Do you ever get the mean reds?
Another minor life, edited for content.
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Do you ever get the mean reds? | | Another minor life, edited for content. |
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7/27/00 - "If you read the letters of the painter Van Gogh, you will see what his creative impulse was . . . . He loved human beings. He wanted to show human beings how beautiful the sky was. So he painted it for them." - Brenda Ueland A sad, strained, misanthropic day. Crushes are a poisonous and juvenile exercise. I resolve to give up the entire current crop. Tomorrow. To-day, the city is cold and faded and foggy; it is a perfect day to revel in sad misanthropy. Writing is a good thing to-day. Writing and running, though I have somehow strained a tendon. Writing and running and ice. Story for sad, soul-depleting-crush days: William Trevor's "After Rain," from the collection of the same name. Songs for ditto: anything by Jacques Brel. We have uncovered a new and rapidly-metastasizing trend among men of the programming set (three, in the last week) toward slightly-too-clever emails layered coyly with programming language. Women of the medievalist set (one, to-day) hereby announce exasperated retaliatory plans to begin replying exclusively in church Latin. 7/26/00 - I am increasingly ambivalent about this whole exercise; in real (read: non-web) life, I am more squeamish and more puritanical about personal exposure (unless I am speaking to my roommate, poor dear). I don't like self-indulgence. I don't like vanity and display. I don't like flamboyance, exhibitionism, or drama. It is much easier, though, for me to self-reveal in writing than in conversation, as both the people with whom I correspond and the people with whom I converse can attest. I liked this game here for the novelty of it, but I also begin to feel like one of the idiots on those reality-TV shows. It makes me uncomfortable whenever I stop to think about it, which lately is often. But I discuss it with people, and they tell me, no, no, it's interesting. (My life? No, I was there, it wasn't really.) They tell me, of course it's self-indulgent, but in a fun way--dubious praise, indeed. To-day, The-Girl-Without-A-Nickname said to me, "You don't make people go there and read it. And you don't pretend it will teach them how to take spots out of shirts or anything." How to Take Spots Out of Shirts: If the spot is red wine, cold water and a little salt rubbed in to the cloth work best. If the spot is blood, try club soda or hydrogen peroxide (be careful with the hydrogen peroxide--it may bleach the shirt). Otherwise, the general rule is: - Mix one teaspoon of a mild ph-balanced detergent (a mild, non-alkaline, non-bleaching detergent) with a cup of ice cold water - Blot - Mix one tablespoon of household ammonia with a half cup of ice cold water - Blot - Sponge with clean ice cold water - Blot Et voila. God: merciful? (see: Vietnamese food, the poetry of John Ashbery, coffee, Rome, the view from Buena Vista Park, Franz Marc) Or vengeful? (see: Wednesdays, liars, the collected writings of Andrew Sullivan, Chicago, subway shovers, Damien Hirst, people who cuss in front of small children) In case of existential crisis, the captain will deploy M.F.K. Fisher. If you introspect hard enough, you turn inside out. Ouch. "Onward. The story of your life demands to be known." - Garrison Keillor But does it, really? 7/25/00 - Landlord inspection tomorrow. The two (illegal) cats have been spirited away in the night, temporary refugees in the apartments of friends. The house is newly and (the landlord will perhaps think) mysteriously clean; I swear the kitchen floor sparkled at me this morning. Annie came back from San Jose last night to find me arranging flowers in the kitchen: she is now worried not that we will be found out for the cats, but that the landlord will suspect we are harboring Martha Stewart in a closet somewhere, an illegal third roommate. The book that shaped my being: The Children's Almanac of Words at Play, by Willard Espy--the Bible of my littler years. The publisher has none in stock; it is possibly headed out of print. This should be considered a crime against humanity. Children everywhere are being hideously deprived. Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet My Dark Secret, worse even than my secret passion for Mr. David Eggers: I have been known, on occasion, to really enjoy a Stephen King novel. Most recently, I spent an afternoon under the peculiar spell of Bag of Bones. Song for the day--for any day, really: "Hold On," by Tom Waits. Hi, Mom. 7/24/00 - Feast day of St. Christina the Astonishing, who flew. Plus, she's called Christina the Astonishing, which means you just have to picture all her fellow medieval villagers standing around astonished as Christina turns loop-the-loops overhead. "By God, that's astonishing!" She also lived underwater for three days. Or nine days. I can't remember. It's better than you could do, anyway, isn't it? A Walter Mitty kind of day. My boss comes past my desk, where I am staring at the cabinet, and asks, laughing, "Have you done any work to-day?" Um, no? In a very crowded elevator, you are immediately friends with everyone. This weekend, small family crises notwithstanding, was mostly about Webzine2000, to which crankygirls trooped as a gang. Caterina Fake of Wench says that we who keep online journals are "introverted exhibitionists." Rock on, sister. Most exciting sighting: To Do List is there. Also, one of the editors of Suck, who tells us all, "It's really impossible to underestimate the intelligence of your audience." A guy from a site called kittyfeet.com says, "The coolest graffiti I ever saw was the word 'me' with an exclamation point (ME!) in six-foot-high letters. I think that sums up all graffiti and 99.9% of all other human interactions." We all go out for tacos and drinks afterwards. A brief story: I am at the drugstore, an outpost of a national chain drugstore which shall here remain nameless. I am buying shampoo. (Isn't shampoo a very funny word? Shampoo. Shampoo.) At the register, the cashier rings me up; the total is approximately four dollars. I may have exact change, so I am rooting around in my handbag for it, when I come across a letter. It is a letter I have written, to Diana, and in perfect me fashion, I have been carrying it around for several weeks without mailing it, because I have no stamps and it never occurs to me to buy stamps. But now I recall that the outpost of this particular national chain drugstore which was located near my New Haven apartment sold stamps. So I ask the cashier, "Do you sell stamps?" He says to me, "What kind of stamps?" I am suddenly blank. I pull out the unstamped envelope and show it to him. "These stamps. Stamps for envelopes." "Oh," he says, and shakes his head regretfully. "No, we don't have that kind of stamp." I pay him my four dollars and change, take my bag and receipt, and turn to leave. A thought occurs to me: that kind of stamp? I turn back. "What kind of stamps do you have?" He shrugs. "Postage stamps." The world is tricky that way. 7/21/00 - It is one thing to have to work through lunch, or to eat lunch at one's desk, fast and covertly; these I do on a regular basis. It is another thing entirely, though, to be obligated to eat breakfast at one's desk as well, arriving at work so early in the morning that there isn't time to eat anything at home in one's own big warm kitchen with the cat asleep on one's feet. At night, I have even begun to dream that I am still at the office, sitting in another interminable store design meeting. I am also dreaming about my old boss, who has lately been calling with increasing frequency to try and lure me up to Novato to work with her again. I am also dreaming regularly about nuclear war. Fun with stress dreams! The other day, yesterday perhaps, was St. Uncumber's Day, just so you know. I have forgotten my calendar, almost. St. Uncumber is the patron of women who wish to shed undesirable husbands or suitors. Blessed St. Uncumber. The two words I consistently misspell: paprika, which always comes out parpika, and embarrassed or embarrassment, in which I tend to play fast and loose with the number of r's and esses. Like when I was very small and thought that the number of horizontal strokes in a capital E was entirely up to the writer's discretion: I didn't realize three was a fixed limit. My capital E's bristled with happy horizontal strokes. Favorite recent book review line: "Omerta reads as if it had been written by Damon Runyon in Esperanto, then translated back into English by Robert Ludlum." – Allen Barra Chagall, Kandinsky, Marc and Schiele. May I go to bed now, please? And dream about nothing at all? 7/20/00 - "You and your circle of friends have a very, um . . . powerful group dynamic." - Annie Erika called to tell me the birthday party was a great success; "well-facilitated" is her term. I am glad of this, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy to know that I throw "well-facilitated" parties. "The