Sunday Top Ten: Entries From a Smokin' Hot Pink Notebook

When I was a little girl in Dork Middle School, anybody who was anybody (which was almost everybody, 'cause there were only 16 girls in my graduating class) read Lurlene McDaniel novels ravenously -- stories which confirmed our suspicions that the world was a cruel, cruel place. Also, anybody who was anybody was allowed to go to the mall alone w/o parental supervision, except me, 'cause my mother was a fascist dictator who didn't want me to have fun or be happy. (JK Mom! Love you! Loved going to the mall with you too!) (Wouldn't it be fun if instead of Mother's Day being "Celebrate Mom" day, it was an April Fool's Day combo? The fam pools collective wisdom to play a big trick on Mom? Like in Home Alone, when Kevin sets booby traps for the thieves? Mom'll get up expecting breakfast in bed and then be like wtf are there micro-machines on the floor, um, hello blowtorch, KEVIN!") Anyhow. What was I talking? Oh yes. Literature.

Since leaving my Dork School peer group for greener pastures, I've not met another fan of McDaniel's cannon of Dying Children Lit -- until last weekend when I met my friend's sister who was also a big fan, which is AMAZING, and we bonded over it.

Also, I just started reading Rachel Shukert's Have You No Shame, in which the author's mother uncovers her daughter's collection of Holocaust Lit and replaces the books with Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High, delaring that: "I'd rather have you shallow and sexually precocious than morbidly psychotic."

So I started thinking about all the morbidly psychotic books I read as a kid. I wasn't allowed to read Christopher Pike or R.L Stine like everyone else (see: mother's general desire for me to be ostracized from peers), but I feel like the shit I was allowed to read was probs way worse for my little baby mind than those authors' straightforward & blatant horror/violence.

Which brings us to an actual Sunday Top Ten. For the first time since um ... oh, I don't know.

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SUNDAY TOP TEN: SEEMINGLY INNOCUOUS YOUNG ADULT BOOKS THAT PLEASED MY TWISTED LITTLE SOUL, AND WHY
or "Things that affected me more than going to the mall w/o a parent would've."

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10. Cynthia Voigt's "Tillerman" Series: Homecoming, Dicey's Song, et al., also The Boxcar Children
Amped up my desire to be an orphan forced to live by my wits,
as well as my certainty that I'd be better off alone like the pop song "Better Off Alone,"
therefore increasing my implicitly unfair & ungrateful resentment towards my family for feeding, clothing and loving me,
inspiring me to write my own bad novels about runaways.

In Homecoming, 13-year old Dicey Tillerman and her three younger siblings experience the literal opposite of my life situation -- they're actually abandoned at the shopping mall by their mother, who subsequently lands herself in a psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, I was being followed around the mall by my psychiatric mother (ten steps behind, providing both protection and distance), therefore preventing me from Having Adventures like Hunger, Misery, Orphanhood, Eccentric Aunts on Dilapidated Farms and Evil Catholics. Reading the plot summary of Homecoming, I realize it's possible I stole it for my epic novel Fly by Night, in which young pyromaniac Erin leaves her abusive home w/precocious brother Tommie, eventually meeting a guy named "Fly," who looks a lot like Jordan Catalano. 'Cause Erin can't stop burning things down & 'cause their number-one income source is carrying groceries to cars (in real life, I suspect this is not the growth sector Voigt's novels implied), they're forced into homelessness and then communal living with Fly and his super-fly buddies. There's a happy ending, I won't spoil it!

Also, how dykey does Dicey look on that book cover? Yow.

As I mentioned in the "Family Film Edition" of "What I Learned from the Teevee," I was a big fan of Orphan Lit and wanted to live in a Boxcar, eat hobo stew and scavenge for loaves of bread, etc. Unfortunately, I was never orphaned, though I enjoyed building forts and pretending to run away from home. Honestly, my coping mechanisms haven't really changed much since then.

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9. The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline B. Cooney

Among other imaginary acts of heroism, I often hoped to find a classmate or friend on a milk carton and save the day, like in America's Most Wanted which I wasn't allowed to watch. Once a lax babysitter let us watch the show (she was fired, clearly) -- this guy killed his wife and hid her in an egg incubator behind his trailer, I still have nightmares about it. Also I believe this book fueled my fear of being kidnapped, and a ridiculous obsession with cults. Later, this became a TV movie staring the foxy Kellie Martin.

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8. The Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

I know what you're thinking -- "The Clockwork Orange" is not a young adult novel. This is true. Howevs, my father felt I was very mature, and 'cause he wanted me to become a great filmmaker like Stanley Kubrick, he made me read this book (we had a serious book-before-the-movie policy) when I was 13. Though most grown-up lit was off limits (e.g., Stephen King, other crap), I was permitted both this and Lolita. This is the essence of hippie intellectual spirit. I was like "Dad, what's 'the ol' in-out-in-out'"? Which was a very special moment for everyone and eliminated any perceived need for a "birds and the bees" convo.

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7. Face at the Edge of the World, by Eve Bunting
Romanticisation of Suicide, Additional Reasons to Fuck it All

I'm not sure if this is the right book, 'cause I probs read more than my fair share of suicide-related narratives. But I think this is the one where the protagonist spends the whole book trying to figure out why his successful and talented BFF suddenly offed himself, eventually (SPOILER ALERT!) determining that perhaps he simply wanted to "quit while he was ahead." So basically all bets are off, re: offing oneself, not good news for me as I believe I was diagnosed with clinical chronic depression at the age of 5. Logistically, it would've been impossible to do myself in since I was so well supervised, especially at the mall.

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6. Eating Disorder Lit, including:
Second Star to the Right, Stick Figure, and Little Girls in Pretty Boxes

As I've noted previously, I was the scrawniest little kid you ever did see. Howevs: my Mom was a nutritionist who helped people diet, I wanted desperately to gain weight, I was a first worldian adolescent in the 80's/90's surrounded by body image obsessed girls. Therefore, I was totally fascinated by everyone else's fascination with thigh girth. As a chronically pre-pubescent teen, I looked to literature to psych me into understanding wtf the deal was ... later, I employed this background when counseling the reedonkulous number of severely anorexic and/or bulimic friends I acquired over the years. I think it's 'cause subconsciously, ED'ed peeps are drawn to me, thinking "what is her secret of svelte-hood?" and then eventually they learn that I hate myself too, it's just more annoying coming from me, 'cause I'm not actually fat, just completely insane, and have read too many books about eating disorders (late-adds include Appetites, The Body Project and Wasted) and also; the media, etc. Calvin Klien fashion magazines hoo-ha. Kazaam.

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Teacher: How would you describe Anne Frank?
Angela [distracted]: Lucky.
Teacher: "Anne Frank perished in a concentration camp. Anne Frank is a tragic figure. How could Anne Frank be lucky?"
[Jordan Catalano walks in, late]
Angela: "I don't know... Because she was trapped in an attic for three years with this guy she really liked?"
(My So-Called Life)

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5. Judy Blume Novels

As I've mentioned 500 times, I'm essentially a human sponge, willing to take orders and absorb desire from whomever's speaking the loudest. Through Judy Blume, I verified that I was, indeed, justified to angst over my bust which wasn't increasing though I thought it must, it must, and that the best way to bond with other girls was via boy-related discussions. I've since learned otherwise, but I still love Judy. The girls in Blume novels are relentlessly catty and tell me srsly if you can't imagine this on the back of a porn DVD: "Rachel is Stephanie's best friend. Since second grade they've shared secrets, good and bad. So when Alison moves into the neighborhood, Stephanie hopes all three of them can be best friends since Stephanie really likes Alison. But it looks as if it's going to be a case of two's company and three's a crowd." Anyone? "In bed"? I know I was reading Lolita at 12, but c'mon now ...

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4. The Quiet Room, by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennet

I'm 99.9% sure schizophrenia is one disorder I defo don't have, but I seriously used to hear voices sometimes as a kid (probs it was G-d, before She lost faith in me altogether), and reading this book really freaked me out -- clearly I had enough neurosis w/o worrying that one day the voices would stop arguing with each other about my self-worth and instead command me to kill someone. Luckily they went away ... now the only voice I hear is Tegan in my iPod. Who's going on MONDAY!?! TO TEGAN & SARA?!!!

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3. Entries From a Hot Pink Notebook, by Todd D. Brown
Felt I related to the protagonist's psyche deeply,
began early fascination with gay male culture,
subsequently realizing literally as I write this that perhaps I identified with the narrator's feelings of alienation and outsiderdom for other reasons,
e.g., personal gayness.

