also

blogging isn’t an assignment, except to myself.  Yesterday when I met with Wideman we were talking about why I wanted to write the long thing I’m writing (speaking of which, I think from now on I’ll just refer to it as “my long thing” which is vague enough that I don’t have to expect anything in particular from it, but also establishes that it has to be long, whatever that means).  I think that my long thing deals with some stuff that has been in me for a while and I’m trying to flesh out.  Which is nice but also heavy.  So maybe blogging/writing short fiction will be fun and sunny and snappy and firey help balance out the long thing, which is wet and quiety and heavy and down. So that’s the plan, for now.

i feel like blogging because

I was reading someone else’s blog and it was great.  It made me feel like, hey, this guy is a writer.  And like  Wideman says in class, if you’re not writing, you can’t call yourself a writer.  So if you are writing then you must be a writer.  Today I am blogging and editing my fiction, so today I am a writer.

 

This is something I thought I should write about:

We got to the town and it was all dark.  Not dark outside, because outside it was still light, maybe somewhere late in the 4 o’clock hour.  Getting darker though.  But the stores were all dark inside because the entire town had a power outage.

When I write the word “outage,” it feels like an alien word.  Ow-taaj.  Outgae.  Outige.  Out.

This is a story that I feel could be a radio drama (maybe because I have been listening to radio on NPR and This American Life and Transom and WNYC).  It would be in installments, maybe nightly, because there isn’t quite enough suspense to sustain a weekly audience, meaning people wouldn’t remember and care enough to tune in a whole week later, but maybe they would tune in a night later.

So it continues:

We drove down the street and everything was dark, everything inside.  The end of the street came too soon so we turned back and did it again, and again again.  There were people around but they were quiet; the whole thing was quiet.  If I could go back, I would say, we drove into this town and it was quiet.  But since it was quiet because it was dark, it’s better to just picture the dark.

When the power goes out, phones stop working, and traffic lights stop working, though there weren’t any in this town.  There was a candy shop, and a visitor’s bureay, and some store called LINDSAY’S which we wanted to photograph, but later.  We’ll come back later, tomorrow morning maybe, we said.  We don’t feel like getting out of the car now.  But we were gone from that town in less than three hours, so we never made it to the later time for taking a picture, and now all I have from that town is what my brain remembers, which is not all that good.

This has been a broadcast of babbs radio, and i’m your host, LJ.  Tune in tomorrow night for the second installment of this modern horror.

side note: I feel better thinking that this is a journal, and nobody is reading it.  But I also want people to read it.  But I’m pretty sure almost nobody is reading it, so that’s good, but then once I write more then that will maybe feel not good, and I will want people to read it.  So just keep doing what you’re doing, i guess.

whatever happened to february?

Whoops.  Guess I blew it on that one.  It’s this thing with the pressure of writing (self-inflicted pressure of course) that makes me not do it.  But also– maybe the fact that I didn’t write in Feb is indicative of the fact that I was enjoying LIFE! I think there was this period of time surrounding the long weekend that pretty much every day was great.  At first it was just the long weekend, but then the good days just kept coming and coming.  That hasn’t happened in a long time.

Last night I went to a faculty fellows event with this NY Times correspondent on India.  Most of the students there were Indian or really interested in India, but I was interested in the writer as a writer.  We chatted a bit and he shared some interesting advice.  Someone asked him how he got his job, and he said that most people go about it with the wrong mindset, trying to have a competitive resume and all that.  But with writing, it is a skill, and the best thing you can do is improve your craft.  You can practice all the time– by remembering details, or being able to write 800 words really quickly, or knowing how to ask the right questions.  He gave me a little assignment– while we were at Professor Foley’s house, I was supposed to pick out two details and describe them to him before I left, because details are important, and as I am learning in my Creative Nonfiction class with Lauren Sarat, you can use details as a lens through which to view the bigger story.  The reporter dude said that he trains himself to notice details, so that years later if he was writing about this house, he would still be able to remember what color the walls were.

The things I noticed:

1. The arrangement of the chairs in the sitting room.  Folded/temporary chairs were arranged in little conversation clusters of two or three chairs, all angled in towards the middle couches and benches, so that there were layers of discussions surrounding the center.
2. The woman standing in the corner of the dining room, at attention in her catering uniform.  She didn’t speak much, but when she did, her voice was low and thickly Rhode Islander.  I think she was a Brown Dining Services staff member, rather than hired help of the Foleys.  But she seemed strangely out of place, and yet not unexpected, in the corner of that room.

