Posted tagged ‘pencil drawing’
Sadness Out of Arizona
January 9, 2011The King(?)’s Speech
December 26, 2010Week Begins With Both Bang and Whimper (i.e. Towed Car)
November 15, 2010My work week (and third Nanowrimo week) started with both bang and whimper.
Lesson of the day: there is no such thing (and I repeat, no such thing) as an unrestricted legal parking space in New York City, i.e. no sign is a bad sign.
Did you get that all you forever-hopeful types who think that maybe the City just “forgot” to post a “no parking” sign, that maybe you lucked out for a change?
Woe to you justice-minded souls who believe that the NYPD couldn’t possibly give you a ticket, much less tow you, in such circumstances.
Did you not realize that the absence of a visible sign means that the open parking space in front of you, even if framed by other parked cars (which appear to be made of steel and/or aluminum or some metallic polymer) is in fact an illusion?
Did you not understand that the space is only there in the sense of a void, a vacuum, a black hole, as, in other words, an absence of space? And that if you drive your car into this void/vacuum/black hole, it will vanish into the alternate universe that lurks around the edges of New York life (i.e. Pier 76 located at 38th Street and 12th Avenue).
Yes, the car can be reconjured. But that trick will not be performed for free.
(BTW, Nanowrimo novel could be going better; there’s nothing like a car–even a rental car– towed from a space that you now just knew was not legal–for interrupting “flow”.)
Nanowrimo – Week 2 – Coasting Through the Bogs (Baths)
November 9, 2010Nanowrimo organizers warn that the second week of Nanowrimo is especially hard, the exuberance of the first week draining, the adrenalin of the oncoming finish not quite kicking in.
I figured these warnings didn’t apply to me; after all. my first week wasn’t exactly exuberant. No, now that I finally had my story, I would coast.
But when I got home from work last night, I had all kinds of non-coasting activities to attend do.
An idea for a blog! Sure, I wasn’t going to actually write one, but get Pearl to help me. That shouldn’t take long. (Ahem.)
Then, well, I should really keep on exercising. Since country music figures in the novel, I’d dance! To Dolly Parton! (Downloading some was a snap.)
OMG–look at you, Pearl! Yes, it’s a bit cold tonight, but it’s not getting warmer.
Bathwater was run. No point in a bath without a trim.
Then (I’m not completely heartless) came an hour of holding a shivering Pearl in a down parker next to a heater.
It was getting very late now, and I realized that the time for coasting was sliding down a very slippery slope.)
I would take my notebook into the bath. (This is one of the best features of sore computer eyes.)
Oops, had to clean the tub.
Okay, so, I told myself, if you are not going to coast, you can at least be workmanlike. (It’s true that maybe the bath is not the most workmanlike writing studio, but I did have an extra towel handy.)
I set down to writing the scene I had in mind. Only the country music had put a bunch of other scenes in my mind. Scenes from further along.
I set down to writing the scene that was supposed to come next. Only I just couldn’t bear to write that scene–a kind of dinner party–and jumped straight to the after-party late night confrontation between an ancillary villain and one of my female protagonists. I was going to fit some good (ancillary) character to help her out, not because I felt the young woman needed to be helped so much but because I had a great idea for a snipy kind of line that one of these ancillary characters might use against the villain. (It involved the Dia Foundation!)
And finally set pen to page. Only, as I wrote the scene, the dialogue was incredibly sweet, too sweet for the villain.
A couple pages in, I converted him to to one of my male protagonists. an important good guy. (Who, unfortunately, would not refer to Dia.)
Oh well.
In the meantime, Pearl parked under the down parka, having had enough of Week 2.
An Egg Is Not A Light Bulb
October 26, 2010You make mistakes sometimes. (If you are like me, you may wish to substitute the words “often” or “frequently” or “constantly” for the temporal element in that last sentence.)
Oddly, the resulting embarrassment, shame, recrimination can be just as intense with small mistakes as big ones.
