Here is one of those sites where you enter random words and it generates, in this case, a poem. Choose from several different templates: Septet, Metaphors, Limerick, Lament. I chose the “Yes, But” style, which spit out this.
Anthony
blinding but hogwashed,
Anthony does laundry, compulsively,
neat as a 20-year scotch,
I wish I had a teddy bear.
(Submitted to really small talk, 2003)
… Two kids, and me, in a borrowed one-bedroom apartment. We take a fire-engine red elevator down to M and play outside with black squirrels. The air is 70 degrees warm, no wind. Gianna falls asleep in the stroller, Anthony and I walk to Pommes Frites on Second Avenue. We sit on stools at the sidewalk counter (our cone of frites wedged in a hole) and watch the city roll by. I buy a Sprite from the deli next door because the woman with no accent who takes our money tells me slowly, “You can get something to drink from the deli next doorâ€.
… The phone rang and the man paused, arm in air, chip en route to mouth. The woman looked at him, frowning. “Just ignore it,” she said.
“I’m not even doing anything,” the man said. The potato chip landed and he crunched it through three more rings. Then a pause, then a voice joined them there in the room through the small black box on the wall.
“Oh, Hi, it’s me, just wanted to let you know I’m stopping by later to drop off the gurney. See you.” Beep
“What’s a gurney?” the man asked the woman.
She hesitated, then answered. “It’s a metal stretcher with wheeled legs used for transporting hospital patients. Why?”
“Just wondering,” he said and then got up. There was a commercial on for Jeopardy, with a teaser: “It is the color of mourning in Iraq.”
“What is BLUE!” the woman shouted. Marco the returning champion said it, too; then, “Thanks, Alex, I’ll take colors for $600.” Another commercial came on, then, for a company that replaces windshields when they’ve cracked. To sweeten the deal they give 25 dinners to a restaurant nearby once the windshield’s replaced.
“I’m going out for a minute,” the man yelled from the front of the house. The woman closed her eyes and shook her head.
Tune in tomorrow for: THE OPEN WINDOW
Envious vs. Jealous. Although these are often treated as synonyms, there is a difference. You are envious of what others have that you lack. Jealousy, on the other hand, involves wanting to hold on to what you do have. You can be jealous of your boyfriend’s attraction to other women, but you are envious of your boyfriend’s CD collection. (From www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html)
Pin a solitary brooch on a curled wool lapel.
Pick at flesh when the people bunch up.
Smack right into the details.
Have nothing to say at the parties.
– Leanne Grabel, “Solitude Instructions” from Lonesome and Very Quarrelsome Heroes
Today is the day to write 3000 words. I have 3 hours, 45 minutes.
90 minutes to drive to Y, run on treadmill, drive to office
5 minutes small talk (Chris downstairs and new Leslie in office next door)
10 minutes on email
15 minutes thinking how starved I am
10 minutes to look up that poem
10 minutes on a piece about poop
15 minutes looking for a page of notes for my future book
20 minutes writing this dumb post
20 minutes getting coffee across the street
20 minutes walking to library to pay fines (Jeff Wakes Up and Blue’s Big Musical, 1 week overdue — cheaper to sign up with Netflix!)
10 minutes to drive home
Crap.
Wordstock in Portland was a smash. I lied to some agents, gawked at Joyce “Olive-Oyl” Oates (she weighs 30 pounds), snubbed Gore Vidal in the VIP room and let Dave Eggers use my computer. (“Nancy Drew Kicks A**” was the coolest button.) My sister-in-law and Maura Conlon-McIvor were huge hits at University Club Friday night. Saturday I groped Chris Botti and Sunday same sister-in-law got stuck on the great big giant Powell’s stage against Gore no-one-really-reads-his-books Vidal who had people lined up an hour before he wheeled in. So she read to, I think, ten of us … four of whom were related. Seven-year-old A. asked afterward (hand high in the air) “What made you write this book?” And 4-year-old G. curled up on a front row chair and slept. That said, the brilliantly talented writer and journalist gave a beautiful reading. I have read her book six million times and still captivated.
Tune in tomorrow, for the rest. I have a 1st grade birthday party to pull together. (By the way, honey, if you’re reading this Madison P. replied today, plus Eric S. We’re up to 15. I think we can get six around the small table in living room (they can sit on the floor) and 10 around the big table. Also wondering if — it’s so nice out — we might want the magician set up outside … call me.)
I was listening to Hilma Wolitzer on Fresh Air a couple of weeks ago, mother of Meg, both writers of books (both here in Portland right now for this). She was talking about writing and mothering and housewifing in suburban New York in the 70′s, circa Betty Friedan and “is this all there is?” My own mother-in-law was mothering (5 at 18-month intervals) and working and going to school in suburban New York, at this time, plus trying to keep up in a white-picket neighborhood. She, like Hilma, wanted more than casserole recipes and furniture sets. I am fascinated with that 70s motherhood story. It was what struck me about this, Hilma’s, interview — to hear her speaking of wanting more. More. Searching for something beyond Jell-o molds.
more »
This via Powells: A book list email going around. I LOVE this stuff, I’m so 7th grade. Directions are: underline the books that are on your bookshelf, bold the books you’ve read, italicize the books you might read, strike-through the books you’ll never read, oh, and put (parens) around the books you’ve never heard of.
Okay, here’s mine:
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
(The Time Traveler’s Wife) – Audrey Niffineger
(His Dark Materials) – Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
The Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkein
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
1984 – George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hasseini
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
(Cloud Atlas) – David Mitchell
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Atonement - Ian McKewan
(The Shadow of the Wind) – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea – Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Dune – Frank Herbert
Sula - Toni Morrison
Could Mountain – Charles Frazier
The Alchemist – Paul Coehlo
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
What titles would you add to this list, if because you love them or because you think they’re worthy of note?
Hmmm … tk.
The heat was stifling. It was smothering them in great heaping waves, so the woman got up and adjusted the thermostat, to 68. Satisfied, the man returned to his potato chips and television channel. The woman resumed her sitting. She sat and sat. She sat at an angle to him, in a chair by the door. And she watched — indifferent, helpless, bemused, and also two parts annoyed — as the end of one program signaled the jangle of 30-second sales pitches, and then the packaged theme music that started another. The second program was punctuated — click, click, click — by intermittent jabs of the man’s finger on the small black stick he held in his hand, his arm extended straight out in an awkward twist toward the big box.
“I already saw this one, it’s a rerun,” the woman said and the man jabbed again at the stick.
“How bout this?” he asked, without looking at her.
“Yeah, okay. This one’s good.”
The man set the stick down beside him and moved the potato chips onto his stomach. He took his socks off slowly, wadded them up, and with a practiced jerk of his arm sent them flying to a spot inside the doorway of the room where the washer sat.
“Can you pick those up, please, at the next commercial.” The woman said, “I’m tired of picking up socks all the time.”
The man nodded his head, the woman didn’t look at him. They both listened to the cat scratching at the door and ignored it.
Tune in next time, when: THE PHONE RINGS …
Caitlin is getting some press for her book of previously-published-everyone’s-already-read-them-yawn essays. Salon editor Joan Walsh got in her face; the NYTBR (skip the ad) went a little softer.
This Flanagan line, “When a woman works, something is lost,” gets pulled up a lot and then slugged in the head by mad moms like a Scooby Doo blow-up punching doll. Conversely, Linda Hirshman also made everyone mad when she said that when a woman doesn’t work, something is lost. The great eye-rolling debate.
