Tag Archives: writing

May 24

100 Word Constraint: Aging

When mom died, her cabinets were full: lotions, oils, skin lighteners, moisturizers, balms, exfoliators. A lifetime of anti-aging left behind.

I received a new/another foundation in the mail today, along with a “face stick” to erase dark circles. I apply and step back from the mirror, searching out difference in the before and after.

Turning my head to the right, I see, I think, the start of a soft jowl. I place fingers on my face and pull the skin taut.

Let go

the idea of what aging,

what living, should look like.

Aging is simply the magic of living.

Apr 5

On Sharing

I posted one of my thesis essays on my website: Ink and Light. It’s located under the “Writing” tab. It was tricky picking one to post because the project tries to entwine the essays together, and some aren’t really essays that work on their own. I hope this one does. Since you haven’t read the other essays, you won’t know Isadoro’s history when you read about him, but I don’t think that it matters in this particular piece.

Nov 10

bash in my brains (my own personal boomboom)

One reason why I enjoy work by dadaists is because it breaks up my own linear way of writing/thinking. It’s a reminder of the possibilities. When I struggle with my thesis, it’s not with what to say, but how to say it. I struggle between wanting to be clear and journalistic (my default tendency), and lyrical & offbeat. I enjoy Brevity so much because each essay combines most of these qualities…it’s not as if the qualities are mutually exclusive. Anyway, I’m a member of the Dadaism Appreciation Society on Facebook, and one of the members sent out a letter by Tristan Tzara. Sometimes I’m lost in it and sometimes I’m found. I thought I’d share:

If I cry out:

Ideal, ideal, ideal,
# Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge,
# Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom,

I have given a pretty faithful version of progress, law, morality and all other fine qualities that various highly intelligent men have discussed in so many books, only to conclude that after all everyone dances to his own personal boomboom, and that the writer is entitled to his boomboom: the satisfaction of pathological curiosity; a private bell for inexplicable needs; a bath; pecuniary difficulties; a stomach with repercussions in life; the authority of the mystic wand formulated as the bouquet of a phantom orchestra made up of silent fiddle bows greased with philtres made of chicken manure.

With the blue eye-glasses of an angel they have excavated the inner life for a dime’s worth of unanimous gratitude. If all of them are right and if all pills are Pink Pills, let us try for once not to be right. Some people think they can explain rationally, by thought, what they think. But that is extremely relative. Psychoanalysis is a dangerous disease, it puts to sleep the anti-objective impulses of men and systematizes the bourgeoisie.

There is no ultimate Truth. The dialectic is an amusing mechanism which guides us / in a banal kind of way / to the opinions we had in the first place. Does anyone think that, by a minute refinement of logic, he has demonstrated the truth and established the correctness of these opinions? Logic imprisoned by the senses is an organic disease. To this element philosophers always like to add: the power of observation. But actually this magnificent quality of the mind is the proof of its impotence. We observe, we regard from one or more points of view, we choose them among the millions that exist.

Experience is also a product of chance and individual faculties. Science disgusts me as soon as it becomes a speculative system, loses its character of utility-that is so useless but is at least individual. I detest greasy objectivity, and harmony, the science that finds everything in order. Carry on, my children, humanity . . . Science says we are the servants of nature: everything is in order, make love and bash your brains in. Carry on, my children, humanity, kind bourgeois and journalist virgins . . . I am against systems, the most acceptable system is on principle to have none.

To complete oneself, to perfect oneself in one’s own littleness, to fill the vessel with one’s individuality, to have the courage to fight for and against thought, the mystery of bread, the sudden burst of an infernal propeller into economic lilies…. Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family is Dada; a protest with the fists of its whole being engaged in destructive action: *Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now by the shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good manners: Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memory: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity:* Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere; trajectory of a word tossed like a screeching phonograph record; to respect all individuals in their folly of the moment: whether it be serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, determined, enthusiastic; to divest one’s church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them -with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn’t matter in the least-with the same intensity in the thicket of one’s soul-pure of insects for blood well-born, and gilded with bodies of archangels. Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE

Nov 8

working and writing

buddhablog

When I think about my “ideal” job, there is a list of do’s and don’ts I wish I could meet. I don’t want to be by myself in an office with florescent lighting and no windows. I don’t really want to work 10 hour days, six days a week. It would be nice to be surrounded by books and people who like books, or people who like to write books. It would be great to interact with different people from day to day. I want to enjoy myself at work more often than not. I’d like to flex my creative writing muscle (or at least give it a work out). I don’t want to be in charge of anyone. The problem with having such a demanding wish list is this: In my professional life, I’ve done nothing of such importance that would allow me the luxury of receiving any of the demands on my wish list. I mean, having an office with a window seems like a reasonable wish, but were I offered a full-time job, and my new boss escorted me to a windowless, florescent office (or cubicle), it’s not as if my skills are in such demand that I could declare, “I refuse to work in these conditions!” and the new boss would immediately find me an office overlooking the city skyline.

In fact, in the current economic crisis, I haven’t had any luck at all in my job search. I applied for a library specialist position at the local university, a position I really, really wanted. I thought I would be perfectly qualified for it, since the only absolute requirement was a high school diploma, but the university’s preference was for the candidate to have some higher education courses as well. When human resources asked me for my transcripts, I thought my chances were excellent. I have my B.S. and am nearly done with my MFA! The position was a civil service position, which means the applicants have to take an exam. For this position, the exam score was based on the applicant’s education and experience. My score was 70–a passing score. However, the scale was 1-100, which means a 70 is very, obnoxiously average. The scores dictate where the applicants are listed on the interview register. The department invites the three applicants with the highest scores to interview. My place on the register: 35. How incredibly depressing. And this for a position that didn’t even require a bachelor’s degree!

I’m slowly reconciling myself to the idea that what I do to make money may not be what I love to do. I’ve always thought a person’s time was too important to spend most of it doing something he/she didn’t love. But I’ve also learned that I love (and don’t love) so many different things about daily experience. It’s not like experience has to be compartmentalized into hourly increments, with certain hours intended for “fun” stuff and others intended for “work.” I’m making the effort to merge fun and work as often as possible–I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive (but I guess it depends on who you ask and what they are doing). Anyway, tomorrow I start my seasonal job at Michael’s Art and Crafts. It’s not exactly where I imagined myself, but I’m grateful to have employment at all right now (and I do like the store’s products, which is why I applied…I get an employee discount…woohoo!). I’m going to keep harassing the universities for a job (though an article in today’s paper said the local state university branch is tightening its purse strings), but for now I have a little financial breathing room.

What got me thinking about all this was the realization that I may not end up earning my living as a writer, and whether or not this mattered to me. It does not. What I do to make money does not affect me as a writer, except for the ideas/inspiration the job may foster. What matters is the discipline to write in spite of working 8 hours, or 10 hours, or what have you. What I miss, though, is the writing community–discussing ideas, books, providing feedback on work, etc. with friends and people I trust and admire. That brings me to a blog entry I read this morning that pointed me to an article in Poets & Writers called, “Ways to Create Community Post-MFA.” The first suggestion is to “Start a Salon.” I’ve often joked to my husband that I’d like to start a salon à la Gertrude Stein in Paris, and that all the community hipsters, writers, and artists could come hang at our house at all hours of the night and day. Now that I’ve moved away from my writing community in Florida, I may try to do or find something like this.