boys especially liked it. They had boy time," she says. Now the question, the fierce and blinding question on everybody's minds (well, on mine and Erika's), is: Why don't people have salons anymore? Proper old-fashioned salons, where we could all get dressed up and sit in someone's beautifully-appointed parlor on a Sunday afternoon and get devastatingly drunk; where we could quote foreign authors with fluency and invent witty epigrams and argue about art and say terrible, cutting things to one another. Afterwards, we could all go home and put our jeans back on and go back to being project managers and freelance journalists and graduate students. (Our parties now feel something like this, almost like this, except that we don't dress up, quote foreign authors, or invent epigrams; we just drink and argue and say terrible, cutting things to one another, cheerfully.) The end result of this conversation with Erika is that we are going to have a salon, a proper one, on a Sunday afternoon in August when I am home from Ireland. You should all come. We will drink absinthe. (Really. I promise.) We will argue ferociously, and I am already preparing a cache of terrible, cutting things to say. "Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but, Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes." - Dave Eggers, reprinted in the August issue of Harper's. A nice sentiment, if mildly flawed. Was that critical? I do love you though, Dave, I really do. I forgive and accept you. Daily theme songs: "Criminal" and "Never is a Promise," Fiona Apple. Small daily happinesses: Van Mourik Farms' bittersweet-chocolate-covered almonds, purchased at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market on Saturday. The sunflowers Emma & Eli gave me. An old Elizabeth Bishop poem. Erika. 7/18/00 - People who send me flowers at the office are my very very favorite people of all. Especially when they are red gerbera daisies. (The flowers, not the people.) Saturday morning early, we ran through Tennessee Valley, up in Marin, a low winding trail set between the great coastal hills asleep with their shoulders in the fog. The air smelled of eucalyptus and the sea. I ran with a woman named Susan, and we did our eight miles in lazy 9s and 10s, talking about contemporary fiction: Don DeLillo, and Robert Stone. She said to me: Where did you go to college? I said: In Connecticut. She said: You went to Yale. I said: How did you know? She said: Whenever you ask anyone from Yale where they went to school, they say, In Connecticut. On the sidewalk outside biospace.com, an object like a voodoo doll lies facedown on a blue cushion, an open tin of Comet cleanser by its side. This probably means something profound and terrible. The birthday weekend is perfect, is brilliant, everyone is a genius, everything is so much fun--but the best moment of all is when I wheedle Annie into taking me Saturday morning to the grocery store in her car, and on the way home in the sun with the windows open, we are singing along at the tops of our lungs to Erasure's "Respect," and Annie has replaced the word "baby" with "bacon," since that is what I have promised to make her in exchange for the trip: Oh bacon refrain/ from breakin' my heart. And it couldn't possibly be a better or a sunnier day. On Sunday, I was dragged off to see "Mission: Impossible 2." The impossible mission to which the title makes reference is apparently script-writing; the dialogue was some of the worst I've heard. (Tom Cruise: "She doesn't have the proper training!" Anthony Hopkins: "To sleep with a man and lie to him? She's a woman--what other training does she need?") Plus, Tom Cruise, whom I remember as a glossy, prettyboy type, is mysteriously bloodshot and bloated and hung-over-looking. Nevertheless, John Woo is a terrible genius and such films are always a bad influence on me: by the end, I was twitchy with adrenaline, having resolved already (a) to buy a motorcycle, and (b) to become a spy, possibly a wicked double-agent. I was fortunately cured later in the evening by a healthy dose of Breyer's mint-chocolate chip ice cream and the New York Times Sunday crossword. If you were thinking of going to see M:I2, I would recommend instead that you stay home and watch "Say Anything" for the eightieth time instead, which is what Annie and Paul and I did last night. I am in happy lust with Paul, which is a terrible thing because, although Paul is beautiful to behold, and funny and a good photographer, Paul is only nineteen. He is also not very interesting, although