I received word today from a friend, to the effect that I will soon be receiving a mixed cd by mail. This instigated immense happiness. Not only that, but the friend described the selection of music as "most random mix ever." This pushed my status closer to ecstasy.
What on earth makes these little plastic discs so endearing? Someone puts what they think they like on a playlist, burns it, and sends it in the mail. The artists and sometimes even genres clash with one another. Album art is either non-existent or done in Sharpie. There may or may not be a tracklist with artist names. I certainly won't get lyrics. It might last a year before it starts to skip. But I'll keep listening to it until it dies, passing over the ruined tracks for the few that still work. (You, on the other hand, might be a careful person, in which case I think the disc life might be extended. Still, you're bound to put your mixed cds through some elevated wear and tear in the name of love.)
I never feel the same way about other gifts. Cookware, maybe. Sweaters, movies, books? Forget it. I'll visit them occasionally over the years and remember the giver, but they won't become daily companions. Even cds that are legitimately bought and given in their plastic wrappings aren't as special. There's something about the time it takes to select the music and the way music helps me interpret life that make me want to scream, "I'm hip! I'm valued! Listen, world, someone out there thought of me, and when they did, they thought MUSIC. This might even mean I'm creative!"
Of course, I'd never say that out loud. No. No, I wouldn't. But whenever I'm driving and you mention you like the music, it won't take me two seconds to volunteer the information: "Yeah, my friend made this mix for me." And then we just keep driving. You, quietly pondering the fact that I have unknown friends somewhere out there who are probably pretty cool. Me, quietly pleased with myself and with the fact that I have a (virtual) posse.
I'll probably turn up the volume and point us towards a highway.
The idea of being "clever" in a gondola by moonlight appeared to her to involve elements of which her grasp was not active.
– Henry James, Washington Square. Penguin, New York. 1995.
From the Eastern Mountains
Godfrey Thring, 1873
From the eastern mountains, pressing on, they come,
wise men in their wisdom, to his humble home;
stirred by deep devotion, hasting from afar,
ever journeying onward, guided by a star.
There their Lord and Savior meek and lowly lay,
wondrous Light that led them onward on their way,
ever now to lighten nations from afar,
as they journey homeward by that guiding star.
Thou who in a manger once hast lowly lain,
who dost now in glory o’er all kingdoms reign,
gather in the heathen who in lands afar
ne’er have seen the brightness of thy guiding star.
Gather in the outcasts, all who’ve gone astray,
Throw Thy radiance o’er them, guide them on their way.
Those who never knew Thee, those who’ve wandered far,
Guide them by the brightness of Thy guiding star.
Onward through the darkness of the lonely night,
shining still before them with thy kindly light.
Guide them, Jew and Gentile, homeward from afar,
young and old together, by thy guiding Star.
(Thanks to a new favorite artist, Eric Priest, for posting this.)
everyone please notice the nifty new music player embedded in my sidebar, courtesy of pitchfork media. they're a music blog frequented by stalkers, obsessive-compulsives, and hip kids who are interested in the latest and greatest happenings within the music industry. the playlist is updated to reflect what they like and what they feel obligated to play. the player technology itself comes from imeem.
hope you enjoy.
We have the new, amazing, booty-lifting jeans.
Thus spake the sign in the Memorial City shop window. I slowed from a quick, disinterested clip to spend more time staring. The jeans looked normal (except for the gold rivets), but I still felt like they demanded some personal response. I looked around and slurped my Dr. Pepper. It felt like a good time for an internal voice-over, in the voice of William Shatner having a flashback.
Why did this seem so odd? I think it was the sign. BLJs might have existed for years without me knowing about it. If there'd been no sign, I'd still be in the dark about them. More than that, the sign suggested there were other people who might have also passed by unawares, not surprised and confused people like myself, but people who wanted this particular product. I imagined them scouring malls and department stores, with no success. Suddenly, a sign! The new, amazing, booty-lifting jeans can be found here! After such a search, so many hours of longing...
