What goes for news these days

So apparently, now journalism = making incredibly painfully obvious statements and calling it news.

On page 2 of the Herald today:

“ABC Family’s new drama “The Secret Life of The American Teenager” (premiering tonight at 8pm) suggests sex is on the brain of the average adolescent.”

Wait, wait, wait… what? Teenagers are horny? They think about sex? NO WAY. No way. That’s… groundbreaking, that’s Pulitzer-worthy.

JEEESSUUUSSS FUUUUUUCKING CHRIIIIIIST! You might as well say, “A new study shows that life can often end in death.”

 

*Sigh*

Listening to: “Blue Ridge Mountains” - Fleet Foxes

Apparently, Into the Wild has spurred a rash of pilgrimages out to the spot where Christopher McCandless met his end, in an abandoned bus along the Stampede Road in south central Alaska. I can’t say I’m surprised. If I go to Alaska–which I hope to sometime in the next few years, if and when I can cobble together enough cash–I’d probably also be tempted to make the trek.

But it’s sad. People setting off into the wilderness not in search of nature or of themselves, but in search of a grave? A monument? The Stampede Road becoming, well, stampeded by tourists?

But here’s the worst:

“Even tourists without plans to see the bus can still view a piece of the saga. Excursion businesses in Denali National Park and Preserve are offering popular off-road McCandless tours that take visitors partway along the muddy, rutted Stampede trail. Some people are disappointed that the scenery is flatter than the flashy snow-covered peaks shown in the movie, only to discover those scenes were filmed closer to the tiny town of Cantwell about 40 miles to the south.”

Do your research before you strap on the ol’ rucksack, kids; it’s a fic-ed up adaptation, not a documentary. And also, seriously, “McCandless tours”? If Chris were around today, what would he think of that? So much for a aescetic’s quest, away from all that is commercial to find the heart of things.

One more thing about this article:

“They envisioned hordes of copycats making dangerous pilgrimages for a character portrayed as a spiritual visionary rather than an ill-prepared misfit, as many Alaskans view McCandless.”

See, why does it have to be either-or? Why can’t it be both? McCandless was both a spiritual visionary and an ill-prepared misfit. I’m sure in his day, people were calling Siddhartha Gautama a freakin’ idiot, too. (Not that I’m say McCandless was the next Buddha).

Argh.

Alright, thus endeth the rant. I could use a trip into the wastes myself at the moment. Instead, I’m going to New York next weekend. Practically the same thing, right?

…………

“My brother where do you intend to go tonight?
I heard that you missed your connecting flight,
to the Blue Ridge Mountains, over near Tennessee.

You’re ever welcome with me any time you like,
Let’s drive to the country side, leave behind some green-eyed look-a-likes,
So no one gets worried, no.
So no one gets worried, no..”

 

Marjane Satrapi = my new hero

Listening to: “Drops in the River” - Fleet Foxes

I just finished reading the two Persepolis books, Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel about growing up in Iran and Vienna. They’re incredible–informative, funny, true, beautifully drawn. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but that’s next.

I learned so much about Iran (in large part because prior to reading it, I knew fuck-all about Iran). It’s amazing how we’ve been conditioned to think of other countries, particularly Middle Eastern countries, as these massive blocks of population with goals concurrent with those of their governments. I didn’t even know that Iran wasn’t culturally Arab. I suppose if Cheney and co. had their druthers, we’d all think that Iraq and Iran were the same country. Probably a lot of people do.

I found this Salon interview with Satrapi, from 2005. She has some really amazing things to say about Iran, America, religious fundamentalism, sexual liberation, women’s rights, government, life… She says that in Iran–unlike in conservative America–sex, divorce, and abortions aren’t considered sins. I could go on, but it’s better if you just read the interview. Some things that stood out for me:

On religious fundamentalist governments: They are the same! The secular people, we have no country. We the people — all the secular people who are looking for freedom — we have to keep together. We are international, as they [the fanatics of all religions] are international.

On coping with the Islamic revolution: Suddenly there’s this really big change and nobody was expecting it. Talking and laughing was the only way to survive. Either we had to laugh or we had to die.

