"Serve God, love me, and mend."
I think that about sums it up. Thanks, Shakespeare. Also:
---
In other news, L. got dreadlocks and my oh my oh my. So fine. The best thing about being an older sibling is that you get to do everything first: learn to drive, rebel, go to college, graduate, became an ADULT (right). That's also the worst thing. The second best thing about being the oldest is you get to be completely stunned by how interesting/amazing/good-looking/intelligent your younger siblings are. L. looks great with her hair all ratted and she's ridiculously smart and going to graduate from college this year and if anyone tried to kidnap her and eat her kidneys, I'd hunt them down and destroy them.
---
I don't have anything to say really. It's been busy at work and busy in life but also oddly small and contained, rather like my immediate environment: sided by water, bound by land, a small town and people who smoke too many cigarettes. I took some time off from alcohol recently (now don't get worried. This isn't a big deal). It's just so easy in this town to get into a habit of a drink every couple nights because that's the way (apparently) that people hang out with each other. Gone are the days of card games and daring each other to jump off things along the pier. We're 21+ now so our new habitat is the bar.
It wasn't like this in Eugene or Portland, so I'm gonna call that generality and say it's just Here. "Here" being small towns where people work hard and want to collapse at the end of the day, kick back a few whiskey sours and go to sleep. It's okay for a night, but some people do this every day. It's money and time and a lot of work for your internal cleansing organs.
Thankfully, when F.C. or J. are working, I can still hang out at the bar and just drink tea and still see everyone I wanted to see in the first place. Seeing these people also means we can slowly, but surely, progress to the next stage: making outside plans and becoming friends.
So recently, Marta and G.C. (are these abbreviations getting confusing?) and I went out to breakfast. Then Marta and I went on a hike.
When I first moved here, I was sick with a cold and worried about failure. I'm a worrier. It's something I inherited from my grandma and (sorry Dad), my Dad. It's almost an occupation. Years ago, when she was still alive, my Grandma was watching us swinging on a swing set. We were trying to match our swinging so that we all went forward and backward at the same time. She put her hand to her head and said, "I just heard the other day about a group of kids who were all swinging at the same time on the swing set like that and it made the whole thing flip over on top of them and they all died."
Well after that, we watched each other like hawks and if any kid's swing even started to be synchronized with another's, we made a sound like an air raid siren.
Anyway, when I first moved here, I was happy to be by myself. I needed to heal and recoup and take stock of my situation. Then I just got used to being by myself most of the time, hanging out with C., who I also worked with, not making any new friends. But then C. moved away. Rotten. Then F.C. and I became friends and I remembered what it was like to be able to call people up and just be around people you like and who like you and approve of your existence. Then I felt like a person starving except I hadn't realized it.
We need community. We need to love things and people and be loved back. Life makes very little sense otherwise and the taste is all wrong.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
vitality
The tea brewing in the pot is called "Vitality" and it has herbal stuff in it that makes you vital and vigorous and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, crush rocks with your fist and save innocent women using only a paperclip, chewing gum and a bit of lint you found in your coat pocket. Or so they tell me. It tastes like lightly-flavored hot water and it smells nice. Works for me.
I am my favorite coffee shop in town where the women know my name and sound excited when they see me and it combines to make me feel just a little bit loved. I am trying to be productive with my day. I am working on a self-evaluation for work because, hey!, I've been at the newspaper a year now and this is what you do when you hit the year mark.
What have I done this year?
"Wrote stuff. Took pictures. Sometimes. Please don't fire me."
I'm bad at self-evaluations. It's hard to bridge the line between self-effacing modesty and mad egocentric raving, and doing so professionally without sly undertones and asides, while still honestly touting my virtues and making a case for my continued survival on this planet. I was not made for the professional adult world. I'm bad at it and my hair is too crazy and I can't apply makeup. Also, I frequently whine about how I can't apply makeup which is just ridiculous. Surely there's a YouTube video out there.
There's always a YouTube video.