The journalist said that if all of us were to submit a 300 word writing sample to him, he would immediately be able to rank us in terms of our writing abilities.  That’s cool.  It makes me feel good that I am learning something tangible.  People often say to me that having solid writing skills will help me get a job, and I’m starting to believe it.  I thought everyone could write decently, but after working in various jobs and taking classes (even writing classes!) I’m learning that that’s not the case.

keeping track (and testing memory): part I

Recap of my trip to England and Scotland.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2009

I got on a plane at JFK to London.  For the first time, I was served wine on the plane.  At this point, I began to resent America’s drinking age.  When we landed in the morning, I paced up and down the aisles to try to get a view of the outside, the ocean, the sunrise, England.  No such luck—everyone seemed to be sleeping with the blinds half down, and the little windows in the emergency exits were only big enough to see an insignificant fraction of the sky.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2009

Landed and Jennie picked me up from the airport.  I hadn’t seen her in over four years!  We talked all the drive back to Aldershot, mostly about her life and our mutual experiences with Grandma and her worrying over us.  Also how we used to “torture” her when we were little…with water and things. Don’t worry, nothing she couldn’t handle 😉

In Aldershot I saw Barbara, and it was cold, and Jennie and I sat in her office and then walked to a little shop to get sandwiches for lunch.  They asked me if I wanted white or brown bread.  Apparently they don’t use the word “wheat” in the UK.  I helped Jennie look through cans in the garage, after being warned by several of her coworkers that I could not be alone in any buildings (lest I see a mouse and slip on some ice and injure myself, or that sort of thing) and Jennie was to be sure to show me the location of any and all fire exits.  The garage door seemed like a pretty good escape route in the event of a freak bread-pudding-meets-canned-peas fire accident.

We drove home and I saw Danny, he was so furry and I almost forgot he’s a poodle, because normally I think of poodles as sort of ugly in all their pampering, but Danny was fuzzy and full, how poodles are meant to be.  Jennie and I drove to town to pick up some Chinese food for dinner, and we had the first of our many dinners in front of the TV, watching British shows like “Eastenders” (a soap opera I unfortunately became invested in by the end of my stay) and “Deal or No Deal” (which I thought was stupid at first, then began to watch because the contestants were all dressed as elves in honor of Christmas, and then stopped watching after my favorite contestant, Sanjay, was off the show…he was very cute, or fit, as they say).  By the time I went to bed, I had been awake for over 24 hours, I think for the first time in my whole life.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2009

By the time I woke up, Hawkley and the surrounding villages, towns, and counties were smothered in snow.  It was beautiful.  We made it out to Tesco, after some ordeals with the cars (including Jennie having to stay home from work after sliding down the hill in her rental car), and did some food shopping.  I can’t decide whether I like Tesco or Publix better.  Both of them appeal to me in their simple packaging, and the aesthetics of the store.  Much less flashy than Safeway or Marks & Spencer or Piazza or even Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, both of which I love.  Shopping seems nice when foods are plain, in their packages, not trying to be more than what they are: Ground beef. Chicken breasts.  Biscuits.  Bananas.  Scones.  Yogurt.  Blocks of cheese.  Grapes.  Orange juice.  Cheerios.  These are things I like.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009

We went shopping in Portsmouth at a big mall, and it was so cold walking around between the shops.  You would think, being a somewhat cold and northern country, that the Brits would put their malls indoors… nope.  I think part of the mall may have had actual hallways, but mostly we traipsed around outdoors between shops that were well heated, but left their doors open (to invite shoppers in?  and simultaneously waste a ton of energy?).  I found some great jeans…at Gap of all places.  I can’t believe I traveled across an ocean just to shop at Gap.  We ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and then, after Jennie and Barbara agonized for a few hours about what to get their friends for Christmas, we went home to the cold and dark and snow.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2009

This was the first night I went to the Hawkley pub.  I think Jennie was out sleeping over at James’ house, so Barbara and I went for a drink or two.  I tried cider at Jennie’s suggestion, expecting it to be some kind of warm alcoholic apple cider.  In fact, it ended up being more like beer.  It wasn’t until later, in Glasgow with Eleanor, that I discovered Kopperberg’s fruit cider, which is delicious.

