Friday, September 30, 2005

plunking down a post...

when i saw this, i just had to say something...

a website full of West Wing fans devoted to cancelling the West Wing?

priceless.
nice to know there are others out there who feel the same way about Sorkin's work -- namely that calling anything "the West Wing" after season 4 ended is the equivalent of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit...i.e., earns you a non-refundable coach class ticket directly to hell, with extra salty peanuts and no beverage cart.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

i have ideas for TV, part II

i'm realizing, just now, that the two ideas i have for TV are actually just series "sequels" to shows i've enjoyed, and i wonder if they have any creative merit to them at all. anyways, they're my ideas, and they're what i've got.

IDEA 2:


"Three Rivers"

remember the show "My So-called Life"?
it was on about ten years ago, for a whole season, and then it was cancelled. it was where Claire Danes got her break (as well as Jared Leto -- possibly the hottest man in the universe) . Until Aaron Sorkin created the West Wing, it was the best show that had ever been on TV. it was created by Winnie Holzman, who co-wrote that show thirtysomething (which aired past my bedtime when it was doing its thing), and was involved with the show "Relativity" which was also quickly cancelled, though not as painfully as "My So-called Life"

that show was my hero in highschool. it got so many things right. and the writing was just breathtaking. ten years later, it still holds up. i miss that show like nothing else. it makes me all nostalgic and melancholly for the time i spent writhing in agonizing hatred for my highschool and the highschool personalities i dealt with every day. weird, eh? anyways. the show ended after a season, and everyone was upset; there was a big internet movement to get it back on the air, but it was just not in the cards, in the stars, nor otherwise ever meant to be.

a lot of the show was Claire's character, Angela Chase, just figuring out life, and her parents trying to figure out how to deal with someone figuring out life. it was so completely the suburban middle-class experience that those of us who've lived it now try to hide.

it took place in a fictional suburb of Pittsburgh, PA, called "Three Rivers".......if you've ever been to Pittsburgh, and i have, you'll notice three things, which i did: 1) it is a hill-ridden city, which makes it more interesting right off the bat (you know what they say about cities with topography)...2) its got some suprisingly interesting architecture for a steel-town, and 3) the city is carved up by three charming rivers running directly through it, and it is beautiful in that old rust-belt city with character kind of way. and this is where the fictional suburb gets its name; and everything about it is perfect -- it catches all the quaintness, all the romantic everyday-ness that My So-called Life so expertly captured. which is why i think it would make a fine title to the follow-up series.

as a weird aside that i'm sure i'll regret having people know about, i somehow always identified more with Angela's character than any other (except for maybe some of the awkward sensitivity of Brian Krakow)...she made so much sense to me, like i had lived the boy-version of her life....which i think now is due to the fact that the show, and its writers, managed to tap into something universal about the teen experience that it transcended so many boundaries. at any rate, not because the lead teen character couldn't be a girl, but because i am an ego-maniac, it would star a young male character based largely upon yours truly. if a 15 year old girl can be universally accessable especially to someone like me as a teen, then someone like me as a teen could probably be universally accessable as well. and besides, the first rule of writing is "write what you know," and, well, what i know is me.

in my first idea for the follow up series, the adult lead originally was going to be based on my high-school guidance counsellor who was actually a very cool woman, and contrary to the stereotype, really did give some sound advice -- i was just too stubborn to listen (if i had, i probably wouldn't be the lovable loser i am today). her name was Heidi Glick-Kerr. i kind of had a crush on her too; she had great legs for a guidance counsellor. she was not, in any way, your typical marm manning the guidance office. she was young and tough and full of you-know-what and vinegar. but best of all, she was confident in me, and that was strange and helpful and comforting all at the same time. and the adult lead can still be more or less based on her, but i'm thinking less now that she should be an official guidance counsellor. my roommate had a fiery activist History/Psychology teacher in highschool that meshes well with the type of character the lead should be: perhaps an English teacher who was an English and Psychology double major in college, who, because of cutbacks, has to take on a small percentage of the guidance counselling duties. and there is where we get the two leads together; a student-teacher dynamic duo, pupil and mentor both full of potential. we follow the teen lead through the labyrinth of the universal teen experience, and the adult lead through the complex life of the Gen Y-er ascending into the role of real, live grown-up -- two journeys that are both very near and dear to my heart.