So, it featured my fave plot device, the gay reveal and subsequent gay crush gay reveal (y'know, the "OMG, my BFF I'm in love with is kissing ME BACK!" thing) and it's actually a really good book, though I realize the title suggests otherwise. Sometimes it hurts: the titles given to brill books. It's much easier to recommend a book called "The Sound and the Fury" than "Entries from a Hot Pink Notebook." I read this approximately around the same time I was writing in my own diary: "my greatest fear is that I'll turn out to be a lesbian. Yuck." Also, gay men were sorta "in" in the mid-nineties amongst liberals -- Rickie Vasquez, etc.

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2. Lurlene McDaniel books

According to Lurlene McDaniel's website, "everyone loves a good cry," which's why McD's written 40+ books about "kids who face life-threatening illnesses, who sometimes do not survive." Sample titles include: She Died Too Young, Sixteen and Dying, Please Don't Let Him Die, The Girl Death Left Behind, Letting Go Of Lisa, When Happily Ever After Ends, Goodbye Doesn't Mean Forever, etc. The best was when two kids with different illnesses fell in love (e.g., cystic fibrosis + leukemia = true love) or when everyone would get into a car accident right before they were supposed to go to college on scholarship (w/bright futures, obvs) except for one girl who'd be left behind to angst. In a rare appearance by an African-American character, McD brought us Baby Alicia is Dying, in which a teenage girl grows attached to the HIV-positive black baby abandoned by her crack is whack mother, probs in Planet Harlem.

Basically, Lurlene McDaniel peddles the most demented books of all time, and I somehow ate them up. We all did. I imitated them, too, with similar plots in novels I wrote (for fun?). I guess we all felt strange and sad all the time for no reason, our little Dork School, filled with kids who suspected that, given the chance, public school would eat us alive and stuff us into lockers, and also: that perhaps we weren't fooling anyone (least of all ourselves) by avoiding the resolute knowledge that our problems weren't really problems, actually. We read the newspaper. We had politically aware parents. We didn't know jackshit, hadn't lived through anything worth crying over. Faces on Spilled Milk Cartons.

I coped w/my sense of alienation as a kid by reading, constantly, both intelligent books not mentioned here and the lame stuff I'm talking about here ... or by trying to be like everyone else as best I could though I felt hopelessly different. I'd been sad all the time for no reason as long as I can remember ... while driving w/my Mom from one place I was running from to another place, I mentioned wanting to get back to some childhood place where I'd been happy and she said I'd actually never been. "Intense," was her word. I guess I knew that already, I just wanted her to disagree, or blow it off. 'Cause I mean, seriously. I don't mention Elizabeth Wurtzel all the time for no reason, I'm legitimately afraid of her & her entitled torture, her ... whining.

I had an association and fascination with terrible & morbid circumstances and latched onto the littlest things to excuse my moodiness -- these books tapped into the part of me that wanted a reason for it. I wanted to be told, again and again, that tragedy waited around the corner. I'm certain there must've been wood nearby worth knocking on, if I'd known enough to do so. Clearly; I knew nothing.

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"I know sad stories aren't for every reader, but it's the kind of story that most of my readers like from me. When I write "happy" books, many readers complain. So I focus on what I do best---stories that might bring a tear, but that focus on real life (where happily ever after rarely occurs). And while the books may not have "happy" endings, I try to give readers a satisfying ending---life is full of trouble and matters out of our control. How we deal with troubles determines our own character."
(Words of Wisdom from Lurlene McDaniel, clearly a Sick Puppy)

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1. Sweet Valley High

I actually was prohibited from reading these books an account of their apparent vapidity, etc., But I finally sneaked one home, probs using crafty techniques learned from another YA novel. Just my luck: I got the book where Elizabeth gets kidnapped. Not good. This verified, to me, that my Mom was Right about these books being Bad; which's why Mothers have special powers that cannot be questioned. Like how the first time I drank alcohol, I threw up all night, which's exactly what she'd told me would happen. Actually, that still happens. Yet I continue drinking. Hm.

Howevs, I'd like to once again point out that nothing scary ever happened to me at the mall, except for this:

On that note of "things I did 'cause everyone else was doing it," if anyone's got a bridge in Brooklyn they'd like to sell me ...

Auto-Fun of the Day :: 5-9-2008

quote: ""Tell me about your life. tell me all about it, don't be shy or afraid. tell me about your beautiful past. Speak it to me. About your first feelings and impulses. About how strong and fine they were. How pure. And high-grade. And about how those around you responded. About the gestures. About the faces. What did the hands feel like? And about the hearts. Could you feel their hearts beating beneath their chests? ... And the darkness. Tell me about the darkness. The depth and the intensity of it. Its feel. The grit of it. Of what you lost in it. The black of it. If you died in it. Or if you lived in it. Tell me about it. Speak it to me. Speak the hatred of it to me. Don't be afraid. Spit on me. Don't hold back. Spit it. That's why I am here." (Robert Aluetta, "Stops")

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links:
1) "Why don't you ever get anything done with your life, Riese?" "Because I'd prefer to spend my entire morning watching conjoined twins video footage! La la la!(@one d at a time)
2) How we become the stories we tell about ourselves/ remember things that never happened: Total Recall (@Miller-McCune)
3) Obvs, a $10-bottle of "drinkable" pinot grigio -- What Motivates the Wine Shopper? (@the ny times)
4) "It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It hurt to lie down. But even worse than the pain in my ass was the pain in my heart. It hurt to be conscious. So it's no surprise that the following day, when I returned to the city, I had a nervous breakdown." Rev. Jen Miller, Seeking Asylum (@nerve.com)
5) I don't know if this counts as "meta" or not: "The Hype Cycle" (@n+1)
6) Fifteen great examples of web typography. Oddly, OurChart is not listed. (@ilovetypography)
7) Sometimes, life is super magic, and Sam Anderson opens his review of The Lazarus Project with "Aleksander Hemon is ragingly addicted to semicolons." (@nymag)
8) Seriously this is amazing ... fourfour presents, in video, The Major Themes of the Anna Nicole Biopic: "Imagine the people who brought you Goddess (Showgirls' fictional extravaganza) applying their talents to a Lifetime-movie version of Anna Nicole's life (while cluelessly retaining about three percent of the boobage), and you're more than halfway there." (@fourfour)
9) The first seven pages of Tao Lin's new poetry book, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. "it will take an extreme person to make me feel less alone / the effect of being alone for a very long time / is that i have been thinking very hard ..." (@c-btherapy blog)
10) I like to re-read this, every now and then: "My Misspent Youth" by Megan Daum (@the new yorker 1999)

The Night Starts Here

I just took the best shower of my life 'cause I've been waiting for it all afternoon ("Take a sponge bath," advised the helpless handyman, staring at our dumb dry shower, "Like in the old days," and then he laughed, a laugh that reminded me he'd been alive approximately 80 years more than I have and was still doing things like this, playing with faucets, he'd probs lost his hair and/or parents in the 60's, it's possible I have almost nothing to complain about, he probs lived through a few World Wars, and on my igoogle home page, underneath my email and its various feelings, the NY Times headlines remind me that 22,500 are dead now in Myanmar. A sponge bath -- a "cat bath" my Mom used to call it, probs the only context in which she spoke favorably of cats, which we're both allergic to, or did she, I can't remember, I think I invent a lot of memories) and I'm eating ramen from the pot. These are the engaging details of my smokin' hot life.

Another memory, possibly also invented, of Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live asking Paul McCartney; So, remember when you said, and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make? Is that true?

And what was he hiding, anyway? Something that killed him. Self-loathing. Cocaine. Prostitutes. Alcohol, whatever, fat, the real secret, and in my final moment, may I hear you whisper, "when you made my people smile, you made me smile."

America loves an overdose, loves the bloody mess and everything you're allowed to say only after -- I read a good one today about Brad Renfro.

My friend confessed (at the time), "The first thing I thought when Chris Farley died was, good, now they won't make any more of those stupid movies." The first thing I thought was, "Good, now he can hang out with my Dad in wherevs," 'cause my Dad really liked Chris Farley. I liked Chris Farley too 'cause he wasn't self-conscious, 'cause he threw himself into it: sweaty & reckless. I hated Tommy Boy, though. And by that I mean, I watched about ten minutes of it, got bored, turned it off, thought it was dumb.

It's got something to do with entitlement, I think. What we're given, what we expect, what we think we deserve. How hard we feel we've worked, what we see when we look in the mirror and subsequently who oughtta mirror us, what we have to offer. The meritocracy of karma ... but I'm an easy target. It's not like "You say jump, I say how high," it's like "you tell me how high I probs oughtta be jumping, I'll run after you all night waiting to fly over buildings," because that's possible, right?

The thing is; we all feel we've gotten away with something. We're spies, ghosts, savage detectives, secret agents, between angels, followers, prostitutes, boxcar children, storytellers, lunatics, teachers, orphans, suicides, cutters, dirty, sharp, clean. If you get too close, you'll see that we're all still thirteen, or whenever it was that we felt the worst we'd ever felt. Yesterday? Tomorrow? Never?