---
What I read today:
"You see where I'm going with this. For your writing to be great -- I mean great, not clever, or even brilliant, or most misleading of all, beautiful -- it must be useful to the world. And for that to happen you must form an opinion of the world. And for that to happen you need to observe the world, closely and steadily, with a mind open to change. And for that to happen you have to live in the world, and not pretend that it is someone else's world you are writing about. A tendency of modern literature is to claim, 'We must love one another or die,' or 'be true to one another,' or 'only connect.' Sweet as such sentiments may be, they give up on the world and imply that the best way to live in it is to hide from it in one another's embrace. Instead, you must love the world as it is, because the world, for all its murder and madness, is worth loving. Nothing you write will matter unless it moves the human heart, said the poet A.D. Hope. And the heart that you must move is corrupt, depraved and desperate for your love."
I am my favorite coffee shop in town where the women know my name and sound excited when they see me and it combines to make me feel just a little bit loved. I am trying to be productive with my day. I am working on a self-evaluation for work because, hey!, I've been at the newspaper a year now and this is what you do when you hit the year mark.
What have I done this year?
"Wrote stuff. Took pictures. Sometimes. Please don't fire me."
I'm bad at self-evaluations. It's hard to bridge the line between self-effacing modesty and mad egocentric raving, and doing so professionally without sly undertones and asides, while still honestly touting my virtues and making a case for my continued survival on this planet. I was not made for the professional adult world. I'm bad at it and my hair is too crazy and I can't apply makeup. Also, I frequently whine about how I can't apply makeup which is just ridiculous. Surely there's a YouTube video out there.
There's always a YouTube video.
---
What I read today:
"You see where I'm going with this. For your writing to be great -- I mean great, not clever, or even brilliant, or most misleading of all, beautiful -- it must be useful to the world. And for that to happen you must form an opinion of the world. And for that to happen you need to observe the world, closely and steadily, with a mind open to change. And for that to happen you have to live in the world, and not pretend that it is someone else's world you are writing about. A tendency of modern literature is to claim, 'We must love one another or die,' or 'be true to one another,' or 'only connect.' Sweet as such sentiments may be, they give up on the world and imply that the best way to live in it is to hide from it in one another's embrace. Instead, you must love the world as it is, because the world, for all its murder and madness, is worth loving. Nothing you write will matter unless it moves the human heart, said the poet A.D. Hope. And the heart that you must move is corrupt, depraved and desperate for your love."
Sunday, January 16, 2011
to your health
"So what do you think of the state of the Union? By which I mean the family? By which I mean God? God and the family! The family and God!" asked the dentist.
To which I would have replied with wit and vigor if there hadn't been a toolbox-worth of dental tools stuffed into my mouth, plus the dentist's index finger and thumb and his assistant's magical cold-air blowing device sucking my excess spit (and thus my vigor) away.
Why do dentists do this?
They do many things but I didn't know they classified mouths.
"Hmmmm...you have a very small mouth," said the assistant as she shoved x-ray slides into place next to my third molars. "Yep. A very small mouth. We call this an extra small. Open wider please."
My mouth was already opened as far as I could make it without dislocating something. I tried a squeak farther. My jaw crackled and popped ominously. I imagined how the next day I'd be in the local emergency room and a surgeon with a bone saw would be gently saying as he stabbed me with the first kick of knock-out drugs, "I hear Fred Meyers is having a sale on silk scarves. After I've detached your jaw and you're hideously deformed and nobody ever wants to kiss you again, maybe you should consider making veils. The allure and mystery, you know, of veiled women."
---
I was in Portland for 3+ hours yesterday to pick up The Car. (I only ever have The Car for a few weeks at a time before something happens to part me from it. Then I drive back here with a borrowed car and confuse the Chevron gas station attendants who all know me by sight. "How many cars does this woman have?")
So I was in Portland to pick up The Car and I stopped over to see T and Mx Stubbert. Probably they will be my favorite people forever. On my way from their place to my place, I stopped and bought music. CDs! Fugazi's "13 Songs" and that Bon Iver "Whatsit to Emma" or whatever it's called. I once stole the most amazing mix CD from the bakery that was Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes only and it was perfect and I can't find it anywhere. Boo.
Fugazi, meanwhile, might be the most wonderful thing in the world and "Waiting Room" is beating out "Time After Time" (I admit it) as my number one pick-me-up-feel-good song. There was a dark time in my life when all I did every morning was lay in bed and listen to "Time After Time" on repeat. Jess remembers this time. She probably wants to forget it since I was not content to simply listen to the song. I'd also sing it wherever I was.
