Readers' Choice

We're running our second Readers' Choice Awards over at 55 Words. Voting opened December 22 and will close January 20, 2007. It's been fun watching the votes come in-- take a look at the stories and send in your picks! Hooray for reading!

Berlin

On the first night of Hannukah, the family Szilagyi saw Lou Reed's Berlin at St. Ann's Warehouse, which has been promoted as "an evening to press between the crumbling leaves of fall." Indeed, with DUMBO all foggy under the Manhattan Bridge, the slow polished melodies and gritty explosions seemed just right-- if only it hadn't been unseasonably warm. Members of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus performed as well and I was mildly surprised to see a youngin' from Spoke the Hub up there, singing "Sad Song". I had to wonder what little Timmy thought of the occasionally lurid lyrics (bad pun, I know, but my grandmother did think we were going to see "Lurid's Berlin"--wee!). After the quasi-rock opera finished, the adult performers came back for an encore. Lou et al. sang "Sweet Jane" and "Rock Minuet" and Antony sang something divine in between.

I also received "Kafka's Soup: A Complete History of World Literature in 14 Recipes" which has been a fun read so far. I'm looking forward to Clafoutis Grandmere a la Virginia Woolf.

Cover Story

A 55-word story from 55 Words is on the cover of the January 2007 issue of The Writer, as it "nicely sums up the appeal of flash fiction." How nice!

Eels & Feels

One of my very first publications was an academic essay published by Hotel in 2002, entitled "The Sexual Life of Agnes Matzerath in Gunter Grass's Tin Drum". They've now made this volume available online as a .pdf. I had wanted to append "Eels and Feels:" to the beginning of the title but opted for something more staid at the time. The essay is on pp.70-76 if you're into that sort of thing.

Luchadoras

The Center for Immigrant Families is hosting "Our Stories: Our Lives As Immigrant Women," a photography and storytelling exhibition at Carlito's Cafe, running November 19, 2006-January 19, 2007. The opening reception is this Saturday, December 2, 6-9 pm, promising music and food and it is free! I hope to get a peek at the exhibit once the stress of final papers ebbs.

In other news, the Dr. Chapbook launch was intimate and engaging. Dr. Rita Charon spoke of the power of narrative and how a literary approach to medicine can help doctors see from their patients' perspectives, and thus make them more empathetic and better doctors. After her talk, contributors to the zine read poetry and non-fiction, and then the odd duck read her short story "Very Big Furniture".

Google Me

Last night I went to the closing event for the New York Literary Translation Festival. A whole slew of poets read one to two poems each, which kept the evening nice and varied. Probably the best reading of the night was given by Saviana Stanescu, who read her poem "Google Me!" from her book of poetry of the same name. A hilarious poem, and given her background in the theater, one of the most boisterously and vibrantly performed. Another highlight was José Eugenio Sanchez Garza, one of the six writers representing the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He read his poem "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" in the original Spanish. Despite my deficiency in Spanish, his animated performance transmitted the gist and I don't think I was the only Spanish-deficient audience member that enjoyed his reading.

Speaking of readings, I plan on reading a short story of mine at the launch of Dr. Chapbook, a new lit/arts zine at Columbia's postbac premed program. That'll be tomorrow at 7:30, if you find yourself in the vicinity.

Literary Events

The New York Literary Translation Festival is next week, November 16-18. It will feature readings by Romanian and American writers, translation workshops, panel discussions on translation and publishing, and a closing night party with Romanian gypsy music at the Cornelia Street Cafe. I hope to get out to one or two events.

In other news, I went to the launch party for Collectanea's third issue, which has NYC theme. Highlights of the reading included ruminations on Norman Mailer's obituary, insane uncles, and Lou Gehrig. The issue should be online sometime soon, and will feature a documentary film short that I believe has some psychogeographic NY-theme. I'm looking forward to it.

Floradita

A little vignette, a sort-of-review.

We went to Floradita, a Cuban diner on 125th St. The waiter had a pompadour, the counter top was a large shiny U. We sat in platformed section, looking down. An old man, fierce-eyed and dressed as a sea captain, stood by the door with his hands clasped behind him, a self-elected security guard. We ordered corditas, faintly scented of rum. I ordered the soup of the day, caldo gallego, white bean soup. I wasn't very hungry and expected something small, and the waiter's pursed lips and approving nod indicated otherwise. A hefty dish of white beans, potatoes, and maybe three types of fatty pork. Pork fat, I had always been told, makes everything good. Together we finished the soup and the waiter smiled at the empty plate. Go if you get a chance.

Lillies

I saw The Tiger Lillies last night, at St. Ann's Warehouse. Overall, it was a very fun show, chockfull of the macabre and grimace-laced chuckles. The slow songs (done in a low, gravelly voice) were disappointing, but the more upbeat pieces sung in falsetto got the crowd stamping their feet. After, the S.O. and I danced on DUMBO's cobblestones all the way back to the F train.

In other news, there's a fresh batch of stories up on 55 Words, and if you missed October's goodies, you can always check the archive. Fun!

Snippet from a longer thing

The weekend passed slowly, with the Saturday morning walk in the woods (with singing, of course), afternoon game of snooker, and dinner with the Grumleys in the nearby chalet. The Grumleys had two boys and a girl, a yapping terrier named Frances and a rasping parrot named General Attawalpa. Frances, when nervous and especially yappy, usually aggravated General Attawalpa, whose previous owners had taught him to say “Sucks to yer assmar.”

Mr. Grumley, a specialist in Peruvian archaeology at the local university, and Mrs. Grumley, a retired ballerina, took their family on weekend trips about as often as the Pieters. The parents usually had post-dinner ruminations while the children ran off to play, usually right about when Mr. Grumley extracted the pipe tobacco from his left pocket. Mother and Father Pieters generally took Mr. Grumley’s occasional dinner table lectures with good humor, as they were usually truncated by Mrs.Grumley’s inquiries about the development of the Pieters children in comparison to the Grumley children, and often, what that loud ruckus in the rumpus room was.

“Oh yes,” crooned Mother Pieters with earnest eyes, “Our Booboo is the head of his class. He will be a great biologist one day.”

“How nice,” said Mrs. Grumley. “Our Daniel wants to be a cardiologist and our George is an impressive athlete.”

“Now, now, dear,” said Mr. Grumley, puffing on his pipe, “Let’s not brag so much, or the greatness of our children might turn them to stone.” Mrs. Grumley giggled.

“He’s referring to Inka myth, you see,” said Mrs. Grumley.

“We know,” droned the Pieters.

From the rumpus room came a great crash, followed by silence. The four parents rushed in, saw Zanzibar standing on a toppled bookcase, hands on hips, pigtails awry. The three other children stood in one corner of the room, stunned.

“Oh ho ho ho,” laughed Mr. Grumley. “Trying to scale the Andes?”

Zanzibar blew here hair out of her face. “No,” she said, furrowing her brow. “I knocked over the bookcase, Bucko.”

“Now, Zanzi, why can’t you be a good girl for once? Go into the parlor, and wait for us there,” said Mother Pieters. Zanzibar fumed and stomped out of the room. The men re-erected the bookcase, and everyone helped re-shelve.

The littlest Grumley, with large green eyes and cinnamon curls, took her thumb out of her mouth. “Zanzibaw is scehwee,” she whispered to her mother. Mrs. Grumley nodded to her child, clucked her tongue in admiration at her three-year-old’s remarkable astuteness.

Crime Prevention Tips

"If you choose to wear your iPod, cell phone, or PDA clipped to your belt for all the world to see as some kind of 21st century status symbol, remember that may not be the best safety practice..." (from the 26th Precinct Community Affairs Unit, emphasis in the original)

...In other words, don't be an idiot.