The pub was magically warm, with its little fireplaces, honey-colored walls, low wooden tables and arm chairs.  We sat at the bar and admired the Moose head (which apparently usually has a joint in its mouth) and Bob, a man who Jennie thinks Barbara should date.  It was nice, being able to order a drink and watch people hang out, without any feelings of age-based status.  It was an old person’s pub, it was a young person’s pub, it was a village pub where everyone seemed to be welcome and everyone was willing to be friends.  Or at least that’s how it seemed to me, not being a townie myself.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2009

Jennie and Barbara went to work today, so I took Danny on a walk in the snow.  There was a footpath to the village center (I think it’s great how there are so many footpaths in the UK!) which we began down, until I realized there was a field of sheep to our left and I had better get Danny on a leash lest he agitate the sheep and end up shot by a worried farmer.  This took some chasing, but I got him on the leash and he pulled me, tripping over snow and his feet, to the end of the path, and then we walked down the road to the village center.  It didn’t take us long to explore the whole village:  a grassy “commons” the smaller than Barbara’s yard, a church (which I tried to go in, but it was locked), and the graveyard.  After a bit more of chasing Danny as other dogs walked by, I decided to keep him back on the leash until we had walked back around to the Hawkley inn (the pub) for a glass of wine by the fire.  Danny sat so nicely by my feet, and I read my book (The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin, recommended to me by my dad, which I was reading somewhat to my chagrin, and yet was determined to finish) until I was warm, and then we walked home.

It took Jennie and Barbara over three hours to get home from work that night.  I cooked cottage pie, and it was after eight by the time they got back for us to eat it.  The snow had been so bad that the roads were freezing, and the little English cars were inching along, getting stuck every which way, forcing some people to walk home or sit in their cars for hours, waiting for help.  This was the beginning of a record in cold and snow to rival the past thirty years, or as the news stations called it, The Big Freeze.

glued

I don’t like being so addicted to things: my computer (which I have been wanting when I am on the train, in a nice café, when I think of things I want to look up, when I have down time); music (which I want to listen to on the train, or all the time, so much that when I hear songs that I know, my body physically calms); money (which I feel guilty about spending, as if  I am wasting, being careless, but then I have to weigh the amount of care it would take to really save as much as I possibly could, and wonder if the worry of all that saving outweighs the niceness of being able to do and buy things within reason, or occasionally even not within reason); quiet (to just sit and do a mindless activity during which I am not obligated to start a conversation or chatter; I have recently been taking out my book as if to read, but often end up staring at the page and thinking, so I can have time and space and quiet to think without being asked if something is wrong or feeling obligated to speak.  One of the nicest things was when I was in St. Andrews on Wednesday and Nina went to study, leaving me to sit in her room and have some quiet time.  I sat on her bed with my cup of tea and stared out the window, thinking, processing, just being.  And then I felt better. Other activities are good for finding this kind of quiet: chopping vegetables, folding.)

Which is harder: doing something you don’t want to do, or not doing something you want to do?

Lately I think it’s the latter.  And I don’t mean not getting to do it, I mean purposely not letting yourself to do it.

I want to write down what I have done every day since I’ve been in the UK.  But every day I don’t write it, there’s another day to write and remember.  The train would be a good time to do this, but I won’t have a computer.  Reading is good, too, though.   But is there a point to remembering days?  The most important ones will get remembered, I think.  Or else the ones that get remembered will become the most important.

excerpts

from “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russel, 1932

Andy suggested I read this when we were talking about the importance of play.  The first quotation below stuck out to me because it really does make our industrialised society seem a bit insane, and makes me dream of working only four-hour days and then having time each day to write, or dance, or hike, or even sleep a normal amount.  At pretty much every job I’ve had, there have been people who don’t work hard at all, or spend a lot of their work day in idleness but still have to show up.  I would rather work hard for four or six hours, than lounge around and do bits of work for eight or more hours a day.

“Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?”

This next quotation makes me feel better about how much money I’ve spent in traveling.  I have been working for the past three months, and school year, and two summers.  Therefore, it must be okay for me to spend the money I’ve earned on leisure.

“The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the food they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad.”

a writer I’ve never read

Jane Austen.  Her books are classics.  There are only six, I think, but they are internationally known and make the English very proud.  Today Barbara and I went to Chawton to visit the house where she did the bulk of her writing (and revising), and I learned that her first books were published under the name “A Lady” and then “by the same author as Sense and Sensibility.”  Those Brits sure are proud of someone they initially tried to supress.  I suppose it was the early 1800s, after all.

They have a writer in residence at her house, and you can do workshops there (unfortunately none this month or the next, which I was bummed about).  She has a blog, too.

