Archive for August 2009

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Six Reasons Why Modern Females May Prefer to Click on Robert Pattinson Rather than Marlon Brando.

August 11, 2009

The one person in my office who knows about my maternal interest in Robert Pattinson (see earlier post, “why my feelings for Robert Pattinson must be strictly maternal”) is mystified.

He can’t believe that anyone, including anyone of the female persuasion, is actually interested in Robert Pattinson.  He starts going on about Marlon Brando and Clark Gable.  They were men, he tells me, while Pattinson, like so many modern male movie stars he says, is just a grown-up boy.

I agree with him.  (See e.g. Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Leonardo DiCaprio.)

Though, of course, in Pattinson’s case, he still really is kind of a boy.

I also agree that as some of these “boys” i.e. Brad, Tom and Leonardo, age, they lose a lot of their appeal.  (Although I have to confess I never ever understood the appeal of a Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise.)

I blame it a lot on bone structure.   But my friend doesn’t listen to me.  He goes on and on and on about Marlon Brando.   Now there was someone, he says, for women to get excited about.

Having, by chance, recently revisited clips from both On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire , I have to admit that my mystified friend has a point.  The young Brando is physically beautiful.  Then there is his power, passion, intensity.   I follow his hooded eyes, especially in Streetcar, my own eyes sometimes becoming hooded because the movie is so very painful.

Still, there are reasons why some modern females may prefer to spend their down time clicking on images of Rob.   Here are a few of them:

Six Reasons Why Modern Females May Prefer to Click on  Robert Pattinson Rather than Marlon Brando

  1. He’s alive (putting all vampiric characterizations aside.)
  2. He has not yet put on over a hundred pounds or so, and then charged astronomical fees for very small parts.
  3. Yes, he is less threatening than Brando.  For one thing he’s British, seemingly middle-class.  It is hard to imagine someone with his accent and bearing slamming a woman against a mirror. (Although I guess there will be some female vampire slinging in the upcoming Eclipse movie, vampires don’t seem as vulnerable as Vivien Leigh.)Most modern females aren’t really comfortable with the idea of being slammed against a mirror, no matter how passion-filled and intriguingly sweat-soaked the slammer.
  4. He (RPatz) looks like a male model.  I do not believe that most modern females actually want to be involved with someone who looks like a male model; however, they like the idea of being desired, at least talked to in a friendly way, by someone who looks like a male model.  There’s simply that elusive quality:   when you look at Brando and Gable, you kind of know that they will end up with some woman, no matter what.  But you suspect that it will be a faintly blousy,  big-hearted woman.  (Sort of like Belle, the good hearted madam in Gone with the Wind.) Yes, there’s Eva Marie Saint, but there’s also Stella.But the modern boy-type actors with the fashion model faces somehow seem more unavailable than Clark or Marlon.  Perhaps because they have such a definite hint of narcissism in their features.  While any woman’s good sense should tell her to stay away from narcissists, many women just love a challenge.  (If you can capture the heart of a narcissist, then, you must be very special indeed.)

    The weird thing here is that Brando, off-stage, really was an egomaniac, whereas Pattinson, with his self-deprecating Britishness, makes his fans think that maybe, despite the face, he isn’t.

  5. The modern boy types, even scruffy, have a certain affluence.  (It’s probably the feeling that they could always make money modeling.)  Whereas Brando carries himself like someone who would immediately spend (or lose) any money he made.    (See e.g., It Happened One Night where Clark is a down and out reporter and Guys and Dolls where Marlon ends up working for the Salvation Army.)
  6. A lot of modern women (e.g. me) are deeply tired, and prefer, in their down time, relatively soothing fantasy to gut-wrenching intensity.  You actually have to sit and, wincing, watch Streetcar; i.e. it’s not a flick for the quick passing click.

Categories: Marlon Brando, Robert Pattinson, Uncategorized
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Poem for a Summer Night

August 10, 2009

This is a poem that I know wrote  as an exercise with my writing buddy, whom I’ll call Agnes.   I don’t remember the requirements of the exercise exactly as it’s an older poem.  I think we had to use verbs associated with butchers – “mince,” “debone,”” weigh,” “haggle,” (we had a list of these) in conjunction with a few random nouns– “leaf”,  “barefoot,” “moon.”

It’s a country poem, though I remembered it tonight, walking sticky city streets.