Dignity continues to elude me.
"Waiting Room" gives me slightly more musical credibility with the Kids Who Know. I think.
---
But back to the dentist. While I was sitting in the waiting room, one of the local dignitaries came in and there was an awkward pause. Media and power like to remain apart in their personal lives, get some kind of break from the scrutiny and the scrutinizing. The awkwardness broke when we both half-admitted that going to the dentist was the most relaxing part of our day... a lunch break of sorts. Although, granted, the kind of lunch break that makes you feel guilty about eating any kind of lunch that isn't juice or water or mouth wash or floss.
It was a human moment (an H.M. Technical term. Look it up.)
To which I would have replied with wit and vigor if there hadn't been a toolbox-worth of dental tools stuffed into my mouth, plus the dentist's index finger and thumb and his assistant's magical cold-air blowing device sucking my excess spit (and thus my vigor) away.
Why do dentists do this?
They do many things but I didn't know they classified mouths.
"Hmmmm...you have a very small mouth," said the assistant as she shoved x-ray slides into place next to my third molars. "Yep. A very small mouth. We call this an extra small. Open wider please."
My mouth was already opened as far as I could make it without dislocating something. I tried a squeak farther. My jaw crackled and popped ominously. I imagined how the next day I'd be in the local emergency room and a surgeon with a bone saw would be gently saying as he stabbed me with the first kick of knock-out drugs, "I hear Fred Meyers is having a sale on silk scarves. After I've detached your jaw and you're hideously deformed and nobody ever wants to kiss you again, maybe you should consider making veils. The allure and mystery, you know, of veiled women."
---
I was in Portland for 3+ hours yesterday to pick up The Car. (I only ever have The Car for a few weeks at a time before something happens to part me from it. Then I drive back here with a borrowed car and confuse the Chevron gas station attendants who all know me by sight. "How many cars does this woman have?")
So I was in Portland to pick up The Car and I stopped over to see T and Mx Stubbert. Probably they will be my favorite people forever. On my way from their place to my place, I stopped and bought music. CDs! Fugazi's "13 Songs" and that Bon Iver "Whatsit to Emma" or whatever it's called. I once stole the most amazing mix CD from the bakery that was Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes only and it was perfect and I can't find it anywhere. Boo.
Fugazi, meanwhile, might be the most wonderful thing in the world and "Waiting Room" is beating out "Time After Time" (I admit it) as my number one pick-me-up-feel-good song. There was a dark time in my life when all I did every morning was lay in bed and listen to "Time After Time" on repeat. Jess remembers this time. She probably wants to forget it since I was not content to simply listen to the song. I'd also sing it wherever I was.
Dignity continues to elude me.
"Waiting Room" gives me slightly more musical credibility with the Kids Who Know. I think.
---
But back to the dentist. While I was sitting in the waiting room, one of the local dignitaries came in and there was an awkward pause. Media and power like to remain apart in their personal lives, get some kind of break from the scrutiny and the scrutinizing. The awkwardness broke when we both half-admitted that going to the dentist was the most relaxing part of our day... a lunch break of sorts. Although, granted, the kind of lunch break that makes you feel guilty about eating any kind of lunch that isn't juice or water or mouth wash or floss.
It was a human moment (an H.M. Technical term. Look it up.)
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
media eyes guns
Journalists are turning out in droves to be allowed to carry guns around in public buildings. Is it because so many of them are killed execution style in Russia? Stoned in the middle-east? Threatened in Scandinavia and other cold northern countries? Chased out of France? Despised in small American towns (cough cough)?
No!
It's because they want to be in the shorter line at the Capitol building in Texas. Because, they figured out, God created man but Sammy Colt made them equal (thank you, Mike Cox). Can you imagine anything more frightening? Armed writers? Or, more specifically, armed journalists? The group that contains some of the most unhappy, neurotic people on earth? Last time anyone gave writers/journalists a gun, know what happened? Ernest Hemingway, that's what.
Here's the article and the best line in the article (besides all parts involving Mr. Cox speaking): "You can trust us. We're journalists. And we're armed."