then the idea struck me: what the hell is Claire Danes doing now? she made one good movie after she left MSCL, and a pantload of crappy ones, and then fell off the face of Hollywood. Rumour has it that the real reason MSCL ended as quickly as it did was because Claire would have rathered do film than sign away the next howevermany years of her life to tv. which is fine except her movies sucked. she's a great actress, but...come on...Brokedown Palace? the Mod Squad? hardly the meaty material she was being dealt on a WEEKLY basis @ MSCL, the kind of stuff real actors would kill for. so...why not give her a second chance?

for years, i was against the whispers of MSCL revival that tickled the edges of the internet -- you can't go back. the series was its own thing, a phenomenon that, in trying to revisit, to recreate that world, would ultimately fail: you can't go back. that ship has already sailed. the writer in me recognizes that the best you can do is create something new that holds to the spirit of the series -- new characters tapping into the same universal relatability that made MSCL as spectacular as it was. i still am against the idea of "revival" of the series. but the writer in me now is looking at the neatness, the cleannes of dropping a grown up Angela Chase into the role of funky English teacher/counsellor, and it is outrageously appealing. a great way to tie it back to the old series, i think, without trying to relive it: you can't go back -- but you can move forward.

now all i need is ten days in a cabin, a computer, and the number for Claire Danes' agent.......

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

i have ideas for TV

please don't steal them. please do feel free to hire me and give me lots of money.

i know i wouldn't be thinking of actually working on them if i wasn't doing school right now, but right now, school is a drag because it is making me think of all the good ideas i have that would be a shame to never write. or a shame to never write first -- because if i don't get around to doing them, someone else will end up doing something similar, although less brilliant, and recieve all the accolades that should rightfully be mine.

just so that you know i had these ideas first, i'm going to write about two of them here. i can't hold them in my head, but i don't have the time to just sit down and pound out a script for the pilot episode of one idea or personally animate the first episode of the other idea. perhaps, if i'm unlucky enough to find out that someone stole these ideas from me, i will be comforted with the fact that i could sue their ass hole off and live comfortably in ireland working on the book that will make me a major literary figure from now until the english language dies. you all will be my witnesses to the fact that i had these ideas first. my expert legal team will be sending you notification of your court dates shortly. we already have your addresses.

IDEA 1

ok, i realize its a little dorky -- but i love He-Man. i grew up with He-Man. the moral code by which i live i learned from watching He-Man. ok, that's not really true...at least, i don't think...having recently seen some of those moral bits that ended every episode, it makes you wonder.....anyhow. from the time of my earliest memories to when i was about nine years old and ashamed to admit it, i passionately loved He-Man. i know, i know...its a crappy cartoon, laughable really...so badly done. but when your four, you don't care about that. you just want He-Man to punch things, and chop up robots with his sword. the one thing that sticks out in my mind, and that i still manage to find not so crappy is some of the character design. Skeletor especially. i loved Skeletor almost as much as i loved He-Man. that green, glow in the dark colored skull...the face only a mother, or me at four years old, could love. such a cool looking bad guy. you don't get meaner than having a skull for a face. his voice sucked, but he had such a badass look going for him. and then, what always mystified and yet made strange sense to me, was his association with Castle Greyskull. a guy with a skull for a head would naturally want to be running a place that basically had his face carved into the front of it. what i never understood was why it was the 'home base' of the good guys, and why they wanted to keep it if it looked like Skeletor.

anyways my idea is this: a second generation He-Man cartoon that takes place in a politically distraught Eternia, 20 years after the original series. ok, right now i'm regretting making the original series sound so corny, and it will be hard to talk up the reasons why my idea would be cool. maybe its just because he has been ingrained in my brain since childhood, but i feel as though He-Man got the short end of the super-hero stick -- he occupies the same upper echelon of herodom in my mind as Superman and Batman do. He-Man could have been a major player if he were handled as more than a device to sell toys. some of the design and thought that went into He-Man was pretty ambitious for a cartoon, and some of the guys that worked on it went on to do the work they're famous or semi-famous for now(see here and here for Paul Dini, and here for Bruce Timm).