The thing that most surprised me about the house was the tiny table that she supposedly wrote at– smaler than an end table, a little low circular table you’d probably put a small lamp on, or a vase of flowers.

Jane Austen's writing table

When I write, I like to be spread out.  It’s hard to imagine being productive at such a small table.  Or without having access to a computer where you can store word documents with pages and pages of notes, or thoughts, and internet where you can look up pretty much anything about anything, any time you need to.  That might be an interesting exercise to do, having to write a complete work just sitting at one table.  I guess that’s how she acheieved her supposedly incredible imagery and attention to detail– she wrote about what she knew, and she knew it very well.

starts, finishes

While watching videos that Benny and Tori and Kim took at MMR, I started thinking about how my two summers there have sort of blended together, and how if I go again it will be distinct because it will not be a consecutive year, and this summer I won’t be going.  Then I realized it’s only winter and not next summer yet (although I’ve already decided that I’m not going back to MMR in 2010) and I have this completely distorted sense of time from not being in school for 7 months (and one more to go!) I guess I’m nearing the end of my self-proclaimed 8 month adventure.

What I can appreciate now about school is the structure of time it provides my life.  Now, time has floated and sped and drifted and shuffled by, randomly at times, and here I am, in December, Christmas, not recovering from finals, for the first time in years.  Which is nice.  But there’s something to be said for school, as it does give me something to constantly look forwards to, like the end of the semester, or graduation– there’s always a goal, and then a chance to start again (never completely, but at least in some way).  And there really isn’t much of that in adult life.  At HSC time just progressed, and the end in sight was December 11, the last day of my internship there.  But for those staff who were really adults and there for an indefinite amount of time, there was no end in sight, no completion to most projects they worked on, no boundaries really.  Not that they had nothing to work towards, because they did (the next newsletter, study circle, Changemaker conference), but adult life just seems so damn CONTINUOUS.

What is there to work towards? Saving for a vacation, or buying a house, or having kids.  But there seems to be so little time for personal journeys towards more skills or knowledge or understanding.  It’s just life, not school, or summer, or classes, or an internship.  That scares me.  I like things to look forwards to, boundaries, knowing that there is an end, or something big is coming to change the way things are.  I like working towards final papers, or dance performances, or finishing a story.  And I can do these things later, if I do write, and continue to dance (which I hope I will!) but it will be just me, not me and 6,000 other people also working towards the end of the semester.  Which is why, I guess, it will be nice to be with other people whose stuff becomes my stuff too, so I can be there when they get promoted, or move to my city, or have a shitty day, or have their own performances and things published and accomplishments.  Basically, I like community– this, I knew already.  I guess I just kind of remembered it tonight.  But I’m also realizing that being in a community allows for much more individual satisfaction too.  The whole benefits the individual, completes her.

reflections, (re)solutions

I was reflecting on the year, thinking about resolutions and all, since it’s almost time for that.  Not that I ever make resolutions really.  I was in Miami and listening to Reba who was a guest on 99.9 Kiss Country, and she said that this year her resolution was to not make a resolution, since she never really kept hers anyway.  Except one time, when she decided to take a picture every day.  And she did it til March, and still has all the pictures, but has never looked at them or shared them so what was the point, she thought.  The radio host said he’s like to see them and put them up on the Kiss Country website.

I know it’s Christmas Eve and not New Years, but I was thinking about things that happened this year, and thought it was much better to count up new things that happened this year rather than make (re)solutions for next year.

For instance, every Christmas Eve, my dad, whether he liked it or not, read me Twas the Night Before Christmas before I went to bed.  That won’t happen this year.  This will be the first year my family didn’t get a tree (no matter how last minute it is) and decorate it with the same ornaments and candy canes, and put up our other weird little decorations like the tissue paper wreath I made in some daycare or preschool class, and the handprint wreath on a piece of potato sack that we sometimes hang on a door.  This year I also didn’t get the opportunity to sneakily hang bells on doors of my house until my mom noticed and took them down.  There will be no shopping trips with my dad to the Clinique counter at Nordstrom to buy my mom makeup, and no stockings full of maple santas and little notebooks and nice things.  I didn’t get to light Chanukah candles with my mom and exchange small presents each night, and have Carolyn and Sara over to make latkes.  I missed out on Carolyn’s Christmas cookies, and getting to drive around in the Volvo to deliver them all around.  And I didn’t get to walk down 28th avenue to see the lights by St. Greg’s.