On how fear has changed us: First, people have stopped talking about pleasure. Eating is a pleasure, but they will tell you if you eat you’re going to get high cholesterol. If you make love, you’re going to get AIDS. If you smoke, you’re going to get cancer. But smoking is a pleasure — I’m a smoker, I can testify. Eating is a pleasure. Making love is a pleasure. OK, it’s a risk sometimes.

The fact is, the world is very fearful, because we don’t know who the enemy is. The world is at war, but at war against who? Bin Laden turns into Saddam and Saddam turns into someone else. They all the time talk about security. Security, security, security. But when you talk about security, then everything is about being safe. And being safe also means having less freedom.

It makes a society much more conservative, looking for security. If you have freedom, then you have more risks. It goes together. Myself, I prefer to take some risks, and once in a while it’s going to hurt. My grandmother always said the saddest life is to be born a cow and to die a donkey. That means you are born stupid, and you’re going to die even more stupid.

In your life you have to experience things; you have to see things. What is the interest of life if you’re always scared and you don’t see anyone and don’t go anywhere? What is the point in living? Just eating and shitting and making money?

On democracy: Democracy, contrary to what they try to tell us, it’s not a paper that you hang on the wall and then you have a democracy. Democracy is a social evolution. It is something cultural. Iranians, they have become much more secular, and they are ready for democracy, but they have to fight themselves for democracy, and the only thing that other countries can do is to understand their fight and help them in their fight.

On the US: For the people who think that America will come and liberate them, I invite them to read the history and see what America has done. I’m not talking about American people. I’m in love with American people. I love going to the United States of America. I’ve been for several book tours; I’ve come for vacation with my husband. For me it’s an amazing country. I love the enthusiasm of Americans … I love the pop art, I love the American cinema, there are so many things that I love about America! I love Coca-Cola, you know?

My criticism is not towards America — it’s towards the American government, which to me are two different things. The America that I know is not represented by George W. Bush.

On combatting fundamentalism: If I have any advice, it’s that every day that you wake up, don’t say, “This is normal.” Every day, wake up with this idea that you have to defend your freedom. Nobody has the right to take from women the right to abortion, nobody has the right to take from homosexuals the right to be homosexual, nobody has the right to stop people laughing, to stop people thinking, to stop people talking.

If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me.

 

Masked balls of the imagination

Listening to: “Cliquot” - Beirut

Hello, ol’ bloggy ol’ blog ol’ bloggy. Noogies! Flecasfksf;lh. I’m tired and hungover–too tired to sleep, and should not be trusted with a keyboard in such a state. But yar, maties, what be this thing on which I’m typing?

Lessee. it’s been awhile, I suppose, partly because the last few weeks I’ve been trying to do some actual writing. Working on a new story, the direction of which changes with the wind. Maybe it’d help if I gave the characters names. I’ve got a title though–”The Price of Rootlessness.” (from a line in Angels in America: “The price of rootlessness, motion sickness. Only cure: Keep moving.“) It started in one of those sudden, feverish, questionable flurries of writing. This one came upon me riding the T back home from a particularly bland thingee thing I had to see for work.

That churned out two pages-ish, and I’ve been taking notes on it since. I tried to write another scene and, rereading it all, I began to worry that I had fallen prey to what Flaubert called in one of his letters, “these masked balls of the imagination, from which one returns with death in the heart, exhausted, having seen nothing but falsity and uttered nothing but nonsense.“

Anyway, we’ll see how it turns out. I’m tempted to yet again strike off in the magical realist direction that I love so well, but that is probably best left in the hands of the masters.

But like my ol’ editor told me today at a barbeque, if you’re too hard on yourself, you’ll cancel it out before it starts. And anyway, Flaubert spent his whole life beating the shit out of himself over his writing, seeking detachment and perfection. Maybe not the best role model for me.

Between reading Persepolis and Watchmen recently, I’m really starting to think about writing something in graphic novel form. Such a cool medium. If only my drawing muscles weren’t all outta practice. Must stretch. Also, reading a book about the myths of the world I got off the dollar rack at the Brookline Booksmith. The Icelandic myths are the tits. A one-eyed king of the gods? A queen of the underworld who’s half-woman, half-corpse? And best of all, Ragnarok, a swords-n-blood apocalypse that makes every other apocalypse look totally lame? Tits.