---
"Eyes", "eyed", "eying" = most overused, yet still completely pointless, headline verb in the whole of western journalism. It's in my paper, it's in your paper, it's in the New York Times, the Guardian. EVERYWHERE. And it needs to end. All I see is the Eye of Sauron, straining at its evil leash, casting a baleful fiery glare over a blighted landscape: "Hobbitsessssssss." And I can't take any news story seriously.
No!
It's because they want to be in the shorter line at the Capitol building in Texas. Because, they figured out, God created man but Sammy Colt made them equal (thank you, Mike Cox). Can you imagine anything more frightening? Armed writers? Or, more specifically, armed journalists? The group that contains some of the most unhappy, neurotic people on earth? Last time anyone gave writers/journalists a gun, know what happened? Ernest Hemingway, that's what.
Here's the article and the best line in the article (besides all parts involving Mr. Cox speaking): "You can trust us. We're journalists. And we're armed."
---
"Eyes", "eyed", "eying" = most overused, yet still completely pointless, headline verb in the whole of western journalism. It's in my paper, it's in your paper, it's in the New York Times, the Guardian. EVERYWHERE. And it needs to end. All I see is the Eye of Sauron, straining at its evil leash, casting a baleful fiery glare over a blighted landscape: "Hobbitsessssssss." And I can't take any news story seriously.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
first brother gets a haircut
L: Mom should give him a mohawk.
K: Yes!
First Brother: I'm right here! I can still hear you even if my eyes are open or not!
Thursday, January 6, 2011
the forces of evil will not be tolerated
Last night was a big deal. Last night I finally killed the spider under my heater. I've been stalking it, keeping notes on its vile habits, waiting patiently for one year. It's been safe in its carpet-surrounded cave (built around some sort of old vent that comes out of the carpet right beneath the wall heater). It was quick, savvy and geared toward survival, but I knew that someday (somehow) it would make a mistake.
So, to back up, I've been hanging out at this bar a lot recently because it's about a thousand times warmer than my apartment and F.C. lets me sit there for hours and drink peppermint tea and I run into people I'm getting to know and it's generally just a nice place to be. I went there after work yesterday and stayed until about 9 p.m. When I got home, I got down on my knees and scooched underneath my kitchen table to get to the heater dial. Out of habit, I glanced down to the spider's cave. I froze. There was the spider, almost completely exposed, though still under the heater, five inches from its cave, sucking the life juices out of a bug.
I watched it intently for a few minutes and then worried that it could sense my intensity and scurry back to safety, I pushed myself out from under the table, my hands shaking with anticipation. I was going to kill it, kill it dead and dance on its remains.
This spider is frighteningly creepy: matte black, with a huge evil body and legs like scissors. It's the most efficient-looking spider I've ever seen. I have no idea if it could kill me or not.
My first plan was to throw a damp blob of toilet paper at it, trapping it in suffocating wet folds to cut off escape and then smashing the life out of it with a shoe. This only somewhat worked. It cut off the spider's escape, yes, but it didn't do much else. The spider scurried out from under the toilet paper before suffocation happened. So I grabbed a bottle of Windex and cowed it into a corner. Then I waited. It huddled for a while, pretending to be dead (I wasn't fooled. I'd seen this before). Then suddenly, it sprang. It ran across the useless toilet paper and -- I couldn't believe it -- straight out from underneath the heater, out into the vast carpeted wilderness of my room.
Maybe the Windex affected its brain and gross motor skill. Maybe it couldn't see or sense anything, blinded by fear or anger.
Either way, it's now a pulpy blob on my carpet floor. The shoe always wins. Always.
So, to back up, I've been hanging out at this bar a lot recently because it's about a thousand times warmer than my apartment and F.C. lets me sit there for hours and drink peppermint tea and I run into people I'm getting to know and it's generally just a nice place to be. I went there after work yesterday and stayed until about 9 p.m. When I got home, I got down on my knees and scooched underneath my kitchen table to get to the heater dial. Out of habit, I glanced down to the spider's cave. I froze. There was the spider, almost completely exposed, though still under the heater, five inches from its cave, sucking the life juices out of a bug.
I watched it intently for a few minutes and then worried that it could sense my intensity and scurry back to safety, I pushed myself out from under the table, my hands shaking with anticipation. I was going to kill it, kill it dead and dance on its remains.