"Prepare / yourself though to keep something back; / there's a center in you / you are simply a comedian / without."
(Stephen Dunn, "How to Be Happy: Another Memo to Myself)

It's got something to do with shame, I think.

My brother and I used to do Abs of Steel together on beach-towels in the living room. I tried doing Eric Nies's MTV Workout video, alone, later, but I couldn't dance, so that was that, I sold it on ebay for five bucks about a decade ago, along with The Real World: Behind the Scenes (book and VHS).

Our masks are flimsy and transparent and mostly made of excuses & saran wrap, which, p.s., never works, like ever.

We owe you something, we just don't know what it is yet.

What's the catch, he'd always ask me. You seem like the perfect girl. What's the catch.

I'd shrug, smile. Do my best Clark Kent: I'm just a little crazy, that's all.

It's the same tone I'd use to reassure the people I served that it's not that spicy, that they won't taste the anchovies. Flippant & easy 'cause before long they'd leave the chair, and then the room, and they didn't mean it when they said they'd call me at 2 A.M. if the coffee turned out to be caffinated after all (It was, you bitch, it was! I hope you wake your husband up and offer strange favors in exchange for a backrub, I hope you watch Richard Simmons hawk renewal 'til your eyes bleed, I hope Pop-Up Video is on all fucking night!) and they were still awake 'cause by then I'd be gone, gone, gone, anyhow. They didn't even know my number and if they did, the phone could just ring and ring and ring ...

So when I took his love it felt like theft, like cheating. I didn't deserve his love, or hers, 'cause I can't take care of myself let alone you. Maybe it's safer if we're both holding something back, maybe that's sexier than being naked for real. Who wouldn't rather do it in the dark?

I didn't ask about his catch. I didn't have to. He said he didn't have one, that's code for "I am all catch," and I also speak code.

I had another boyfriend who liked to talk about what a catch he was. "I'm in law school," he'd brag. "I'm pretty good looking."

I'd sit there dumbly, thinking, "But that's not even your real nose."

Did he know that -- stepping from the shower into steamy bathroom air, I knew just how to stand when I seize the bath-towel ... like shoplifting. I've practiced, like an insecurity performance artist, how to escape the room w/o glancing at my actual body. I slip past mirrored walls and wash my hands with my head focused squarely on the faucet. I don't want to know, all that really matters is what I think I know.

What's the catch?

At midnight, I turn into a pumpkin.
At midnight, I leave you. At midnight, I stop listening while maintaining eye contact.
At midnight, I turn into your mother and I'll remind you, all morning long, of your mother.
I can see through walls, I can fly, I can see your heart through your skin.
I'm killing myself, it doesn't hurt.
I don't even like you, I just want to like you.
Yes, I got into a fight with a porcupine.

I'm not actually all that interesting, I just sweat a lot.

I'm melodramatic, it's hopeless.

I'm actually Angela Chase, after she got canceled 'cause no one gave a shit except me and my friends.

I want to believe in a world so beautiful as the one you've described to me, and so I do. Is the secret that I'm using you? That I've tried, in my own way, to give something back, too, or to be sure I didn't ask for too much. My humility ensured your participation. You've become characters as soon as you walked out the door, but who am I kidding, I beat you to it.

I relapse all the time, into everything, sometimes two or three vices a night.

In many ways, I'm still just trying to figure out what my Dad wanted me to do, and when I go to sleep (finally) I hope he'll speak to me in dreams and tell me, and when he doesn't, I try to find someone else to tell me what to do and who to be, and when they confuse or hurt or judge me harshly, or turn out to be someone else, I hate them with the firey passion of a thousand suns.

Because when they leave, they make it look so easy. This isn't complicated: I can't see what anyone does when I'm not around.

"Your father worshiped you," my mother said.

And when that rare person comes along to make me realize all they want is for me to be happy and true to myself, I realize I don't know what to do with that ... besides find someone else to tell me what to do, how to be happy, what my truth is.

When you're told all your life that you're too independent, too resistant to feeling/needing things from other people, you tend to see co-dependence as an achievement rather than a problem: "Look, I've let myself rely! Look at me, opening up! Like a flower! Look at all the people I need, and who need me!"

But "need" is such a dumb word. There is want and there is death and there is love.

There are 50 ways to leave your lover, 50 more ways to say "fuck you," 50 trees falling in your silent forest-mind (sorry, tree). 50 rings in a wet empty room. You're still up, I'm still up, we're all up.

Oh, honesty. That tricky & fickle concept, the bullseye of my mindseye. Who cares?

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In 11th grade, for Christmas, my BFF Ryan gave me a white tank top from Victoria's Secret and on the inside, where the tag would be, it read: "Soft, sexy, necessary."

He added: "Like you! Soft, sexy, necessary!"

I gave him a white Calvin Klein wifebeater. I'd replaced the burly man-meat on the label with my own note, reading: "If you're going to beat me, you might as well do it in style."

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I've created a character, and a cast. Personal branding -- an idea fostered by media "personalities," thrived upon by actors & musicians & performers. Is that me? I'm not sure. Where do we draw the line? Between who we are and the stories we tell about ourselves? Part of wanting to stop blogging for a bit was that I wanted to figure out not only the difference between Marie and Riese and Autowin, but between the friends I've made via autowin and the characters they've become on here.

It's nice to feel necessary, even just as something to read while you're bored at work. This blog isn't that popular, isn't that big of a deal, but having so many friends I'd met through here possibly made it feel like a bigger deal then it is.

Chuck Klosterman's column in Esquire Magazine remarks that Hannah Montana (a show I've never seen), which explores the divide between the famous Hannah and the real-life Miley, is popular 'cause kids these days can relate: "They all struggle to reconcile who they are with the quasi-real persona they constructively construct. Hannah Montana is the internet."

My ex-bf emailed a few weeks ago; he'd been watching a documentary about high schoolers, thought of us at that age -- the pressure we put on ourselves, consequently how possibly we'd wanted to be like the characters on TV (oddly enough, the only show John & I watched, ever, was Dawson's Creek) w/their neat labels: the sexpot, the virgin, the intellectual, the bad seed. He said: "You look at a character whose entire moral or personal dilemma can be solved by staring at a pond and listening to Paula Cole, and it seems so much more efficient than actually having to confront one's self."

Of course, I said, we did, which's why I prefer literature with its complex characters, its demand of our extended & in-depth attention. He agreed. Literature matters to me so much more than anything else ever has, or ever could, to me. Print. Which lately has seemed irrelevant, compared to this instant gratification.

While writing Living it Out, Carly and I got a lot of feedback about "defining our characters." Narrow their complexity. What's the type? Make them specific, identifiable. How will we recognize them, sans label? How will we know, even, who's talking? Can you add, for example, an accent, or a figure of speech. A unique/overwhelming hobby/habit.

What if that character is a person, what if this character does not know who she is? Can she make the story true by telling it?

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While reading Tipping the Velvet, the following concepts struck me;
-Nan's analysis of her relationship w/Kitty as existing on two levels, informing and defining one another; the relationship itself, and their performance of it. The song and dance.
-While living with Diana, Nan spends four hours a day in the bathtub.

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The only thing I'm sure of that I want is to write the best book I can write. It's that silent way your gut talks to you when you know something/someone is right.

The first time I heard the Beatles song "Yesterday," I used my two-deck cassette player/recorder to make a tape of it playing over and over again. I knew I wanted to hear it again and again. Sometimes, a body in your arms feels certain, correct, sometimes, a poet makes life feel possible. I'm certain I want this book, even if no-one else reads it.

I'm not certain that I'm actually going to write it though, it might just be another story I tell.

It's easy for me to feel one way, and the opposite. It's not desire that defines us so much as it is fear.

I am well aware that this is melodramatic and trite. But isn't that why we're all here, anyhow? Yes. Many of you came here via Gawker (which is hopelessly self-centered, too) or via The L Word (which is hopelessly melodramatic, passionately trite, but oh, so sexy! so necessary!) or via my friendship (which is melodramatic, self-centered, trite, and gawky).

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Also, in addition to the wifebeater, I wrote Ryan a poem. It was 1998, he was my best friend, and at that time; an actor.

Some of it: "So tonight, I hated seeing you on stage because you were so far away and I had to share you with the audience and you weren't only mine for that minute. And so I can't let you perform 'cause I adore your reality, the way you cried in church this morning while everyone else sat still and you held my hand afterward and your ring hurt my finger but I didn't move ... and so I can't write your peer evaluation for Dartmouth 'cause I can't write you down and I don't want you to go to Dartmouth, anyways ... and so I hate your dishonesty, but I love the way you are honest with me, even if it's only me your honest with, and I hate your double standards for people but I love being your standard ... and so you would never write about me. And so if you knew I wrote about you, and I read this to you, you might laugh at me ..."