Summer Night

The frogs mince the night with
keening chants that haggle with the moon
for precedence: whether still, dead, light can outweigh
the cry of living tissue, deboning the memory
of barefoot afternoon in the black green
lurk, a leather  of
heavy leaf and humid longing.

(All rights reserved, as always.)

For something cool and blue, check out the link re 1 Mississippi, available on Amazon.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing exercises
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Nine Reasons Why I’m Glad I Won’t Be Free to Watch Tonight’s Teen Choice Awards

August 10, 2009
  1. Because I really do understand that my attachment to Robert Pattinson is bizarre and embarrassing and that it’s best not to feed it.
  2. Because I’m afraid that my bizarre and embarrassing attachment to Robert Pattinson won’t survive actual, meaning virtual, exposure to him.   (No offense, Rob.)
  3. Because it’s hard to imagine myself watching any show in which Brittney Spears may be receiving some kind of lifetime achievement award.  (No offense, Brittney.)
  4. Because I used to think of myself as a person who really liked Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Nadine Gordimer, James Joyce, Palestrina, Steve Reich….  (No offense, Charles, Virginia, Nadine, James, Pal, Steve.)
  5. Because I’m seeing a dear old friend instead who had Nureyev quality bone structure as a young man, and may, come to think of it, be part of the reason for my bizarre and embarrassing obsession, but most likely wouldn’t understand it.  (No offense, Rudy.)
  6. Because I won’t be able to stand listening to a lot of teenagers saying “phenomenal” no matter how good looking they are.  (No offense, teens.)
  7. Teen Choice Awards?  Who ever heard of the Teen Choice Awards?
  8. I don’t even watch the Oscars.
  9. Because if I continue with embarrassing bizarreness, I can always fast fast fast forward on youtube.

I’m sure there are many more reasons.  Apologies for those rooting for my better nature!

Categories: Robert Pattinson, Uncategorized

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Go Yankees! (Oops! Elephantoms!)

August 10, 2009
In honor of Yankee Sweep

In honor of Yankee Sweep

All rights reserved.
If you like elephants, check out link for 1 Mississippi.

Categories: Baseball, elephants, Uncategorized
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Blocking Writer’s Block – First Assignment – Sample “I remember”

August 9, 2009

In yesterday’s post, I suggested “I remember” as a writing exercise.  It’s a place where almost anyone can start writing any time.

I did my exercise in a beauty salon waiting for a hair cut.  I have to confess I cheated a little.  Because I knew I’d assigned it, I started the exercise in my head en route to the salon;  I also had to write down the last few sentences after they finished the haircut.  (They wouldn’t let me hold my notebook once the shampooing began.)

I did try not to erase or cross out when I wrote, or since this is an exercise, to edit, when I typed (though I did change names.)

Finally,  I didn’t intend to make the exercise itself about writing exercises and writing buddies, but because I was thinking about the blog, that’s what came to mind.  Which was fine.   The point of the exercise, if you try it, is to write about what you remember at the moment you sit down.  So here’s what I came up with 1:30 p.m., August 8, 2009.

“I remember”–

I remember when I first started these writing exercises.  It was years ago now;  I was invited into a group, a women’s group; I guess it was inherent back then that it was partly about writing, partly about “empowerment.”

There was Barbara with frizzy black hair and a dark green minivan; Helena who was Finnish, made documentary movies about anti-abortionists, and lived in a heavily subsidized mouth-watering West Village apartment right next to the Hudson.  (I never could figure out how she finagled that one.)  There was Evelyn who had long Auburn hair and a fey Pre-Raphaelite pout to her lips and who already, she told us later, borrowing sunblock, had had a melanoma removed.  There was Carrie, who I think was my original contact and who later came up to my house in the country one summer weekend with new husband in tow.  It was an unusually hot weekend and she insisted on dragging a mattress from the atticky bedroom I’d assigned them, down the stairwell and onto the screened porch that was just outside my window.  It’s an old house; it was an equally old mattress.  Mouse droppings littered the stairwell marking the path the mattress had lumped down.  The next day, still hot, she walked around most of the morning in a loose sweater with no underwear (pants either) making coffee for the new husband.  I’d recently gone through a wrenching separation from my own husband.  Suffice it to say, I never invited Carrie back again.

Then there was Agnes.  Agnes who was slender and small and upright in every sense of the word.  A dancer, an editor, a reader, a disciplined person, her back was straight at all times; her clothes trim and unwrinkled even if somehow vintage, her wavy hair pulled back, sometimes with tortoise shell combs which seemed in my mind to have the authority of reading glasses.

