…hair please step forward. Is it me? Or is it you? Look alikes are everywhere these days. Even in London, England. It’s not often I see someone with the same hair as me, the same shades, a similar curl. It makes me feel less lonely somehow. Thanks Annette for the photo.

…me out reading on AuthorsAloud. The coolest site ever!

…reading from my wonderful first book.

Thanks Trevor Cole for the great opportunity.

… I’ve been furiously writing essays–the hardest one on Hannah Arendt is to be last–I’ve also been furiously procrastinating. This morning, while procrastinating, I found a page of first lines from new novels.

So to amuse myself I dug up my recent acquisitions and here is a list of first lines:

“Here’s a memory.” How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen. Essays. Harper Canada (2003).

“Powwow 1/2 mile.” Backwater Mystic Blues by Lloyd Ratzlaff. Thistledown Press (2006).

“In an upstairs room on Temperance Street, Amber dragged a box out of her closet and through her bedroom, bumped it over the edge of the carpet and pulled it across the kitchen tiles.” The Art of Salvage by Leona Theis. Coteau (2006).

“July 13, 1999” Between Mountains by Maggie Helwig. Knopf Canada (2004).

“Supposing truth to be a woman–what? is the suspicion not well founded that all philosophers, when they have been dogmatists, have had little understanding of women?” Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche Penguin (1973, 2003)

…is someone I’ve been thinking about far too much these days. I’ve been studying line by line, The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot and wondering about romantic love. I’ve thought of Ophelia the most, since a favorite teacher of mine once dubbed me with the nickname, and, of course, I could never quite figure out if it was the hair that made her do so, or if there something tragic about my personality.

Either way, I’ve been pondering the role of the tragic virgin, in lieu of a poem I’d written awhile ago, and wondering how the tragedy of Ophelia might otherwise be brought to life, not as the perceived victim, the romantic who throws away her life for her love, but as someone empowered. Thus, I’ve been drifting on the water, trying to bring meaning and life to the lifeless.

…arrived today–a wonderful journal that I will take with me to Vienna and surrounding area, a box of English Breakfast tea, from Harrod’s no less, and this wonderful postcard of Andrew Motion the poet laureate of England (it’s a picture of a carved lime portrait by Jilly Sutton).

…and in the tradition of an evening of representation, masks, and other such delights, a quote from Aristotle’s Poetics:

Since by nature we are given to representation, melody and rhythm (that verses are parts of rhythms is obvious), from the beginning those by nature most disposed towards these generated poetry from their improvisations, developing it little by little. Poetry was split up according to their particular characters; the grander people represented fine actions, i.e. those of fine persons, the more ordinary people represented those of inferior ones, at first composing invectives, just as the others composed hymns and praise-poems. We do not know of any composition of this sort by anyone before Homer, but there were probably many [who composed invective]. Beginning with Homer [such compositions] do exist, e.g. his Margites etc. In these the iambic verse-form arrived too, as is appropriate. This is why it is now called “iambic”, because they used to lampoon (iambizein)each other in this verse-form. Thus some of the ancients became composers of heroic poems, others of lampoons.

…a new post card arrived in the mail today. Thanks Annette.

And here is something from The Carillon newspaper interview with Oliver Stone–the line has captivated me all afternoon–I think, because I write and face the rejection squad numerous times a year, this sentiment rings true–I can’t find the exact quote, I thought it would be online, but apparently not so; it was something like this: we can only know ourselves by our defeat. We can only see outside ourselves by seeing our failures. So true, methinks–but even then, do we really see?

Last night was my first encounter with Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie. These eccentric relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis lived a life of squalor in a mansion at the Hampton’s. They were ordered at one point to clean up the mansion which was in disrepair and full of raccoons and cats (at one point in the documentary, Edie fed an entire bag of wonder bread to the raccoons living in the attic). But they were full of life, singing, and arguing in the way only family members are able to, vicious and cruel one minute, affectionate the next. They were shut-ins, rarely leaving the house; they were once beautiful, still were in some way, and in their off-beat manner, they were often philosophic speaking about life, the meaning of, almost I must say, poetic (I started taking notes one-minute into the film when Edie said “You can’t be too careful–they’ll get you for wearing red shoes on a Sunday.”). They talk about each other from past loves to present stagnation, seeing their lives as still worth living. I enjoyed the interaction between the mother–I would guess she was in her seventies in this film made by the Maysles in the 70’s–the daughter, and often the filmmakers.
Now Grey Gardens can be enjoyed as a Broadway play–I wonder what this does to the biographical element, does it dramatize it more, or less? I don’t know if this is the trend, a musical drama about the drama between two eccentric women, but in the words of Edith Bouvier Beale: “There’s nothing worse than a staunch woman–they don’t weaken. France fell but Edie didn’t.”

“It’s difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.”–Edith Bouvier Beale.

“Certainly the Maysles are interested in recording the Beales’ very real life—the ruined house crawling with cats and fleas, the paper bird in the rusty gilded cage, the mother and daughter quarrelling—but those are the film’s most superficial elements. What draws the viewer in are the stories around what we cannot see: Miss Beale lamenting the loss of a scarf. The suitors turned away. Mrs. Beale’s infatuation with a man whose minor musical talent is better remembered than heard. Money spent. The dream of New York on summer nights filled with jackhammers and the moon. Regrets and recriminations: the language of lovers, the fabric of family life. The Maysles’ interest in the ephemeral, the passing of time in a sea of leaves, tells us that masks are all we have; people would not know who they are or what to say without them. Time is cruel, but we can overcome it a bit by insisting on self-expression (at any cost, since it generally does cost something: a conventional life and the conventional wisdom that goes with it).” –Hilton Als

They were intriguing on screen as people who’d had everything, and then nothing but each other.

…again, this time by Amy.

Well, a meme. That’s something I’m not sure I want to give away. Five little-known things about me. Hmmm. Well. Let’s see what I can come up with that may or may not shock you.

1. It’s not that I don’t like country music, it just doesn’t like me.

2. I own a guitar, but rarely play.

3. I dislike chaos, but like spontaneous gestures.

4. I’m not fond of crowds, but I like to talk.

5. I can talk for hours and not say anything.