I read it, he cried. The last time I heard from him, he said he felt far away. From me, and most of all, from G-d.

These true sentences.

--

"And so we turn him into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punchline you'll tell for years to come:
"Oh, that reminds me of the time the impostor came into our house." "Oh! Tell the one about that boy."
And we become these human jukeboxes spitting out these anecdotes to dine out on like we're doing right now.
Well I will not turn him into an anecdote.
It was an experience.
How do we hold on to the experience?"
(John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation)

*

Tinkerbell got her wings on the way back from California, 'cause we set her up on a pillow with a little napkin-blanket in between our seats. The flight attendants probs thought we were totally insane, which is actually super-duper-true, let's not be crazy, but at the end this woman came and gave Tinkerbell her wings, see them?

A number of days ago (3-4? 4-5?), my fortune said: "Everyone around you is rooting for you. Don't give up."

Last week, I said: "Alex, this cookie contains my fate, I promise, this is a big deal, this is everything, this fortune we're about to open and I really hope it says READY LET'S GO LOW FAT WHOLE WHEAT GREEN TEA but instead it told me, "Now is the time to start something new."

I know I've said this before and not followed through, but in Malibu; top down, mountains on one side, ocean on the other, I felt like it was possible to fly/flee in either direction -- circle one: climb. swim.

1. The sky or 2. That feeling we describe as feeling underwater but when we're actually underwater, it doesn't actually feel anything like all those other feelings we'd compared it to. It's just like, swimming.

Everyone keeps telling me to be selfish and do what's best for me, but I can't seem to let go of the idea that what's best for me is to do what's best for other people.

This week marks my fourth consecutive year of New York City residence; my fourth year of throwing myself into one all-consuming world and then another, some honest, some delusions, some honest delusions, some good, some bad, and then the consistent faces on the horizon. And then this blog, this thing here.

I feel like moving to California would be admitting to myself that somewhere, deep down inside, I actually might want to be happy. I've wanted many things in my life; happiness has never been one of them.

It is admitting I have love to give, it is admitting that I do, after all, know where to put it.

*
I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written .....
[Ernest Hemmingway]
*

Joey: People change, Dawson.
Dawson: They don't have to.
Joey: Yes, they do. People die, and they move away...and they grow up, Dawson. Everything changes eventually.
(Dawson's Creek)
*

Auto-Fun of the Day :: 5-5-2008

Happy Cinco De Mayo! If you live in NYC and plan to participate in the day's festivities, just remember, this isn't the Puerto Rican Day Parade, it's just Cinco de Mayo. So go to Senor Swanky's, Gabriella's, Rosa Mexicano, TGI Friday's, wherevs, have a margarita, and party like you're white as stuff white people like and it's the Rose Bowl (even if you're not white and don't like football, e.g., me, I'm 1/64th Native American). Following your activities, please take off your cape/flag and put your garbage (especially animal bones) in the garbage cans, thank you.

Also, look how cute Tinkerbell is in Hollywood! She's like, "Hi Hollywood, here I come! Wheeeee!!!!"

---

quote: "We become the stories we tell about ourselves." (Michael Cunningham)

---

links:
1. When we went to the Spice Girls, Ginger Spice totally made serious eye contact with Haviland and probs that moment of intense connection what's inspired her to "hang up her hotpants and union jack boots, today embarking on a new career as a children's author." Also, in the car back from Newark, Cait told Stef on the phone that Hav was in the backseat with Ginger Spice, and Stef fully believed us for about 14 hours, 'til informed that no, there was no Ginger Spice, we're just assholes with requisite asshole in-jokes. (@guardian uk books)
2. I've read nothing for about a week except this article, three times. Seriously, just do it: "The Memory Addict" by Sam Anderson (@ny mag)
3. The National Magazine Awards: (@nsame)
4. "Hard Sell, Soft Touch and the Right Question": Barbara Walter's Memoir, Reviewed (@the ny times)
5. 50 Greatest Commercial Parodies of All time; including parodies from SNL, MadTV, In Living Color, SCTV, etc. Highlights include "Excedrin for Racial Tension Headaches," "Nikey Turkey," and "Compulsion by Calvin Klien." (@nerve/ifc)
6. Vote for the world's top public intellectuals. I don't know what that means but I feel like probs I should win maybe. (@prospect UK)
7. What happens when human beings (e.g., Miley Cyrus) become brand names (Hannah Montana) and then get their photos taken by actual artists: A Photographic Collision of Stars, in Living Color.
8. Inspirational PDF Magazines (@smashing magazine)
9. Attack of the Aristo-Brats! "Children of the rich and famous are taking over the world. Welcome to the new age of nepotism." (@radar)
10. "Infidelity" by Phillip White (@poetry magazine)

Mark All As Auto-Read

I have 454 unread items on my Google Reader, it's probs like how the pioneers felt in 1752 returning from their Oregon Trail vaycay to a huge stack of unanswered telegrams. I can attribute 41 of these unread posts to Stef's shared items and 48 to mediabistro, but still.

It's kinda funny 'cause, like I said, two weeks ago I'd been writing a post about taking a break from blogging but I never finished/posted it, and then the real world kept shifting, like going through stages, 1. mean & tragic & unpredictable, 2. lonely, unhinging, unstable, 3. sunshiney & safe & sad/optimistic, 4. unreal, 5. the yet to be defined but hopeful present. So before I knew it, I'd taken a break from blogging by accident, like sometimes I'd forget I had a blog at all, though strangely I never forgot facebook. Probs 'cause facebook is HOW I REALLY FEEL.

Beautiful things have happened too, and I feel I've gained back some people I didn't have a few weeks ago, and, well, oh, the internets ... is a lot ... this has been known to happen.

Hey, remember when I didn't win "Lesbian Blogger of the Year"? Well, luckily Crystal thinks I'm Lesbian Blogger of the Year anyhow, 'cause she sent me a Dyke Duck. Also, the Uh Huh Her Prize Pack has arrived, although the video hasn't yet materialized. Probs 'cause Leisha has a lot of feelings about/for me:

*
i. Now I Will Pay Attention to My Google Reader: Live-Blogging Auto-Fun

My hero for life: Four Four's Recap of America's Next Top Model. I'd begun free-falling off planet secretly before the Dirty Girls reading, fo'real afterwards, and now let's catch up: AVN write-up, book release party in San Francisco. This photo from my reading; Stephanie looks beautiful, I look insane. I'm not being self deprecating, I really do look insane.

Oh! Wanna watch our vlog again, but on Haviland's page? Elsewhere amongst "VIP" label; Stef also finds that she'd like to lie more often than she does, 'cause honesty is a real bitch. Lozo's posted 16 times, and I'd give him Most Reliable Unpaid Blogger of the Year Award if it wasn't 75% videos (two girls kissing!) I wouldn't say this if he hadn't bitched about me not blogging. I just used the word "blogging" like ten times in a row so now I've gotta punish myself by spraying Glade in my eyeballs.

She always reminds me of me but younger and closer to mountains and in some ways braver. I don't know what to do about that, at all, so I do what I do which is wrong. I like this: "I feel like we're married, like I need a really really really good reason to ask for divorce, better than I'm tired of you, better than you make me scream without even doing anything necessarily wrong." Speaking of girl-children in faraway places who're wise beyond their years, Moonkiller's blog is one year old! She already knows everything there is to know.

"Mark all as read" is satisfying. I don't need all this Elegant Variation, NewPages, Critical Mass, Mediabistro. I need this Bookslut ... later. Is it May? Does anyone still trust me to relay a perspective on reality? Do I live your nightmares for you? Sometimes we all feel like this at once. Sometimes we don't read about it 'til it's over. Oh ... and. Scene. Eric Mathew to himself: what can I do today to win the hearts & minds of the lesbian community.

Oh ... and wow, and oh, and: this: Now this, the / dreaming breathing body / lying right beside / my own, just think -- ("The World of the Senses," by Franz Wright). The New Yorker's unofficial theme, this week, seems to be "Poems to Break Your Heart." "The God of Loneliness," "Grief." Fuck. I love poetry. I know that's like saying I love food. So I'll clarify; I love good poetry. More than almost anything, except kissing, laughter, and string cheese.

OMG, my agent, who probs wonders why she's still my agent considering I've yet to produce any material worth selling (but man, I sure do talk about it!) wrote a new post.

Sometimes there's people who've known me since I got here, and I get too embarassed to talk to them again and admit I keep making the same mistakes over and over. And then; how I don't think they're actually mistakes. I say: "I'll never trust anyone again," but then I laugh, "Yeah I will. I will. Over and over, I will."