This spider is frighteningly creepy: matte black, with a huge evil body and legs like scissors. It's the most efficient-looking spider I've ever seen. I have no idea if it could kill me or not.
My first plan was to throw a damp blob of toilet paper at it, trapping it in suffocating wet folds to cut off escape and then smashing the life out of it with a shoe. This only somewhat worked. It cut off the spider's escape, yes, but it didn't do much else. The spider scurried out from under the toilet paper before suffocation happened. So I grabbed a bottle of Windex and cowed it into a corner. Then I waited. It huddled for a while, pretending to be dead (I wasn't fooled. I'd seen this before). Then suddenly, it sprang. It ran across the useless toilet paper and -- I couldn't believe it -- straight out from underneath the heater, out into the vast carpeted wilderness of my room.
Maybe the Windex affected its brain and gross motor skill. Maybe it couldn't see or sense anything, blinded by fear or anger.
Either way, it's now a pulpy blob on my carpet floor. The shoe always wins. Always.
Monday, January 3, 2011
#185: books I have read and animals I have eaten
I want to tell you about books I read in 2010. The ones that I can remember, that is.
I spent the first couple of months after I moved here not reading because I was so overwhelmed with acquiring newspaper/reporterly knowledge and the idea of cramming anything else into my head that wasn't directly relevant to work seemed stupid. Must know everything! And if I'm not reading leases and deeds and contracts and press releases, by God I should be!
Well, I finally got over that and purchased a 6 month library card in a nearby town and went on a reading frenzy.
I read:
1) Geek Love by Katherine Dunn and it horrified me. Such a sad book, but so engaging and weird, it lures you into a false sense of safety. How can a book this weird be tragic? And then it is, terribly so. I'm hesitant to recommend it to anyone because a) you'll probably never want to talk to me again, b) it might completely disgust you, c) it is full of unsavory things (but not tasteless...there's a difference), and d) it will destroy your mind and trample on your emotional core with the indifference of rural kids in pick up trucks.
2) The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read this mostly in one day, and mostly in one 6 hour sitting. I left a crazy voice message on Tim's phone, babbling incoherently about holiness and the Glory of God in Nature (like the Beethoven piece except not musical) and how none of us need to write anything ever again because, darling, it's been done. We can all go home and take naps.
Am I repeating myself? Something I've said before?
What amazes me about The Road is how boring it is...or rather, could have been, because it's not boring, but very few things happen. Folks are just walking, I'm sorry...trudging through an ashy wilderness and occasionally are attacked. But he kept things simple (of which he is master) and beautiful and each word had weights attached to it and then sometimes (to switch it up) he beats the reader over the head with a mallet and you find yourself curled on the floor wanting to weep but finding you are empty of tears and there is only raw pain and no quotation marks and sometimes you have no idea who's talking and conversation is so minimal anyway so you keep on reading and hope it ends with your death. Just like that.
So I read several McCarthy books this year: The Road, Outer Dark, All the Pretty Horses and the first part of The Crossing (before I decided I couldn't make myself read it. At least not right now. When my next dark night of the soul comes along, sure I'll read it, but I'm feeling too happy and generally content and I don't want to throw this away for no good reason).
Favorites is a tie between The Road and Outer Dark (which is about such acceptable topics as incest, murder and evilness and also, I think, poetry).
3) My Traitor's Heart Rian Malan. I'd been told to read this a year ago by my then-comparative literature professor who was amazing, from South Africa, exceedingly white, and who taught me ever so much (but especially that the word "posh" is hilarious). This is a book written by a man, the descendant of Dutch oppressors, whose entire history and heritage is wrapped up in what exploded during apartheid. He leaves South Africa unable to deal with what is going on, wanting to disassociate or reinvent or something. But then he comes back and stands as a witness to what is going on, reporting everyday crime, the pounding relentless little blood lettings. I don't know about some of his conclusions, but it's something to think about, something to test against, something I really won't ever be able to understand. People were a bad idea. I hope I don't get struck down for that, but it feels true. A terrible idea, worse than spiders.
