Tag: writing

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Our weekly or sometimes bi-monthly lunch date

  
“How was class today?”

“I finally convinced my students that writers are like magicians. They make something out of nothing. Turning a blank sheet of paper into an essay is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, changing the properties of one thing to transform it into another.”

“And they bought that?”

“They did.”

“Because you hold their future, namely their grades, in your hands, you think?

“Maybe. Whatever it takes.”

“Sounds like teaching is a lot like extortion.”

“There’s a lot of ‘or else’ in life, not just in teaching. Everything is a matter of dangling carrots or dodging sticks: Pay your bills on time or pay penalties, finance charges or lose your electricity. Pay your bills on time and build good credit, so you can have more credit. Sticks and carrots.”

“Speaking of which, I’ll get the check this time. You paid last time.”

“Carrot. You want me to show up next week to reciprocate–or retaliate, right?”

“Clever girl.”

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Quote of the Day

  
I really have no idea what that means, but after reading this wonderfully packaged quotation by someone I know not, I considered that my day actually did struggle with me for control.

I awoke at 4 a.m. with a total of four hours sleep, after which I suffered in bed awaiting daylight. When I finally surrendered to the day, I went off to teach my 7:20 a.m. class only to discover I left the pile of essays I corrected til midnight the night before, on my dresser. The absurdity of that condition annoyed me but did not throw me into despair as it might have on any other day. Notable.

After my husband graciously agreed to deliver the papers to me, all seemed to be righted again, like tipping the corner of a crooked picture. My two cups of coffee were sustaining my teaching mind, and class went fairly well considering it was an unusual day of mostly grammar lessons. That is not what occurs on any other day of the semester. I preside over a writing class full of students assumed to be competent writers (assumed, anyhow).

But then I went home to write an article with a three hour deadline that was already on extension. My tired brain could not muster up the 1500 words in three hours, and I was about to miss the deadline or ask for yet another extension when I realized I had already missed the deadline 12 hours before. Oh shit! But wait, the missed deadline was somehow overlooked as my project was not automatically terminated as it would be on this site. Oh shit! okay.

So I asked for another extension, not actually caring whether I got it or not, pretty zen about it, and made my way to the DMV appointment to replace my lost license, expecting at least a couple hour wait. No sweat, since I had yet another batch of essays to correct for the next morning’s class with me. Amazingly, however, I filled out my application for my license, handed it to the gentleman behind the government issue desk, who promptly handed me a number I glanced at just as I heard that same number called to window 21. Wtf? Could it be? I completed my entire transaction in less than 9 minutes, a first in my five and a half decades. 

Then I worked my third job of the day, dreading the drudgery of holding up on my feet on four hours’ sleep until 11 p.m., ending a 19 hour day. But a surprise impromptu training session arose, and time swallowed up my shift with me none the wiser, even as I glanced at my phone every half hour waiting for it to be over.

Days are like that occasionally, pushing and pulling me along with fortunate and unfortunate events, or good turns from bad ones back into bad, then good again. Kind of like today. And all the while, I took it all pretty well, rather evenly, notable in itself. 

I think the above quote by the person about whom I am not curious enough to Google, should read, “Sometimes the day runs you and you run the day too.”

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Umberto Eco

  
“I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.” 

― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

I first learned of Eco after reading The Name of the Rose in graduate school, though I cannot remember whether it was the first round in 89 or the second in 2003. I saw the movie of the same name and cannot remember whether I saw it before reading the book or vice versa. I do know I enjoyed both immensely, so much so that I read a second book, the one from which the above quote comes, which I also enjoyed, though I believed that the text was far more about the title namesake than it was before reading it. I had read Michel Foucault, who I found as intriguing as mystifying, so naturally was drawn to the title. 

The text, like all Eco works, is complex and dense with plot and erudite history, lore and textual references–not your read on the beach in paradise. Eco demands you grapple. And while many details of both books I read are long forgotten, the words and specific scenes remain etched in the beautiful keepsakes section of my brain.

Like many faithful readers, I seek treasure–that unique turn of phrase or universal truth that hangs with me, bubbled to the surface when I need a lift, a reason or insight. Countless times the belief in mystery became and becomes my mantra. Some people often sigh, “It’s God’s will” when at a loss to explain the inexplicable and I just as often say, “Bow to the mystery.” Though both signal surrender, one does far less resignedly. 

That the “world is an enigma” satisfies, becalms and relieves humans of the burden of making sense of chaos and that which we cannot understand due to the size of our brains, undiscovered truths or components necessary to solving riddles, or both–or neither. That we madly “attempt to interpret” the world smacks of vanity or fruitlessness but not necessarily. Human’s drive to know, to understand and control is itself an enigma, one with benign origins though sometimes malignant intent or results. 

