Even At The Fulton Street Subway Stop
Archive for January 2011
You Can Find Them Anywhere (If You Really Look) Part 2
January 25, 2011Updated Brain in Bed (With Canine Companion)
January 25, 2011
Updated Brain in Bed (With Dog)
The dog is supposed to be nestled in the curve of the temporal lobe, pons and medulla.
(When you know very little either about the brain or art, and are working on an iPhone, it’s hard to get those details.)
Putting Brain To Bed
January 24, 2011
Brain In Bed
Sometimes the brain just gets tired–too many holidays, too much work or age, (any is too many) reports of violence.
It begins to shy away from the unpleasant and the uncertain, merely scanning (at most) headlines, seeking out known books to re-read, vaguely trolling through mild TV show clips on the internet.
What the brain is really looking for at these times is a full frontal lobe lie-down, an occasion for occipatal un-occupation, a cozy cover for the cerebellum, i.e. sleep. Indulge it! (Says she to self.) Try to shut the lids of the eyes (and laptop.)
P.S. – for poems about brains, even villanelles–check out “Going on Somewhere” by Karin Gustafson, Diana Barco and Jason Martin on Amazon.
Apologies. Breakthrough? Push through.
January 24, 2011
Pearl Does Not Believe in Contests
My apologies for a somewhat desultory blog of late!
I have been working on entering a novel contest. It is one of those sort-of-hopeless endeavors that one tells one’s self is nonetheless worth doing.
In this case, it’s the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest (called ABNA Contest.) I have been busy (among other things) revising an old novel that was written during another sort of contest–Nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month. This was not the novel I wrote this past November (which needs more than revision), but an older one, which I have been working on sporadically for some time.
The odd thing here is that over the last year or so I spent a great deal of time cutting the novel to streamline it. I had gotten it down from 52,000 words to less than 42,000.
Then I realized that ABNA contest rules require a novel of over 50,000 words.
When you cut things, you really can’t just add them back in. It’s a bit like hair. You can grow new, but you can’t somehow just paste the old back on. Even in the age of computers. It doesn’t somehow work that way. You made the cuts because you thought the stuff should be cut.
So now… so now….I had to figure out what was missing.
Yes, I could just have kept the novel short and not entered the contest, but things were, in fact, missing from the novel.
At any rate, I have more or less finished it now, at least gotten the book to the necessary word count.
I’m not sure I can yet call it polished, but the entry got in on time.
Silly! (Probably.) Unlikely to be a commercially successful endeavor. (Who knows?) But doing this type of thing offers a deadline, a standard, a goal. It gets one moving, forces one to push through obstacles, burn the midnight oil. Right now, for example, it is past 1:30 AM on a work night.
What?!!!!
(P.S. – if you are interested in writing, check out “Going on Somewhere” by Karin Gustafson, Diana Barco and Jason Martin on Amazon!)
You Can Find Them Anywhere (With a Careful Eye)
January 22, 2011
You Can Find Them Anywhere (With a Good Look)
In my beautiful home city of Washington, D.C. today, walking by the Potomac–amazing what you can see down here.
PS – ManicDDaily elephants make no particular reference to Republican party symbol. (I just happen to like elephants.)
PPS – remember to check out “Going on Somewhere” by Karin Gustafson, Diana Barco, cover by Jason Martin at Amazon.com.
Trained To Complain?
January 20, 2011
Trying to Pack It All In
It’s been one of these days and weeks in which there are not enough hours. The odd thing is that a long list of tasks, and a short amount of time, typically does not make me efficient. Instead, these circumstances inspire me to to (somehow, magically) find a huge amount of extra time which I spend complaining, resisting both reality and my own prior choices, and avoiding and bemoaning same.
I am on a train right now (where I was able to do above drawing with great iPhone brushes app), thinking of how I managed to squeeeze it all in.
Working With Layers (Brushes App)
January 20, 2011
Working With Layers
Working with “layers” not very successfully on the iPhone App Brushes. The app allows you four different levels of content! (Almost as many as a distracted mind.)
Gratitude for Steve Jobs – Unplugged
January 18, 2011
I like to think of myself as fairly technologically advanced. This is primarily because I type well and practically live on a computer.
Even so, the one area where I’ve definitely been behind the curve is the iPod. I’ve never had one before my current iPhone. I don’t much like ear phones (or ear buds). My brain feels invaded by sound at close range; the inner monologue gets panicky when drowned out.
So I was surprised tonight when I tried, for the second time, to use my iPhone as iPod at the gym and found it not to bother me. I could hear my book on tape perfectly, without my brain feeling invaded. I could get used to this, I thought, happily pumping small amounts of iron. My enthusiasm even seemed to be catching, since the few other people I saw at the gym all seemed to smile at me.