4) The Corpse Had a Familiar Face by Edna Buchanan. Crime reporter. Famous crime reporter. I wish I was her. She says in (I think) the introduction that she's covered over 10,000 murders and I was like "Holy Cow!" and I got really excited about my job as court reporter (not happy. Excited. There's a difference). And then I realized that there are barely 10,000 people in this entire town and the reality of my life came home a bit more.
So this is about her life as a female crime reporter. Fascinating stories, good writing and lots of funny and sad mixed up together. Oh the stories. I love journalism. I love journalists and how inappropriate they are and how outwardly uncertain about humanity they are, but how inwardly idealist they remain despite it all.
5) Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller, which was interesting...I'm going through a religious books phase, apparently...but he kept using the phrase "It's quite beautiful really" and I wanted to shoot him every time. I wanted to make the use of the word "beautiful" a capital offense and convict him on every count. The book is some sort of D.Miller apologetic, I suppose, but the writing gets boring. I liked Blue Like Jazz (I remember liking it). It was more story-oriented though and not so darn weepy and full of phrases like "It's quite beautiful really." I know it's beautiful, I can figure it out, or approximate it. Stop telling me like I'm a slow child. Maybe living outside of civilization has put me against "It's quite beautiful really." I associate that phrase with the more obnoxious parts of Eugene and coffee shop Portland. What we really need more of is dirt. But not like the Alice in Chains album.
6) Clockers by Richard Price. Drug dealing and homicide investigation and a brilliant writer who can write realistic people without making you completely hate them. Also, I read an interview The Paris Review did with Price and he grew up blue collar and should have gone to school to be a lawyer because that's what you did to get out of the projects but instead he became a writer so that he could write about the projects and nobody was writing about the projects because the people who came with that background went on to be lawyers or doctors. To say "Hey I'm going to be a writer" was telling your parents or your relatives or your friends, "Yeah, I know you sacrificed a lot to get me an education so that I could get a good job and leave this dump forever, but I'm going to be a writer and make no money. How do you feel about that?" And mostly, Price said, people were confused.
Ok. I read more, but I've spent too long on this now and I need to move on.
I spent the first couple of months after I moved here not reading because I was so overwhelmed with acquiring newspaper/reporterly knowledge and the idea of cramming anything else into my head that wasn't directly relevant to work seemed stupid. Must know everything! And if I'm not reading leases and deeds and contracts and press releases, by God I should be!
Well, I finally got over that and purchased a 6 month library card in a nearby town and went on a reading frenzy.
I read:
1) Geek Love by Katherine Dunn and it horrified me. Such a sad book, but so engaging and weird, it lures you into a false sense of safety. How can a book this weird be tragic? And then it is, terribly so. I'm hesitant to recommend it to anyone because a) you'll probably never want to talk to me again, b) it might completely disgust you, c) it is full of unsavory things (but not tasteless...there's a difference), and d) it will destroy your mind and trample on your emotional core with the indifference of rural kids in pick up trucks.
2) The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read this mostly in one day, and mostly in one 6 hour sitting. I left a crazy voice message on Tim's phone, babbling incoherently about holiness and the Glory of God in Nature (like the Beethoven piece except not musical) and how none of us need to write anything ever again because, darling, it's been done. We can all go home and take naps.
Am I repeating myself? Something I've said before?
What amazes me about The Road is how boring it is...or rather, could have been, because it's not boring, but very few things happen. Folks are just walking, I'm sorry...trudging through an ashy wilderness and occasionally are attacked. But he kept things simple (of which he is master) and beautiful and each word had weights attached to it and then sometimes (to switch it up) he beats the reader over the head with a mallet and you find yourself curled on the floor wanting to weep but finding you are empty of tears and there is only raw pain and no quotation marks and sometimes you have no idea who's talking and conversation is so minimal anyway so you keep on reading and hope it ends with your death. Just like that.
So I read several McCarthy books this year: The Road, Outer Dark, All the Pretty Horses and the first part of The Crossing (before I decided I couldn't make myself read it. At least not right now. When my next dark night of the soul comes along, sure I'll read it, but I'm feeling too happy and generally content and I don't want to throw this away for no good reason).
Favorites is a tie between The Road and Outer Dark (which is about such acceptable topics as incest, murder and evilness and also, I think, poetry).