After all, caught in the wallop of a catastrophic misjudgment, you may feel that fate, or at a minimum, genetics, have conspired against you, while little stupidities seem all your own fault. Or worse, your brain’s fault–your decaying, ill-functioning, brain. Even worse–your not-decaying, but lifelong-faulty, brain.
I read a confirmation code to someone today that started with the letters HTO. It was only after he said “that’s easy to remember, like water,” that I realized that I’d been repeatedly saying H2O.
And believe me, that was the least of it.
Computers compound one’s natural propensity for error–the screen providing a sympathetic gloss for the most flagrant typo; the automatic replace function exponentially upping the ante.
All of the above leads me to the reposting of a villanelle. (I’m sorry if you’ve seen this one before, but perhaps, if you are like me, you’ve forgotten it…)
Villanelle to Wandering Brain
Sometimes my mind feels like it’s lost its way
and must make do with words that are in reach
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day,
when what it craves is crimson, noon in May,
the unscathed verb or complex forms of speech.
But sometimes my mind feels like it’s lost its way
and calls the egg a lightbulb, plan a tray,
and no matter how it search or how beseech
is pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.
I try to make a joke of my decay
or say that busy-ness acts as the leech
that makes my mind feel like it’s lost its way,
but whole years seem as spent as last month’s pay,
plundered in unmet dares to eat a peach
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.
There is so much I think I still should say,
so press poor words like linens to heart’s breach,
but find my mind has somehow lost its way
as pink as dusk (not dawn), the half-light of the day.
For more villanelles, or info on how to write them, check out that category from the ManicDDaily home page.
The Matrix on Cheetos
January 20, 2010Two tremendously scary articles in today’s New York Times.
No, I don’t mean the one about Robert Gates in India warning of interlocking Asian terror networks. Or the one about ex-convicts from the U.S. joining with Yemen radicals. Or even the ones about the defeat of Martha Coakly in Massachusetts.
I’m talking about the article by Jennifer Steinhauer reporting that “Snack Time Never Ends” for U.S. children, and the one by Tamar Lewin, “If Your Kids Are Awake, They Are Probably Online.” (This one reports that, with the advent of smart phones, personal computers, and other digital devices, internet time never ends for U.S. children.)
Reading these articles, one gets a picture of a U.S. child blindfolded by a miniature screen, which he manipulates with one hand, while using the other to repeatedly lift crinkly snacks to his lips. (It’s kind of like the Matrix on Cheetos.)
I don’t mean to sound critical. I myself spend much of the day on the computer. I am also an inveterate “grazer.”
The difference between me and most U.S. children, however, is that I’m old enough to know better. I have had enough experience of the benefits of (a) uninterrupted concentration, (b) delayed gratification, and (c) discipline, to understand that there is something to be gained from thinking deeply and quietly while repressing the urge for non-stop stomach and mind candy. Even my body (especially the toothy bits) has a deep (if sometimes neglected) understanding of the benefits of not constantly chewing.
In other words, I feel guilty.
My personal difficulties bring up the fact that adult society has, to a large degree, fomented this conduct among children. In the case of adults, however, ADD (attention deficit disorder) is generally called “multi-tasking.”
It’s bad for us too. There has been study upon study about the dangers of texting while driving, texting while walking, texting while taking care of young children. Then, of course, there are the soaring obestity rates.
But it all seems worse when children are involved.
Though I don’t mean to criticize parents, part of the problem is simply their busy-ness. Working hard, their lives, and the lives of their children, are highly scheduled. Snacks and media are used to silence childish impatience; both allow parents to participate in their children’s lives in a way that makes them feel (and is) caring, as cook, food-buyer, internet-regulator, but is also somehow less personal and confrontational, than acting as direct companion and/or adversary.
Older generations focused on the behavior of children (and both parents and children had the relief of unsupervised play–time that was free and apart from each other); but in our world, it’s not enough for children behave the way that we want them to; we also want them to be happy while behaving this way (while remaining in a fairly confined location). Some parents trot out long explanations to children, trying to secure agreement to restrictions; others (or maybe the same parents) trot out snacks, gameboys, smart phones, trying to pre-empt disagreement, discomfort, wear and tear.