So my idea, again, is this: you take it to the next level. Eternia is basically in the midst of their World War II -- the bad guys have taken control of Castle Greyskull, in which Evil Lynn lives, with her son Ozrik, who is the heir of Skeletor (yes, she and Skeletor made a little baby). Skeletor is dead, but that hasn't saved Eternia from any danger, because Evil Lynn and Ozrik are each twice as ruthless as he ever was. what's more, He-Man has not been seen in twenty years. Prince Adam, the former He-Man, has never revealed his secret identity to the public, but has ascended the throne of Eternia. despite his coming to power, he has never been able to show the same fortitude he did as Greyskull's protector, and it is all he can do to keep Eternia locked in the stalement it has been since Greyskull was overtaken. Teela, who Eternia generally assumes to be dead is actually on the lam -- she is the rightful sorceress of Castle Greyskull, and is being hunted by Evil Lynn's minions. Teela does, however, have Duncan to protect her, though he is no longer Man-At-Arms, and is technically no longer alive -- he is a cyborg, the brain of Duncan in a robotic body. Before she faked her death and took off, she had a child with King Adam, who was hidden (a la Star Wars) because it was feared that this heir to Eternia's throne would be attacked by Skeletor's forces, and that the only chance in overcoming Skeletor's reich lay in the possibility that this little prince grow up to assume the mantle of He-Man. His name is Seth. initially he does not know who his parents are -- and he is shepherded by Orko, no longer the bumbling magician, but the greatest sorcerer in all Eternia. only Orko knows the significance of Seth's existence, and knows how important it is to introduce him to the role of He-Man before all hell breaks loose. Orko plays a Gandalf-type, a wizard of Dumbldorian proportions; extremely wise, and unimaginably powerful. but he realizes the need for a new He-Man, and the first episode begins with him leading Seth to where he's hidden the power sword, and revealing the truth about who he is and where he comes from. the rest of the series would be mainly about Seth's internal struggle with trying to assume the role of He-Man, and the external struggle of He-Man verses the forces of Evil Lynn and Ozrik.
fwhew. that was a mouthful. can you believed i typed that all with one breath? well, not really, but then, you'd never know, would you?

i heard a while back that John Woo, who i could give two shits about, was thinking of doing a He-Man movie, which i could give many, many shits about. chances are i'd be pretty disappointed with his attempt, and normally i'd dream about directing the movie myself except for the fact that if this movie ever gets out of development it would open the market for this cartoon idea. all i would want really are a few seasons of seven to ten minute episodes, something like Tartakovsky's Star Wars: Clone Wars, or the Maxx, from MTV's Oddities. short. sweet. to the point. leaves you begging for more. i would totally love to see it as an internet cartoon, but i don't know any animators, and i don't know Flash, and i don't know anyone willing to do it or learn and then work for me for free. if i had money, time, and more money i'd buy a high end computer and Flash and other various animation software, and do a whole ten minute episode myself. but unless it starts raining rare civil war collectables, thats never going to happen.

(stay tuned for IDEA 2 -- right now its my bedtime)

Monday, September 26, 2005

writing the legend of Frank Fanara

-- for the past few months on random sundays, me and my roommate have been doing some songwriting. for those of you who might be curious, i quasi-count this activity as a writing exercise (i semi- or fully count it according to how well i keep up with my independent writing). writing lyrics is a whole different animal. i'm not great at it, and i'm not sure i ever will be -- but that's ok, i'm not a musician and i won't have to do it if i don't want to i guess. still, its pretty interesting. its obviously not like writing prose, but it isn't like writing poetry either.

emily and i have started a new song, "the legend of Frank Fanara," and so far, i have one, single, solitary line:
"its three in the morning, i'm walking; i walk when i don't know what else to do."