Transfer to Nowhere

In Second Language Acquisition (SLA) there are two types of transference: linguistic and cognitive. Linguistic means you can see the influence of the native language on the second language in the surface of the structure-- grammatical errors, etc. This is part of the "Transfer to Somewhere" hypothesis, that you can see the influence. "Transfer to Nowhere" is more interesting in that it is cognitive and you can't readily see the influence. That is, one could have a perfectly grammatical sentence but it still sounds "off" because a native speaker would most likely never produce a sentence that way-- that your native language shapes how you express your experience of the world. So off isn't necessarily off or odd, I think it could also be refreshingly different. It makes me think about writers working in their second/third/fourth/etc. languages. Did Nabokov transfer Russian onto French onto English? I guess he (and Conrad) might be exceptions because they were so able to manipulate English (and I'm guessing their other languages). But then again, I don't think the influence necessarily causes language to sound off (though in many cases it might, and it does get mixed in with the grammar issues), at least in the cases of talented language users/manipulators.

The Last King of Scotland

I saw The Last King of Scotland this weekend. What can I say? It made me faint (literally!). I'm not sure it was just the gruesome scenes at the end, though those images did seem to be at the front of my mind at the time. Some reviews have criticized the fictional Dr. Garrigan that becomes Idi Amin's personal physician for being overly naive and blind to the atrocities going on around him for a longer stretch of time than is believable (though honestly time was not clearly marked in the story-- how long had he been in Amin's service before things went bad?). In any case, the film is definitely worth watching (weak of stomach forewarned). Forest Whitaker did a phenomenal job as a charming, paranoid, and horrifying monster. I also appreciated the clips of the real Amin at the end of the film; they seemed to add an important sense of truth, whether or not the viewer was already aware of who Amin was. That those atrocities were real, that atrocities are being committed right now in other parts of the world.

Art & Words

An art book I was very (very) marginally involved with is finally coming out and there will be an exhibit of the work at the New York Open Center October 28-December 4. The opening reception is October 28. It will be a Hallowe'en Party, and costumes are encouraged. Fun!

Lost At the Aquarium

Eels slithered, sinewy, in the dark water of the dirty tank. Electric eels. Lala stared at them, watched them dance, mouth agape. Absently, she poked at her dry lips, twirled a soft curl. What made them electric, she wondered? She stood closer, pressed her nose to the glass, and smeared her little finger on the fog prints she created. Thought of Miss Janet in a hot pink leopard print leotard, teaching the electric slide in jazz/tap class.

The din of Mrs. Burger’s second grade class trickled away, but was easily replaced by new din. Lala looked at the information on the electric eel’s plaque. She read the words quickly, her eyeballs jumping from line to line, then looked back at the undulating animals.

“Did you just read that whole thing?” a strange woman asked, astonished. Lala didn’t want to hurt the lady’s feelings.

“No,” she said. This seemed to satisfy the adult. Lala looked around to find her classmates gone, the parent-volunteer having ushered them away—but when? How long had she been staring at the eels?

Lala walked toward the exit of the Eel House, picking her nose. She wiped her finger on the yarn around her neck, attached to a construction paper ID card. “LALA” it said in red glitter on glue globs. Her school, grade, and teacher neatly printed underneath in Mrs. Burger’s cautious hand.

Lala wandered from the dark building into the gray light outside. She squinted, and found the penguin habitat. The penguins seemed stuffed, standing so still on their plastic rocks, painted white to resemble ice and snow. Lala wondered if they were real. She peered closer. Finally, a penguin dove into the water, its awkward wings becoming graceful fins. Lala wanted to be graceful too. She gave herself a twirl, watching her skirt fly up, and skimmed her palms against the soft, ruffled denim.

She looked at the penguins again. One of them was stuffed. How lonely it must be, Lala thought. It was a very mild winter. Lala fidgeted in her wool tights.

She moved on, twirling her hair, and found the polar bears, great big lumps of whitish gray fur. They seemed to sleep, paws shielding their little black eyes from the harsh Coney Island light, the wrong type of salt wafting in from the Atlantic. Lala found them sadder than the penguins. One bear rolled on his back, paw out like an open palm. Then it rolled again, dragged itself up and dove into the water, its tired face becoming serene as a manatee.

Lala had enough. Where was her class? She was ready for lunch. The errant parent-volunteer, Chichi, had promised cupcakes. Lala had spied multicolored sprinkles. She considered consulting a security guard. But there they were, lining up at the gate to leave. She joined the end of the line. Mrs. Burger tapped her head, the last in the count. They filed onto the yellow bus with the squeaky green seats.

Art & Technology

My brother Victor will be in Marseilles this week, showing his xBlocks at the Arborescence Festival. Their theme this year is "light," running the gamut from contemporary tributes to Cezanne to video games, with a particular focus on interactivity. If you happen to be in Marseilles, say hello. It looks like it'll be a good time.

Interactional Sociolinguistics

I'm taking a course in Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS). It looks at how culture and society is replicated and created in social interaction, a microanalysis that has larger implications. One big area of research that I'm particularly interested in is how IS can elucidate intercultural/interethnic misunderstandings. A lot of work has been done on "gatekeeping." A study that's been mentioned in a lot of the introductory readings relates the story of a South Asian man interviewing for a job in London who missed multiple (almost imperceptible) cues to promote himself; likewise, the interviewers did not take into account/did not know/did not realize that promoting oneself is not an acceptable practice in his culture. Another area of research that looks interesting is cross-gender (mis)communication, which works on the assumption that genders are almost separate cultures.

We got a taste of the microanalysis in class this week, looking over transcripts of conversations and trying to find and interpret the contexualization cues. Repetition turned out to be an important feature for creating solidarity in a conversation (though that doesn't go across the board-- every situation is different). What I liked about the exercise was how similar it felt to literary analysis, taking apart the smallest features and finding meaning in them.

Stories and Such

There are more stories up at 55 Words. The Readers Choice Awards is also on. This means you should go read the nominated stories and send in your votes. You have until October 1st but don't procrastinate! Go now!

In other news, my family finally published my grandfather's memoir, Bittersweet Memories. It's been an interesting process that stretched a bit over three years. I've read various chunks of drafts but I'm looking forward to reading it in book form, cover-to-cover. From the back flap:

"Born into the quiet and remote steitl of Falticeni; embroiled in the fight against fascist dictatorship; entangled in the farce of the Communist regim; escape into the free world.

This is the life of one Jewish man, representative for so many of his generation."

Brooklyn Book Fest

Saturday I went to the Brooklyn Book Festival. I had a lovely time wandering the stalls with M; we caught the last half of Jennifer Egan, Pete Hamill, and Colson Whitehead's reading. All the readings in the Borough Hall Courtroom (a lovely place) were a madhouse, with lines to get in winding down the stairs and out the Borough Hall door. They also had audience members sit up in the judges' seats, which made watching the reading extra interesting, to see people's changing expressions of amusement, sleepiness, and sleepy amusement. During the Q&A someone asked all 3 writers if they ever get depressed reading writers they admire. Whitehead said he tends to read non-fiction when he works, and Egan said if she reads something that depresses her because it is so good she doesn't sit down to write right away. I found Hamill's response most reasonable and encouraging. That you'll never be Gordimer (the questioner said Gordimer is her favorite) and Gordimer will never be you. You bring your own unique experiences to your writing (and this includes everything you read). He added that he tends to read work in translation in order to get the substance of the work without letting the music influence his writing (like reading Tom Wolfe and putting 20 exclamation marks in a paragraph).

