Random

Fluff: Adam Lambert's performance from last night's American Idol. He sang "Mad World," originally by Tears for Fears, but I was only familiar with it from the version (much like Adam's) in Donnie Darko.  

I'm listening to the Reds, waiting for Lost and Idol to come on.  

Thinking about motivation, or lack thereof, as I sit in my chair and be unproductive. That's better than being destructive. Inductive? Reductive? Constructive? Deconstructive? Reproductive?

Reds up 4-2 in the second. 

"For sale: baby shoes, never used."

The title is a six-word short story by Ernest Hemingway.

Writing a story a week is a much harder task than I anticipated. In a rare moment of extreme self-confidence, I assumed that once I sat down to write and really focus on characterization, dialogue, etc, that I would be able to flesh out my story idea into something worth reading. But then again, if it were easy, I would have done it months ago.

A.O. Scott wrote about the short story in a recent New York Times article, Brevity's Pull - In Praise of the American Short Story. He cited Raymond Carver (my literary namesake), Flannery O'Connor, and John Cheever as examples of excellent writers known for short stories, not novels. While the article seemed incomplete - he mentioned few female writers (where was Alice Munro? Jhumpa Lahiri? Joyce Carol Oates?) - it did have some interesting things to say the form's place in today's portable society:

The new, post-print literary media are certainly amenable to brevity. The blog post and the tweet may be ephemeral rather than lapidary, but the culture in which they thrive is fed by a craving for more narrative and a demand for pith. And just as the iPod has killed the album, so the Kindle might, in time, spur a revival of the short story. If you can buy a single song for a dollar, why wouldn’t you spend that much on a handy, compact package of character, incident and linguistic invention?

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate

The book I'm currently reading (and have been for a couple months - it isn't that long, but I wait until I'm in bed to start reading, and after 10 or so pages, I stop to sleep) takes place in two settings. The first is the near-future, a world devastated by a man-made virus that has rapidly spread to kill most of the population. The second is a city, neither heaven nor earth but somewhere in between. People go there after they have died and "crossed over," and they stay there only as long as someone on Earth still has memories of them. In other words, once everyone who knew you is gone, you move on from this in-between world.

Before the virus, most people would stay in the city for 30-70 years, depending on how old they were when they died. But once the virus started wiping out whole families and cities and countries, people might stay in the city for a month or a day. 

As someone who tends to picture herself as worm meat, post death, this is a very attractive idea, one that I can somewhat reconcile with my depressing notions of mortality. That is, we live on in the memories of those we leave behind, and those memories are what sustain us.

From Othello's soliloquy in Act 5, just before he stabs himself:

... I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well.

I get hung up on connections between things, whether they're real or perceived. Othello, here, is about to kill himself. He's just killed his wife and belatedly realized that his wife wasn't unfaithful. And he's worried about how he'll be spoken of, how he'll live on in the memories of others. This contrasts with Desdemona's acceptance of her fate. She knows that she is going to be unjustly killed. But still, in response to Emilia's question of who "hath done this deed," Desdemona says, 

Nobody; I myself. Farewell
Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell!

She dies believing that she'll go on to heaven. Enough Shakespeare for tonight.

Late night musing

The joy and pain of being a student (and a teenager, and a child) is that someone is telling you what to do. Write a paper by this date. Be home by this time. Don't stick your finger in the light socket.

My Advice Column

I read an internet article (can't find the link, sorry) that applied the rules from Meg Cabot's book, How to Be Popular, to the internet. The article defined popularity in terms of followers on a blog or twitter or anything else that is quantifiable. For blogs, the article suggested, write "how-to" posts. Give advice. That's what people want, and that's what makes people popular.

This is understandable. When I seek out blogs, it's for ones that give advice on teaching or language. I avoid ones like mine. If I want links to news articles, I'll visit Andrew Sullivan's blog at the Atlantic, The Daily Dish. If I want book recommendations, I'll visit Goodreads or Turning the Page. If I want petty complaints, I'll revisit my ninth-grade journal (except in a bout of sophomore paranoia, I locked it in a tackle box and lost the key, and forever it remains!)

I'm horrible at giving advice. I have strong opinions and ideas of what people should do and think, but I always picture myself in the other person's shoes and know that I refuse the advice of others to an unhealthy degree. 

But, for the sake of popularity and advice for advice's sake, here's one of my strong opinions (to borrow the language of Coetzee): Be the same to everyone. Be honest - not hurtful or, necessarily, blunt - to everyone. Be yourself. Working at the library, I hold this principle close. Treat everyone the same, whether they have no fine or owe $9.99 and have ten notes on their card. Similarly, don't say anything about anyone that you wouldn't say to their face. Easier said than done, but I promise, living each day with that idea in mind makes life better.

Happy birthday to my mom - 35, is it? ;)

Not quite Friday

My days feel especially long lately. Between my two jobs, I'm working much fewer scheduled hours. The time I spend planning, preparing, etc, has remained the same (or increased) but I haven't quite figured out how to arrange my time most efficiently. Sometimes I think that's a gift people have--the ability to be organized and neat and on schedule. But, more likely, I think that's just my excuse for laziness. "I can't control it, that's just the way I am, blah blah blah." And that bothers me, but not enough to really change: I haven't quite reached that critical point.

I still have my story idea sketched out. It's there, waiting for me to fill it in. But sleep shouts for me a little more loudly, and to Sleep I answer.

April fools

I was probably eight or nine years old, my brothers four and six.  We were living in a two-story house on a busy street. The yard was small and fenced in the front and back, but my mom took good care of it. She kept the lawn mowed and neat, and she always planted flowers. It wasn't uncommon for her to be digging around in the front yard.

She called my brothers and I out front - we were inside, probably watching TV. She held out a small, earring-sized box. Her voice soft and shaky, she said, "I found this."

She uncovered the box to reveal a human finger, covered in dirt. I remember one of my brothers being very disturbed, but I was fascinated. I asked questions like, "Whose was it?" and "Was it buried in the ground?"

I think that's when the finger moved and we all screamed.

"April Fools!" she said. She had poked a hole through the bottom of the box, stuck her finger through, and then filled it with dirt. It was very Cosby Show.

No good pranks, first-hand, today. I thought that Obama's Ipod gift to the Queen was an April Fool's day prank, but it wasn't. Click and Clack took over GM, but that was clearly a joke (and if it wasn't, cool!) 

Anyway, I decided that I would aim to write a story a week. Nothing to share, nothing to publish, but just a desire to keep up with it. They'll probably be bad, but that's ok. I've got #1 sketched out, woo hoo!