.............and that's it. that's all i got. but the guitar part is fantastic, and it deserves to be finished, to be made into a real live song.

now i've written my share of poetry. granted, i've done it with mixed results, but i'm familiar with the form -- i've written sonnets, haiku, cinquain, sestinas, etc., and some of them were even good. and you'd think that writing song lyrics is really only just a variation of that process. and then you'd try it, and you'd realize that you were wrong. "but lyrics are just poetry set to music" you say. well, allow me to retort: no.

poetry has only words, phonetic music, the knotwork of meaning, the challenge of subtlety...it is only words, and you can use as many or as few as you feel are necessary. you are decidedly less burdened with poetry as opposed to lyrics -- poetry, of course, has to be beautiful, or profound, some quality of it has to escape definition, has to transcend, has to make sense and do better than make sense. this isn't to say that lyrics don't do that or that lyric-writing is a debased form of poetry, a failure of words that relies on a melody. not at all. but you are more limited in how you achieve those poetic goals. the fact that words are all you have to work with when writing poetry actually relieves the load of considerations you encounter when attempting to write lyrics. in composing lyrics, you are bound by the other half of the song -- the musical half -- and that is a limiting factor. another limiting factor is that you don't have the same vocabulary of words available to you as you do with poetry -- its important to remember that a singer has to be able to sing these words, that they have to not have so many syllables, and that they have sounds in them that sound 'right' when they are sung. for instance, the word 'Starnbergersee' works fine in a poem. but unless you're german, and even then, you probably wouldn't ever want to have to sing it or hear it sung.

so once they are finished, lyrics are often considered as poetry, or as having some poetic quality -- but when you peel the curtain back, you'll find a completely different wizard at work.

the best lyricists, in my opinion, are Gordon Sumner, aka Sting and Ani DiFranco -- whose songs exemplify what lyrics can be at their best. i love music, but i don't herald other musicians' lyric-writing abilities the way i do theirs. i am told Bob Dylan has written a good lyric or two, but tend to avoid him for reasons i won't go into now, and thus can't say one way or another if i think he is any good. sometimes Leonard Cohen is a good lyricist -- sometimes he's an amazing lyricist, but sometimes he is terrible.

there is something about lyrics that requires that you fit something profound into them -- a profound thought or use of language -- and you have to do it in a nutshell. the rythm of the lines has to be cooperative with the music, the theme has to be tightly gathered, easy to follow -- there is no room for meandering. and you have to wrap it up in about fives stanzas. it doesn't have to be complex, but it should be compelling, it should capture something. its a tough gig. its a bit like a puzzle, piecing words into phrases, and phrases into turns of phrases; making sure they match the measures of the music. a song is its own little universe, its parts need to add up to its perfect whole; my favorite lyrics are kind of self-referential, they maintain and refer back to their established patterns, or stories or themes. its hard, to tie something up that neatly.

and despite all of this great advice i'm giving, i still haven't been able to do it yet -- i still haven't finished a song, and failing thus far to write Frank Fanara's legend isn't inspiring any confidence. i mean i've tried everything i could think of to come after that first line, and nothing works, i've got a million dead ends.



one day i will be singing it in a bar, and people will come up to us and ask who Frank Fanara was, and we'll tell them all we know about him, and his tragic death, and Frank Fanara will be remembered in Buffalo, though not as the real Frank Fanara...

but between now and then, i've got a lot of work.
maybe i'll go for a walk. at this point, i don't know
what else to do.

wish me luck

Friday, September 23, 2005

cutlery

often, i come by my parent's house to write these posts. i live downtown, and i work in the suburbs and here, right in between the two, is this little haven: my old house. this is where i grew up, my family has lived in this house for twenty years. when i moved out for the second time over a year ago, i never would have thought this house would become what it has. it is a stopover, a place to shower before work sometimes, a fridge to raid, and i'd never thought it could even be that much to me; but my family is still here, my mom, my dad, my sister, and they guard a certain quiet in this house i forgot had existed. not literal quiet, of course -- they are a little too verbose for me, but that's just how they show their affection. i'm not exactly sure what kind of quiet it is that i find here -- for so long there was nothing but turmoil between me and my family, and i'm sure that if moved back here it would be the same -- but there is something reassuring in being able to come home from time to time, to find that the doors and walls that hold the memories of my childhood are still here, even if they've got a knew doorknob or an extra coat of paint on them.

it is nice to come back and after rifling the pantry for food, to open the silverware drawer to find the same cutlery i grew up with -- shiny, long butterknives, deep welled spoons, solid, sturdy forks with extra long tines and handles that end in simple florettes. they're heavy in my hand; i have complete confidence in them. they aren't beautiful, and they're a ragtag assembly of several different sets, but they are what i think of when i think of knives and spoons and forks. you could say in a weird way i'm sentimentally attached to them. they compose the set of cutlery i've used since i was a child, they are the memory of all the meals i've had with my family, they are tokens of my home; i compare all other cutlery to them , and all other cutlery could never match the value of their familiarity, no matter how fine.

and, of course, they are much better than all of the the silverware i have in my apartment.