We also saw the next reading: Ben Greenman, Jonathan Ames, and Gary Shteyngart. That was a very fun group. Shteyngart gave an especially spirited reading from the start of his book (beginning with masturbation and ending with circumcision and, of course, infection), so I finally picked up a copy of Absurdistan and hope to read it soon, though now that school has resumed it may be slated for July 2007. Oy.
.  

Conflux

Conflux, the annual NYC conference on psychogeography, will be in Brooklyn this weekend. My brother took me to my first (and only) Conflux in 2003, when it was on the Lower East Side. He participated in a chess game on the street (he was a chess piece, the player dictated where he go via cell phone, a man with a papier mache horse head plastic-axed him somewhere near West 4th St.). This year will include a Smelling Committee and The Former Resident Project (when you leave a place, what do you leave behind?) among many other things.

Code Switching

I'm excited. All right, I know I said that in the last post. But now, in addition to autumn, I'm excited about a symposium I've registered for, on African & Diasporic Languages. One of the recommended readings is on Code Switching, which is using different languages within a conversation. This immediately brought to mind a trip I took to Germany with my grandmother in 2003; we visited her cousin and uncle, and it was a quadri-lingual affair. My grandmother spoke Romanian with her cousin and uncle, her cousin spoke German with her family, her family spoke English with me, and everyone who knew Hungarian reserved that for curses and other colorful language. So I suppose the code switching there was between Romanian and Hungarian. I can sort of guess at the significance of it, in my very vague, impressionistic understanding of the two cultures and languages and their histories. I've been told Hungarian just has better swear words. I wish I knew more of the language than I do; all I can say is the arcane greeting, "I kiss your hand" and "igen" (yes).

In any case, I'm looking forward to the symposium.

Enter Autumn

I'm excited for fall. Aside from the end of wretched, bludgeoning-sun summer, aside from the fresh breezes, crisp air and crunchy leaves and all that good stuff, I'm going to two fun shows at St. Ann's Warehouse in Dumbo.

First, for Halloween I'm seeing the Tiger Lillies, who I first saw in Shockheaded Peter last year (the song "Snip Snip" is still in my head).

Then I'm going on a double date with M and my parents to see the world premier of Lou Reed's Berlin, in December. It's going to be depressing. Hooray!

Even sooner than that, I'm going to the Brooklyn Book Festival (yow!) and my friend Andre's play. Fun will be had.

Readers' Choice

More stories are up on 55 Words. Stay tuned for a readers' choice awards: read the best stories of the summer (nominees announced later this month) and choose your favorites. What fun!

Death of a Dancer

(A long-ish, journal-y post. A quasi-personal essay. And a plea to myself.)

On my super-basic website, in the about me section, I wrote that I'm a writer, dancer, and teacher. I should probably change that seeing as I haven't danced in almost a year.

I've danced on and off most of my life, most intensively in the last ten years. In high school, I replaced theater with dance as an outlet for the unverbalizable (is that a word?), choreographing wordless stories and sublimating excess energy. I took a brief hiatus in college, first to "adjust" (read: be lazy), then because I was rejected from Mosaica, the school dance group (needed to mend the ego with nutella sandwiches), and finally because of major surgery (a potentially book-long story I won't explain here). While still in physical therapy I took exactly one horrible ballet class, and later attempted to join some rogue "dance jam" group (compiled of Mosaica's rejects), a bunch of university students that didn't wash their hair and rolled around on the floor of some loft housing 12 or 20 people and their 50 cats. Didn't jive with me; I didn't last long.

Sometime in my third year of college I finally found a niche, though, a modern dance class that didn't bore me, didn't feel awkward, and was just the right amount of pain. A good pain. A healthy pain. When I fell into depression (a string of bad relationships + grandfather dying), I doubled up on classes ("I'm so glad," said my teacher, taking my check, "winter's a wonderful time to work, don't you think?") and threw myself into the thing, plunging to the wood floor and relishing in the buckets of sweat released, the bruises gained. My teacher told me I was making remarkable progress, which always feels nice.

Graduation, France, and back to NYC. I took Graham classes. In general I don't like Graham, I feel as if my bones are exposed and I think the discomfort is inherent and intentional and disquieting, but not in a good way. It's melodramatic and, with the wrong teacher, down-right irritating. Luckily there's one teacher in NYC that teaches Graham while doing Marlon Brando and John Wayne impressions and I took his classes semi-regularly, and laughed at his assurances that "if it feels wrong and painful you're probably doing it right." It was almost as good as the class in Montreal. I felt good about myself, I went back to my old studio from highschool and choreographed another piece for their anniversary weekend, had a wonderful (albeit self-conscious) time performing that and being in a larger piece by the director of the company, with out-and-out professionals. But after that performance last October I haven't been back to a dance class.

So what happened? School happened. No dance classes nearby, nothing apparently convenient on the way, so I learned how to swim instead at the TC pool (useful, sure, but not the same as a satisfying dance class). Am I being lazy? Yes, definitely. I'm worried about taking down the label "dancer"-- it might be the last nail in the coffin, though it feels like such a lie to keep it up there. And though dance has been this peripheral thing, not nearly as constant as writing, which as been front-and-center for a while, but this thing at the sidelines, it is frantically waving and quietly shouting (kind of like those nighmares where you scream, but no sound comes out), asking me not to just drop this part of myself. Well, we'll see. If there's a self-help group for lapsed dancers, I want in.

Little Miss Sunshine

Yesterday, between bouts of wind and sprays of rain, I saw Little Miss Sunshine. I must say it was one of the best movies I've seen in a while, and it really cancels out the funk The Ascent put me in last month(though also an excellent film). Some critic in Entertainment Weekly gave Little Miss Sunshine a C or some such mark because it was neither realistic nor completely off the wall, but some mix of the two. What a dualistic simpleton. It was just the right mix of realism with something askew. Perhaps the little girl Olive was just a wee bit too cute but I could live with that; she was hardly the star (indeed, no one was). A feel good movie with suicide, Nietzsche, Proust, creepy 5-year-old beauty queens, and a druggie grampa with a heart of gold. Highly recommended.

New Template

Well, I've been hunched over the computer labelling posts with the new blogger labelling thing. Because I like to categorize. But it's not as organized as I would've liked. Ah well.

What do you think of the new template? A little too pink? More pleasing to the eye? Go back to the simpler one? Comments, if you will. Or not.

Pet Names

(Ignore the silliness; just playing with the beta features. Or, add your own pet names in the comments! Fun!)

Honey, Sweetheart, Pumpkin tootsiepie
Snookums, Shnookums, Shmoopiedoo
Cuddily Dumpling; Snuggily Bunny
Ginger Bucket
Sugar Bucket
Ginger Fish
Gibbledewidget and Wibbledegibbet;
alternatively, jibbledwidget and wibbledejibbet

Hodge Podge

I'm mid-way through the 3-week break between my last summer course (my first teaching practicum, and a rather intensive one at that), and the fall semester. I think I've been balancing productivity and relaxation pretty well.

Thoroughly enjoyed my first reading at KGB, sent out another few stories (plan to send a fourth next week), finally organized my files in this great old cabinet my father gave me (metal, clangs), set up an RSS feed for 55 words (ok, so that took one, maybe two minutes).

Also seem to be getting a satisfying amount of sitting-and-reading time (short stories, The Sun is My Enemy, Lake Wobegon Days), and miscellaneous research. Yesterday I flipped through the old Britannica volumes we found in the basement, from 1981. Read about Romance Languages and Romania. I enjoyed the adjectives used to describe Ceaucescu's foreign policies: brave, bold, courageous. Mm. Today was less musty, more internet-y. Andy Warhol, Basquiat, funerary art. Ah, vacation!

