and i ask myself

[fflo]

and now a short poem, entitled
and i ask myself

what the fork am i doing?
only i don't say "fork."

what do you all think? that's not part of the poem. we're outta the poem now.

(or are we?)

(this ain't no poem, baby.)

norman mailer, who said you need one thing in order to be a writer, but it's really two things, if you count each testicle as an individual, died today. or yesterday. whatever.

i am most disappointed to be disappointed in Fingersmith, the TV adaptation of the famous Sarah Waters novel. definitely shoulda read the book first. i think it's my headspace, as they say, and as i was telling shmizla, though i started out complimenting her banana bread. there's another curséd thing about that work of art too.

oh, it's a bit of a rough night down here in the lower marlborough quadrant, or whatever the official neighborhood name is. i'm gonna be sleeping sounder than my neighbor, though, likely.

got one load of laundry partly done. put batteries in my new flashlight. went for a walk in the woods.

which reminds me, what the fork am i doing? what space is this, this headspace? heartspace too loud. can't hear headspace. but i am up in that headspace, where the pounding muffled heart, down there somewhere goin' crazy, echoes loudly through everything g g g g g

muse later, maybe, on: permission not to think

Comments

[schroederjt.livejournal.com]

I read Fingersmith, but I haven't seen the movie version. Sarah Waters is a very evocative writer. I remember reading the part in the madhouse during lunch, and going back to my desk feeling like I had actually spent an hour in the madhouse instead of in the bright warm cafeteria. But I did not like the way you spent hundreds of pages deeply invested in a story where all the characters are acutely miserable and then only get maybe three pages of Happy Ending. Have you read Tipping the Velvet?

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

norman mailer, who said you need one thing in order to be a writer, but it's really two things, if you count each testicle as an individual, died today. or yesterday. whatever.

I started, maybe finished his book on the Apollo moon landings once. A Fire on the Moon, I think. Mostly it seemed to be crowing about how cool he was to be on the arts side of the great arts/sciences divide. He seemed to find it profound that NASA shared two and a half letters with NAZI. I think he even had a rant about how black people were cool because they were all on the arts side of the arts/sciences divide. Well, that's how I read it anyway. One of the most dissapointing books I ever read--though maybe I was just too irritated by his attitude to recognize his literary greatness. I could never be bothered to look at anything else by him.

It was the sort of experience that pretty much turned me off to highly touted writers in general.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yep. Did the book first with Tipping, which was fun. She is absorbing, that's for sure, and indeed calls up well---through whatever all writerly means---atmosphere, setting, stuff like that.

I dig what you're saying about the almost-solid misery. Even when they're not miserable, they are cuz of what they think is going on that isn't, or they would be (or would be even moreso) if they knew what was going on. Not that life isn't like that. And it makes for pretty gritty Victorian novel ambiance & everything. But, yeah, I want a little more salve after going through that with everybody. These days anyway.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

No one touted him as much as he did! That's an accomplishment, of a sort.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

not a bad one---i generally like the idea of thinking of one's thoughts in poetic terms. as in, when you think about it, how do you do it? in what words? in what terms? in what length of sentences? i guess it's not a revolutionary thought, but i guess these stories might be all i can see (in the toolbox).

as i mentioned, i need better stories.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

what are some nouns they stick after "narrative"? right now i can think of only "narrative stance."

the narrative, man. so much is about the narrative.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

'narrative devices' perhaps? i like those.

so much is in the narrative that i'm staking my career on it. we'll see if the world agrees :)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

you remind me that/how it has been a luxury to sacrifice and/or sabotage any career of my own. ;)

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

trouble is, i'm not even sabotaging it intentionally :)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i don't think of you as sabotaging yours.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i don't either, but then the world rarely agrees :)

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

i want to defend norman mailer a bit. i started the executioner's song, about gary gilmore, and i basically had to stop reading it because it was quite good. he didn't spend that much time overall on the violent acts, but he slowly built up details about this man's life and the lives of those around him, who were seeing things in him but either not paying atention or not seeing enough to know to do anything about it. reading this was enough to make you start thinking dark thoughts about the world as you tried to go sleep at night.

anyway, mailer was on the right side considering iraq, i'll say that for him. interesting discussion of gender, race politics, and the war here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16470

[(Anonymous)]

Only Mailer I've read was Armies of the Night. I thought wow, pigs can write.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

:)