On my way back to my apartment, however, as I took out the ear buds, I noticed that I had not plugged them into the iPhone properly and that they were playing at a relatively normal pitch, i.e. they were not broadcasting into my head but at large. (As in no wonder the other people in the gym were smiling at me!)
A failed attempt. Still it brings up what I truly wanted to write about tonight: my gratitude to Steve Jobs, who has recently announced his decision to take another medical leave.
Even without using an iPod, Apple’s iTunes has been a major fixture of my life for the last several years. My family and I have listened to endless music, pod casts, and audiobooks. (I feel sometimes like a small child, getting solace from having the same books read to me again and again.)
But with the availability of so many iterations of music–different singers, composers, pianists, iTunes allows for broadened horizons as well as comfort food.
Then there are the computers themselves–so fast! And pretty! So many things that you can make with them!
A phone that you can draw with! (See above.)
And the stock. I was lucky enough to buy a few shares some time ago. That act has made me look like a smart investor (even as so many other choices have tanked.)
So now, with the earpods out, but still listening to iTunes, I want to thank Steve Jobs, who has brought me comfort, fun, productivity, and all kinds of both mild and profound enrichment. I wish him well.
(Disclosure–writer still owns some Apple stock.)
King’s Birthday – Private Epiphany
January 17, 2011
Attempted Portrait
One of the great things of not watching much TV is that you get to have your own private epiphanies–sudden realizations that would probably be hammered into your brain if you were habitually tuned into to some 24-hour news channel, but which you get to somehow happen upon in non-television meanderings.
I happened onto one of these realizations today–I was lucky enough to receive an email from Leonie Haimson who runs Class Size Matters, an organization that focuses on trying to improve the New York City school system, in part through reduction of class size. In today’s email, Ms. Haimson embedded a video of an interview of Martin Luther King Jr. with Martin Agronsky in 1957.
The interview, conducted at Dr. King’s church in Montgomery, Alabama (made only a couple of years after Rosa Parks’ arrest) is incredibly impressive. King is articulate, thoughtful, carefully analytical, profound and generous. And so so young.
My “revelation” (undoubtedly more of a remembrance than a true epiphany) was about King’s youth–the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize at 35, assassinated at just 39, in his twenties in this particular interview.
I always think of him as having that kind of slightly rounded face that doesn’t show age, but the fact is that he didn’t attain a very old age. Just 39 at death. So impressive, so young.
The interview (embedded in Ms. Haimson’s blog) can be found here.
PS – Sorry to self-promote, but please please please check out “Going on Somewhere” on Amazon, and if it’s not a strain, get a copy! (If it’s a strain, drop me a line and I’ll send you one at a heavy heavy reduction.)
Public Bravery/Kings/Gun Craziness
January 16, 2011
In the wake of the Tucson shootings and Obama’s inspirational memorial speech, and now on the eve of Martin Luther King’s birthday, it is hard not to think of the bravery required to put one’s self in the public eye, much less to take a stand.
Just after writing that sentence, I read about Colin Firth winning a Golden Globe for The King’s Speech, which brings up another kind of public bravery. I don’t mean overcoming the stutter so much, as George VI’s role in World War II, particularly his remaining in London during the Blitz, where he and the Queen Elizabeth–the Queen Mother–narrowly missed death by a bomb on Buckingham Palace. “I am glad we were bombed,” Queen Elizabeth reportedly declared, “we can now look the East End [previously heavily bombed] in the face.”
I’m not here comparing the bravery of the different Kings, only noting that the requirement of bravery in public life is not a new phenomenon.
I will note, however, that it took the air force of an entire nation (Nazi Germany) to attack King George VI, while in the U.S., a lone gunman seems to suffice.
It’s a truism to say that Americans love their guns.
Just before writing all those sentences above, I read about the Massachusetts’ acquittal of a gun fair organizer on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death of an 8 year old from accidentally shooting himself in the head with an Uzi machine gun. The defendant Police Chief Edward Fleury’s firearms training company had co-sponsored the annual Machine Gun Shoot and FireArms Expo at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club, near Springfield, Massachusetts. The 8 year old boy was shooting only under the supervision of another boy — an unlicensed fifteen year old. (Apparently, his father who had taken him to the fair and was videoing the incident was also there.) The Uzi machine gun kicked back when the 8 year old fired it, shooting him in the head. The event’s ad read “It’s all legal & fun–No permits or licenses required!!”
The ad also said: “You will be accompanied to the firing line with a Certified Instructor to guide you.”
Neither of these statements turned out to be true. (It is thankfully not actually legal to arrange for an 8 year old to fire a machine gun in Massachusetts.)
These facts did not seem to overly influence the jury, however. Accidents happen.
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