This quote counters another oft-pronounced snippet pulled out of pocket at the cause-effect chain’s logical end with no solution: “Everything happens for a reason.” Eco obviously disagreed and wrote legions against that idea, wracking ordered plots with disordered interferences from magic, evil intent, human contaminants and other messy interlocutors, all in historically altered (small and large) and imagined context. 

One thinker, writer and human I mourn, Umberto Eco died yesterday, a significant loss or gain for the mystery.

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Two Years


 

Two years ago, life was as different as it was the same as it is now. While so much has changed, not much has either:

Two years ago, my mother could speak and recognize me fairly often. She does neither now, or rarely. But she is still here.

And both daughters were in high school then, the older just having turned 18, a senior and the younger a freshman. They both played soccer for their school, which took up much of our time between playing, attending and enjoying games, volunteering and fundraising, etc. Now neither does. One left home and came back. The other continues on without and now with her sister. We spend time doing other things now, like talking in coffee shops, shopping, bookstore browsing and eating. Sisters are still sisters, daughters, daughters.

And about that same time, I was teaching six classes and running–and not just exercising. Too busy to think about anything. Two years later, I teach two classes and refuse to run.

People have moved in and out of my life yet somehow all still remain, though the live connections grow more tenuous and infrequent. 

Stronger, thinner, and lighter then but calmer, wiser, and slower now, I am, all for the better and worse, in just a matter of days, weeks and two years.

Two years ago I started this blog with no other intention than to write, no expectations. That has not changed. And though WordPress reports hundreds and thousands of posts and views and followers attributed to this blog, which has grown in words, mine, yours, and others’, the daily writing discipline over the months has not changed–I write. 

I am still happy then as now to have shared words for all eyes who have cared to read–and am grateful for any morsel of insight, amusement, pleasure or education I may have bestowed upon a passerby here; touching another is the aim and hope. 

Peace and blessings.

Thank you,

Gaze    

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Wisdom?

 
 
It’s the nature of the beast.

To demolish all creative thought in a cliché, say

the sentence out loud without pause.

Don’t question it; don’t sneer. Don’t ask:

Does it mean surrender, resignation, acceptance,

withdrawal, wisdom, abidance or indifference? 

You already know the answer.

Code for trade-off, the things that cannot change

not by will or effort, not by demanding, wishing, 

hoping, foot-stomping, screaming, crying or praying. 

Laziness, perhaps, or exhaustion, one preceding

the other, most likely, at intuiting the insurmountable.

 
He’s always late, never checks his messages when

he’s made a date to meet me, and snores so loudly

most nights I can’t sleep, and counts on my inability

to hold on to anger time after time, til I wonder

if he’s just playing me, holding me down, keeping me

in the invisible stockades of pilloried complaints,

usual ones like taken for granted and love me enough.

 
“Look, if you want something bad enough,” my mother

always said, “you’ll find a way to get it and keep it.” 

That nearly always sounded like truth, like something

right out of the good book of cause and effect and

Newtonian physics or the natural laws of divine free will

or perception–on the little brain bits we have to depend.

The whole a-will-a-way combo, the tritest of them all.

Except how do I know if I have accepted in wisdom, peace 

and knowledge what I cannot change, made a fair exchange 

or simply ducked and run without a step in the face of the 

inevitable, my presumed conclusion befitting the fatigue 

of too many, just too many reasonable compromises?

“Better not to ask,” she’d sometimes say.

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Knock Knock

  
Knock, knock, knocking

They constantly want inside

takers disguised as networkers

giving me something I don’t need

just so they can. I don’t want them.

I crave holing, gathering up my wits

acute, incisive, slipping out my ears.

Who can write with so much chatter?

so much irrelevant noise, never ending

polluting the pristine powder of ideations

pure and unsullied, untouched and virginal?

There, freshness whisks, tucked away, shiny

bright and ready to reflect the sun of its making.

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Exactly Ten Raindrops Fell Today

  

Delaying the inevitable chore,

distasteful, disagreeably utile,

cracking open a creative divide,

writing mercenary words to eat.

Powerful procrastination widens

my eyes smoldering laser-see

the clouds churning charged,

ready to release and pour rain.

The storyline unfolds just then:

He had a girlfriend at the time.

Saigon had fallen two years prior.

So, his coming trailed calamity.

She walked the color of caress,

peaked fem-enigmatic effusion,

lithe boned and delicate fleshly.

Her name, a chilly winter song,

juxtaposing a bronzed-fire will,

she led him to the sun wingless.

And I watched behind a column

I constructed far too narrowly

to hide the heavy haunting me,

the girth of stony mind sleights.

I, velveted brown-eyed insecure, 

peered around an Ionic pillar thin,

to gaze on a gazer, distant-drawn

drinking her gauzy gray-blue sea.

His eyes pierced her silken skin

hollowed her safe harbor’s vapor.