Helena, the one doing the documentaries about anti-abortionists, seemed to me to write about blood;  Evelyn, sex, Carrie, irritations, Barbara, the family life, Agnes, the physical and mental world, accreting images with great precision.  And me, probably pain at that point in my life (wrenching separation, remember?)

It was fun.  We usually met at Carrie’s or Helena’s since they’d managed the best apartments.  We ate chips, but since this was New York and either the West Village or the Upper West Side, they were special chips, like Blue chips (blue organic corn) or vegetable chips (sweet potato or taro), served with, you know, hummus.

Slowly, somehow, I don’t know how long it took–maybe Carrie’s bottomless weekend in the country precipitated it, it ended up being Barbara and Agnes and me.

We met at coffee shops, restaurants, choosing places for their lack of, or low, music;  their lack of, or slow, service; their lack of, or little interest in the fact that every few minutes we would each read aloud.

Barbara died a few years ago.

I remember her writing about braiding her daughters’ hair, the luck that her own was so curly (the girls were half African-American, she wasn’t), what that gave them in common.

I remember her writing about the slap of her feet in her Karate dojo.  There was a host of square shouldered men at her funeral—black belts, I thought.  The sweat that gathered in the crease inside her elbow. The joy of a kyaii.

I remember her writing about sex; her husband coming home too late, proffering her his cock.

You get to know your writing buddies very very well.

You know about the times they fought with their parents, their boyfriends in back seats, the times they lied to themselves and others, the times they told the truth.

I remember a last writing session.  I don’t know what we wrote about.  Barbara made mango-scented green tea.  She was drinking a lot of green tea those days though the cancer was irretrievably advanced.  She dragged equipment behind her around the apartment, black plastic sacking on wheels.  She’d always been someone with dimples.

Agnes and I still write together when we have time.

Categories: Uncategorized, writer's block, writing, writing exercises
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Blocking Writer’s Block – First Assignment

August 8, 2009

Since I’ve been writing so much about the value of writer’s exercises, I thought it might be interesting to actually give you one.

The rules are:

  1. Write for a pre-set time.  Ten minutes is a good start.  If you go over, fine, don’t go under.
  2. Don’t stop moving your pen, or stop typing.  If you are using a pen, use a good one, with flow.  If you are typing, try not to read too much as you go.
  3. Don’t cross out.  Don’t erase. Don’t backspace.  If you want to use a different word than the one you’ve just used, just write down the new word.  But keep going.  Don’t stop to judge or evaluate.
  4. Feel free to cheat a little if rules make you feel stuck.

(As noted previously, these rules are derived from Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones.)

The topic is “I remember“.  This is a nice topic for writers who are blocked, for writers who are not blocked but very tired, for people who don’t consider themselves writers but would simply like to write.   Hardly anyone can truly say that they can’t come up with something.

I will post mine tomorrow.

Check out 1 Mississippi, for people who don’t care so much about writing, but want to learn to count.   Link to the side.   On Amazon.

Categories: Uncategorized, writer's block, writing, writing exercises
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Blocking Writer’s Block – Part VI – Be Brave – Read Aloud

August 8, 2009

I want to begin with apologies for my last post to those who are not interested in Robert Pattinson’s struggle with paparazzi.  I find the subject fascinating – the part about the struggles with the paparazzi, that is — but I understand it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.  So let’s try blocking writer’s block again:

Rule No. 8   –  Be Brave.  Read Aloud.

If you’ve been following this blog at all, you may remember Blocking Writer’s Block Rule No. 3 –  Get a Friend.

By “friend,” I mean writing buddy, someone that you actually write with, meaning right next to, someone with whom you do writing exercises.  Your writing buddy may also be someone with whom you share finished, or nearly finished work, but the exercises I’m talking about are the ones that you do on the immediate spur of a new topic, the ones that you write for a set period of time (ten to twenty minutes usually) without stopping, erasing or crossing out.

The next step- after your set time for each exercise is finished –is for you and your buddy to read your exercises aloud.

To each other.

Right then and there.

(I’m not joking, and I want to take advantage of this break in the flow to give credit to Natalie Goldberg,  Writing Down the Bones, who originally popularized these types of writing processes.)

