Category: Uncategorized

Band name: Visible Id.

Saw Nicholas Ray’s “Bigger then Life” last night with Marianne, Gary, and Bradley. James Mason plays a straitlaced schooolteacher in the 50s who goes psychotic & megalomaniacal from cortisone pills that are intended to save his life. Beautiful cinematography — cinemascope, muted 50s colors and Caravaggio-like flashes of red. Has someone done a study on the color red in the films of Nicholas Ray? Memorable quotes from James Mason’s character’s craziness:

Childhood is a congenital disease.

I can’t afford this — I’m a teacher not a plumber!

God was WRONG!

I told Marianne that I really identified with the Mason character. If I could find a drug that would make my nerves and muscles feel like something other than vicious little steel cables running from my neck and into my arms, I might take it even if it made me a little psychotic. (Is that like being a little pregnant?) There is a scene that shows the machine monitoring Mason’s pain in relation to the cortisone. You can see the pain start to diminish as he takes more of the drug until finally, in glorious 50s script like you used to see on car and refrigerator logos came on the screen: NO PAIN!

As I wrote to Nick: “Pain! You can’t live with it, you can’t live without it.”

Or as I said to Gary on this particularly crabby morning, “It’s torture. Amnesty International ought to send ME money instead of vice versa.” It’s true, in a way. Pain that won’t go away is extremely corrosive. It twists my brain around, and is largely responsible for the cynicism, disgust, ambivalence, etc…

Of course it would help to think positive thoughts, move around, watch my breathing, eat more vegetables and NOT TYPE.

OK, today I am going to think positive thoughts. Bye!

Goddesses bless Nick Piombino for quoting on his blog the only salvageably unsymptomatic bit from yesterday’s rant. Of course he’s right we should come on people now smile on your brother everybody get together & etc.

Still haven’t figured out the taboo on appearing symptomatic, though. The fact is, the symptoms creep through anyway, whether or not you decide to be overt about them.

For a truly lovely antidote to my unforgivable cynicism, please to go visit Marianne Shaneen’s Froth (link at left).

A Rant: On Cynicism, Disgust, Ambivalence, Nihilism, Despair, and the Erasure of Origin

Gary and I are still getting feedback from a few older writers who mistakenly believe that we intended some kind of attack for having framed the Blank Generation forum question in the newsletter before last the way we did, with “out-of-context” [as if a quotation, by its very nature, could be otherwise!] quotations from Ron S. and Lyn H. Ron charged us with “the excision of history” for leaving out the background to his quote. What no one seems to remark on, though, is that there was no editorial position implied in our selection or presentation of those quotes; I would not assert that I necessarily disagree with what either of those writers was saying! I felt fairly accurately indicted by them. (But then I feel indicted by everything, an echo of Jordan’s “mea culpa” — this war’s all my fault, right?) A politics of cynicism and disgust? Yeah! Hello! Look what’s happening! This outrageous stinking bully of a country we live in. Why do you think I left it in the first place?

Yes, cynicism and disgust. “No one pays any attention anyway.” “Ecch.” But not REDUCED to MERELY cynicism and disgust — there’s more to the mix. Denial. for instance: “Wake me up when it’s over.” “It’s not really happening, right?”

[big excision here — things i regret saying]

I’m (clearly) not apolitical but I don’t like politics. I never intended for this blog to be a dedicated political space. But I deeply *deeply* resent — no, I TOTALLY FUCKING HATE the Bush administration for invading not only an undeserving country but also my brain, my sleep, my blog, and my poems, and moreover making me not care about writing poems because at the moment looks like there’s no future to write them down for, and the present is like completely lost. Poor little privileged poetess. Lucky they ain’t bombing yo ass or knocking at the door to arrest you for treason. I suppose they’re waiting until next week.

A thought: the war is about ERASURE of ORIGIN. That is, The cradle of civilization will be the grave of civilization.

Where’s Marianne? We’re worried about her…

Blogfriends, help! help!

I again need to choose a novel for my advanced ESL class, the one with whom I read _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ (with much success). At the level just below this one I taught Salinger’s _Nine Stories_.

I have been reading a bunch of novels over the past couple of weeks and I just can’t seem to hit on the right one.

Here’s what I’ve read:

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg (wonderful book, but too mystical?)

The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead (again a wonderful book but the dreaminess of it might be hard for foreign students)

After the Plague — short stories by T.C. Boyle (too crass and violent even if they do give an “accurate” picture of the USA — really good IDIOMS, though)

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez (to me, this had no narrative urgency)

considered a book called something like The Golems of Gotham and a novel by Y. Blak Moore — both of these were strikingly unsuitable.

Considering also

The English Patient (although I never actually thought this book was so interesting, I know lots of other people love it)

Sheltering Sky (I adore this book but I’m afraid it’s too dark and interior)

And here’s what I really like best, although it’s a truly SHOCKING book:

Dem by William Melvin Kelley (bitter bitter satire about whitefolks for black readers) but I’m not sure if with all its squirmy discomforts this is the best option for the classroom.

The problem is, I have to decide for sure by MONDAY! I could REALLY use some ideas. Here are the general criteria:

–no translations

–nothing too outrageously violent or sexual, but adult content is OK, of course

–under 300 pages

–vocabulary can be fairly sophisticated but I can’t, for example, teach _Lolita_

–must be highly discussable, bring up important issues

–Ideally it would be something that either “speaks to the immigrant experience” (but Sandra Cisneros, for example, would not be challenging enough for them) or that sheds some light on American culture, preferably contemporary.

–Should be well-written, engrossing, and not boring for me! These students tend to be pretty sophisticated. At the same time some colloquial language is desirable, too.

–Doesn’t absolutely have to be fiction, BTW. I considered Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed in America but then decided to let another teacher take it.

I can speed read but I need your suggestions, for which I will be forever grateful, ASAP.

Thank you thank you!

My Dirty Mind

Side of a bakery truck:

“Big enough to service you,

small enough to care.”

Aaaaagggghhh get me out of here!

Nightmare experience about an hour ago in a ladies’ clothing store at the corner of Coney Island Avenue and Kings’ Highway:

A redneck muzak song came on “I’m proud to be in America/ where at least I can be free”… “There’s pride in the heart/ of every American”… I found myself getting steamed up, nutty, cursing audibly, had to leave the store in a kind of furious panic when I saw several middle-aged women SINGING ALONG, AAAAAGGGHHH!

Also tried to post this yesterday, to no avail (is this Ashcroft’s doing, perchance?):

WHAT’S THIS I HEAR?

Cheney’s daughter is a human shield in Baghdad.

Good girl!

May the sins of the father not be visited against her.

SPOOKY

THREE TIMES now I have tried to post this sentiment and Blogger each time has swallowed it mysteriously, so I am trying again:

Conviced as I am of the folly of human beings, I remain unconvinced of “the sanctity of human life”.

Let’s see if it goes through this time.

Maybe it’s just too ineffable.

WE ARE AN IDIOT SPECIES!

I am not talking about INDIVIDUALS.

I don’t want to die yet. I don’t want anyone I know to die either. Of course, I don’t want anyone “innocent” (whatever that means) to die.

But as a species, I’m not sure that we have earned the right to live.