And there he knelt, nose in the air

sensing the suck of the sea’s loss

ebbing tides of futile passage…

and so it begins, drops descending,

disrupting imagery as I trace them,

all ten of them mustered in distress

great blustery burst of all but naught.

Like sitting by the window waiting

for inspiration and steely wit to spin

commercial cogs of nil to the world.

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Akrasia

  “akrasia, the mystery of why people choose to do other than what they think is best for them to do.” ― John R. Perry, The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing

I am having a meta moment: procrastinating by reading about procrastination. My article is due by midnight. It is not even half way done and the one who assigned it, my possible future editor, is waiting for it to see if I am worthy to write his blog fodder will-write-for-food spin.The thought of this looming project deadline scratches at my peace every hour–at coffee, eating breakfast, scouring Facebook, chatting with a friend, doing yoga, watching a soccer game, eating lunch, texting anyone, playing with the kitten, reading emails–even every quarter of an hour, yet I cannot muster the urgency…yet. 

Curious about procrastination, I started reading widely over the net to discover why I am procrastinating. Finding no answers (and still not writing my work with an ever shortening deadline), I decided to draw the feeling of it, a cocktail of procrastination–slow and steady, slightly shaken–with a shot of stress on the rocks. It should be a jolt but it is more like an electric line down shorting out wildly slashing the ground like a toad on cocaine, like my brain some days. And this is what it looks like at the moment:
  
So now it’s getting late. I’m sufficiently motivated. Until tomorrow….

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Power Tools

  
Man, myth and vibrators: the Power Tools of the Empowered. Good vibrations: for all your pleasureful needs. And worse. 

I was trying to come up with a title for a blog post I wrote for one of my will-write-for-food sites, a post describing a massager and vibrator section of an online catalog of “romantic toys.” The copy was pretty straight forward: selling sex toys with luscious descriptions of need and success in the bedroom. But the title–a real grabber–is always challenging for subjects I know a lot about and so are enthused about, let alone for topics I know or care too little to whisk up a flavorful title. 

It’s not that I don’t like vibrators. I just have been sort of meh on them. Some have suggested that I may not have found the right one or are too accustomed to “other ways” of achieving the same results, both of which may be true. But I haven’t really thought about it much until I wrote up this blog piece.

Curious whether I could find commiseration in my take-it-or-leave-it attitude about vibes, I went to the internet. Wading past the ads disguised as informationals, I found lots on the topic but only a couple of good reads:  The Secret to Having Mind-Blowing Orgasms with Your Vibrator in YourTango.com and Psychology Today’s Vibrators: Myths vs. Truths.

Beyond the obvious of all obvious recommendations in the one–to experiment and try what feels good (duh, really?) and not to drill your sensitive areas to death–I did take up the solo solution of massaging the rest of your body first as foreplay–sorta.  Imagine that, using a massager as a…well, massager.

And while both tackled some myths about becoming addicted and desensitized to using a vibrator, one confirmed that too much of a good thing could lead to less of a good thing in other areas. In other words, orgasming with a vibrator may make it more difficult to orgasm without one. The psychology writer’s opinion was more a “it depends on the person” comment but clearly denied addiction danger:

Do carpenters become addicted to power tools? No, power tools just get the job done faster. Many women really love their vibrators, but that’s a personal preference, not an addiction. 

Not sure about the analogy as altogether apt, certainly is cliché, but like most habits, it seems to me it would depend on so many other factors like the person’s relationship(s), mindset, attitude and existing personality traits as to whether vibes are habit-forming. And so what if they are?

Maybe it’s my prejudices. Solo sex is utilitarian, accomplished with or without powertools and a good imagination. Beyond solo, connection with others, well that’s my preference–with or without the tools.

 
Credit:  https://bmnorthamericaprod.blob.core.windows.net

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Horror and Music

  

 

 
You want horror? I’ll give you horror.
 
You want music? How about a dirge?

How about the feeling of feeling nothing?

Not fear or love or even boredom. Not feeling.

How horrible would that be? Or maybe not.

How about brain tumors and skin cancer?

Who doubts rectal cancer’s horror, rotting from

the inside out, reeking inverted guts exposed?

What about bloat, the Great Dane disease,

their intestines twist-knotting them to death?

And perfect lovers meeting at the worst time,

both stuck inextricably in others’ lifeless lives?

Shattered happiness is horror, potential lost,

Losing a child or a loved one’s murder, terror.

How do you recover from sending your child 

off to school just to find her dead, shot up by

a murderer festering in a room, a closed door

emerging for a brief fatal foray out of alienation?

I cannot write any greater horror. Unimaginable.

How to write horror stories worse than the real?

Controlled horror in letters would play us God.

We can manage and shape–to know the ending. 

To know: Coping with horror is to make it. Write.  

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