Haviland was just talking to me about The Sound and The Fury and now she is, and also, this Phillip Glass opera; I must see it.

While sans-internet in Malibu, we were forced to settle arguments the old-fashioned way, like cavemen, with buffalo-killing competitions. Like; Cait said Polaroids were going extinct. I called nonsense; slogreenx says Cait auto-wins.

Note to all ye 12-year-olds: back in the day, when I walked ten miles to & from school, uphill both ways, we had cameras called Polaroids. Magic photos shot out right away, you wrote on them. Once we had a Polaroid Gallery Opening in our apartment, apparently I made a graphic about it once, don't know why:

Note to all ye newborns: you're really missing out, growing up in a world w/o Polaroids. Also good job on already knowing how to read.

Also speaking of lesbians I love them. Via Alex's shared items, and its respective cute user icon: more on feelings.

OK, I have like 184 items left, but I can't, I'm tired.

Some other things I'd like to bring to your attention:
1. Sam Anderson's feature on Augusten Burroughs, memory, life, everything: 'The Memory Addict"
2. The Anorexic's Cookbook, by Rachel Shukert, at nerve.com.

*

ii. Promise I'll Be Perfect From Now On

"You say that you're broken,
I just wanna fix you.
Tell me what to do, and baby I will listen."
-Uh Huh Her

Sometimes I wish life didn't have rules. I mean, because it does, you know? History's proven certain ideas good, others bad. Sometimes, it's fun to break the rules, but also, if you keep breaking things (e.g., rules) you'll end up alone w/o things. Or, rather, you'll just have many broken things, what do you do with broken things? Fix them. Leave them. Hold all their broken pieces. A combination of all three.

There's 10,000 children in Ethiopia who'd beg to have problems so ridiculous as mine.

There are so many people that I love and late at night all my mixed feelings fade away and I wish they were all here, even the ones that hurt me so badly I thought I'd never breathe again -- no -- especially them. Sometimes I want everyone so bad I could fuck or hit them all. It's like my heart turns honest at 1 A.M. Sometimes, in the winter, B. and I would get off the phone by one of us declaring; "I'm over this day. I think I wanna go to sleep, just so it'll be over," and the other responding "Totally. Over this day."

Below this sentence are a million other sentences. Perhaps later, like tomorrow or the next day, I'll publish them. But right now ... gtg, kiddos, mermaids await. There is fun to be had, and trees we've yet to live in ... for real. Wheeeeeee!!!!

The Kind of Girl Who Laughs and Says Get Up Off Your Knees

All day long, it's been Monday. Perhaps you know this, perhaps calenders are an important part of your life. Chances are, you have been aware of Monday. Like the song "Manic Monday." Well, now it is 5:37 A.M. on Tuesday, so it's not Monday anymore. The point is that yesterday WAS Monday. But you wouldn't know that by speaking to me --

Me: "You can take 8th avenue, it won't be rush hour 'cause it's the weekend,"
Person on street asking for directions: "It's Monday."

Me: "You have class tonight, right?"
Alex: "No, it's Monday."

Natalie: "Do you wanna work out tomorrow?"
Me: "Oh, I can't do that tomorrow, I have therapy on Wednesdays."
Natalie: "It's Monday."

Alex: "Sooooo ... when do I see you again?"
Me: "Wednesday? Is that tomorrow?"
Alex: "Tomorrow is Tuesday."
Me: "Wednesday?"
Alex: "Okay!'

**
I was thinking about my book today. Memoirs usually have two parts -- the title intended to carry great import and capture your attention; Wasted, Smashed, A Million Little Pieces, Night, Prozac Nation, Now, More, Again, An Unquiet Mind, the Boy Soldier, The Mistresses' Daughter, Microthrills ... and these are always eye-catching titles used to lead into the SUB title which explains that the book isn't, as I wished it had been, about smashing people with giant pumpkins until their heads got good and wasted into a million little pieces and then we all took Prozac to forget. Rather, they explain what the book's about.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

"An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness"
"Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality"
"The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness"
"The Day the Voices Stopped: A Schizophrenic's Journey from Madness to Hope"
"Madness: A Bipolar Life"
"Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bullimia"
"Girlbomb: A Halfway-Homeless Memoir"
"Now, More, Again: A Memoir of Addiction"
"Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive"
"Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness "
"Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder"
"Pain in the Arms of Joy: Thoughts of a Borderline Personality"

I don't know my title yet but we've decided my subtitle will for sure be "A Memoir of Other People's Madness." Possible Title-Titles include "The Autobiography of Sancho Panza," among others.

Once they did a typo in this Stephen Dunn review I wrote, where they said "among other homes" instead of "among other awards," and so I always want to write "among other homes," as a joke on everything, but no one would get it besides me, like most of my jokes.

Speaking of, I think that's one of the funniest ideas I had today. I might wake up and think it's actually tacky. I dunno right now. Whatevs.

**

One time at band camp, I mean, at the Olive Garden, I was eating my stolen Tour of Italy (lasanga, fettucine alfredo, chicken parm, about enough calories to send Lance Armstrong into immediate cardiac arrest and to send me into a stomach ailment I found mysterious rather than consequential) and Layna, this compulsive liar who always talked about going to Harvard even though she didn't, was looking out the window with her little salad and its mediocre Italian dressing and she goes, Marie, have you ever seen that movie, Magnolia?

Yeah, I said. I loved that movie, actually. Magnolia.

Marie, she said. Do you remember the part in the bar, where he's sitting at the end of it -- Quiz Kid Donnie Smith? What he says?

I don't, I said. I don't remember what he said, not exactly.

It's how I feel right now, she said, cigarette in hand, smoke like ghost-hands in greasy air. I ate more lasanga, not 'cause I like lasanga really, but 'cause I was hungry.

Well, she said, this is what he said: "I really do have love to give, I just don't know where to put it."

**
Promise me you'll never go away
Promise me you'll always stay

I've Been Doing Circles I'm Taken I Am Yours I am Doing VLOGS I Collapse

Last week, I wrote an opus-y piece regarding my super-important feelings on blogging, identity crises, true sentences, feeling unhinged, instant gratification vs. real literature, returning to the deep yearnings of my soul (books, print, tangible words, small silent private lives), feeling slightly insane w/o my anti-anxiety meds, wanting to call a team meeting with my head, and other very world-shatteringly important milestones of the twentysomething apspirant's Search for Self. I read this and this and this and this. Then, instead of finishing this navel-gazing epic [or anything] I pulled a MeMeMeMe and, per Haviland's request -- busted this pop stand for sunnier skies. I was lucky enough to be able to escape: clean blue sky, those lappy waves, long roads through mountains and along ocean, sandy feet, and an internet-free home. I hacked at my ars poetica while in the air on my way .. then I realized; why I am I spending so much time writing about how I need to spend more time writing/reading, when clearly I should just be writing/reading? So that's what I did.

I still don't know the answers to most of the questions I've been asking myself, and every day there seem to be more questions. I don't know.

One thing is pressing, then something else presses harder. Our brains only have room for one thing at a time. Also I'm still chillin' in this self-consciousness fog, trying to shake irrational insults/judgments that wound deeper than they oughta, but this is me, this is me, this is me, calm down, I'm calling you to say I'm capsized erring on the edge of safe, calm down I'm calling back to say I'm home now and coming around .. since returning, I see that maybe life is simply limbo, from now on, let's only speak in invisible ink. You go first.

In times like this, only one person and one thing can make you post again during a self-imposed hiatus ... and that's my dearest BFF Haviland Stilwell and her love of and natural talent for The Vlog. So ladies and gentleman, I present to you the longest vlog ever, starring Haviland Herself.

This blog features Haviland P. Stillwell herself, along with Cait's laughter in the backgorund, and some clips from a vlog that Alex and I tried to do but then gave up after about two minutes. There's also a few flashbacks. It's an epic, like Gone with the Wind. Topics discussed include drama, comedy, tragedy, the meaning of life, very important arguments of modern literary theory, and gymnastics. Oh right and flying lesbians. And; briefly .. the riese & haviland true hollywood story, Cait & I's phone call from Leisha Hailey, Los Angeles, etc.




Soundtrack:
0. Intro: Tupac /California Love
1. "Haviland & Riese: The True Hollywood Story" : Melissa Ferrick / The Breakup Song
2 "Oh Fans oh Fans" : Once on this Island / Waiting for Life
3. "Mini-Feed Me" : The Cure / Pictures of You
4. "Fiction vs. Reality" : Uh Huh Her / Explode
5. "I Do Not Know Who I Am" : The Who/ Who Are You

This Girl Called, Interrupted

New York might not know that I can see her veins through her skin now, or the scar where she got her tattoo removed. I'd always liked that tattoo -- if only because it seemed like something permanent -- but I guess I never told her that out loud.

