readers so wholly and satisfyingly in books, I would feel unutterably blessed and successful in my work.
there. if I’m honest about it, that is the dream. nothing less.
And now I’m going to make a cup of tea and maybe a batch of cookies and continue to savor the receiving of the gift.
my dirty little secret
chris knows it–
(wait for it)
I love grey’s anatomy. as they say, seriously. it’s a soap opera with good writing– what’s not to love?
what’s not to love about a mark with a broken penis? or dramatic scenes that turn on a wafer-thin instant, a line– ethically, emotionally, even to some extent spiritually. I gladly buy into the drama of it– I think I mainly live in that current. which is why I so looove grey’s anatomy.
I am facing the sappy, goopy in myself lately– it’s what you tend to reach when you retreat inside. depression is a sloppy business when you get down to it. struggle involves awkward positions, chagrin at the numbers but persistence, however you weigh it.
there’s not a lot of discernible language when you go underground, under the radar and other scientific instruments. and then you seem to surface– it is a little better, for one reason and other. a walk by the lake, a telephone or chat conversation with a friend across the miles– or right at home. you surface. chris knows it.
you tread water with watching t.v.
days can be a bit of a slog.
and then you’ll stumble over a project, become infatuated, want nothing but to talk about it, become a little tiresome. happiness hath no momentum.
but after awhile you have to say something. odds are it’s not going to be brilliant, so just move forward. the head is a heavy thing.
you make projects as a distraction partly– you think, I could make an essay form in this medium– even if I do it stumblingly. you write just whatever from the place you’re in. it’s a relief. sometimes that’s enough.
so you breathe and just keep putting the feet forward the best you can.
you think about how longer narrative forms are more challenging because they need to create interesting, muscular patterns– or at least maintain consistency to be readable or livable, for that matter. there is discomfort, weather and vexedness of a thousand varieties– so it goes. it would be nice if your narrative could have some gypsy shake, heft and bells.
by the end I always have to change the title– and then rearrange things, so it ends up not being the end– sometimes it’s good to give your audience opportunities to forgive you– small ones work well, large ones less well, you learn.
I don’t know what the appeal is of the second person vague– it’s both confrontational and obviously sneaky. vaguery has always been my sticky wicket, the slope I must slip on because I hate the editor. grapple with the editor. do war with it. grit in the throat.
it is most excellent to have your mind thought sexy, odd and elemental, especially by thinkin folks you think are cool. you realize– I realize moments of feeling fully present. first person intensely. I imagine english as a foreign language– grammar and vocabulary most provocative, shaping what you say and letting it change on your lips. that inevitable second person! is the plot thickening sufficiently? or does it need some agent to make it coagulate. is it bad form to speak of coagulation? I do faux pas.
sometimes you, that is I, overcook the chicken. but it still feels necessary to make things bite-size, even if too dry to rightly swallow.
I know why the you– the you is the I that wants to be edited somehow. tailored to make more sense.
you have a thing for tightropes. tights, ropes. you have a thing, a relationship with words, relationship here being a dirty word. you choke on it, stutter, make sounds almost like sense. a little offkey, singing.