Was this a strange thing to want, or was I just being clueless? Had I been away too long? I personally preferred that part of myself (and of others) left by my jeans to hover at a natural altitude. Advertising such a product seemed downright shameless and suggested shameless things about my fellow consumers.
At some point, I realized I'd been stationary in front of a glamorous but not very masculine women's jeans outlet for five whole minutes. Trying to look as casual as possible, I scanned my environment. Pan left... two women on a bench glancing repeatedly at me... could be worse. Nervous slurping of Dr. Pepper. Pan right... gangster rabble approaching with quizzical expressions... slurp, slurp. Time to roll out.
As I strolled away, I ran over a quick laundry list of important questions. Am I be doomed to puzzle publicly over American culture for the rest of my days? Will I ever understand the BLJ phenomenon? And where are my friends, the sociology majors?
what happens in that moment,
stays in that moment –
the faltering resolve
the loss of nerve
a slow spreading puddle
of acquiescence at your feet.
we squelch on in sodden sneakers
towards bethlehem,
at the worst time of the year –
the know and the understand
burn inside us but cannot escape.
You know you've passed an important point in learning to embrace your generational and national cultures when you can admit that watching movies helps you think about life. And society. And core identity issues. And what to eat next.
Since I've been back: Die Hard 4, Resident Evil: Extinction, Fun With Dick and Jane, Howl's Moving Castle, Johnny Appleseed, Phone Booth, The Forgotten, The Fountain, Underworld, and Curse of the Golden Flower. I think I'm missing something... Mad props to Jeff, for sticking around and trying to study.
I have a feeling there's more coming, in this post.
All the reading I’ve done about writing seems pretty discouraging, so far. On the surface, it looks like writers smoke a lot and don’t have to wear ties. Let’s all be writers! Who wouldn’t want to write? But when I read Annie Dillard or Anne Lamott or Joan Didion, I keep catching an echo of tragedy, as if the author has come to accept some internal pain or has chosen to pay some personal cost for what she does. The feminist literary theorist in my brain wakes up and makes some noise at this point, but I don’t think this is because they’re women writing in modern-day America. I’ll have to read more men to be sure, but I suspect they’re reflecting on some challenge that’s universal to writers on both sides of the gender line, writers who are human.
I think this because I resonate with the sentiment, myself. The process they describe sounds a lot like an exercise in faith. When Dillard talks about shoving your desk and chair out the window, then climbing up into them and getting to work turning the imaginative flywheel that keeps them suspended in space, I think about living overseas. When Anne Lamott talks about scaling back our expectations and writing thought-by-thought, notecard-by-notecard, word-by-word and bird-by-bird, I remember talking to francophones, religious and otherwise. And I say, yes, yes you’re right about something, ladies. Each interaction felt like a test of whether I really believed in what was about to happen. Each action and every decision posed a potential threat to my identity.
Writers seem to question their identity an awful lot. Awful, because it’s just the sort of habit I should be trying to kick. They throw so much useless material away every day. They get restless. Irritable. Frustrated. This can go on for days, by all accounts. Who wants this? Where is the balance, the fame and glory of being widely read and loved?
Apparently it doesn’t exist. Writers write because they have chemical imbalances.
Still, a man has got to eat. Not much, it turns out, but something regularly. A strapping young fool such as myself will probably want to eat at least twice a day, which requires an income. Does one try to make it from payday to payday busing tables, writing a little here and a little there? Or is it better to make a clean shot of writing for a living first, giving it all you’ve got and then picking up the pieces later if the big fish aren’t biting? The difficult thing to remember is that we’re not talking about people, here. We’re talking about me. The question isn’t how this normally works for people, although that’s helpful. What I want to know is whether I’ll end up hurt and alone and in rehab because I tried to be a writer. Or (arguably) worse: rich and responsible for putting things in print that destroyed people’s lives, living the good life without a soul. I almost feel I could handle total failure better than qualified success… not that the second is even within my grasp. Just planning for eventualities.