he is in the habit of saying completely preposterous things. Last night, pretending to read while he talked, I transcribed in the margins of my library book (In pencil! I will erase it! I promise!) the entire indignant monologue he delivered in an effort to convince us that programmers are artists; just another species of poet, really. ("No, 'cause--I do these applets and things--'cause . . . really, no. Stop laughing!") Better even than "Say Anything": read Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter. Also, it's not my recommendation (because I haven't read it yet), but Dan and Eli think that if you were an Ender's Game fan, you should most certainly read Ender's Shadow. My least-favorite syntactical error: people who say "less" when they mean "fewer." I will bite you, I really will, damn you all. In back of the flat, a large brown garden snail climbed up the glass wall of our sunroom, gummed itself there to the window, and died--of heatstroke, presumably. Snails oughtn't gum themselves to southerly-facing glass surfaces in July. Now it is a morbid brown blotch, clinging obstinately, and one averts one's eyes quickly, looking past it out the window. I would go round the outside and pry it off, but the idea makes me feel crawly. Maybe someday it will dry out altogether and fall off voluntarily. Meanwhile, my zinnias are thriving, though the poppy looks confused. Friday night, we are going to hear Sara's friend Eugene Ostashevksy read his poetry at Blue Books on Valencia Street. You're invited. Please do come. 7/14/00 - Bastille Day. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, and all those nice things. The story's title is "Birdland: The Ineluctable Rules of Migration." The author's name is Michael Knight. The New Yorker issue was November 9, 1998 (it is believed). Thank you, darling. 7/13/00 - Anniversary of the assassination of Marat. Soon, I will be older. This actually terrifies me, when I think about it. But why am I afraid of 24? Excessive self-analysis poisons the soul. I would like to see this magazine succeed. I feel affectionately towards it already. Last night we watched "Female Perversions," starring Tilda Swinton, unquestionably the most beautiful woman in contemporary film. She almost makes me want to see "The Beach." Almost. 7/12/00 - Word of the day: polymath. Have I broken the Wednesday curse? Good Things I received to-day: (1) a California driver's license; (2) a raise; (3) four new books, including the first (A Bad Beginning) in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events; (4) a blouse I'd forgotten I'd ordered; (5) four personal phone calls at the office--I love taking personal phone calls at the office; (6) a letter from an old friend. There are several hours left in Wednesday, though. I will go to yoga, and then curl up with the rest of Robertson Davies and with Lemony Snicket and see if we can't beat the whole damn day for good. "My life purls drowsily out behind me like water. Parrots preen invisibly in the dark. I shuttle inside for more ice and listen to the Blonde spin stories about our unborn child. Her daughter, she says, will discover a lost tribe of parrots in the wilds of Borneo, and invent a vaccine for broken hearts. She will write a novel so fine that no other books need writing anymore, and she will marry, if she chooses, an imperfect man and make him good inside. And maybe, if the stars are all in line, our daughter will grow up to be the hardest-hitting free safety who ever lived." - This is my favorite passage from a beautiful short story that ran in the New Yorker sometime last summer, I think. I cannot recall either the writer's name or the story's title; I have only this excerpt, cut out and taped inside my notebook. The first person who can recollect for me author and title gets to be my very best friend forever. Or until next Tuesday, whichever comes first. On my way this afternoon up Battery Street, I passed two handsome thirtysomething businessmen in excellent suits. One was serenading the other with a loud and heartfelt show tune as they walked. I have faith in a benevolent deity: how else to explain lemon meringue pie? 7/11/00 - "Women are funny little creatures, Johnny." (from Rita Hayworth's "Gilda") I work in a madhouse. Our CEO left us Monday, transferred by the Company: he is gone to be short and tyrannical in the New York office, apparently, now as President and CEO of LVMH Fashion and Leather Goods. Our receptionist has left as well, and Gayle has not exactly left, but is mysteriously absent