Monday, September 12, 2005

a peanut of a post.

i just ate a peanut, and it completely hit the spot.
one peanut, that's it. amazing.

-- yesterday was the anniversary of sept. 11th, but i don't need to tell you that. i should have gone to bed, but i was watching the discovery channel (?) which had a documentary about flight 93, the aircraft that did not hit a target, but went down in pennsylvania. i should have went to bed, but i was riveted. seeing footage from that day again was a reminder of just how unreal that was. we are accumulating videographs of history through the omnipresence of technology and media, and i'm sure if we could see even some of the minor milestones of history winding and rewinding before us we'd be shocked, but honestly...it all starts here, doesn't it? there isn't much else to point to, few single moments in videographed history that are this appaling, this surreal. it all starts with airplanes into buildings, and buildings cascading to the earth. i shudder to think what atrocities the videographs of our future might hold...

at any rate, flight 93 is something of a comfort. i wish all of the passengers on all of the aircraft could have rebelled, could have taken the chance that those on flight 93 did; but they can hardly be faulted. for all they knew, they would be negotiated out of the plane. they had no idea. how could they? thank God 93 was in the air as long as it was, thank God they had the chance to call home, to say goodbye, to get information. thank God they decided to do what they did. not just because they averted another attack on yet another populated building. but for their sake. even though they went down, they got to go down fighting. there must have been some comfort for them that even if they hit the ground, there was some purpose to it. and somewhere within in me i am so glad they got a chance to beat the shit out of their hijackers before it all ended. it is pretty clear that they killed at least one of them before they all got to the cockpit. and i'm glad. its ludicrous that all it took to hijack an entire planeful of people were boxcutters. its comical. when i can forget about the tragedy of it, it makes me laugh. a boxcutter, are you serious? i'm a whimp, but you'd have to do better than that to hijack my plane...i'm glad to know they got the chance to put up a fight.

anyhow. kudos to AA flight 93. you're all heroes, and thank you.

--so, i'm really missing morning pages these days. much easier to do free association than to organize your thoughts into a poem. three to four poems a week is quite the challenge. but then, that's why i decided to take this creative writing class, to challenge myself. maybe it will equip me with some of what i need to start producing more finished products. i have written a few poems, and though i am satisfied with them upon completion, i always hate them a day or so later, and for always after that. but i'm posting my latest, because i think that at the very least, it is funny.

its called

a lesson from the greeks

i wonder where i
would go
if i tried to
demonstrate
zeno's arrow
while i
walked the line
of a
sobriety test

when they would try to
arrest me
i would get in my
car
and drive slowly
or quickly
away
and closing the distance
by consecutive halves
the cops
would never catch up

and when i got away
and the APB went out
for a green '94
nissan sentra
heading west on the 290
i would dismantle the
car as i drove, and
replace it with
replacement parts
until all across
the miles behind
me
my car is scattered on the road

they will reassemble
the parts
"not a piece missing"
they'll say
and they'll
declare me dead
and my father will grieve
as i drive off
the edge of the world
and get away
scott-free

Sunday, September 11, 2005

i live at the end of a 5 and 1/2 minute hallway

finally.
finished reading House of Leaves today.
it took ages. it took me about four or five false starts to actually dive in.
its not an easy read, and if you ever pick the book up you'll see why.
it is like a heretic after a literary Spanish Inquisition: hacked, twisted and tortured to within an inch of its narrative life.

that said, it is one of the most remarkable books i've read in quite some time, if for nothing but the ambition of it. and there is more to it than just ambition.