I'm off to Boston for the weekend. I don't plan on doing much. Sitting. Watching. Taking in the smog of another city.

A Love Like Damien's

My friend Andre Lancaster is making his directorial debut this September with A Love Like Damien's at the WOW Cafe Theater in the Village. I saw a staged reading of the play (by Andrea Davis) this past spring; it was quite strong on the bare stage, so I'm looking forward to the full production.

Less demonic

Reading
Originally uploaded by burningsnail.

Here's another photo from Thursday's reading.

Squinty

Squinty
Originally uploaded by burningsnail.

Here's a photo from my reading on Thursday. I look a little demonic, but I guess that's me getting *really* into character.

Sunflowers and Black Russians

Good afternoon!

Last night was joyfulicious. My first reading, really (if you don't count "coffee house night" in my dorm, freshman year of college, dressed in black reading poetry I'd written in high school...heh).

I went last, after Matt Cav and Professor Arturo, both wonderful readers and writers, both so different from each other and from me (hooray for variety!).

The podium successfully hid my shaking legs, which stopped trembling somewhere around page 5 of 9. I really enjoyed performing. It's one thing to sit alone and write (also, a joy; also, torture-- but we love pain, don't we?). It's another to get to share your work with a responsive crowd and really get into the voices of your characters as you've envisioned them, get into the rhythm and intonation, take the appropriate pauses, make eye contact with and funny faces at perfect strangers.

I'm looking forward to reading again. I've created a mailing list for future readings and publications. If you'd like to join, just enter your email address in the sidebar. I promise not to flood your mailbox.

KGB-Tonight!

I'm reading a short story at KGB tonight--it's called "Skitter" and its going to appear in The Massachusetts Review. 

Also performing are Matt Cav, Kidd Lambert, and Professor Arturo. 

In case you've never met me, I'll be the blonde woman gripping the podium, 
trying not to fall over and praying my voice doesn't squeak. 

I'll also be sweating profusely. 

Antigonish2

In case you're having trouble getting your hands on the current issue of Antigonish Review, selections including my own story are now up on their website. If you like what you see you should still support them though.

KGB

Mark your calendars!

I'll be reading one of my short stories at the venerable KGB Bar, Thursday, August 17 (that's a week from tomorrow!). The reading is from 7-9 pm.

Hope to see you there!

Ascent Aspirations

Ascent Asirations has republished my story "Cumulus."

Further Updates

I went to Celebrate Brooklyn last night, to see the Kronos Quartet play the score for Dracula (and watch Dracula). A heavy mist rolled over the crowd and turned greenish under the lights by the trees. Less than a third into the film, thunder started grumbling and the sky started blinking and flashing. The crowd kept applauding the sky's thunder claps (though they also showed Bela Lugosi some love) and gave the musicians a standing ovation when the concert was cut short due to torrential rain. It was a very enjoyable 20 minutes.

I've finally updated the writing links section of my website (see "me, elsewhere" link in the sidebar).

Twelve 55 word stories are up on the 55 words site. Read them, love them.

On Teaching Writing

I had a rude awakening in my practicum seminar yesterday. We talked about an article called "A challenge to second language writing professionals," by Ilona Leki, focusing on the claim that "Writing is personally fulfilling" and that that's one of the big reasons why writing is so important. Basically, Leki says this claim is bunk:

"The argument that learning to write is important because writing serves a few people so well is reminiscent of parents' argument to coerce children into practicing violin--some day the learner will be grateful. But we are not dealing with children, and we are not our students' parents."

The instructor asked how many in the room actually found writing personally fulfilling (we're a class of 8). Two or three including myself sheepishly raised our hands. Fact is, writing is not fun for a lot people, and torture for a lot of language learners-- a notion I never really considered but am beginning to understand. How can we ask them to see writing as "cathartic" if they're still struggling with the language (another question posed by Leki)?

So I was left with this dangling question: if students are not the creative type prone to playing with languages in the first place, do we not bother? Do we focus forever on English for academic purposes and business English and all-things-dry-and-pragmatic? That doesn't really lend itself to flexibility with a language. And that doesn't seem practical either. Hm.

First Lines Collage

Pure silliness. See if you can match the first lines below with their stories (choices below collage).

It was winter. A string of naked light bulbs, from which it seemed all warmth had been drained, illuminated the little depot’s cold, windy platform. Inside, Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and spread them judiciously over the whitening dome of coals. A spiteful scar crossed his face: an ash-colored and nearly perfect arc that creased his temple at one tip and his cheek at the other.

Running footsteps—light, soft-soled shoes made of curious leathery cloth brought from Ceylon setting the pace; thick flowing boots, two pairs, dark blue and gilt, reflecting the moonlight in blunt gleams and splotches, following a stone’s throw behind. She was tall and slim, and though no longer young, had the strong firm breasts of the dark-haired woman. When he got on the bus, he irritated everyone. Poor Juan!

There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel. As soon as she arrived she went straight to the kitchen to see if the monkey was there. The monkey, named Senator Onesimo Sanchez, had six months and eleven days to go before his death when he found the woman of his life. He held his breath an instant, dug his nails into the palms of his hands, and said quickly: “I’m in love with you.”

Lines from:
G. Verga, "The Wolf"
T. Capote, "A Tree of Night"
J.L. Borges, "The Shape of the Sword"
L. Heker, "The Stolen Party"
M.V. Llosa, "Sunday, Sunday"
L. Valenzuela, "The Censors"
J. Joyce, "Ivy Day in the Committee Room"
F.S. Fitzgerald, "Tarquin of Cheapside"
G. di Lampedusa, "Joy and the Law"
E. Hemingway, "Cat in the Rain"
G.G. Marquez, "Death Constant Beyond Love"

p.s. More stories are up on the 55 Words site! Updated weekly! Write yer own and tell yer friends!

Happy Bastille Day!

It's another sticky NY day and I'm miserably delighted with all the work I've got to do. Here are some updates (and shameless plugs):

-I've added new stories to 55words.

-I went to the launch party for Collectanea's summer launch party last night. Not as heaving a crowd as their debut, but a pleasant evening in from the mugginess, with some good stories to listen to. In case you missed it, my story "Bastille Day" is in their winter issue, with a podcast/radioplay version. I understand the summer issue will be up Monday.

-I started reading Flannery O'Connor's collected works and am thoroughly enjoying it. This winter I gobbled up Raymond Carver's Cathedral and quasi-gobbled Angela Carter's Burning Your Boats. School is making the gobbling-thing rather difficult, but at least short stories can be read in a single train ride. That's a real lifesaver. As much as I enjoy reading about how to make grammar interesting (I do!), sometimes I go through fiction withdrawal.

Antigonish Review

The Antigonish Review has published my story "Reunion: Recovery," in its Spring 2006 issue (#145). Yipee!

55 words

So I'm now the editor of the guest stories portion of Rosemary Mosco's website. There's a new email address for submissions: 55gueststories at gmail dot com. I hope y'all will try writing one--55 words, no more, no less. They're oodles of fun. I put one of my own up on the site (Ro originally had it on her livejournal). Take a peek .

Nausea

Ride through the sickness. That's what she had to do. She leaned against the red wall and shut her eyes from the milling crowd and ambient, amniotic lights. Her eyelids shielding her from the flashing bulbs and the photogenic smiles.

She leaned against the wall and against his reassuring torso, standing behind, and listened to the lulling acoustic music, the music that spoke blue in the face of the all the red, that was the peppermint for her nausea. A tranquilized cover of "Eight Days a Week" almost droning, but beautiful in some narcotic way. She couldn't see the musicians if she tried, stuck there in the back on the stool the bartender had pulled out for her. She shivered once, twice, curled up into the music beneath her eyelids and rode it out.

