But Call Me Betsy

I've been meaning to put up these photos, particularly since V-Day has passed and many of the windows in South Philly have begun to change over to the next great holiday, St. Patty's Day. I don't have any of those yet, but I do have some gnomes. And a wretched little calico caught behind a torn screen. Here you go. This is love. And hearts growing in a flower box, fertilized, I guess by love. I admire the lack of symmetry here but don't much care for the stuffed hearts with faces on them. A celebration of hearts. Simple. Okay, and this is Piper, Padhraig and Carrie's cat, in their window. He looks very noble. Here is his butt and an action shot of Paul Scholes preparing to leap up to the window. Isn't he a pretty boy?

I had a vivid dream last night that I was a RN at this very busy hospital. My first job was to get this transient-looking guy prepped for an organ transplant. Unfortunately, I lost him--I mean, like I couldn't find him. He ran down the escalator and out of the doors. In the dream, I remember thinking, "Of course I'm a nurse! Why didn't I think about this career before? I love nursing!" But then I woke up and remember my days as a volunteer candy striper and how most of the time, we just did things like carry sputum or shit samples to the lab in clear plastic vials. I'm sure that nurses do other things, but don't they also have to clean up vomit and take swabs of icky things and see people feeling bad. I think in my dream, I also realized that I was in the ob/gyn track. I'm sure that all of this is a deep psychological response to the fact that I now know of three women younger than me who are all three months pregnant and having their babies in Augus...

We read an essay by John Gardner before the writing class last night about interest and truth--how a writer must find what she loves or is obsessed with and write about that. We talked about how Mary Gaitskill's stories are always dark and twisty and uncomfortable and how Tim O'Brien writes again and again about Vietnam (we were also discussing his story, "How to Tell a True War Story," which you really should read if you haven't already). I think it's an important question to ask about stories--what do you love? Because sometimes, I'll read a student story from that class and not understand the impetus for it or not see the writer in it at all. It happens in every class. I mean, truthfully, I don't know most of the students very well. I don't go home with them and sit in their living rooms and talk about books or call them up to chat. But we had one story in the fall class that seemed really far from the writer's possible realm of experience...

I went to a Philadelphia Noir event at the Rittenhouse Barnes and Noble last night--wasn't sure if it would be a reading or just a discussion or what. It turned out to be a book signing. There were like 8 of us contributors sitting in a row behind a table of books. I believe exactly one girl stopped to talk to us. I don't know that she bought a book. But it was still interesting to hear the other writers chatting. Many of them have books out on their own; one woman I talked to writes historical fiction and seems to be doing very well with it. Another guy bragged about how his novel was rejected from a huge publishing house because it was just too literary and good. And then a third was checking his book sales on a laptop and reporting good returns. So, what is wrong with me? I don't know why I can't seem to just commit to writing a longer work. I have my thesis from grad school which is a novel, but it needs work. I have sort of an idea for a character and story, but I...

The last issue of The New Yorker has a dark, uncomfortable Mary Gaitskill story in it. Though most everything she writes has this sense of ick underneath, this one struck me as particularly disturbing. It's about a father who has homicidal tendencies that he's passed on to his little boy. The narrator relates how when he was fourteen..."I started getting excited by the thought of girls being hurt. Or killed. A horror movie would be on TV, a girl in shorts would be running and screaming with some guy chasing her, and to me it was like pron. Even a scene where a sexy girl was getting her legs torn off by a shark--bingo. It was like pushing a button." It's utterly convincing and so you feel like you're getting a peek into the mind of a sociopath who also really wants to be a good father, and really doesn't want his son to have the same lurid attractions. She also makes him seem ordinary in a creepy way. The narrator explains how he lives in two different worl...

I realize that I am sometimes an irritable person. I have certain peeves that make me crazy--and most of them have to do with mouth noises. The other day in my art history class, I just saw a girl chewing gum with her mouth open, and I felt irritated. I couldn't even hear her chewing; just the suggestion of audible chewing made my skin crawl. And she chewed the gum for the entire class (2 hours). I can only chew gum for like 3 minutes before I lose interest and have to spit it out, so it's hard for me to understand someone who has that kind of stamina. I also don't like the sound of teeth on fork tines (Dan knows this b/c I had to tell him to stop doing it), or the sound of open mouth food chewing in general (Luke does this b/c he's young and b/c he almost always has a stuffed up nose). Or the sound of someone talking on her cell phone right next to me on the subway. Or the sound of someone hocking up a loogie, followed by the sound of him spitting it on the sidewalk. W...

Around the neighborhood, we have gone from holiday windows to V-Day windows. Here are just a few examples, taken on my way home from the gym. People really do seem to spend time on these. Detail of the teddy bear. The twin thing seems to be a standard way to go--good for symmetry, I guess. Pretty standard. I wonder if the person who put this up worried that the window watcher wouldn't be able to read the whole banner? And this is a cat I saw in the window one morning on my way to the subway.

This morning, I took a moment to document the mean/nice/purring/hissing essence that is Emma Carol. Here are the results.

Well, we were focusing on the Buddhist and Hndu eras in India. I learned that the real Buddha was from a royal family and he was kept inside the castle walls of his father's house until he was in his early twenties when he escaped outside and realized that there were things like sickness, old age, and death. This caused him to realize the first tenet of Buddhist, Life is suffering. He ran away to help others, fasted, and became a spiritual leader. Or something like that. I don't know where we get these Western images of Buddha as a fat and happy smiling man, because I guess in real life, he was thin. The top knot you see on many of the sculptures of Buddha stands for the extra wisdom he carries. Sculptures of Buddha from ancient India often show him sitting on a lotus flower because in his very first sermon under the Dog Tree (?), he made the comparison about how something so beautiful such as a lotus flower could grow out of the muck of a mud pond--so, even humans have that c...