Monday, January 30, 2006

Evelyn Waugh said

"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."

un autre paragraphe (Sunday's)

excerpt:
"The bus was a large space of white and orange and neat dark rows of seats in two lines. Our hair--light, dark, curly, clean--stood out against the rest and our arms were stretched out careless on the seatbacks. The windows were bright striated streaks of light. On the way back home, we fell asleep in ones or twos, leaning on ripped faux-leather seats, and warm shoulders, and cold windowpanes."

I think I write fiction because it's so much easier to make things up than attempt to recreate such an intricate situation of reality! Memory, distance, and/or time make things infinitely easier--some kind of separation allows for a blurriness that then must be filled by an action, description, or character that is a compromise from truth. Maybe it's all about compromise--that's why trying to write "truth" is tough, because I can't stand the thought of not conveying everything perfectly to the readers. Sheesh.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Fifth Paragraph

Yesterday's paragraph was remotely connected to an unfinished story, so I didn't bother posting.
The first sentence of today's was written around 6:30 a.m., on the drive to the Greeley West Forensics tournament. I was (of course) napping, and woke up really quickly and looked past my friend's profile to see this weird vision:

"Far in the distance were the white lights of a parking lot, stretched over a flat gray expanse like a net of glowworms. Through the haze of a sleepy inertia, we saw the land lying in the cool metal window frame, moving by with the slow stretch of arms in the morning."

I dunno, blame it on the myopia.
If you've read Robert Pirsig's monumental rant (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) then you've heard his opinions about landscape seen through window frames (contrasted, of course, with the ultimate superiority of motorcyle-viewing). I'm pretty sure he and I disagree. Any good road trip stories?

Happy birthday to Anton P. Chekhov!

Friday, January 27, 2006

Speaking of femininity . . .

Ah, for those who are still here after the title--
Ibanez and I were talking about Neruda, and Garcia Marquez, and Latin American writing in general and how strongly it is able to reflect a more feminine side of life/living/truth. Here's something from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's first volume of autobiography (called Living to Tell the Tale, translated by the inimitable Edith Grossman):

"I believe that the essence of my nature and way of thinking I owe in reality to the women in the family and to the many in our service who ministered to my childhood. They had strong characters and tender hearts, and they treated me with the naturalness of the Earthly Paradise." [then skipping a few paragraphs, in which he speaks of, among other instances, how when he was about six he saw one of the maids giving birth in the laundering room, with the aid of all the other maids] "In any case, I think my intimacy with the maids could be the origin of a thread of secret communication that I believe I have with women and that throughout my life has allowed me to feel more comfortable and sure with them than with men. It may also be the source of my convictions that they are the ones who maintain the world while we men throw it into disarray with our historic brutality."

Reading this made me want to reread everything of his that I've read! I have been thinking, recently, that I like to get to read books and authors the same way it is interesting to get to know people--everyone has something we can empathize with, and everyone has at least one thing we can find interesting. It doesn't matter what's absolutely true, really--if I read Garcia Marquez's books differently now, is that so wrong? This isn't explaining it well. In any case, I'd like your thoughts.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Paragrafo Numero Tre

An excerpt:
". . . unroll the strip of teabags like a roll of candy buttons. I would rip each open and pour the specks of scent into my hands, lift them to my face and rub them between my fingers, so that for weeks the wrinkles of my knuckles would smell of peppermint and chamomile, and the deep lines of life and death and fortune in my palms would be stained green . . ."

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Le paragraphe numero deux

"The discussion of age must always result in the tossing of hands and an exclamation of impossibility. For in a discussion between two, the advantages and disadvantages are evenly divided: half has lived further into their thread of years, while the other half has not yet been tainted by compromise or fatigue. Half have seen, and felt, and believed and disbelieved more than the other, while the other sees and feels and believes everything for the first time, all afresh. Half are filled with history and stand high on their accumulated years; the other is unweighted by time, still filling themselves with truth and ideas. How are we then to frame our speaking, when each half moves within their own strong lens and thier own strong netting of truth? We can't, perhaps."
I have no ideas on this question--and seeing as I'm currently in that state of overdoing the cutting of the cord to the family, I'd like to know what you think. (flatter me and ignore the grammar mistakes)

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Paragraph Numero Uno

Today's paragraph was a recreation of one of my favorite Iowa-exercises--writing as badly as you possibly can, to break down any fear you have of writing badly. Never underestimate the power of pulp. Here's an excerpt:

Tafoyla threw back her long, silky, red, ravishing hair and cried out, "Never! You shall never have my father's diamond mines, although you have most cruelly killed my former lover Troxel with your vicious knife-fighting skills, I will never love you!"

We have Avana to thank for the names. You have to imagine 'Tafoyla' with a southern Jersey accent to make it even funnier. Maybe tomorrow I'll write something, I dunno, good.

Postscript: Happy Birthday to Virginia Woolf!

Monday, January 23, 2006

Micawber's Quote for the Day

"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider." - Francis Bacon, Essays