Harvest

(another story snippet)

On the balcony Luda dreams, feeling the morning air on her face. British women, she has heard, have beautiful skin, because of the moisture in the air. She thinks about this and lets the dew seep into her pores. Brown and white pigeons ruffle their feathers in a coop in the corner, coo-cooing at her and each other. She holds a butcher’s knife, idly twirling the point on her calloused finger. Which one will be for dinner?

Suddenly, a great white bird alights on the ledge, bristling, head cocking curiously. Luda stares at it. The cockatoo reciprocates. She fears it will speak, it will reproach her.

“Come in, come in, sweet bird,” she says, opening the door to the apartment. She'd love it as a pet. Would like to teach it to speak and sing. Pissou the cat looks out from under the kitchen table, two green eyes in the shadows, his black tail switching stiffly back and forth. The cockatoo has other plans: no apartment block for him. He leaves as abruptly as he came.

Luda shrugs. She puts the knife down on the ledge and opens the pigeon coop, selecting the plumpest of the bunch. She holds its body in one hand and delicately, lovingly, uses the other to break its neck.

Rockhurst Review

My story "Lemon Tree Palace" has been published in the nineteenth edition of the Rockhurst Review (Spring 2006). It's a journal based at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri and it's printed on really nice paper, which is good for the color art section at the back. It's a lively mix of stories and poems, if I do say so myself, and a mere $5.

If you're interested in getting a copy, send the $5 to:

Patricia Cleary Miller
Rockhurst Review
Rockhurst University
1100 Rockhurst Road
Kansas City, Missouri 641100-2561

Comics

This weekend I went to the MoCCA Art Festival to see my friend Rosemary and her new comics. I picked up her lovely, boldly-inked, and educational Mid-Cambrian Morning, about some crustaceans (?) living in a wacky period of evolution, 540 million years ago.

I also picked up a copy of Heart & Brain: A Turning Story, by Fay Ryu, as I naturally gravitate to pictures and stories about those (and other) internal organs. It's a wordless story of, you guessed it, a meeting between a heart and a brain in a garden. I won't give away the ending but it's both touching and devastating.

Finally, on a related note, Teachers College is having a gallery opening called "Learning Inside (and Outside) the Box". It's a show devoted to the combination of creative thinking with traditional literacy skills and it exhibits original comic books by children made over the 2005-06 school year. Follow the link for details.

3-Day Novel

This sounds like horribly good fun. I'm somewhat tempted to enter.

Escribir

(silliness)

This is a cop out of a post. So I'm taking beginner Spanish at TC's Community Language Program. Below is a short absurd story I wrote with my limited knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. It is also probably completely incorrect.

Hoy, los gatos toman gotas de girasol. Pero el pinguino sordomudo, el gerente de la gente, toma cerveza. Los gatos y el pinguino son de la ciudad de las luces. Por cierto, la derecho de la ciudad es linguistica aplicada. Hasta luego!

Interni

Last Monday my father took me to some design parties in Williamsburg as a part of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) and follow up to his trip to i Salone del Mobile di Milano. We parked on N.6th and Kent Avenue; traipsed over potholes and broken glass, passed empty riverside lots to look at the yellow-dotted scrapers against the red-purple sky, and listened to corrugated metal fences whine in the wind.

I complained of the cold so back we went and started at Fresh Kills where we drank Perroni and wiggled past clumps of hipsters to look at the ice-sculpture arm chair (cleverly drained by tubing snaked into a nearby grate in the floor) and a linen-covered Taschen tome on anatomy and surgery (I’m guessing its about $500 and I’m hoping someone will save up and buy it for my quarter-century birthday—only 9 months away!). My father touched every surface of every interesting piece of furniture: marble coffee tables with geometric inlays, dangling lamps of translucent glass. Fresh Kills was small, crowded, and not on his agenda. He was eager to move on, so we chugged the cold beer, eyeing the crowd (shaven heads and circus skirts with potato-sack pockets, dreads of all varieties, people really into design, people really into being into design). And out we went.

At HauteGREEN, my father marveled at the space. This was a workshop, he kept saying. I was here two days ago. Where are the saws? Where are the forklifts? It had become a hip party space, white-walled and minimally filled with items of green design: corrugated cardboard recliners, cork arm chairs, used tea bag wall hangings, book cases made of books. He wiggled the cork and the cardboard furniture, assessing comfort level. He ran his hand along bamboo plywood—“this is nice”. A tactile playground for an artist/craftsman.

From there to a boutique of Dutch and Finnish products. He was disappointed at the lack of Dutch beer.

“More Perroni?” he offered. “Shame on me, feeding my daughter a liquid dinner.”

We could hear the strange ululations of Finnish schmoozing. He gave the glass top of a coffee table on upturned skateboards a twirl. I pointed to an arachnid chandalier, made of black desktop lamps and he shrugged.

“That’s easy and cheap,” he said.

Next to the “big party” for Core77, at a large tapas/mezze restaurant next to empty warehouses, where men in amorphous gray felt costumes gave us 3D glasses. The crowd inside was an immovable blob so we looked a bit at the vibrant photos on the walls nearby (pink pigs with strangely textured skin, almost shingled), looked a bit at the pretty people, and left.

I was ready to call it a night, but dad wanted to hit one more spot. We went to the Altoids Living Space, ducked under film crews recording hipsters in linen cowboy shirts murmuring about gentrification, were disappointed by the cash bar, and stuffed our pockets with free tins of altoids.

“Licorice?” my dad offered. I crinkled my nose. “It’s good for you,” he admonished, before putting the black tin in his brimming pocket. We shuffled back to the car, mints clinking with our steps.

Summer

I do have new posts in the works but my new schedule for summer (12 hours at school on Thursdays) means a shift for MLP, probably to Tuesdays. Stay tuned for posts on design parties, Spanish, theories of learning & adult development, and of course short shorts, story snippets, and links/info on stories I've got coming out this summer in other publications. And if you're reading this, thank you!

Gowanus

I've been obsessed with Gowanus for some time. Lucky for me, my SO, Michael, is also obsessed with Gowanus. He just had an article published in the Urban Review, about the impending transition from industrial to residential, and is a prelude to his much larger research project on transitioning/gentrifying industrial neighborhoods and the implications of pushing industry to the outskirts of cities (p.3). Another very interesting and well written article in the UR is a brief history of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, tracking its move from country road to architectural playland (Victorian to Art Deco and Art Moderne), its post war decline and optimistic future (p.1). (Click Vol. 3, Issue 2, to download the .pdf)

Ditmas Stroll

I “write” a lot in my head. I compose as I go on a neighborhood walk, thinking about a letter I want to write to a friend or an imaginary post that never goes up on this blog (or shouldn’t). Often I come up with somewhat ambitious ideas that I never do anything with, like eating my way around the world and writing about it. Then I realize I probably won’t get to eat my way around the world literally, but of course I could give it a try in New York. Write about a meal I’ve had in each neighborhood of each borough. How delicious.

The other day I went on one such stroll, from Kensington into Ditmas Park. I didn’t end up eating anything because I couldn’t stop myself from wandering. I followed the old routes of my childhood. Maybe now the ambitious plan would be a psychogeographic memoir. Some of the things I love to read are about places and lives in those spaces. So why not try that.

Here is the house I grew up in, on Beverly Road, second story of a 3-family. Here, across the street, the ancient apartment buildings that gave me my boombox lullabies. Both structures are gray and dingy. Broken glass still on the sidewalk, just as I remember. Children playing whiffle ball on a brown, balding lawn between concrete walkways.

