We are what we walk between

Listening to: “Skullcrusher Mountain” – Jonathan Coulton

So I’ve been diving whole-hog into this Infinite Summer thing. Have you heard of it, blogs? Basically it’s a summer-long, communal reading of David Foster Wallace’s giant, giant book, Infinite Jest. I mean 981 huge pages, tiny lettering, plus 96 pages of endnotes, written in even tinier lettering. And it’s full of passages like this:

So on 1 April, Y.D.A.U., when the medical attache is (it is alleged) insufficiently deft with a Q-Tip on an ulcerated sinal necrosis and is subjected at just 1800h. to a fit of febrile thrusive pique from the florally imbalanced Minister of Home Entertainment, and is by high-volume fiat replaced at the royal bedside by the Prince’s personal physician, who’s summoned by beeper from the Hilton’s sauna….

I’ll stop there, because the sentence goes on for another half-page paragraph. You get the idea. It’s tough going. But in between all this jargony gobbledegook (which may be some people’s thing, but not mine) are wide swaths of real brilliance, and those are what it’s worth pressing on for. In any case, I know I’d never finish this book in my life if I wasn’t adhering to  Infinite Summer’s bi-weekly page count deadlines, with a whole interweb’s worth of blogs and tweets to bolster my reading.

 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I want to post more excerpts, because this book is just….wonderful. But here’s a couple:

Two adult unmentionables–both of them male–busied themselves feasting upon the flesh of the household staff. How two zombies could have killed a dozen servants, four maids, two cooks, and a steward was beyond Elizabeth’s comprehension, but she knew precisely how they had gotten in: The cellar door had been opened to let in the cool night air and relieve the oppression of the woodstoves.

“Well, I suppose we had ought to take all of their heads, lest they be born to darkness,” she said.

Mr. Bingley observed the desserts his poor servants had been attending to at the time of their demise–a delightful array of tarts, exotic fruits, and pies, sadly soiled by blood and brains, and thus unusable.

“I don’t suppose,” said Darcy, “That you would give me the honour of dispensing of this unhappy business alone. I should never forgive myself if your gown were soiled.”

“The honour is all yours, Mr. Darcy.”

Elizabeth thought she detected the slightest smile on his face. She watched as Darcy drew his blade and cut down the two zombies with savage yet dignified movements. He then made quick work of beheading the slaughtered staff, upon which Mr. Bingley politely vomited into his hands. There was no denying Darcy’s talents as a warrior.

“If only,” she thought, “His talents as a gentleman were equal.”

………………………………………………………………..

Elizabeth and Darcy merely looked at one another in awkward silence, until the latter reached both arms around her. She was frozen–”What does he mean to do?” she thought. But his intentions were respectable, for Darcy merely meant to retrieve his Brown Bess, which Elizabeth had affixed to her back during her walk. She remembered the lead ammunition in her pocket and offered it to him.

“Your balls, Mr. Darcy?”

He reached out and closed her hand around them, and offered, “They belong to you, Miss Bennett.”

 

And I don’t even own a Mastercard…

Thao & the Get Down Stay Down concert at T.T. the Bear’s: $10

Drinks at the Cellar: $19

Drunk guy trying to make out with my chin at Noir, leading to a near-bar fight: Priceless.

 

Work and eggs

Listening to: “Dance Dance Dance (live)” – Lykke Li & Bon Iver

FYI: For those readers (do I have readers? WHO CAN SAY) who are not content with my sporadic blog posts or would like their updates in frantic miniature form, I now have a Twitter account. Lord help us all.

I’ve spent most of this week interviewing theatery types for preview articles. I now know more about Spring Awakening (the play and the musical both) than I ever dreamt possible. I’ve been a little obsessed with the whole thing since I saw the musical on Broadway a few years back, so it was cool to actually get to talk it out. For those who live in Boston, there are two productions afoot: the Frank Wedekind 1891 original from Zeitgeist Stage Company at the BCA, and the touring Broadway musical at the Colonial. If Wedekind were pulled out of his grave today, I think he’d be laughing his ass off at how much play his oft-censored baby is getting in the Cradle of Puritanism. Chatting with musical lyricist/book writer Steven Sater yesterday, he had some pretty interesting stuff to say about the changes he made to the story. I guess amorality and musical theater don’t mix too good. Maybe one day they will.

Anyways, Blog, I’m tired of staring at my computer screen. I’ve been breaking up the time with egg parties, pub trivia, and concerts (Of Montreal tonight!) but my ass is starting to fuse to my desk chair. Enough. But you do what you gotta do, and I’m happy for the work.

Anyway, umm…WEBCOMIC!!

Hark! A Vagrant is for totes my new favorite time-waster. History is funny, fuckers.

 

Scribbly

Listening to: “All Tomorrow’s Parties” – The Velvet Underground

I was too lazy to scan it. I just took a picture of it with my computer camera thingy. (Face drawing style shamelessly cribbed from one of my fave webcomics, Girls With Slingshots).

What else, what else? Today my mom sent me a video of her trying to pull on a horse’s tongue. She keeps asking whoever’s behind the camera, “Did you get that?” And then the voice is like, “I dunno Gale, I can’t really see…”

…..

I saw the most exhalted Joss Whedon get a Humanism award last week at Harvard. It was awesome. He is my hero, and he was talking about constructive atheism. Double times awesome. He signed my comic book. I sputtered something at him. There was a giant fucking gold eagle in front of him, but that’s OK. He said lots of smart and funny things, including:

Faith in God is believing in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary.

And, on coming to grips with death:

When your time is up… y’know… worms are hungry. And they’re cute!