What else, what else… went camping two weekends ago in the Mahoosucs with a friend and the dog. Disaster ensued when we followed what we thought was a path, but turned out to be a boundary line that led us through dense underbrush up a mountainside in the dark. Had to set up camp where we could, the wind howling off the fucking summit all night. We made it out alive, though, albeit coated in scrapes and mosquito bites, and even a tick or three. Tucker took it like a trooper. It was an adventure, I’ll give it that. And it was beautiful out there. Here’s Tuck at Dryad Falls, contemplating the view of the Whites to the south:

But get this, get this: the mountain was called… Mount Success! Oh, thou soul-crushing irony, take my soul for the crushing!

It’s funny how you can crave wilderness, but the second you’re up on a mountain in the dark with no place to make a fire, all you want is to land smack-dab in the middle of Times Square. Deep in our primordial scared-ass caveman guts, we just want light and warmth, I suppose. And maybe a mammoth-beatin’ stick. Take that, mammoth!

 

Several items

Listening to: “Death Car” - Wheat

Item 1: In which I am (sloshedly) walking my dog circa 2:30am, and I overhear band of (fucking wasted) BU kids behind me:

Chick: Is that a raccoon?
Dude: What, that dog?
Chick: No the… isn’t that a raccoon?
Dude: No, that’s a dog.
Chick: Oh. [beat] It looks like a raccoon.*

Item 2: In which my dog takes an inordinately long time to scope out a shittin’ spot, and I watch no less than three cockroaches rush between my feet in the direction of my apartment building.

Item 3: In which I light up a cigarette and think on the bright side–more material for my hypothetical comic strip about Allston.

Item 4: In which sleep eludes me, as always. Happy June!

* Tucker does not look remotely like a raccoon.

 

The Galaxie Twelve

Listening to: “Music is My Boyfriend” - The Hidden Cameras

I’m in love. With a typewriter. I found it in its case on street a few months back, right before a snowstorm. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed, except Tucker went up to sniff it. Having thus saved it from snow and dog piss, I brought it back to my apartment to have a better look.

I’ve always wanted a typewriter–not any of that electronic shit, but an honest fucking manual typewriter. Something to do with tactility and labor, and how these are good things. Typing on a computer is light, easy, fast to erase, potentially negligible. Typewriters are loud and heavy and permanent. You must press down each key to make a letter stick, and once it’s there, it can’t be unstuck. You can white it out, sure, but you’ll know the change had been made.

I still have some silly, bygone idea of old journalism, or what I pictured it to be–a newsroom deafening with the sound of punching keys and dialing phones, the smell of ink, sweat, and whiskey, a cloud of cigarette smoke rising up to a pressed-tin ceiling. I blame my old editor and His Girl Friday for this shamelessly romanticized image.

Anyway, I digress. The typewriter I found turned out to be a Smith-Corona Galaxie Twelve–a name that, for some reason, is totally beautiful. It’s from the late ’60s/early ’70s, from what the interwebs tell me. Tan and brown, with gorgeous knobs and springs and metal bits and plastic bits–an honest-to-god machine.

It’s been sitting next to the front door for awhile cause I kept getting sidetracked, but today I ordered ribbons for it. I found where the ribbons go, too. I was pushing and pulling at the Galaxie, trying to figure it out, when I pulled the top and it smoothly unfolded on metal stilts to reveal the two ribbon spots. That’s when I really fell head-over-heels.

I know, I know, I’m just another mid-twenties hipster chick who thinks vintage stuff is the shizz. Judge away, mon freres.

 

They haven’t yet invented a nasty enough word…

…to describe what I think of the NeoCons.

John McCain’s latest (clairvoyant!) pronouncement:

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom,’’ Mr. McCain said at the Columbus Convention Center. “The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.’’ The United States, Mr. McCain added, “maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.’’

Wow, that’s great, John. And by 2013, I shall have a pony-monkey-Care Bear hybrid who plays the piccolo, shits marijuana, and cleans my apartment for me.