Firecrackers would swoop up onto our roof on the night of July the 4th, crackling smoke in the windows. My father would rush out through the window in his underwear and, with invincible flat feet, kick the offending pyrotechnic back into the street where it was launched.

I cross Coney Island Avenue, past the 11-7 and the former Kantacky Fried Chicken (most likely sued by Kentucky Fried Chicken across the street). I enter the green zen of Beverly Square and Ditmas Park. Rows and rows of enormous trees line these streets. Unlike Kensington, where people lop off branches and chop chop chop (we need sunlight, they say, or, the next storm could send these trees crashing down, they say). In Ditmas Park no one chops trees. No one squints in the light. There is a coolness here, amongst Victorian houses in various stages of renovation or disrepair.

I wander passed lawns bedecked with pink flamingos and plaster-cast lions. Houses renovated in the ‘80s by Park Slope expatriates, and houses renovated by Flatbush’s upwardly mobile. Porch swings, silver cats, magnolia trees. Columns at each intersection proclaim each street name with British regality: Marlborough, Stratford. Argyle. Dorchester. Remnants of 19th century moguls.

More interesting to me are the houses still in ruin: relics of a past and food for a darker appetite. A green house with musty brown shards of windows; mummified in plastic; shutters hanging askew off their hinges. A copper plaque on a porch column by the steps reads the name of a doctor, an orthopedist: ancient doctor for an ancient generation. All gone. A dusty sign written in careful block letters pleads, “DON'T PLAY ON THIS PORCH…” the rest is unintelligible, but the warning is clear: the porch steps are broken, a ragged hole. Collapsed where some small child may have played, fallen through and eaten by some slithering monster underneath.

Next door, a house with new stucco and two slender saplings of cherry trees, fresh-blossomed and swaying in the spring breeze.

Jane Jacobs, RIP

I read "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" this summer. I enjoyed it, for the most part, and recommend it to anyone interested in cities (especially the first two or three parts). I've had some psychogeographic mental bubblings of late and may start posting things of that nature soon. Stay tuned. In the meantime, a bit about Ms. Jacobs.

Games

Just in case there are people reading this that aren't also reading my brother Victor's blog, here is a link to his great, fun, inventive take on traditional video games. He had an exhibit at the Salone del Mobile, in Milano, which has just closed shop. Which shows how up to date I am...

(Just as expected, the more work I should be doing, the more posts end up here. This does not bode well for productivity.)

Greenpoint Blues

I went to see my friend Euna's band Greenpoint last night. They performed at the Manhattan Korean-American Association of Greater New York, for amateur band night. Euna rocked the electric harpsichord while the front man resurrected Jim Morrison, Ray Charles, and Bob Marley in throaty blues songs with a touch of Mick Jaggeresque dancing, wagging his teased tea hair, his sunglasses glinting in the lights . The Doors covers riled up the previously sedate, seated crowd (save the one fellow up front who periodically danced in circles ecstatically, and the occasional silhouette of a head-banger for the punkier rap-metal band prior). Greenpoint sparkled as the last act and put a smile on my face. Fun was had by all.

Fiber

My good friend Eric just started a knitting blog, recording progress and product of various projects. Crafts like knitting are so much warmer and fuzzier than paintings and sculptures that you can't touch. Partake in the warmth.

Watermelon, Baby, Chicken Bone

(Some more Luda. Previous bits of Luda can be found under Fiction/Story Snippets.)

She walks down the hot sidewalk pushing the cart, empty but one bulbous watermelon. The metal of the cart sags at the bottom. Green bits of glass sparkle on the asphalt. Round the corner from the bodega and up three flights of stairs—it takes her ten minutes and Luda is tired when she retrieves the grandbaby from the neighbor. Grandbaby coos with glee at her return. She plays with the brown cowlick on his head, coiled like a sarmaluta.

In the kitchen, she gives the baby a chicken bone. He gets grease on his rosy cheeks, bangs the table as she chops up the cool melon, slices through the sweet flesh with her favorite knife: a good, sharp knife, a wedding present to her daughter and the son-in-law. She thinks perhaps she’d make sarmala for dinner, smiling at the baby’s curl. But she’d have to go back out for the cabbage and this thought tires her. She stops chopping a moment and looks out the kitchen window, at the rusty fire escape and down to the avenue.
She hears the dreaded noise: a faint little scuttle.

“Mices!” One of her few English words, such as yes, no, help and bodega.

She drops the knife and it clatters to the floor. Sticky pink juice and black pits splatter. She clambers atop a chair and onto the kitchen table, gathering her floral moo-moo. She sees the little brown mouse go behind the stove. She shudders, but is grateful its not one of the more dreadful rodents, the ones that scurry in the subway. The ones large enough to eat the baby.

Slowly, slowly, she climbs down. The baby laughs at her. Laughs at his silly Bunica. She gets tired easily under all her weight, but she doesn’t take long to clean up the fruity mess, and move the baby to the living room. Out of breath, she switches on the fan and the TV. She sits down with an ooph and watches the mid-day news. Pictures of looting in darkened streets, broken glass, sirens and screaming: the chaos of the blackout a few days ago. She sighs and eats melon, chews and swallows but doesn’t process the sweetness. Watches the procession of soaps after the news, tries to take in the new language, is mildly shocked and amused by the love scenes. Over the course of the afternoon, alone in the apartment with baby and TV, she goes back and forth to the kitchen, cutting and eating the watermelon.

The son-in-law arrives from work on his bike. Brings it up and locks it on the fire escape. He is a good son, with a secure job making gravestones. A demand never to diminish. Only all that death. Was it bad luck? Luda wonders. Her daughter is in a more abstract field. At least she can understand the stones, the carving. Computers, she will never understand. I only understand the buttons on my dress, she thinks.

The son-in-law is taking art classes at the community college at night. Painting. The old Romanian teacher jokes with him: “You can take this class for free if you make my gravestone complimentary.” So he pays just for the supplies and sits in the back, craning his neck a bit to see the lithe model or the basket of fruit and animal skulls on silky colored fabrics.

Tonight he works on his homework, portrait of a family member. He sits Luda down on her twin bed in the sewing room. The walls are painted in a bluish sherbet color and her dollar store house dress is of blue, white, faint orange-pink flowers. She sits forward, hands on knees, rocking slightly with impatience. “Dukes of Hazzard” will be on in fifteen minutes. The son-in-law doesn’t care if Luda misses it because she can’t understand anything on the TV. But there’s something funny about all that nonsense English and sound effects and music—no matter what she watches she finds something to laugh at, manages to clap her hands in amusement. She likes to enjoy life, not like that daughter of hers, hunched over the typewriter in the bedroom, endlessly updating her resume.

Luda brushes her white hair away from her forehead, her bowl cut growing out. It is hot and though all the windows are open the air inside is very still. Very still and vaguely brown. The baby sits in his high chair, commenting on his father’s art in gurgles, banging the chicken bone on the little table. A natural critic.

“Did you eat that whole melon?” he asks.

“What melon?”

“I saw the rinds in the trash. You can tell me, Bunica. Better you tell me than Mia.”

“I tell you, you tell her. What’s the difference?”

“You know you don’t need all that sugar.” He reaches for a tube of pink and squirts it on his pallet.

“Melon. Fruit. It’s healthy!”

“Do you want to go blind, Luda?”

She rolls her eyes and sighs. Looks at her hands. Needs to cut a cuticle or two. Tell me what’s next, she thinks. Amputation? She lets a moment pass.

“What would you like for dinner?”

He doesn’t look up, he is concentrating on the canvas.