Yes, I know.  Reading aloud is a bit like taking off your clothes in a crowded room.  Only worse.  Because the crowd may be so busy, people may not even notice your nakedness.  Okay, they’ll probably notice.  But it’s a crowd, right?  There may be no one that you know, no one that you need ever see again

Your writing buddy is presumably a friend of sorts.  He/she is staring (i.e. listening) right next to you.  At/to just you.  You hope to know each other for a long time to come.

Plus, you’ve just done an exercise that absolutely proves how idiotic you are.

But here’s the trick of it.  Your writing buddy has to read aloud too.  You might even be able to make them read aloud first.  They too have written an exercise that exposes their idiocy.

When you each start removing the clothes… ahem… reading aloud, it’s a tremendous feeling—of freedom, exhilaration, acknowledgement, even if coupled with acute embarrassment.

I don’t know if it helps, but usually my writing buddy and I preface each reading aloud with some well-worn warning such as “this one is so stupid.”  Or “I don’t know where this came from.”  Or a simple heartfelt groan.  This type of introduction is not obligatory, but it does tend to clear the throat.

Natalie Goldberg sets a few ground rules for the listeners of read-aloud exercises.  These include a prohibition against evaluating the work—against saying anything akin to either “I really like that,” or “eeuww.”  In Natalie Goldberg’s workshops, she urges the listeners simply to echo the phrases that they remember from the piece, a practice which encourages closer listening, but also tends to emphasize what was most vivid about the writing.

That’s probably a good idea.  Even praise can be stultifying in the case of exercises;  soon you are distracted, writing your exercise for the praise, and frankly, you can’t always do a good one.  (Then, when you don’t, you feel horrible.)

But for me and my buddy, Natalie’s prohibitions are hard to follow.  We really don’t have the short-term memories anymore to repeat too many phrases  that we’ve just heard.   And we know each other too well not to guffaw, or say “wow” or “whoops!”  So we are usually quite free with our commentary.  This makes our writing time more fun.  I would warn you, however, that beginners at these exercises might want to be a bit more circumspect.

Still, the question of evaluations raises an important point.  One of the greatest things about reading an exercise aloud is that you are putting your work out into the world.  You are exposing your work in a very intimate way;  it’s not just your words you are putting out there, it’s also your voice.  It could hardly be more personal.

But what’s great, what might even make it possible, is that you’re only doing it for a minute or two.  You’re reading aloud, and then you are done.  No one’s taping you.  No one has your printed page to peruse.  You’ve put it out there, then grabbed it back.

Besides, it’s a DRAFT.  You did it in ten minutes, fifteen minutes.

It’s relatively easy under these circumstances to follow the first rule of blocking writer’s block which is simply not to care too much.

Nonetheless, they are your words, it is your voice, it does take courage.  So be brave—read aloud.

You’ll be very glad you did.

(To be continued with Rule No. 9– Don’t be too brave too soon!  Know your limits.)

Also, sometime soon, I’d like to write about the benefits of reading drafts aloud to yourself, and reading at public readings.  But that’s for the future.

For now, please check out the link for 1 Mississippi, my counting book for children who like elephants (and watercolors) on Amazon.  See the link above.

Categories: Uncategorized, writer's block, writing, writing exercises
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To Robert Pattinson Re Leaving New York and Fast Sporty Cars

August 7, 2009

Dear Rob,

It’s so boring here in New York now you’ve gone.

As an admirer whose feelings are strictly maternal (check out July post, why my feelings for Robert Pattinson must be strictly maternal), a part of me is happy for you.  Those paparazzi were such thugs.  The endless click of their cameras on all the youtube videos was like the sound of huge skittering cockroaches.  Their voices, calling out your name, sometimes lewd questions too, were crude, thick, loutish.  I got such satisfaction out of absolutely hating them on your behalf.

And I did feel truly sorry for you.  Seriously.  Maternally.  Which, I have to confess, was a great way to use up my downtime.

Besides all the photos.  Dozens of them every single day.  You in Washington Square, out on Long Island, Brooklyn, Central Park.  And though I think it’s more a tribute to your features than the talent of those bloodsucking (oops! Sorry!) paparazzi, an amazingly large number of them were pretty charming shots.

But now you’ve gone back to LA and the paparazzi just don’t seem to have the same access.  I guess that’s because it’s a place where you don’t walk or take cabs, but drive everywhere in fast, sporty cars.

Speaking of fast, sporty cars, you seem to have gotten yourself a new one. You apparently lost your old car (which I imagined as used and agreeably beaten up) because, in the chaos of your new fame, you forgot where you had parked it.  (This made me feel doubly maternal towards you–a misplaced car almost automatically raises maternal feelings of some kind.)