Sometimes, I spot a break of sweat or an incandescent glance -- a sweet split-open moment where I can see absolutely that she's lying, possibly even to herself, and that we both know it, and that I'm going to let her lie, and furthermore, listen, New York has her reasons; knows we can't argue.

Me: I'm sorry.
New York: What did I tell you about that? All the apologizing.
Me: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you.
New York: And that --
Me: Thank you.

New York might not know that when she turns from me, her back and its blades to my face, her front and its eager flesh to the wall, that I want to make her bleed so bad. But moreso, I want to make myself bleed. I can't tell if New York wants to hurt me or if she just doesn't care about me at all.

So I remain still, and wait for the bite. All night long, I wait for the bite.

She sleeps. New York sleeps. New York sleeps but I can't:

New York: I never sleep. There's so much anxiety, a fog of it. And those damned amphetamines ... consequently; the pearls.
Me: Always the pearls.

*

Out West, wind whips and water laps like the earth itself drifting in and out of sleep. Our feet sandy, laughter vaulting, we submerge constant self-analysis and its demanding dreams in favour of skylight's sunny screams. Our brains [our sins, our souls, no longer nymphic but girl-children still we have been everywhere, we have seen nothing] empty out -- or is it something else, a kind of opening? -- to welcome wavesounds and the soft pulse of a world barely awake. We walk easily along a whole coast inhabited by half-alive humans who already know the secret we're just now learning: You never wanted to be whole-alive, did you. I mean, didn't it hurt? Wasn't it hard? That was just a trick life played on you to enable the breeding of strivers; dogged, miserable, beaming, brilliant. Somewhere between halfway and all the way, you lose something. What is it?

It's so pretty.

My father scooped me up with one arm before I got swallowed altogether by the wave. On the shore, my grandmother laughed nervously, one hand on her husband's stoic back, said something about being careful. Thank You, I say. I can't hear what she's saying about being careful, and the water keeps going. I shook sand from my suit, and hair. I never learned how to swim, but loved to tempt drowning.

California stops me with her breath, like just her body existing behind me is enough. She removes my shirt with her fingernails. I turn to her. I'm not hungry anymore, she's feeding me with air. She bites my lower lip, lets her teeth linger. Her tongue like waves with mine and then she pulls back, places her palm on my jutting hipbones and yanks me to her. I grab her hair in fists.

I'm curious about her secrets and her ugly heart, so when she leaves in the morning for work I snoop around and find an old drivers license with her photo on it; she looks young and angry and her name isn't Los Angeles. It is Kansas City. But I don't care, I like her plastic and fast and full of lies.

I'm grateful to everything, even to Kansas City, one of a million places I've never been.

On the beach, my feet still wet, my suit still soaked, we pass equal numbers of dogs and humans. There is also the audible experience of birds chirping.

*

And so I used to be fascinated with hands, lately I've been into spinal cords. The tracks beginning where legs leave off, parallel to gut, snaking gallantly towards brain, full of nobility. The ink at the back of the neck, itself a kind of prologue.

New York's hand grasps the back of my skull, my hair in her hand like it's anything you can steal, or borrow, without penalty, and so I bite her wrist. She doesn't flinch. Her unyielding mouth kisses me like I'll die from it, like she'll kill me of it but she does this with the silent understanding that first, before I die, I'll break out into a kind of muscle-wrought song that'll make everything worth it, and in that moment the rest will fade away -- the jagged anger, couples squabbling on street corners, car alarms and thump-thump hip-hop from giant mutated cars and cleaning trucks and go-go gunshots and kids looking for someone even more pissed off to get riled up about, girls and boys looking for love and knowing it won't even matter if it's real or not, as long as it's alive -- all of that fades away -- she tastes like toothpaste and cocaine, her fingers are limber snipers, knowing when to get there, and how, and then exactly how to exit without a trace on her but the signs nearly exploding from me.

And I'll thank her, which is a kind of apology for never being enough.

When I come, it'll be pure, it'll remind me of hearts and love, it will be a star, it will be a chorus of stars, a body pulsing like a star, when I come, you'll know it, you'll feel it all over, when I come, I'll say,

Here I Am,

I'll say,

This is Me,

you'll open your mouth, begin to speak, I'll say,

Shhh...

don't ruin it.

Auto-Fun of the Day :: 4-17-2008

quote:"It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death ... perhaps - perhaps." (Virginia Wolff, Mrs. Dalloway)

---

links:
1) 35 years later, can Erica Jong's feminist classic Fear of Flying stand up as actual literature? (@the chronicle of higher ed)
2) Michael Agger attempts to analyze the "feedback" for youtube's popular "Laughing Baby" video, where "commenting has become its own special form of social idiocy": "Laughing Baby vs. The YouTube Commenters." (@slate.com)
3) That slate article linked to these '07 videos from CollegeHumor - in which the sketch-writers have asked the question "what if businessmen communicated like youtube commenters?" - which jetted me out of EMO and into LOL in about ten seconds, no small feat (really, the fact I watched them all the way through is miracle enough, my video attention span is about ten seconds): Commenter Business Meeting 2 , Internet Commenter Business Meeting 1, Internet commenter funeral (@college humor)
4) Once upon a time, The Real World was an interesting social experiment. Season One, New York: "This is what Generation X was like before everyone decided to have their lives taped." Now? "Entering its 20th season, [TRW] long ago made the transition from grappling with issues to well, groping for butts." "The True Story of Seven Strangers ... And You" (@details)
5) "Here, a weary academic term is resuscitated and revisioned: creative writing as a necessary, death-defying act.": Miroslav Holub's poem "Creative Writing," translated from the Czech. (@poetry magazine)
6) "Why I Never Write Here, And Other Things That Are Wrong With Me" (@one d at a time)
7) I often leave books on my Visual Bookshelf forevs, and I do not know about this nagging robot of which he speaks: "A Supposedly Fun Facebook App I'll Never Use Again" (@vanity fair)
8) On the John Ashbery reading: Alone With John Ashbery (@bap blog)
9) "I wrote this next song years and years ago. I consider myself an easygoing, simple, lighthearted, positive, friendly, sweet, loveable person ... sadly, most people that have dated me don't think so. It's okay, they're bitches ... nooo ... they're not. [smiles] .. this song's about that": Tegan & Sara: "Fix You Up" (@edilma's corner)
10) Richard B. Woodward's Critical Library: Pound, Nabokov, Robert Warshow, R.P. Blackmur, John Szarkowski. (@critical mass)
Also) In the Flesh TONIGHT! (@lusty lady)

Auto-Fun of the Day :: 4-16-2008

quote:"It seems to me that a good formula to test the quality of a novel is, in the long run, a merging of the precision of poetry and the intuition of science. In order to bask in that magic a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading. Then with a pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass." (Nabokov, "Good Readers and Good Writers")

---

Some brief announcements (did you know that I secretly LOVE announcements? Like, in school? Especially on the P.A., for reals.):
1) April 17th (Thursday): In the Flesh reading. I will be reading. You will be there. Awesome!
2) April 17th (Thursday): If you wanna pre-party, I'd suggest attending this LGBT Rally for Economic Justice, which'll feature a performance by my friend Angelica's band "In Deepest Sleep" @6pm. Ang likes Tegan & Sara, so it'll probs be pretty hot.
3) April 22nd (Tuesday): WAR Against Human Trafficking: An Evening of Music, Art and Activism - Many of my fellow Interlochen alums, unlike me, have actually grown up and made something of their lives. E.g., the dude on Blue's Clues and Brooke Bryant. Brooke's founded Women Artists Rock, a series of events that bring together socially conscious female musicians, visual artists, film makers, and activists to make a difference about the negative impact of human trafficking on individual lives & society in general. They're hosting their first event at the JCC Manhattan on the evening April 22nd, everyone should go! Check out the website or download the flyer here.