It doesn’t really work. But the parent is busy, stressed; besides, he or she has some browsing to do.
Ink Pot Pill Box Hat – Beginning of Decade/End of Era
December 28, 2009With all the newspaper articles, I’m taken back to the beginning of the decade/century/millenium, or maybe just before, when everyone worried that Y2K would wreck havoc with all known security and operational systems, even perhaps bringing the end of the world as we knew it. Flights scheduled for December 31 sold at heady discounts, and one guy I knew, who had a record of moving violations while drunk, was happily confident that the imminent self-destruction of the DMV’s computer system would finally give him a chance to get another driver’s license.
(Lesson: the “end of the world as we know it” does not generally happen according to calendared anticipation but with utter unexpectedness of box cutters taken onto a plane.)
Putting all that aside, the beginning of the decade/century/millennium brought a range of unexpected developments not only in the world, but in my personal life. The first big event was the bursting of pipes in a snowy country house. (This led, years later, to a second marriage.) In the midst of those burst pipes, we also lost electricity for a few days (not because of Y2K, but an ice storm); for a day or two, we had to ship a dear old French friend, then houseguest, to some one else’s house since our friend, then in his 90’s, suffered in a house lit by candles and heated by firewood.
Thinking back, I can’t help but focus on that same French friend, who died at the beginning of the following year, in early January 2001. Rene-Jean Teillard, he was born to an aristocratic family in the Pyrenees in 1906 or 7, and there schooled by Jesuits, which instilled in him a lifelong hatred of Catholicism. He was a resistance fighter in World War II, who escaped capture by the Nazis by pretending to be mad, and later rescued several U.S. paratroopers in the French countryside. This rescue (the paratroopers were from the South) led to Rene’s being awarded the “key to the city” of Tupelo, Mississippi, a town which welcomed him on visits throughout his life.
After the war, Rene emigrated to New York City. I say, New York City, because although Rene later became a U.S. citizen, his move was definitely to New York. He simply adored New York, believing it to be a place where one could do, see, be, anything; where freedom and possibility were literally made concrete. He had a talent for design and friendship, was gifted with creativity and charm. He opened a hat shop, where he made beautiful, stylish and above all, playful hats, whose sales and rentals sent him around the world four times. (I’ve drawn one of the simpler ones; the more elaborate featured small pianos, flower pots, balloons….)
He was an old-fashioned New Yorker, both generous and parsimonious in the extreme–you probably know the type, a person who will give you absolutely anything while also spending as little as possible on himself. His rent-controlled apartment, a fourth floor walk-up on Madison Avenue, looked like the inside of a Faberge egg, with hand-marbelized woodwork, a deep purple canopied ceiling (in the bedroom), and a combination of true Louis XIV antiques and furniture scavenged and re-made from the City streets.
In the hot New York summers, he stayed with friends outside of the City. He was the ideal long-term guest in that, with his broad life experience (he was probably the only person ever to have had therapy sessions with Carl Jung and to also go to the circus with Elvis Presley), he was both (i) a great talker, and (ii) a great listener. Above all, he was purposeful, capable of silently, independently, and beautifully, repairing almost anything broken, torn, fraying.
He was not perfect. French, he could be snide, classist, gossipy (although not with confidences), and he drank a fair amount of wine. But he was above all interested. A taxi ride with him was an education; by the end of it, one had learned, through him, where the driver was from, whom he had left behind, and what he hoped to do when he did or didn’t return. The driver, magically, did not feel drained by this, but unique, valued.
His favorite word was “marvelous.”
I think of him at the beginning of this century because he was such a creature of the last one. Who wore hats after Jackie Kennedy? Who uses ink in the age of computers? Does Tupelo, Mississippi still have a key? Does France still have nuns? Is New York still a place where one can do, see, be, anything?
He missed 9/11, for which I was grateful. It would have grieved him beyond measure.
Recent Comments