“Whatever you cook is good with me,” he finally says, still not looking up. She sighs and heaves herself up.

“Can we finish later?”

“Sure, Bunica.” He looks up at her, finally. Gives the smile with the dimple that the baby has.

At night in her little room with the sewing machine and the twin bed, she lays facing the window. The moon peeks in and bounces off the sherbet walls. Her thick glasses are off and everything is a luminous blur. She listens to the baby cry and to her daughter murmur in the other room. Their sounds weaving in and out of her memories.

Ramble

An early post this week, and then I delve into papers and finals, which means possibly less posts, possibly more!

Ramble Underground has published my story Cumulus.

Foray into Children's Lit

Tobias Theophrastus Bombastus von Hobbins IV sat on a park bench by the water. He stroked his enormous beard with his enormous hand. He reached into his beard and took out a handful of crumbs, throwing them at the ducks in the pond. The ducks gobbled the crumbs, and waddled toward him for more. He reached into his beard and threw more crumbs. His stomach growled.

“Time for lunch,” he said to himself. Tobias reached again and took out a cucumber sandwich covered in plastic. He unwrapped it and nibbled daintily at the crustless lunch. The ducks looked up at him.

“Quack,” they said.

“None for you,” he said to them, mouth full of chewed up cucumber and white bread.

“Quack,” they said again, waddling off.

Tobias finished his sandwich and dusted his hands off. Slowly, he lifted himself from the bench.

“Oof,” he said.

He walked down the lane, whistling to himself. He was happy. Today he would buy a didjeridoo. He walked out of the park to the music shop. The bells chimed when closed the door behind him.

“Hello,” said the shopkeeper, wearing thick, goggle-like glasses.

“Hullo!” Tobias said brightly.

“May I help you?”

“Are you in the habit of selling didjeridoos?”

“A whointhewhatnow?” The shopkeeper scratched his bald shiny head.

“A didjeridoo?” Tobias put one fist on top of the other and pressed them against his mouth, trying to imitate the noise.

“Oh, a triangle,” said the shopkeeper. He held out a small metal triangle and struck it with a metal stick. It clinked.

“No--”

“Yes, that’s exactly what you need.”

“But--”

The shopkeeper rang up the triangle. Tobias could not argue with the shopkeeper, it was not in his nature. He bought the triangle. He walked down the street, shoulders slumped, clinking his triangle. He clinked back to the park, clinking at the ducks.

“Quack,” they said to him.

Clink, he went, before putting the triangle away in his beard. Tobias sighed. He heaved a heavy, deep sigh. He stroked his beard, and sighed once more, with gusto.

“Hmmmm,” he said, reaching back into his beard. Heaving (again) he pulled out a long tube. He blew on the tube.

“Quack,” said the ducks.

“Bbwo wo woo wooow wo,” blew Tobias Theophrastus Bombastus von Hobbins IV on his didjeridoo.

(This character was salvaged from a much longer story I'd written several years ago that crashed and burned. Maybe one day I'll be able to salvage more, or at least do something else with him.)

Fireworks, Plots, & Globs

This is gorgeous.

For the clowns

Spoke the Hub is now offering a clowning workshop! I wish I had the time and/or money to partake.

Bargello

I went to Florence in October, after visiting my brother in Milan. “Florence: We’re More than Just the Renaissance” seemed to be the city slogan. Still, I wanted to see the museums. I took a trip to the Bargello, which houses Donatello’s David, skipping Michaelangelo’s masterpiece all together.

As I looked at him—beautiful, sensuous, conceited—I listened to a British woman (sleek, silver bobbed hair) discuss the piece with her messy redhead granddaughter, freckled and bespectacled, 11 or 12 at most.

“What do you think?” the elder asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, how does it make you feel?”
“I can’t explain it.”
“If he were to talk to you, what would he say?”
A pause.
“Would it help if I told you what I think?”
Silence.
“Well,” the grandmother continued, “I think he’s very sexy.” The girl snickered. “And look at how his hand is on his hip. Isn’t it effeminate? I think he’s quite satisfied with himself. And who’s he standing on? What is that?”
“A body. No. A head.”
“Whose head?”
“Another king’s?”
“What’s in his hand?”
“A rock.”
“And what did David use his slingshot for?”
“Oh! Goliath.”
“Right. And look at how he’s standing. I think it says ‘don’t fuck with me.’”

My Favorite New Toy

Duotrope's Digest

Diseased Articles

In Grammar class last night we were talking about articles and why certain proper nouns take the definite article and others don't. One reason is shared situational-cultural knowlege. We use "the" when all members of the discourse know about the noun, as in the sun, the moon, the diner, etc. A lengthy discussion ensued regarding diseases.

Why do we say the mumps, the measles, and the plague but not the AIDS or the cancer? What's so strange and silly about saying "I've got the cancer"? (One person pointed out that Forrest Gump said his mother had the cancer.)

One hypothesis was related to historical linguistics. At some point in time many people got measles, mumps, and black plague, so it became shared cultural knowledge and thus took on the definite article. Perhaps, then, as AIDS and cancer become even more embedded in society, they will also take on "the."

Do I smell a research project?

Modern Life of the Soul

Overheard at the Munch retrospective at MoMA:

Mother: What’s wrong?
Teenage Son: [Eyes blank, shrugging] I just wouldn’t put any of these paintings in my house, that’s all I’m saying.

Oh c’mon, what’s a home without a little melancholy, despair, and sexual humiliation?

(Another hopefully-beefier overheard in the works for next week.)

Pindeldyboz

Pindeldyboz has published my story "Go East". Wee!

55birds

Rosemary, of Bird and Moon fame, has posted two of my 55-word stories on her journal, 55birds. It's a project devoted to stories of 55 words--no more, no less. The form is great fun. Try it sometime.

snippet: The Anniversary

Luda smoothed the shirt on the hanger and hung it in the closet. Her eyes lingered on no particular spot there, just her family’s clothing bunched together, a row of hangers clutching a pole: her husband’s good suit, her good dress, and little Mia’s weekend outfit and alternate school uniform, all hanging limp. It was early afternoon but the clouds outside were so dense and full with rain that it felt much later. She sighed and closed the door.

The sounds of the youngest school children began wafting up through the large concrete yard, through the open window in the kitchen. Luda put the kettle on and cut a slice of bread, spread goose fat on it and waited for Mia. She had started first grade a week ago and no longer required her mother’s company.

Luda adjusted the pins in her hair and wiped her hands on her apron. The door unlatched and there was Mia, her red hair wild and bow askew, red-cheeked and breathless.

“Hello little devil,” Luda said. She resisted the urge to scoop her up and give her kisses. “Come here and have a snack.”

Mia shut the door and went to the table. Luda poured her some tea and Mia swung her legs as she chewed on the black bread. She chattered about her day between bites and Luda reminded her to swallow before opening her mouth to speak. Mia finished her snack in silence (still swinging her legs) and Luda adjusted her bow.

A few hours later Matei came home. Matei was a tailor. He shared a shop with another tailor and he often brought home his work, which Luda helped with. Usually they would exchange a kiss and have a quiet dinner before setting down to work. They would sit side-by-side, mending and altering, taking turns at their major investment, the Singer.

Today, however, was the fifth anniversary. Luda could not look at Matei. She looked above him, beside him, at his forehead, his nose (growing a hump beneath his square glasses), at his ears. She looked at the corners of the kitchen, her fork, her spoon, her soup, the table. She wondered if he noticed this behavior, and its steady yearly recurrence. If he did, he had the tact not to say anything. The tact or the fear. She wasn’t sure. She worried that he knew and did not say, but perhaps he knew that she thought he knew.