---

links:
1) This is pretty much the best thing to ever happen, ever: fourfour's composed an Angela Chase (My So-Called Life) Highlight Reel -- "the wisdom of Angela Chase in all of its endearingly laughable splendor." She's probs my most formative influence. You'll notice this. (@fourfour)
2)I was just talking about this crazy bitch: Elizabeth Wurtzel, interviewed. (@the new haven independent)
3) Play the Font Game! I got 17/34, without cheating, which is bad, like worse than some people I know did on the ACTs.
4) One of my worst nightmares is getting trapped in an elevator. (@the new yorker)
5) Dirty Girls Book Party photos (I was super fashionably late, so um, not in any ... but still! Check it out!) and Live Girl Review interviews Rachel Kramer Bussel about Dirty Girls.
6)Bookstores are going extinct (@sf gate)
7) This would have been helpful when we had to sneak drinks into Naked Boys Singing: theater drink reform (@globe & mail)
8) The Guardian UK's Top 10 Archives -- matching great writers with great Top Tens in magical ways for many years. Highlights include "dystopian novels for teenagers," "books about outsiders," "books in which things end badly," and "books in which things end well." (@the guardian uk)
9) Poem by David Lehman: April 15. (@bap blog)
10) Democrats drink gin, vodka, white wine and Evian. Republicans drink bourbon, scotch, red wine and Fiji Water. Furthermore, Obama supporters like Bear Naked Granola, Clinton's fans (surprise!) like Kashi GoLean, and McCain's are constipated and therefore "enjoy" Fiber One. Seriously, I cannot make this stuff up, it's a real article. No word on the political affiliation of string cheese and leanpockets. (@the nytimes)

Stuff I've Been Reading: March 2008

This may appear, based on title & content, to not be a Top Ten -- but there are, indeed, several top TWENTIES at the end of the post. This is becoming a habit, it's like the Sunday Top Ten Cop-Out. When your life's like mine, Sunday's a state of mind. (UPDATE: omg, it's Monday.) Tuesday Top Eights are always hot. Also I'm working on an Auto-Straddle Top Ten. Next week for sure, I'll be on top of it. Speaking of topping ...

Hey, have you seen the award-winning documentary "Uh Huh ... Her?" Well, there's a brief clip of me freaking out at the Austin airport -- half epileptic fit, half unbridled enthusiasm -- and the clip's placement suggests that I'm spazzing out to see my number one band Uh Huh Her live in concert. That's what we at Automatic Universal Studios call "movie magic," like Jaws except with fake glee instead of sharks (and less blood, though a little blood never hurt anyone). I mean, I was happy to see them, but that's not why I'm exploding. Like the Uh Huh Her song "Explode" ... right ...

The truth is: After exiting the plane, I turned on my Blackberry and what did I find there but an email from my number-one feeling Sam Anderson, the New York Magazine book critic I raved about in last month's installment of "Stuff I've Been Reading," thanking me wittily for my kind words. I know OMG! This my friends is the magic of the internet. As you may notice in the screenshot (left), I'm cradling the phone like it's Tinkerbell. Also, including Sam (we're probs on first name basis now), that means at least 18 people for sure read "Stuff I've Been Reading: February," the monthly account of one [wo]man's struggle with the monthly tide of the books she's bought and the books she's been meaning to read, inspired by Nick Hornby's Believer column by the same name. (See January, it explains). 18 may not be a lot, but it's not nothing. It's the age of consent, somewhere. Where was I.

Last week's New York Magazine explores "The New York Cannon 1968-2008," with lists of New Yorkish movies, architecture, art, theater, etc. compiled by its critics, including Sam Anderson's 26 favorite New Yorky books (here). His list includes only a few I've read -- Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (Grace Paley), Bad Behavior (Mary Gaitskill), Bright Lights Big City (Jay McInerney), The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier & Clay (Michael Chabon)-- but now I know about a whole bunch more books that I WANT to read. I've got some lists of my own at the end of this post. See that? What I did there? Does that count as bringing it back around?

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BOOKS BOUGHT/RECEIVED/BORROWED:
The Conde Nast Traveler Book of Unforgettable Journeys, various
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

BOOKS READ:
Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson
Drunk by Noon [poems], Jennifer L. Knox
The Book of Other People, Zadie Smith
Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters

This month I read only books given to me by other people (last month), including a book called The Book of Other People, which contained 23 stories about fictional other people even more incorrigible than my non-fictional friends.

I mentioned last week that I'd left Written on the Body on the plane back from L.A. -- I re-bought it, so maybe it technically is a gift I got myself? Anyhow I finished en route to Austin, and then, feeling accomplished, dove right in to Drunk by Noon, which I finished in about 30 minutes, 'cause it's a poetry book. "Look! I've finished two books already!" I said. Though I don't remember specifically, I'm guessing from experience that my companions' responses were as follows:

Cait: "Ooooo!"
Crystal: "What's that?" [that's Australian for "what did you say?"]
B.: "Good job, weirdo."

Usually it takes me a while to get into a novel and then my interest increases exponentially. Written on the Body sort of did the opposite -- at first, I was addicted to it. The voice was enthralling, sensual, brilliant, evocative, compelling.

Also, I confess I spent the first hundred or so pages awaiting the lesbian reveal. Then I read the back of the book -- "the narrator has not neither name nor gender," consequentially dug up the requisite gender studies academia on WOTB, realized the narrator remains gender-less, decided it was clearly a lady anyhow, and soldiered on. It's not that I'm a heterophobic reader, just that the lesbian reveal is always a good plot device, and I've read a bazillion hetero love scenes already in my life.

Howevs after re-purchasing the book, I never got back into it with my initial enthusiasm. Maybe it was the lack of underlines ... and I feel like it's blasphemy to speak ill of Winterson, but it gradually stumbled past plot into the vast meadows of endless emo. Like if the narrator was my friend, I'd be like, "shut up already and get a new girlfriend for crying out loud." Near the end the language got especially heavy-handed, like a personal blog about a breakup or me during Secrets Week. I started groaning a little and rolling my eyes and reading particularly annoying passages out loud. Maybe this's a side effect of reading too many bad personal blogs about bad breakups. For example, This Girl Called Automatic Win. Anyhow, it was good, one of the best books ever, etc.

Drunk by Noon was, as I expected from reading Knox's brill interview on bookslut (which made her my interview hero, I want to interview like her) was delightful & irreverant: "A chainsaw's God's way of evening out the playing field between you and everything, even the invisible stuff." How can you not like that? Or this: "Meat when it's alive's not meat, FYI. / Some meat's alive, and it lives in Wisconsin." I imagine hanging out with her would make me feel stupid in comparison, but smart by association, like she'd always be saying witty things and eating special foods I'd never heard of and emailing Denis Johnson while making poignant accurate observations about pop culture. [Read her here.]

While in Austin, I read nothing, 'cause I had to devote myself to Uh Huh Her/learning Final Cut.

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So, I started The Book of Other People on the return flight. Zadie Smith, who I haven't read despite her obvious position in the hipster cannon, edited what's intended to be a series of character studies. Jaime said this about it, which I agree with: "several writers took the opportunity ["to make someone up"] to draw utterly empty, worthless, depressing people, in stories whose sole point seemed to be to show me how worthless, empty, and depressing these lives were. There was a string of that in the first half of the book."

I felt initially that TBOOP was taking advantage of my "read everything in the anthology from start to finish" policy, like a boy who thinks he can use my bisexuality to talk me into a threesome. This policy is intended to forcibly expose myself to things I wouldn't ordinarily read and to expand my brainspace, but can often feel like masochism.

A disadvantage of reading on planes is that you can't scream or jump out the window without alarming everyone, but you can force your seatmate to read your least favorite passages, to which she'll implore, "Why don't you just skip that story, weirdo?"

"BECAUSE I CAN'T! THAT'S NOT WHAT I DO!"

In particular I felt like A.L Kennedy's story, "Frank," was really testing my faithfulness to self-imposed policy. Note to ALK, who's already more successful than I'll ever be: A sentence fragment in and of itself does not dramatic effect make. Furthermore, "not making sense" and "being excessively elusive about important things like 'wtf is happening' while recording every goddamn irrelevant detail possible" isn't a literary technique, it's just annoying.

Highlights included a Miranda July story I'd actually already read in a June '07 New Yorker but enjoyed again, and stories by Vendela Vida, A.M. Homes, George Saunders, and a graphic (that means it is all pictures/cartoons) story by Chris Ware. Like Jaime, I really dug "Lèlè" by Edwidge Danticat. I'd reccomend it mostly, if only 'cause it's big like most British paperbacks and therefore easy to read at the gym, where I finally laid this beast to rest. Also Nick Hornby's in it, which might make this meta. I dunno. I feel if it'd been arranged differently, I'd be giving a 100% rave review. I tend to be more tolerant of bad stuff at the end. Like a relationship: first you must earn my trust, then you can do whatevs you want.

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Haviland gave me Tipping the Velvet for my birthday (see her inscription, right, which I'll be selling on ebay when she gets famous) in September. It looked very long, and falls easily into the "pre-electricity lit" category (I prefer "post") so clearly I've avoided it 'til now, although I should've known better 'cause Hav NEVER finishes novels, so if she read this whole entire book, it must've been really good. BUT OMG -- it might be on my Top Five Novels of All Time list. And I'm not just saying that 'cause the novel includes female cross-dressing, dildos, fisting, prostitutes, theater, England, seafood and is named for an oral sex euphamism.