three weeks now. Meanwhile, Salon scorns our latest venture (probably rightly). Will I survive here long enough to attain a transfer to Paris? Because that is all that makes this worthwhile. Otherwise, I will drop this charade now, and trundle off to Div School to write about medieval heresies. The printer I have just hired for a project here has been trying futilely for three days now to induce me to call him "Lumpy." I will certainly not call you "Lumpy," Mr. Winterbottom. "Jeff" is quite familiar enough, thank you. What sort of a person wants to be called "Lumpy"? In Slate's "Breakfast Table" feature yesterday, the two writers expressed mutual shock and dismay that a gang of Ivy League students had failed an exam because they did not know when the Civil War occurred. My senior year at Yale, I was approached by a sophomore outside one of my lecture classes who asked me if I knew where the Indian Ocean was; she had been unable to place it on a map quiz. It's a big, wide, baffling world, sweetheart. To-day's reading: Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer, July issue of Vogue. Further updates as events warrant. To-day's listening: Dar Williams' "The Honesty Room" To-day I am in love with Sara-pronounced-SAHrah, and with Annie's chana masala, and with three very tall men on the Muni metro. Also, I am going to marry Gregoire Colin. Someday. You're a big fat liar, Thomas Stearns Eliot: July is the cruelest month. 7/6/00 - The thing to do on a mean red day, it turns out, is to have Annie rescue me for a clandestine lunchtime rendezvous, and to drink lots of cafe au lait with brown sugar and nutmeg in it. What was the matter earlier, again? 7/5/00 - Insight for to-day: I am going to end up for the rest of my life like Holly Golightly, getting my heart broken by improbable men, and breaking the hearts of all the probable ones. The beginning of the month: Friday - Mags is here. She and Em and Annie and I go to Thirstybear and eat tapas. We drive to Larkspur in the dark. At home, I fall asleep on the floor of Annie's room, and she and Mags talk quietly over me. We have solved our housing crisis. Saturday - Breakfast with Mags and her friend Elad. Go to Toto's party with the usual gang. Discuss Claire Denis with Dan. Stenny and Geoff and Erika are very drunk. I drink cranberry juice, and make fun of them. We all make fun of Toto's med student friends. Sunday - I go to church and repent. Home again, to do the overdue spring cleaning. Buy some furniture (A desk! I have a desk!). Newly obsessed with Mary Magdalene. Monday - Sleep late. Get a package. Give 2 bags of old clothes to Goodwill. Go into the Mission for a carnitas taco at La Cumbre. Outside Home Sausage Co., the street smells of fennel. Tuesday - Barbecue at Peter and Diana's. I eat too many hamburgers without buns. Feed a piece of cheese to a stray cat, until it scratches me (the cat, not the cheese). Devon and Geoff, having lost Erika to journalism school, resolve that I should live with them; as a concession to my tastes, they sweetly volunteer to switch from drinking too much beer to drinking too much vodka. I decline, politely. Devon, it is revealed, comes from a large Amish and Mennonite family; this is not immediately apparent from Devon's own lifestyle in the four years I've known him. He's just returned from a family reunion, where he hurt his back playing basketball with the Amish cousins. 9:30 finds us up at the Marina, I on tiptoe laughing over Peter's shoulder at the fireworks storming in the clear Pacific sky. Chrysanthemums, weeping willows, stars and fish. Two small children next to me scream and clap even for the glowing sift of ashes after each bright explosion. Afterwards, hot fudge sundaes at Ghirardelli. I catch the bus home. Van Ness Avenue is such a snarl that the 20-minute trip takes 2 and a half hours. I read Catch-22, interrupted at intervals by four men who want to tell me what they thought of Catch-22, and who commend other books to me. Stagger back to the flat at 1:15. Annie, back from LA, has brought us garlic, though not from Gilroy. I have already bought garlic at the Safeway. We'll be eating a tremendous lot of garlic these next couple of weeks. To-day I find that I am beginning to dread Wednesdays in general. Theme song: "No Mermaid," by Sinead Lohan. I have been reading Sherman Alexie lately. Funny, heartbreaking stuff. Movie not precisely about my life, but which feels most like my life: "La Vie Revee des Anges" Thank you, Lenka. I am a noodle. June. |
Life is a glorious cycle of song, |