The really big elephant in the room, of course, is the thought I had a few paragraphs earlier: isn’t the difficult bit in written communication the same bit that’s difficult for us in any leap of faith? Guts, mettle, risk, daring-do, whatever you call it, the questions of who we are and what we can say about reality require a little more from us than do our daily routines. Daily routines are made so that we can collect the mail and buy vegetables without being confronted by the weight and direction of our lives. There’s not much prophecy in potatoes. Any daily routine worth its salt will avoid such tasks as reflection or imagination so that lists get smaller instead of larger. (Let the scholars deal with philosophy; we men of the world like to think of ourselves as men of business. Men of business don't write; they make lists.) Even so, there come to each of us those times when we ourselves must grip terrifying truths or laugh down crippling fears. Whether or not we’re writers hasn’t much to do with it.
This brings me around to one of those conclusions I’ve only seen before at early hours through unfocused and bleary eyes: being is a demanding calling. A noble thought, but it doesn’t help me with career decisions. Not much.
The Lean Pockets ® microwave oven directions specify paper plate use. Paper? Is this really necessary? I'm not going off the ecological deep-end on them or anything, but I am feeling some vague class-impropriety. Can someone who uses ceramic plates eat microwaveable food? Or does that mean I'm a proletariat wanna-be?
I think it's Lean Pockets who are posing, here. Identify with the common man to cover up your secret deal with the paper-plate manufacturers! That's the ticket. Please take my money and manipulate me as a consumer, then make me feel guilty for having discretionary income. Please. I'll do anything.
In other news, we're out of hot pockets, lean or otherwise. I'm going to have to make something legitimately bourgeois. Like maybe meatloaf.
i've just received word that my parents are reading my blog. hello, parents! welcome to the world between my ears. it's a bit like the wood between the worlds, in terms of growing things and lots of mysterious puddles. but you can't get to as many places from here as from there.
last night i drove and drove around the city, thinking. i now see all kinds of things in american cities that i didn't, before. take the skyscrapers. they must somehow reflect the desire to achieve and to gloat about it. forget all the talk about efficiently using space, this just looks like Babel to me. especially when the shadows of the downtown business district almost touch the poorest parts of the city. we have money, access, power, climate control... and you don't. in america, the advancement of the human race is never all of us advancing together. it's some advancing at the cost of others. "oh! let's play universe! i'll be god and you all be weak and oppressed, ok?"
maybe that's too much of a burden to place upon the well-meaning skyscraper. still, i find it hard to consider the steel-and-concrete exaltation of major corporations without thinking about money, when nine out of ten are financial institutions.
then there's the street-level activity. where do people spend their time when they're not working or sleeping? well, from the socio-economic bottom up, there are the public service providers (soup kitchens and shelters), starbucks (where you can get surprisingly little for less than $3), and dance clubs (where people wear expensive clothes and pay heavy cover charges in order to ruin their hearing and livers).
these are my options? good grief. i wonder if i drank too much european water; maybe these things are all normal and i'm just seeing them slant-wise, like when you've fallen out of bed and can't place where you are. but what happened to the humble kebap shop? why are the only people in the parks selling drugs or exercising themselves to death? where, oh where, are the tea rooms and all-night coffee bars? and if these places exist, why am I having trouble imagining conversations about philosophy or politics happening in them?
that's when the low-fuel light went on and i realized that as a private automobile user, i'm once again responsible for procuring fuel. with no one to reimburse me. woah.
no more driving for me. and who cares? i've got a television and a deck of cards waiting for me at home.
Hello again, blog. The new resolution is a little writing every morning. I'll be doing some limited backposting, mainly helpful quotes from the last three weeks. But mainly, I think it's time for me to start writing down stories that I see happening around me. Less writing about my head and more writing about what's going on outside.
Like two days ago, I drove past a sign that read: "my karma ran over my dogma." Sure beats me, but I laughed anyway. The crab inside my shell came out to taste the breeze, then scuttled back inside. Baby steps. I could probably write something about that, right? I wonder if some writers just write as a way of coping with their own fears. Somebody likes their manuscript, they sign a deal, and suddenly they're on the shelves: successful, accomplished, glossy. Writing down words that other people understand must bring a breathe-easy feeling of validation. Hope for salty hermit crabs afraid of intimacy?
Wonder if it works with blogs.