i am a bit of a Borges fan; i've only recently, within the last three years or so been introduced to him, and he is probably the best bang for your buck as a writer. what the guy can do with five pages is mind boggling. he could lobotomize you in ten words or less. anyway, one of the things i've noticed about Borges is in his essays and short stories he loves to assert with authority -- the names of characters, or articles, or events under his pen become assertions of their historicity, whether they ever existed or no. he simply states something as a fact with the assumption this statement is one of common knowledge. reading this causes a few reactions:

1) you realize you have know idea what he is talking about.
2) you become inclined to perhaps verify the historicity of his topic. but you don't, because
3) just like when someone is talking to you about something you are ignorant of, if you hang in there and pretend like you know what he or she is talking about, you can usually figure it out before you have to say something.

and then, when you realize the point of Borges' story or essay comes
4) the realization that whether his assertion is factual or not is completely unimportant -- you've discovered meaning beyond literal, factual or historical.

a few weeks ago i thought it would have been interesting to play with that idea in a story -- to write something that assumed common knowledge of a thing that was in actuality completely fictional. little did i realize i had already tried to read exactly this experiment four times before, this experiment which was now sitting in a giant tupperware storage box in my room, called House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski.

i've only just finished the book today, so my ruminations are still precipitating and settling, but the magnitude of effort and expanse of subjects covered in this documentary novel? are something to be recognized. and again, i am experiencing writer's envy -- not just a "boy i wish i would have written that," but a "damn it, i was just going to write that" kind of deal.

its the footnotes -- the footnotes i tell you. they are footnotes that defy the definition of the word, swallow the story, become the story and give birth to it. in retrospect it would have been easier to read 'the Navidson Record' section first, sans footnotes, and then gone back and read Johnny Truant's contribution.....but i would have felt like i was missing too much, reading only parts of pages, being forced to ignore the fascinating snippets i couldn't help but read on the rest of the page. i would not have been able to read it in sections. and besides, reading it the way i read it was almost mind altering. in some ways House of Leaves is equally an acheivement of reading as it is of writing. almost.

that said, the prose comes out a little forced sometimes, but i assume that it has less to do with Danielewski's writing and more to do with the fact that the prose is bound to the characters whom he has created to channel the story through. it is at times a little overly dramatic, especially when it comes to the Johnny Truant character -- but everything about him screams excess, and because of that i'm willing to let it go. but there are certainly flashes of beautiful phrasing and diction and composition, threads of it that lace themselves through the book that let you know that a writer is writing this, and not Johnny Truant, and that becomes a comfort.

there are lots of interesting facts about HoL too: like that the author's sister is the recording artist known as Poe, and that HoL was first published on the internet, all facts you can read up on at Exploration Z.

but i just find it fascinating that a book like this exists, that its references are so transparent, and that it is so much its own thing, and so creatively its own thing. such an interesting experiment in literature and art, and as you'll find if you catch up with Exploration Z, in multimedia and internet publishing.

it is definately worth the time and effort. any book that is willing to take on literary theory, film, mythology, horror, Borges, madness and Generation X all at one crack deserves props.

nicely done, MZD.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

not blogging about New Orleans

...its not that i don't care...
its just that i don't need to add to the number of depressing observations accumulating on the web right now.

i hope that's ok?

anyhow, here's a writing update:

'morning pages' recieves 'walking papers'
-- that's right i'm giving morning pages the boot. what's that, morning pages? no, its not that i don't love you -- that's not it at all. i cherish our time together. we have so many memories that i'll treasure for the rest of my life. you see, i've discovered that i love you, but i'm not "in" love with you. no, you didn't do anything wrong -- its not you, its me. i'm just at a transitory time in my life right now. and...i've met someone else...

...her name is "three to four poems a week." no, i wasn't doing three to four poems a week while i was with you. i would never do that to you. i didn't even meet her until after that week and a half -- we didn't start until i decided to let you go. where did i meet three to four poems a week? why do you have to know? it was at ENG 253, Creative Writing: Poetry. its not like i picked her up at a bar or anything, i'm not like that. why do you say that, of course you know me -- you know me better than anyone else. no, i'm not replacing you. i could never replace you. i could never do it every day the way i could with you. it wouldn't be fair to try to do you and three to four poems a week at the same time, and i realize i have to decide. but you're such a wonderful writing exercise, and i still want you to be a part of my life -- maybe we can get together over coffee sometime? i'm sorry, i never meant to hurt you...you were only supposed to be a writing exercise for me while i was having writers block, but now i have another, in some ways more challenging structured exercise to keep me writing and i have to follow it. no, you're right, i shouldn't have said that, i didn't realize it would make you feel bad. i thought we had talked about this before. all right, i should...three to four poems a week is waiting...i should uh...i should go. i'm sorry.