3) My Traitor's Heart Rian Malan. I'd been told to read this a year ago by my then-comparative literature professor who was amazing, from South Africa, exceedingly white, and who taught me ever so much (but especially that the word "posh" is hilarious). This is a book written by a man, the descendant of Dutch oppressors, whose entire history and heritage is wrapped up in what exploded during apartheid. He leaves South Africa unable to deal with what is going on, wanting to disassociate or reinvent or something. But then he comes back and stands as a witness to what is going on, reporting everyday crime, the pounding relentless little blood lettings. I don't know about some of his conclusions, but it's something to think about, something to test against, something I really won't ever be able to understand. People were a bad idea. I hope I don't get struck down for that, but it feels true. A terrible idea, worse than spiders.
4) The Corpse Had a Familiar Face by Edna Buchanan. Crime reporter. Famous crime reporter. I wish I was her. She says in (I think) the introduction that she's covered over 10,000 murders and I was like "Holy Cow!" and I got really excited about my job as court reporter (not happy. Excited. There's a difference). And then I realized that there are barely 10,000 people in this entire town and the reality of my life came home a bit more.
So this is about her life as a female crime reporter. Fascinating stories, good writing and lots of funny and sad mixed up together. Oh the stories. I love journalism. I love journalists and how inappropriate they are and how outwardly uncertain about humanity they are, but how inwardly idealist they remain despite it all.
5) Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller, which was interesting...I'm going through a religious books phase, apparently...but he kept using the phrase "It's quite beautiful really" and I wanted to shoot him every time. I wanted to make the use of the word "beautiful" a capital offense and convict him on every count. The book is some sort of D.Miller apologetic, I suppose, but the writing gets boring. I liked Blue Like Jazz (I remember liking it). It was more story-oriented though and not so darn weepy and full of phrases like "It's quite beautiful really." I know it's beautiful, I can figure it out, or approximate it. Stop telling me like I'm a slow child. Maybe living outside of civilization has put me against "It's quite beautiful really." I associate that phrase with the more obnoxious parts of Eugene and coffee shop Portland. What we really need more of is dirt. But not like the Alice in Chains album.
6) Clockers by Richard Price. Drug dealing and homicide investigation and a brilliant writer who can write realistic people without making you completely hate them. Also, I read an interview The Paris Review did with Price and he grew up blue collar and should have gone to school to be a lawyer because that's what you did to get out of the projects but instead he became a writer so that he could write about the projects and nobody was writing about the projects because the people who came with that background went on to be lawyers or doctors. To say "Hey I'm going to be a writer" was telling your parents or your relatives or your friends, "Yeah, I know you sacrificed a lot to get me an education so that I could get a good job and leave this dump forever, but I'm going to be a writer and make no money. How do you feel about that?" And mostly, Price said, people were confused.
Ok. I read more, but I've spent too long on this now and I need to move on.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
184: whale
So you can be sure some jerk is down at the beach scavenging whale vertebrae as we speak. They're poking at the ribs, pecked by seabirds, and they're already planning on how they're going to pour boiling water in a bathtub or the large vat in their backyard and boil the bones clean and then they're going to turn them into tribal jewelry or furniture and they're not going to leave anything for anyone else and they're going to take pictures on their cellphones and pass things on to their grandchildren and smell like dead whale for days, even weeks. This is so annoying because it's exactly what I was planning to do and now I'm being thwarted. I should have pitched claim stakes or just settled in the surf with a rifle and a knife.
I found a whale carcass today. Well, not exactly found. I mean, yes, I found it but I was on a hunt for it. I'd been told there was a rumor of a whale washed up on the beach, so I at least knew my hunting might lead somewhere. It wasn't a stumbling by chance. F.C. was doing something productive and Bishop is still out of town so I went by myself. I looked to the north and saw only tourists and Washington, distant (like it should be). I looked to the south and saw only emptiness, the waves bucking like horses and surging with foam, and then, looking longer, I saw a heap bigger than drift wood that seemed to glisten and as I watched, I saw seagulls rise up as the tide washed around the heap.
It was the whale, or what was left of it.
