Thing to Worry about: the Short List

-
I noticed the other day that a lot of my repeating internal thoughts have to do with "what-ifs" and they're never happy scenarios. Like, I don't think, What if I get a phone call today from someone wanting to offer me $500,000 to write a book? Or, What if I they discover a new kind of frosting that tastes just like regular frosting but eating it on a graham cracker actually helps you lose weight?! No, all if my what-ifs center around disaster. Yesterday, for example, I was standing outside on the patio in the snow and it occurred to me that an icicle could melt and stab me in the face. To be more specific, I was looking up a the dripping icicles on twenty feet above me on the eaves and I thought, What if one pelts down right now and gets me in the eye? I didn't play that out because I got distracted, but if I'd had more time, I'm certain I would've contemplated what kind of life I might have with an eye patch. Would I still be considered pretty? Could I do my job? Would it in a backwards way give my life more meaning?

Then, the day before that, I was staring at the woods behind our house because I happened to see five deer run by the other morning, and I thought, What if I see a bunch of guys hunched over dragging what looks like a body bag? Would I call the police and report it or do nothing? What if they were hunters and it was just a deer carcass and I caused a ruckus for no reason? Or, what if I called the police and they couldn't find the body bag, but the bad guys knew I had turned them in and then they decided to hunt me down? 

I do have semi-realistic fears too. When Dan was leaving last night to drive in the snow to Valley Forge, I thought, Okay, well, I should be nice to him and give him an extra long hug because there's no way he's not going to get into an accident and die on the side of the road.  I think that most times he leaves for any extended amount of time or even when he goes down the road to get the mail. 

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