Archive for the ‘Literary’ Category
[100 words] I remember it well….
there’s no place like home.
I’m in this hotel room over by
Stuyvesant Park, trying to write.
she freaks out with enough regularity
that I the guy working the front desk
knows me by name. I take the room
that none of the tourists want -
the one right above the street
with all the accompanying bustle,
arguments, and car alarms.
I can’t write unless I hear that stuff -
maybe I need proof that life exists
beyond my own sometimes claustrophobic
imagination.
tha words come to me more easily here,
seems I write better where it’s calm…
but not for long.
[100 words] Of cinnamon and sneakers..
I smell cinnamon, and it reminds me
of all the good times I had with her….
she liked making cinnamon buns,
especially for festive occasions
manufactured wholesale from her
ever so vivid imagination -
Squirrel Nut King Day, Banister Eve,
Chandelier Festival, and the highest holiday,
Dia de los Cinnabons….
the apartment would smell of cinnamon
for days afterwards, and she would be serene, content to see herself as
a June Cleaverish muse in a Misfits t-shirt,
camo pants, and combat boots…
I strived to be her genius in cargo pants,
palatable to the suits and to the chuck taylor sneakers….
[100 words] stay or go ahead….
I closed the door and walked away.
I’ll probably have to find a hotel for tonight,
I’m used to it, though - it’s best not to be in the house
when she’s in these moods,
I’m too easy of a target for the rage.
not that it’s a torrent of thrown items,
it’s more the death of a thousand cutting remarks
with a side order of denial which further fuels the rage…..
it’s always something different,
and never what it appears to be….
you’re probably asking yourself why I stayed,
and I probably couldn’t tell you why
if you asked me….
Try Not To (Try Not To (Try Too Hard))
Tags: Politics, Religion, tagsSo suppose you are looking to meet someone, and happen to find yourself alone in a restaurant near someone, also alone, you are overwhelmingly attracted to. If you were a non-human animal in such a situation, you would initiate a simple approach, and mutual sniffing and body language would immediately signal to you, politely and without fanfare or embarrassment, whether the object of your affection was interested or not. As a human, when you approach, your body and face are already signaling your interest, and the body and face of the object of your affection are signaling a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ right back. Before you say a word, the decision is already made. So, assuming that (thanks to our dulled human senses and the miracles of modern perfumery) you can’t ‘read’ that decision, it really doesn’t matter what you say. You don’t have to try hard, or try not to try too hard, you don’t have to try at all. Just be yourself and do what you want to do — it won’t change the outcome.
In the years before AIDS, many of us learned this astonishing lesson, and it wasn’t because people were more promiscuous then. We just learned that not trying worked, night after night.
Same with your sales pitch to a co-worker or customer. Communicate the idea as clearly as you can, as simply as you can. Your use of media doesn’t matter, the arguments don’t matter. The listener will have decided ‘yes’ or ‘no’ within a couple of minutes, maybe even less, based on ancient baggage in their brain that you have absolutely no impact on. You don’t have to try at all — it won’t make any difference. If you lie brilliantly, you might dishonestly get a ‘yes’, but how long before it gets found out and turns into a no, leaving you to pick up the mess behind the bridge you’ve now burned?
So trying not to try not to try too hard gets reduced to just not trying and being yourself. You can’t keep up the pretense of being anyone else for long, and, unless you work on a stage for a living, it won’t get you anywhere anyway.
Blue like jazz, et al….
Figured I’d let you in on what I’ve been reading as of late..
“Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality” (Donald Miller)
This book was a page turner -
I went through it relatively quickly…
not that it wasn’t profound, but I just enjoyed the ride…
I keep thinking “damn, I wish I could write this kind of stuff, all simultaneously cool and insightful as it is…”
then I realize that I’m in a job where stories are the enemy,
the useless chaff I sort through to get to the wheat -
the real issue at hand, the problem I have to solve…
This week, I started to read one of his other books…
“Searching for God Knows What” (Donald Miller)
This is one you chew on, just a few pages at a time…
like when he uses a men’s room encounter with Santa Claus, a Smiths song, a self serve car wash, and an encounter with a poetry quoting debate guy who got all the girls, to explain why we do almost everything we do and how both Shirley Maclaine and Jerry Falwell get God wrong….
here’s another one I’ll have to get….
“To Own a Dragon: Reflections On Growing Up Without A Father” (Donald Miller, John MacMurray)
Mom and I left Dad before I was 2,
so I have no memory of him, and may never have one,
now that he’s dead….
don’t know if that’s a good thing….
Tags: tagsQuixote Novel
Death Sentences, Vanity and Dinner at Eight - This day in Literature
On this day in 1849, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death
(it was later commuted to 4 years hard labor in Siberia)
This day is also playwright George S. Kaufman’s birthday
(born in 1889 in Pittsburgh, PA)
who wrote Dinner at Eight,
Stage Door,
and The Man Who Came to Dinner.
and in 1897, Oscar Wilde, following his release from Reading Gaol,
writes his friend Robert Ross:
Tags: Politics, tagsIt is curious how vanity keeps the successful man
and wrecks the failure.
In the old days half of my strength was my vanity.
Paradise Lost, Scarlett, and Sister Carrie
on this day in 1674, John Milton died
and was buried in the chancel of St. Giles, Cripplegate
Margaret Mitchell, the creator of Scarlett O’Hara, was born on this day in 1900 in Atlanta, GA
Also in 1900, Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: tagsStonehenge, a spurned poet, and The Stranger
born on this day:
Albert Camus(1913)
and
William Stukeley -
more about the latter: Read the rest of this entry »
Happy 151st Birthday, Rimbaud…
From the better late than never dept. -
Arthur Rimbaud was born on this day 151 years ago -
Wrote his most remembered works before he was 20 - Read the rest of this entry »