I think it was flipped on its back and the ribbed vertically stomach was what glistened in the full sun. One long flipper, a snake trickle of spine near where it's head used to be or maybe still was, crushed underneath somewhere. Another huge chunk of it rested several yards away from the bulk of the carcass, already stripped of (I'm guessing) what made it edible. I know almost nothing about whale anatomy. It's kind of embarrassing. Seagulls swarmed the whale carcass, cursing each other in a variety of clicks and screams and gutter utterances. They arched their necks in ugly ways and fixed their eyes on intruders and bellowed damnations. Little white piper-type birds scuttled in the tide. They kept a 10 foot distance from me at all times, scurrying in huge arcs when they wanted to pass me and go to the other side. I'd hate to be that worried.
The carcass was more like a whale cutlet than a whale. So much for that spiritual moment with nature, I guess.
I hung around for quite a while to watch how the birds handled it all. It's weird how the meat looked like frayed bits of rope, not like anything solid or relevant. Just dead. Very dead.
Then people started wheeling by in their pick up trucks and SUVs and came out clutching cameras and cellphones and it all got boring. So I left.
Gray whales should be finishing up their pass of the Oregon Coast. They migrate down to Mexico from the Arctic Ocean in the winter and come back this way in the spring, en route to the Bering and Chukchi Seas where they feed during the summer. I don't know if this was a Gray Whale or not. It was gray, but so are other things. My jeans, for instance. I would hate to just start making statements.
In the 1600-1700s men with greasy hair, sailing in wooden boats, hunted Gray Whales to extinction in the Atlantic. Shocker. Fortunately, in the Pacific, they were only hunted to the brink of extinction and so, I don't know, scientists and people who like Gray Whales invented helium balloons and transported whales by air across the continent and thus repopulated the Atlantic. They also tried this with mustangs, except, for reasons unknown, the mustangs' balloons deflated while still passing over the United States. And so now we have wild mustang herds everywhere and the nasty creatures have formed gangs and their universal motto is "Death to the Bureau of Land Management!" and they kill women and red-haired children and trample everything that comes in their path, showing no mercy and expecting none in return. There's been a Disney movie made about them called "Spirit" and the horses are blowing up trains and bringing down industry and just generally destroying everything and laughing the whole time. Also they have eyebrows.
"The burros, yeah they'll kick your teeth out," said an agent for the BLM, who spoke under condition of anonymity. "But those mustangs, they'll kick your teeth out then make you eat them, one by one, and as you're scrambling in the dust, stuffing your own teeth in your mouth and chewing, the (expletive deleted) will start cantering around you until you can't see the sky for all the dust flying. All you hear is this eerie whinnying. Like a ghost train. Like the sound of death."
"... If you ask me, the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was the worst idea we've ever had. The things run like the wind itself, so it's not like anyone ever really got a decent shot off anyway. I carry a garroting wire at all times. As far as I know, rifles are out and missiles and poison, but I didn't ever see 'no garroting wire allowed' in the BLM manual, post 1976. So there."
---
Yeah...so...anyway. It's Day 2 of this year, which means Day 2-type ceremonies but mostly dish-washing. I'm out of spoons.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
new years
First, briefly, unless your pet is Sophie, I don't care about it. (Oh hi there loud coffee shop ladies eating breakfast and talking stridently about your cats Angelina Jolie and Natasha and how they prefer female humans to the other kind of human, I didn't see you there when I started directing hateful laser beam darts out of my eyes in your conversation's direction)
Two, NO SLEEP. But a lot of talking and listening and a brisk walk in the cold while cop cars crawled up and down the hills like bugs. I'm surprised F.C. and I weren't pulled aside for "suspicious circumstances" at some point because I know we were gesturing wildly while we were talking and walking and it was close to 1 a.m.
Thirdly, no motivation...to do anything except watch the second season of Gilmore Girls all day and reconstruct my apartment. Right before the house party at S.'s I was overcome with a need to take apart my bed (such as it is) and move it and move my bookshelves and pile things in piles and then make sub-piles to the piles. So I was late to everywhere that night. Fortunately I only had one place to go and was gone from there once midnight hit.
And a happy new year.
---
Now, some reading:
1. Best weather story ever. I love this man. I want to find him and kiss him and then kill him so that he won't do something like this again and instead I can do it: SLUSH
2. Read this too: DEPLOYMENT
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)