I have to confess, though, that there is something that bothers me about LA (besides the fast, sporty cars).  Maybe it’s the conspicuous wealth.  Or the ability to hide wealth.  Or the fact that wealth in LA can be conspicuous and hidden at once.  Meaning that people can both flaunt what they’ve got and also live in an enclave.

New York City certainly has its share of very wealthy people.  But here, at least, the rich and the poor have to walk the same sidewalks, and, in your case, get mobbed by the same crowds.  (Only yours are usually young female crowds.)

Maybe the saddest thing for me about knowing that you’re driving around LA in a fast, sporty car, is that it somehow destroys my already feeble fantasy that I could somehow, someday, write a book that you would be interested in, and somehow, someday, get you the manuscript, and somehow, someday, convince you to be in the movie based on that manuscript.

Yes, I know it was very silly.  People who know my work will point out that you don’t look anything like an elephant.  Still while you were here, walking behind several supposedly lax security guards, there seemed to be always the chance.

To see my counting book for children and elephants, check out the link for 1 Mississippi.

Categories: Robert Pattinson, Uncategorized, writing
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Blocking Writer’s Block – Sample “Block” Poem

August 6, 2009

In connection with my series about writer’s block, I thought it might be nice to post a poem that was the product of writing exercises.  I chose this poem, in part, because the topic actually was “block”.

It’s not a completely fair example.  As you may know from prior posts, two of the rules of the exercises are that you don’t stop moving your pen through your set time limit, and you don’t cross out.    Usually, these rules tend to produce prose.  (It’s hard to keep your pen moving for ten minutes and come out with a poem.)

In the case of this poem, however, my writing buddy and I first did a prose ten or fifteen minute exercise on “block”, dutifully keeping out pens moving and not crossing out.   Then we took the exercises we had each separately produced,  and, in another short set time frame, re-wrote them, this time allowing ourselves to cross out, amplify, to actually take a moment to think.

So this poem is like a biscotti, if you will–twice baked.    (And since it’s  been edited since that exercise evening, you could consider it a biscotti with squiggly frosting.)

Block

Right-angled in the newer areas,
our curb was smooth, sloping into
a chenille of pebbled tar
that bubbled below our skate wheels,
grinding up to spine,
a gravelly shiatsu.
Bare knees as gravelly, the memory of
scrapes in our skin,  we sat with them up
till the white truck jingling
fairy dust turned in, spreading both
joy and panic.  We ran for
quarters.

I had a working mom and so
had funds enough for a drumstick, real
ice cream, but
hid the extra change deep in a pocket
where only straight fingers could
touch bottom, joining
Patty and Susie and Celeste, the
Catholic kids, with houses of siblings,
chores, and, hovering in their stories, nuns
(rulers at the ready)—
Patty the pretty, Susie the plain,
Celeste Celeste
Celeste, who, arms outstretched, could walk across
practically anything,
Celeste with the six brothers
who constantly toot-toot-toot-
played war—panting for the
popsicle of the day.  Sometimes it would
be root beer, that sweet-strange amber we hardly
dared lick; pink lemonade a purer thrill
in our specific honor.
The new houses started at the next
corner but no one sat in front of their
flatter spindly treed lawns.
Did those houses even
have kids?

Later our side changed too.
Patty only came out to dry
her nails; Susie didn’t feel
like playing; and Celeste, Celeste,
Celeste’s father came back from
Vietnam, a different man.
Her brothers who’d crawled under bush,
up tree, their finger guns poised,
were not to be seen.
It was dark behind
their screens, words heard only as
sounds, vibration, things shaken.

The street was still,
except on the rare
blue evening as fall fell,
when a boy we’d fought in
war, lorded over on skates,
stepped out from the curb, tossing
a football hand to hand.  Slowly we’d
all appear, hurriedly learning signals,
copping moves scribbled on his cupped palm; our feet
slapped hard against the
pavement, our voices insisting that yes, we had
touched with two hands.  We played
until car lights glared and our
bodies smelled of cold blown leaves.
But that would be it.
We would not come out again
for some time.

 

 

P.S. – I am linking this poem to Victoria Ceretto-Slotto’s liv2write2day blog prompt about writing with an attention to detail.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writer's block, writing
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Another Crescent

August 6, 2009
From 1 Mississippi (On Amazon - see link)

From 1 Mississippi (On Amazon - see link)

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