Why read it now? 'Cause in Cait's car, A;ex announced: "Guess what I'm reading? Tipping the Velvet." I think my line was, "OMG, best book EVER!" but of course, I hadn't read it, which would be like if I said to Alex, "Guess what my new favorite font is? Verdana!" and she'd never typed anything in Verdana. I couldn't have this.

"Oooo! I'm gonna read it now too! I'll race you," I said. "It'll be like book club."

Alex: "Okay! You'll win."
Me: "But I haven't started it yet."
Alex: "You'll still probably win though. I'm on page five."
Me: "I'm secretly a very slow reader."
Alex: "Nice shoulder!"

[I made up that last line, but it's something she'd say.]

A;ex took an early lead, but I bounded ahead when she went to Dinah Shore and I didn't go to China (realizing that this is now April's territory, but let's be real, clearly this's "Stuff I've Been Reading: From the last time I wrote this segment through last week.") -- reading the last 300 pages in one day.

Despite its homosexuality, Dinah Shore is apparently not conducive to reading, which's probs why Shane is dumb as rocks. Here's Alex's account of what it's like to try to read a book while surrounded by 50 gazillion drunk lesbians in Gammorah:

First of all, I'm not sure if I missed the memo or what, but apparently Dinah Shore is "not a library" as I was told by a very intoxicated/angry/possibly sexually frustrated lesbian who I just met that night. Do you know how difficult it is to enjoy a great strap-on sex scene with angry lesbians yelling at you at 5 a.m.? Obvs I had to go back and re-read the sex scenes like 5 times, which was just the most inconvenient thing ever!

(Notice the Victorian inflection in that last line? Yeah you did.)

I literally couldn't put it down, I don't mean that as a figure of speech. Its language is exact. The pacing is perfect. Waters is both a master storyteller and a master sentence-constructor. I read Tipping the Velvet while walking. At the gym, on the train, in my room, in the kitchen, while walking from my room to the kitchen, while walking down stairs, while waiting in line, while eating & drinking & lying in bed. I read it at the laundromat while a bunch of angry black people yelled about my favorite topic, the shitty U.S educational system, which I know a lot about and kinda wanted to chime in, but figured that my opinion would be unwelcome in this context.

Another confession of my secret low-cultureness; I kinda like pictures ... I like seeing what the movie-of-the-book looks like (as in -- not WATCHING it -- but knowing about it) or some revelatory cover art. I've not seen the BBC miniseries all the way through, but I've seen clips of it here and there 'cause it's ALWAYS on Logo (or at least it was back when I used to watch TV) so I already had an image in my head of what Nan & Kitty looked like, which I think helped my overall visualization and consequential rapture.

Waters says that lesbiainism is incidental to her books -- and though Tipping the Velvet's 19th century story is fully driven by the implicit societally unacceptable behavior of "toms," I think she's right on. All peoples can read & enjoy this book: brown, yellow, red, straight, or Max.

But, as one of maybe ten well-written stories about lesbos in the 19th century, I clearly enjoyed that element. I learned that lesbian groupthink hasn't much changed since the 19th century: then & now, ladies love to gossip about each other, covet photographs of semi-famous homos, rush into serious relationships, have a lot of feelings, and develop complicated social cliques of hopelessly intertwined lesbos who, when all in the same room, can easily entertain themselves all night long just by judging each other. Other people do arts & crafts, we judge.

It'd seem a primary lesbian literary archetype is that of "crushed-upon girl awakens latent homosexuality in narrator, leaves narrator for a man, narrator continues to pursue lesbian lifestyle while first love wastes her heart away in terrible hetero marriage," though I can't think of that many examples, I feel like I've read/watched it many-a-time. I guess it happens in real life (yes, right now, in some Illinois bedroom, a teenage girl is crying desperately with all the weight of her so far insignificant life crashing down around her like a rainstorm of glowly sticky ceiling stars and her best friend, less kind than she could be, is pulling away from her needy embraces, saying she has to go, he's waiting, and besides, she's not like that) and maybe has been me, too, on both sides.

One day, I'm actually going to return Heroes : Disc One to Netflix (which i've had now for like five months) and I'll watch Tipping the Velvet for real. Also, next time Hav suggests "Nan & Kitty" as costume of the day, I won't need to google it. I only wanna see the movie 'cause I want to re-experience the book over and over again. Even if you think you only like books with electric lights, you will like this book, and it will enrapture you when real life is less than perfect.

Oh, P.S., obviously I won the Reading Race I started. How, you may be wondering, did Alex lose after such a promising start? Here's how:

The prize is that now I can be smug and annoying about it. Really, it's remarkable I have any friends at all that aren't imaginary and/or stuffed animals. What's Tinkerbell's number one book, you may be wondering? Um, Tipping the Velvet! Also, close runner up: Dirty Girls. Very close third: Mrs. Pigs Bulk Buy, all about the dangers of enjoying too much ketchup.

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Someone asked me in the reader survey for my Top 20 book Recommendations. I found this almost impossible, so instead I've compiled a series of lists across genres. I'm certain this is incomplete.

Also, the [self-imposed] rule is that I couldn't include the same author twice on the same list and I tried mostly to include books that I've read recreationaly, 'cause like, it'd be lame to just tell you to read Of Mice and Men or something, I'm sure you read that in 9th grade English anyhow. So these are not school books, mostly. RIGHT?! Most of them are also in my a-store.

My 20 Most Favorite Novels - In alphabetical order
20 Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid's Tale
19 Burgess, Anthony: A Clockwork Orange
18 Cunningham, Michael: A Home at the End of the World
17 Curran, Colleen: Whores on the Hill
16 Eugenides, Jeffery: The Virgin Suicides
15 Franzen, Jonathan: The Corrections
14 Gaitskill, Mary: Veronica
13 Hornby, Nick: High Fidelity
12 Kerouac, Jack: On the Road
11 Kundera, Milan: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
10 McInerney, Jay: Bright Lights Big City
9 McEwan, Ian: Saturday
8 Meeker, Marijane: Shockproof Sydney Skate
7 Moody, Rick: The Ice Storm
6 Nabakov, Vladimir: Lolita
5 Salinger, J.D. : A Catcher in the Rye
4 Sebold, Alice: The Lovely Bones
3 Sittenfeld, Curtis: Prep
2 Safran-Foer, Jonathan: Everything is Illuminated
1 Waters, Sarah: Tipping the Velvet

My 20 Most Favorite Short Story Books
20 Bloom, Amy: Come to Me
19 Bradbury, Ray: Martian Chronicles
18 Calvino, Italo: Invisible Cities
17 Carver, Raymond: Where I'm Calling From
16 Coupland, Douglass: Life After God
15 Driscoll, Jack: Wanting Only to Be Heard
14 Estep, Maggie: Soft Maniacs
13 Gaitskill, Mary: Bad Behavior
12 Homes, AM : The Safety of Objects
11 Houston, Pam: Cowboys are my Weakness
10 July, Miranda: Nobody Belongs Here More Than You
9 Miller, Rebecca: Personal Velocity
8 Moore, Lorrie: Birds of America
7 Nissen, Thisbe: Out of the Girl's Room and Into the Night
6 Orringer, Julie: How to Breathe Underwater
5 Paley, Grace: Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
4 Prose, Francine: Peaceable Kingdom
3 Roth, Phillip: Goodbye, Columbus
2 Salinger, J.D. : Nine Stories
1 Yoshimoto, Banana: NP

My 20 Most Favorite Memoirs
20 Allison, Dorothy: Bastard out of Carolina (I realize this isn't techinically a memoir, but c'mon, it is)
19 Bechdel, Alison: Fun Home
18 Carroll, Jim: The Basketball Diaries
17 Daum, Meghan: My Misspent Youth
16 Didion, Joan: The Year of Magical Thinking
15 Erlbaum, Janice: Girlbomb
14 Eggers, Dave: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
13 Hornbacher, Marya: Wasted
12 Karr, Mary : The Liar's Club
11 Kaysen, Susana: Girl, Interrupted
10 Kilmer-Purcell, Josh: I Am Not Myself These Days
9 Knapp, Caroline: Appetites
8 Levi, Primo: Survival in Auschwitz
7 O'Brien, Tim: If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
6 Salzman, Mark: Lost in Place
5 Sedaris, David: Naked
4 Smith, Alison: Name All The Animals
3 Walls, Jeanette: The Glass Castle
2 Wurtzel, Elizabeth: More, Now, Again
1 Wolff, Tobias: This Boy's Life

[I know that "Wo" is alphabetically before "Wu," but I'm a little embarrassed about Elizabeth Wurtzel, so I couldn't put her in the number one spot even if it is alphabetical. But now I've drawn attention to it anyhow, which is something that Elizabeth would probably do.]