 

for such Great Voyages

Listening to: “Place to Be” - Nick Drake

So I know I ought to be writing about my Great California Adventure–getting skewered in the foot by a stingray and hobbling on crutches up and down the Pacific Coast, etc.–but instead I’m going to write about what’s on my mind at the moment.

I don’t know where to start on this, or what exactly I’m talking about. But I’m thinking of two people, people who were about my age, who have died in the past twenty years–Christopher McCandless and Rachel Corrie. I’ve talked about Corrie before in this blog. I’ve more recently learned about McCandless, after watching Into the Wild and then doing some research on my own.

There are several reasons I think of Corrie and McCandless on a similar level. First of all, I was introduced to both stories via artistic renderings–Corrie via My Name is Rachel Corrie, McCandless via Sean Penn’s film (I’m going to have to read Krakauer’s book next). Secondly, both stories really haunt me. Both Corrie and McCandless had the nerve to go off and do things on their own, against all advice–things that I myself would love to have the time, the funds, and the bravery to do.

Both, too, died tragic, improbable, and wholly avoidable deaths–Corrie in 2003 at 23 in Gaza, crushed by an Israeli bulldozer, McCandless in 1992 at 24 in the Alaskan wilderness, of starvation. Both have had cults built around them, in equal measure with people who fervently hate them. Both went into their chosen situations half-cocked: Corrie to Gaza with little prior knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, McCandless to Alaska with no prior experience in the far northern wilderness and fewer necessary supplies. Both willfully revolted against their upper-middle-class upbringings. Both loved reading and writing. Both, it seemed, had an undeniable zest for life.

With all these things in common, there’s one thing that makes Corrie and McCandless polar opposites. Corrie saw what was wrong with society and chose to dive in and fix what she could, to surround herself with people, to foster communities. McCandless saw what was wrong with society and chose to abandon it, to forsake friends, family, community and live completely on his own. Both ran–from Washington to Gaza, from Virginia to Alaska–but Corrie ran into new arms and McCandless ran into empty space.

Which is the better path? Both tempt me.

And in the end, both have come to stand for something larger than intended. Neither set out to be martyrs–both had a future in mind, never intended to die. But both ended up that way. They’ve each come to stand for something larger than themselves. They’ve each been lionized and demonized–words like brave, smart, strong, stupid, foolish, inexperienced–it’s all… I mean… what can you say about a person who died pursuing the path he/she chose, other than, it ended? Judgment doesn’t help. It never does. (Sayeth the girl who gets paid to judge other people’s artistic endeavors.)

What I’m saying is: we live in a time when frontiers, so they tell us, are few. Even the abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilds has become a tourist attraction ever since McCandless died there 16 years ago. Even as Kushner’s rabbi says of the dead immigrant woman in the opening scene of Millennium Approaches: “You can never make that crossing she made, for such Great Voyages in this world do not any more exist.” He even capitalizes “Great Voyages.” That line always makes me want to cry.

But what Corrie and McCandless prove is that yes, you can. You can be brave, you can leave it all behind, you can find something new under the sun. The rules are laid out, the path is well-trod and ready for you to follow, but you don’t have to. You don’t have to. You don’t have to. There might be a lot wrong with America, but we can still choose what we want our lives to be. It’s getting harder, when so much around us is standing at the ready to choose for us. The frontiers may be shrinking on this Earth, but they’re not gone. Not just yet.

And maybe they were naive; maybe people can tell them they didn’t have the right to do what they did. But they did anyway. And they didn’t wait till they were old, till things were settled, till they knew which way was up. They thrust out in the full thick of youth and confusion and unanswered questions. They sought the answers in new places. They dared.

Is it fair to think of Corrie and McCandless in the same discussion? Who knows. Have I oversimplified? Definitely. I just had to get this down.

 

Sharks!

You know when’s the best time to go to San Diego? The day after a shark attack. No, I’m serious. It’ll clear the beaches right out.

Man, my flight’s in 6 hours and I haven’t packed or slept. I’m smart.

 

The Atlantic

Crane Beach in Ipswich, to be precise.

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

~ e.e. cummings

………..

Next week: The Pacific!