After dinner Luda checked on Mia’s homework and put her to bed on the cot in the living room. Then she went into the bedroom and lay down. She stared into the darkness and listened to the stuttering of the Singer. She listened to the rhythm of Matei’s work, as well as the silences, and wondered if in those pauses, he was looking up, staring at no particular point on the wall and thinking of her. She smiled at this image, then put her hands on her belly and cried.

scheduling

Just to impose some order in the chaos, MLP will be updated once a week, on Thursdays. Perhaps with extra tidbits to chew on as I encounter them.

snippet: Luda

In the narrow, sherbet room there is one wall with floor-to-ceiling shelving. The shelves are filled not with books but yarns, threads, ribbons, and lace, in descending order of frequency. The colors cooled by the light bouncing off the walls. A painting of Luda hangs on the opposite wall, above the twin bed. The faint blue and purple shadows in the folds of her flesh.

“If it tastes good, it's kosher,” was her motto. And this was manifested in her, and the portrait continues to manifest it.

In her final years, the seamstress lived in this sewing room, though she didn’t do much sewing anymore. She simply beamed at the wall of threads and admired the woolen yarn and the half-completed rug on the loom by the window. Her daughter had tried weaving in her unemployed days, but was now too busy at IBM to have “productive leisure time.”

Luda would sit on the bed with her hands on her knees and listen to the son-in-law mend curtains on the sewing machine, or do other odds and ends. What a handy boy.

Few people came to the funeral. They’d either died or were stuck in Romania. A few letters of condolence arrived in thin airmail envelopes. They had a short service at the cemetery and the rabbi gave a generic speech based on the five minute pre-funeral interview. A flock of honking geese flew up as rocks were strewn in the grave and the small party (daughter, with baby on hip, her husband, and me, the neighbor) got into the Subaru and drove back to Brooklyn.

Her daughter Mia invited me in after the service. I had made a pot of cholent before the funeral. I lived next door and occasionally swapped stories with Luda in her better days. She’d told me about her life, her sewing and her cooking. She made cholent with bacon fat. So I finally tried the sacrilegious recipe in her honor. It worked well with the meat and the beans, added a smoky flavor.

Mia was sitting on the floor of Luda’s old room when I arrived. The baby was waddling around, banging at the loom and babbling to it. Her husband was in the dining/living room, arranging flowers.

“That’s it, then,” Mia said, as I stood in the doorway.

“She’s in a better place,” I said, dreading all the clichés and wishing for something better. I barely knew Mia. “I’m so sorry.”

Mia grabbed at her boy and swung him into her lap. He squeaked with joy.

“I wish she had come over more, I so enjoyed her stories,” I said. “We always talked of knitting together. I didn’t realize how much yarn she had!”

“She used to make beautiful things.”

“I can imagine.”

The afternoon light threw a muted orange triangle on half of Mia’s face. She had her mother’s roundness and hearty build, but her eyes were darker and stronger. Her hair was red but I’d only known Luda’s stark white.

“Sit down,” said Mia.

Her husband brought in some plates of cholent. I started for the bed, hesitated, then opted for the floor, beside Mia. Luda looked on, above us. The cholent was thick and not very hot, just the right warmth. We ate in silence.

(Maybe part of a larger work. Then again, maybe not.)

word coinage: Clogosphere

Clogosphere:

N. The thousands (millions?) of blogs of no consequence, "clogging" the internet.

I thought I was a genius, making this word up (see Anca's ego; see Anca's ego puff). Then I googled it and realized it already existed, with varying defintions (see Anca's ego deflate). I hope that if I'm a clogger it is in the more innocuous sense, that is, of no consequence. The other sense being corporate with nefarious intentions. To my knowledge, I am not secretly an evil corporation.

But I do so enjoy the growing lexicon, which *sounds* like an evil corporation.

My Mom Says I'm Cool

Last night was the Collectanea launch, at Mo Pitkins' House of Satisfaction. It started at 7 on the dot and ended at 8 on the dot, and was heaving with happy drinking people.

Like a dope, I missed most of it. I was finishing a presentation at school on the UWS, teaching Cantonese using Mr. Potato Head for a body parts game, and couldn't leave until 10 past. Apparently Lizzy read my story first, so I'd missed that before I even got on the 1 train. My mother was there, and assured me whistles and stomps were had.

They didn't record the event, but Lizzy's radioplay is available on the website, and on their Limited Edition CD, which includes a .pdf version of the magazine, the radioplay, and extra interviews and music. And it's only $5! (*cough*)

My friend Sean at Said the Gramophone was so kind to put a link up to Collectanea. Thanks, Sean.

In other news, I have a grammar quiz to cram for. Deontic, Epistemic, Dynamic. Go modals go!

Launched!

Collectanea has launched its inaugural issue, which includes my story "Bastille Day."

The neat thing about Collectanea is its cross-pollination of media. In addition to straight fiction and non-fiction, there is an illustrated story and a podcast. The podcast in this issue has an audio piece inspired by my story, performed and produced by Lizzy Cooper Davis. She did a fabulous job, and it was fun collaborating on the music and French with her.

Tonight's the launch party and actors from the New York Collective will read selections of the stories. There will also be some multi-media art presentations.

In short, wahoo!

short short: Thoughts in the Library

I am an aural irritant. I wear corduroys to the library. I swish-swish-fpp-fpp through the oppressive silence and decaying bodies, bringing both life and irritation to those still gasping for air. I disrupt the smooth sound of pen-to-paper, rasping pages mid-trun, I fpp-swish-fpp amidst the pernicious threat of paper-cuts. I carry books as my ticket inside but my subversive mission is clear: to pierce the silence with incessant swish-fpp-fpp-swish-swish. I only wish I could mimic the muted crunch of boots on snow, pebbles, and salt, to harmonize with my corduroy, and realize- yes! And I run outside and do just that, books forgotten, mummified corpses left behind, breathing, stomping, swish-swish-fpp-fpping. Truly, the cloth of kings.


(Written in Montreal, no doubt during term paper season, when I should've been writing about Ancient Egypt or Neolithic China or some such thing.)

Aks the aminals about pasghetti

Neat thing I learned this week:

"Bird" and "first" used to be "brid" and "frist" in Old English. So the switching of sounds within a word (called metathesis if you must know) eventually solidified, changing the standard of English we use today.

Teacher Brain vs. Writer Brain

I spent the weekend at an intensive workshop in developing classroom materials. I came away with a lot of ideas for a slew of situations, and I also came away with a story idea. I don't know if it was something specific at the workshop that stimulated this, but what I do know is I was frustrated having to pay attention and participate and not whip out a notebook and go into my own world.

This has been a bit a of an internal Cerebral Death Match for me the past year. I care about my students (when I have them), I want to pay attention, but the intellectual stimulation sends me off on mental tangents that seem to fall through the cracks because I can't always stop what I'm doing to write an idea down. And then when I do sit down to write on my own time, lesson planning or curriculum development or school ideas start nattering away. (Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.)

I wonder if I'd gone into another field (like my failed attempt at bartending) if I'd have more time to think about writing and actually write, or if I'd be stimulated less and thus have less ideas.

Collectanea

Collectanea, put out by the NY Collective for the Arts, is launching its first issue (including my story "Bastille Day") online on March 1st. They're having a launch party at Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction on Tuesday March 7, at 7 pm, which should be a multi-media wonderland. I'm excited.

dipping a toe

So this is a tentative dip into the very crowded blog pool. I know I'm so late in the game. This is just a place to post news and maybe occasional thoughts/observations about writing, teaching, cities, and other things. Hopefully as I get the hang of the ladybug some order will make itself apparent.