That said, I did a bunch of new things this Christmas.  I just got back from a Christmas Eve party at Barbara and Jennie’s friends’ house, and I’ve been shopping with them a couple of times.  I tried some sort of British food… something with bread pudding and beef in a pastry, dunno what it was called.  And tomorrow we’re going to Step by Step to cook and eat with the residents there, which should be rowdy and fun.  I also got to go get a tree with Don and his family at a farm where there was a reindeer, pigs, some really ugly turkeys, and a really cute puppy that Jennie wanted to steal and take home.  And I’ve eaten some delicious Christmas biscuits and chocolates which is always good.  The UK really has us topped on good sweets.  And in Florida I lit candles with my Grandma (for the first time I can remember) and we made latkes which were delish.  These are probably not new lasting traditions for me, but it is nice to see how other people celebrate holidays.

I have done lots of new things this year.  I went to Canada the first time, when a bunch of us went to Montreal and Bonnie came along and we had a fun time President’s day weekend going to bars and seeing Ben Gold’s friend at McGill.  And of course, the Biodome was amazing.  And on the drive back, me, Pank, Isabel, and Bonnie all walked across frozen lake Champlain in Burlington, and Pank fell in the ice a bit and cut her hand.

I also started playing Ultimate this year, which meant learning a whole new sport when the last time I had played a sport was probably softball in 6th grade.  I had a great time roughin it on Jibba Jabba, playing savage and learning the game.  Then I got to play on STD at UM which was a ton of fun!

This year I got to spend more time with family than I have maybe since I lived in New York, what with seeing my Grandma and TomSharon&Nina in Florida, then being with Barbara and Jennie here.  And I saw Grandpa Frank and Grandma Ginger for Thanksgiving, and all my third cousins and mom and Grandma’s cousins at Gordon’s wedding in Ogunquit in early September.

I learned how to drive a boat at camp…I spent last New Year in San Francisco with my friends…I learned how to cook a lot of new things…I had my first internship/office job…I drove a big white van, which was my first care (not that I owned it, but I did drive it every day)…I stayed up for over 24 hours (when I flew to England)…I navigated the subway system in NY…I saw Common and The Wailers in Miami…I tried Cuban food, Haitian food, ceviche, roe, proscuitto, and became a non-vegetarian once more…I became a lifeguard…and a safewalker…and took a linguistics class…performed at the Black Rep in downtown Prov…drummed in a play…went to New Orleans twice…swam in the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Tahoe…made a pumpkin pie from scratch…learned Mande dance traditions and almost went to Mali…almost went to Israel…lead Primalfest (twice)…and a backpacking trip…developed an affinity for country and bluegrass…spent my spring break playing ultimate in Georgia and partaking in ridiculous traditions at a beach house in North Carolina…played a little guitar…started a blog.

That’s a whole lotta things, and those are mostly the tangible ones.  Maybe I’ll conquer the intangibles in another post, but it’s 11:24 and I have to go to bed before Santa gets here!

And to all a good night…

MAGNETIC or NOT?

In middle school, possibly in Ms. Ganim’s 7th grade Bio class, the one where we watched a video of a woman giving birth and Ms. Ganim couldn’t pronounce some word that we all made fun of her for, we watched an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy that has stuck with me to this day.  Please view below (youtube to the rescue!)

Woah– okay, while searching for an appropriate vid I happened upon a fantastic  drinking game all about Bill Nye the Science Guy!

Here’s the vid– the relevant section is from about 3:05-3:31

Wasn’t that great?  I sure thought so.

Anyway, the reason I thought of MAGNETIC or NOT? (although I do happen to think of it often for various reasons; it has obviously had a great impact on my life for at least 7 years) was because I found myself doing this thing in my head where I think about what I’m doing, and ask myself: PRODUCTIVE or NOT?  Sometimes I have trouble deciding the correct answer.  Sometimes I also have trouble convincing myself not to do this, because really, is it necessary for me to always be considering whether what I do is productive?

Well, let’s play the game.  Are the following activities PRODUCTIVE or NOT?

• tagging old photos on facebook (like, photos from high school)
• copy pasting guitar tabs from the internet into word documents and then manually re-spacing them when the spacing from the website isn’t retained properly
• finishing my book
• downloading free christmas music
• making shopping lists
• spending at least half an hour watching Bill Nye the Science Guy on youtube until I found the MAGNETIC or NOT episode

So… PRODUCTIVE or NOT? Only you can decide.