today's poetry offering:

with apologies to buddhists

with apologies to buddhists
its easy for me
to get to zen

zen
burns when you sit on your knees;
creaks when it crawls with hunger
buzzes when you want to break
your own nose,
but its still
zen:

the world is a womb
which you must bear
to be born
your own fingers working
your own feet kicking
your own eyes seeing the cracks in reality
until they open
to disgorge
you

and finally you can turn around
and see the mother
who's heartbeat is a buzzing sun
blowing through the back of your head
burning through your eyes
like a magnifying glass
flagrantly translating the world

i am still sitting on my knees
i am still hungry
but this is zen
and with zen
you find that it doesn't matter so much

with a little focus
and a broken nose
with a world of tinder, and a little fire;
with apologies to buddhists
its is easy for me
to get to
zen

Thursday, September 01, 2005

When I find I can't remember what comes after "A" and before "C," my mother always whispers...

ok. enough blogging about stupid crap this week.

just so that the last thing anybody reads on Written Off isn't me going on for two posts about how hung up i am on myself and girls i can't get, i'm posting this to clean the slate, a bit -- get the digestive process started, so that those posts can work their way down and out of the bowels of this blog.

consider this as peristalsis-posting.

i just read this book called Bee Season, by Myla Goldberg.
this is what its about: a not very smart eleven year old jewish girl suddenly learns she has a knack for spelling, and goes on to compete in the national spelling bee. oh yeah, and she deciphers the true name of G_d.

i was hesitant at first to pick this book up. my roommate read it and we have slightly different tastes. and then i started reading the first page, as i do with some of my roommates books from time to time to see if they actually are as good as she says they are. and this one was. really, it was mind-blowing. thirty five quickly turned pages later i was hooked, but i had to go to work.

i'm a bit familiar with Kabbalah -- i know its the hip thing to be into now, taylor made to sit right between the south beach diet and plastic surgery, but before famous people made it cool you never heard about it unless you were into things hermetic and esoteric. i knew it from Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, and of course the movie "Pi." and i read up on it on my own a little before and a little after i experienced both of those. its really fascinating, especially if you are from a Judeo-Christian background.

anyways, Kabbalah is an element in Bee Season. and while it was what probably turned me on to the idea of reading it, it isn't the reason why i did. it is just simply amazing. amazing in the most tender, nostalgic, captivating, linguistic, realisic way. its just beautiful and heartbreaking. i never thought an eleven year old jewish girl could be so moving a character for me.

here are a few thoughts:

-i love the way Myla Goldberg writes. she has a great command of the english language and uses it to great effect. vine-like sentances with little barbs of wordplay. she somehow just nails the heart of every scene she writes, leaving out tiresome and generically written descriptions.

-the books is an accumulation of scenes -- there are no chapters -- just vignettes, encapsulated and self contained, usually no longer than ten or fifteen pages. the pacing doesn't feel hurried though; something about the language makes reading it a slow roll.

-she wrote the thing entirely in the present tense. you would think it would get annoying or awkward after a while, but it doesn't -- it somehow feels so natural. i didn't actually notice until about 20 pages in.

-it is a lot like how i have been trying to write -- subject matter, language, diction, vignette style. it gives me hope that maybe one day i'll squeeze out a book. i was almost angry to realize this, as it was kind of a voice i had just discovered independantly of reading the book, but it encourages me to know that it works.

-it reminds me, in theme, not execution, of Borges' "The God's Script" In fact its exactly the same except Bee Season is longer and about a jewish girl and her crazy family rather than a Mayan shaman imprisoned by the Spaniards. and it has a few more pages than "The God's Script" too.

anyhow, i highly recommend it. it clocks in at about 275 pages, and its a pleasure to read. i found myself wanting no more and no less than exactly what the book had offered me, a sign to me of some kind of perfection. it made me blow off morning pages for like three days in a row.

read it. its good.