FML: "The Whole Damn Shooting Match: You, Me and John Wayne"

FML: "Using a Warrant (Not the Band)"

:)

FML: "All Things Steve Almond"

:)

Four Months Later . . . "Music as Text"

Well?

Four Months Later . . . "Our First Run: Universe in the Pause"

For all of these, as this is your final exam, I will post last.  :) Last one in is a rotten egg?

Writing Crap and Other Musings

Sheesh.  After talking about lean writing, verbose writing, soundbite writing, warrant writing, personal writing . . . what to do  . . . I wish I was just at the beach where I could think better . . .

Then I saw what I was doing and had a memory.  (The class sighs.  Dr. PD has a memory.  Again.)

I was stuck.  Chapter Three of my dissertation had my butt in a sling.  Really.  Nada.  Books piled on the floor, some of which that had become make-shift coffee tables, were crunching in on me.  I think they call this writer's block.  I tried everything: wine, t.v., calling my bff and running it all down again, re-reading, screaming, pacing, and railing at the sky that I should have gone into another major.  My dear friend and mentor, Frank Walters, ran into me in Haley Center and saw that we were quite near a fundamental breakdown and out of mercy sat me down somewhere on a bench.  After the wailing and teeth grinding subsided a bit, he offered his well-earned, academic-type advice:

Write crap. (Language cleaned up here for formality purposes.)

Not out of self defense, not as a last ditch effort, but very much ON PURPOSE. Aggressive crap writing.  Take that.

Right, I'm with you.   An English prof saying write poo?  Seriously?  What I would have given to have heard that all along.

And so I did.  I wrote a load of ka-ka.  Laughing all the way.  Somewhere along page twelve, I had an idea.  My muse grabbed my brain and went: Have you thought of this?  Brilliant.  Yes.  I couldn't stop.  And it wasn't ka-ka.

Here's the thing: I had forgotten it was a joy ride, screams and all, and had made it straight up work.  Now.  That's not what we are in it for, is it?  Turns out, I can revise crap and make it gold once the muse starts singing.  (P.S. That chapter is still my favorite.)

You ever notice how that paper with all the angst and sweat that you thought was crap got an A?  You ever notice how that one that was perfect got a B?

We've talked about risk taking. Yeah, yeah.  Gotta stay in the parameters of the assignment, research the field, cite correctly . . . but once you get that, you got it.  Sometimes, the risk is worth it.  (Says the girl who included The Da Vinci Code in her dissertation.) But wait: isn't this the same as our daily, grinding lives?  Lesse--don't speed, don't drink too much, go to class, don't be late for work, brush your hair . . .
Where is the muse here?  Does she get to sing off of paper or are we all a bit too pansy to try that out?  I'm thinking here that really being awake, really throwing it out there in our lives (even though it may start out as crap) could lead to our favorite chapter, the love of our lives, the job that makes it all worth it, a lesson of unfathomable proportions.  Can we revise crap?  As long as it's not in print yet, I think so, and that print is pretty much the tombstone, yes?

I wrote this purposefully forgetting rules of grammar and propriety (except for not saying the word shit, which I just gave in on) in order to get something out.  I know where the edit button is.  Sometimes you just gotta say  . . .

Portrait of My Body and Other Horrors

I'm sitting here actually trying to link "Portrait of My Body" and "Why We Crave Horror Movies."  Sober.  I think I've got it, but it all seems a bit too strange for a blog, or for sharing, or for thinking even.    I wonder if several of us were pulled in easily to "Portrait" simply because we wanted to connect to it somehow, have the scars made beautiful or the imperfections justifiable.  What a jolt those of us must have had when it all went wrong halfway in and our tender author betrayed us, made it a bit uncomfortable, and stank up the room.  I wondered the same thing halfway through King's piece.  It was all fine and good until he started saying things like "we" and "madman," and sheesh, so close together like that?

Which brings me to another bit of a loser supposition: what if certain folks are right?  What if there is no "true" us, only the performer on paper?  What if we cannot escape him/her simply because we (the reader) are the intended audience for us (the writer) and, here's the kicker, we know what we cannot bear to hear?  Then, riddle me this Batman, is there any point at all to this academic, masturbatory, narcissistic exercise called writing?

Come on.  You didn't think I was that innocent, did you?

Let's try something here.  Portrait # One:

Long fingers.  Granma loved them, called them piano chasers.  (And they were, years ago, chasers along porcelain sound). Here, a sliver of a scar in the shape of the glass that sliced it, either side of my middle right knuckle.  Hands just beginning to crepe up a bit after years of washing dishes, cleaning houses, working dirt.  They held babies and stroked hair and clasped others and enunciated sentences.  Married by joints that ache when it's going to rain and sometimes just because.  They were the prettiest thing I had and are now the most belligerent sign of my wisdom.  The left one bears a wedding ring so heavy that it has left a permanent, soft dent.  I find comfort in them, the bones and the thinning skin that are the closet thing to my writing, my history, my life.  My hands.

Sookay.  Now.  Portrait # Two:

Cuticles long scarred by permanent teeth, ripped and bit and torn until they bled.  I curl the tips under to hide the flesh when I pay in cash, cut the nails to cripple their chances of self-mutilation.  Veiny and branded by a drop of velvety hot grease -- a moment of self-defense against someone I loved.  Fingers so long that they will have no choice but to become claws in the next two decades, bony things that held cigarettes and formed obscene gestures and slapped a friend once in a drunken rage.  I am terrified of these appendages for they just might one day turn on the rest of me in jointy glee.  Premeditated.  Justifiable handocide.  My hands.

Saalright.  Pick one.  Which portrait is true?  Why, both, of course.  And neither.  Somewhere in the middle.  Whatever I choose to remember or believe or tell.  I think that may be the point, after all: to tell the truth, but to tell it slant (English majors, unite).  Tell it ugly, sometimes, otherwise the writer in you will call bullshit on the whole sweet thing.

And for reasons beyond my own understanding this morning, the following verse just came into my head:

Would you believe in a love at first sight?  Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time.  What do you see when you turn out the light?  I can't tell you, but I know it's mine.

KPD