Resolve to Do Nothing

-
Liz and Luke are at my house right now, staying over so that we may celebrate the New Year by going to a party in Fishtown with C & P. I had a little time this morning to write the last pages of my current notebook, something I really wanted to finish b/c Jodie bought me this nice, new, big journal (and a DVD player. Thanks, my bitch), and so I ended up writing about the important or significant events of the last 12 months; working at Drexel, new regular writing gigs for two publications, the summer of dating two people at once and getting migraines from it, the fact that no one I know or love died this past year (the most shocking death for me was the suicide of David Foster Wallace. And I didn't even attempt to read Infinite Jest), that I didn't get ill or sustain any physical injuries, that I didn't get any more cats or incur additional debt. In fact, this has been my most financially prosperous year to date, and I have made big strides toward paying off my credit card and also finished my last car payment in December. Have not saved a lot of money, but I'm hoping that once my credit card has been paid off, I can save lots and lots per month. So then I guess you're supposed to think about what you want for the next year. I prefer odd numbered years to even ones. I'm not going to make any resolutions though except to try to be more physically present and attentive on a regular basis. And to take a trip. I want to go to Spain this year, maybe for my birthday. I'm not quitting anything. I don't have any big purchases that I want. I'd rather save $ this year and buy a house next year. I have pretty much everything I need right now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Candyman: Race, Class, Sexuality, Gender, and Disability

-
Candyman hits on almost all of the sections we discussed over the last six weeks. Let's start from the most obvious and move from there.   Race: A large part of Candyman confronts the anger and rage of the Black community after years and years and years and years of systemic racism. Candyman is an embodiment of all of the men who have suffered at the hands of whites (white police man, the white community, white systems that have set them up to fail such as the housing projects of Cabrini-Green). The monster of Candyman is a tornado of retribution, a hive of bees swirling angrily and containing the men who have been lynched or tortured by whites, starting with the original death of a Black male painter who dared to fall in love with a white woman whose portrait he painted. This monster, like the original, can be summoned by anyone who dares to say his name out loud in front of a mirror five times. Until the very end, the only people who do this are white--and every one of them is
Read more

Short story by Lauren Groff, "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners"

-
Image
You have to maintain a much more focused attention when reading a good short story versus a novel, because if you skim, you might miss something.  For this reason, I find it a little more difficult on my brain to read short stories.  But if you're going to write in the form, you should read in the form (and others--I have yet to memorize a poem as was suggested in my workshop last week), so I've been trying. Lauren Groff has a story called "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" in Best American Short Stories, 2014. You might have read her novel The Monsters of Templeton, or her other short story from a previous Best of collection, "Delicate Edible Birds" (also the name of her book of short stories), I have a vague recollection that that story was about World War II or possibly World War I and a dinner party where the people invited are living it up . I seem to also remember a line about the crunching of tiny bird bones. The Monsters of Templeton
Read more

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

-
Image
It’s all about the recaps. It’s a show made of recaps from previous shows. I purposefully skipped the first 40 minutes. These guys are all a bunch of idiots. They are turning on one another. Wes has not shown up, because he will probably come in at the very end for some kind of surprise. They are all trying to humiliate Jake because he is too perfect and too sweet (however, he just referred to himself in the third person; kind of irritating). I don’t remember any of these guys, to be honest. Who are these women in the audience? Oh, okay time for a short break because the show has been on now for three minutes. You know what, I’m going to go ahead and time the difference between the commercials and the actual airtime of the show. >Show returns at: 8:47 p.m. Don’t forget the 20 minutes of clapping in between the scenes. I can’t tell you how much hair mousse has been used in the making of this show. Dave is the crazy dude who has decided to grow a beard for the recap Juan is being atta
Read more