And on writing:

That’s why we write in the first place–to bring the darkest parts of ourselves up into the light.

He also said that if Buffy and River got in a fight, River would win. But I disagree.

…..

Also in life:

- This gives me some faith in humanity. Go robots go!

- How did I not know about this before, and why isn’t there a button for it on my keyboard? It would make virtual communication so much less awkward. Also, “Irony Mark” would probably make a good name for a douchey band.

- Tomorrow I shall go to the beach with the mutt, yes I shall. Because I will have mailed in my taxes, and it will be sunny, and the beach is open to dogs till the end of April.

- I started a Twitter account, against my better judgment. I’m not going to give you the link, Blog. It will only lead to heartache.

- Against all odds, ended up at a Holiday Inn Express in Waltham last Saturday night. What? (PS: the Holiday Inn Express porn channel is really funny. And no one in Waltham delivers pizza at 3am. I had almost forgotten that from college).

- Today I wrote two theater reviews and two restaurant blurbs. I am EXHAUSTEDface.

- I’ve had the uncanny urge to add -face to the end of random words. Bewareface.

 

You’re older now and you’re a clever swine

Listening to: “Rubber Ring” – The Smiths

The weather today (rainy, gray, not too cold) reminds me a lot of London in the winter. I was thinking of London today, how sort of aimless, cash-strapped, seeing lots of plays, drinking lots of beer, I was when I was living there–and it reminded me a lot of now. Oh, how life runs in loops.

Anyway, thinking of that time and that place, I ran across this video:

When I was there, I spent a whole lot of time just wandering the city, looking for weird little bits of historical shrapnel and back entrances to hidden places. The Shunt Vaults, which are mentioned in the video, is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. Trippy performance art and tequila shots in old wine cellars under the London Bridge. One of the things I really love about London is how much history is piled on top of other history, how many and old stories you can find just by ducking down a side street. It’s something I really want to poke into in World’s End, once I get up and cracking on that project again.

Blargh. Time to keep searching for gainful employment. Got an interview at Starbucks next week, yup yup.

Somehow this wasn’t where I pictured I’d be three years outta school. Oh, younger self, if you only knew.

…….

In case you haven’t heard, journalism is getting wicked dead. I’m torn between wanting the Globe to hang in there and wanting them to get scared so witless, they actually morph into a decent newspaper. Let’s not talk about possibility number 3 just yet…

 

Eh…?

Listening to: “Deep Red Bells” – Neko Case

I don’t know who these people are. The pissy one might be me. I drew it on the T.

Have you noticed that it’s stopped snowing? It completely slipped past me. Next stop: spring thaw for realz. In the garbage on Linden Street today, there was an honest-to-heck safe, like the kind you lock jewels in, that was a-sploded on top! Looks like a layer of concrete plus some other shit. Bank heists in Allston?

I’m really sleepy. I have work to do. So why am I in the Valley of the Blogs? Happy April!

 

Die Erwachsene

All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all its fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.

And she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play,
transfiguring and preparing for the future,
the first white veil descended, gliding softly

over her opened face, almost opaque there,
never to be lifted off again, and somehow
giving to all her questions just one answer:
In you, who were a child once–in you.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Writers get their hands dirty, run away weeping

If you make the decision to tough life out as a working writer, it’s pretty much a given that at some point or other, you’ll have to supplement your income. And that means part-time jobs, thankless jobs, mindless jobs, labor-intensive jobs. But you take your lumps, because hey, it’s all just fodder for your future novel/memoir.

Yours truly has worked her fair share of side gigs–waitress, office assistant, PR rep, lab study participant, etc.–for the sake of some extra income. And I’m planning to dive into the exciting world of food service again, very soon.

But apparently–and I’m totally stoked about this–there’s a universe out there where professional writers don’t have to do any jobs but writing. They’ve never had to lift a finger in their lives to do anything more strenuous than clack away on their laptops.

And if they do, well–well gosh, it’s just quaint, isn’t it?

Take it from this New York Times piece by Caitlin Kelly, a freelance writer who decided to pick up a part-time job (part-time as in once a freakin’ week) working as a salesperson at a clothing boutique–for funsies!

Sometimes I feel like Alice slipping through the looking glass, toggling between worlds. In one world, I interview C.E.O.’s, write articles for national publications and promote my nonfiction book. In the other, I clock in, sweep floors, endlessly fold sweaters and sort rows of jackets into size order. . .

The contrasts between my former full-time job and my current part-time one have been striking. I slip from a life of shared intellectual references and friends with Ivy graduate degrees into a land of workers who are often invisible and deemed low-status.

Congratulations, Caitlin. You just discovered that there are other people in the universe! People who aren’t journalists. And have crazy things like diversity and no college degrees. OMG!

 

birthday post!!

Listening to: “For Beginners” – M. Ward

A quarter of a century, people. This guy (points, Fonzi-like, at self) is OLD. I promised myself that by my birthday, I’d get a job, health insurance, and a haircut.

…. hey, one out of three ain’t bad, right?

At least it’s gorgeous as shit outside. (If shit were gorgeous). Maybe I’ll go to the beach or somethin’. Party the other night with buddies = amazing.

……

The first two things I saw this morning = this comic:

…and this poem by Matthew Rohrer, from a hand-printed zine I once picked up at The Strand for 48 cents:

Into the vessel, pour your great work.
Each of you is the universe, though occluded.
Expand hungrily into other people’s routines.
Open the door to protein.
Three purple trees and new groundcover in the wet woods.
Stand beside their occult murmurs.
Your friendship is the great work.