Itinerantdaughter's Blog

So when I was at writing camp this year, we had to write letters to anyone, essentially, and mine was, apparently, kind of funny.  (It was to Ryan Gosling, on whom I have a gigantic crush.  I saw him once, and I think the tone of his voice when he said, “Hello” implied that he really wanted to marry me, so that’s where the letter starts.)  My teacher told me I should submit it somewhere, but where?  The only two suggestions from the class were the now-defunct XX Files (of The Washington Post) and Shouts and Murmurs, of the venerable and infamous New Yorker.  I feel kind of stupid submitting to the latter, but seeing as I don’t know where else to go (water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink) I think I’ll just bite the bullet.  Besides, who will ever know, except you guys, aka Nobody?

Plus, when I asked my teacher if she thought I should really do it, she said, “Now, you do realize that the chances of getting into Shouts & M is miniscule, it’s merely an exercise, why not submit it, and yes, it does fit the genre, and quite well, but don’t you dare feel the least bit devastated if/when it’s rejected.  I still want you to submit it there.”

Color me convinced!  The “It’s merely an exercise” really sealed the deal for me.  Though I’m still tempted to write a snarky note as a prelude to the piece (also kind of snarky…)

Anyone else think it’s really funny that it’s S&M?

…and forgot how to spell “androgyny.”

I swear, I’ll do some poignant here soon. It’s going to happen. The divine spirit will fill me at any moment and I will be unable to tear myself away from the page.

I read an essay today that was about ____ and writing, and it was pretty awful at de-constructing ____ but has come closer to describing the writing process than anything else I’ve ever read about writing (and that’s a pretty good deal of text!)  I suppose it’s personal for everyone, but her experience sounds most like mine…

“It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment –– the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims back toward it, it backs away. ”

The myth of catharsis.  Sigh.

Oh! This reminds me. I write book reviews, and here are the synopses of some nonfiction books I may be assigned to read (assignments are SO fun!) I haven’t included reviews, per se (though I accidentally read a heated comment on the first entry, which sucks because now I feel as if my own opinions are poisoned and therefore I can’t evaluate properly, and I wanted to do that off the bat), just a summation, usually from Amazon.com (not linking):

The Wicked Son: Antisemitism, Self-Hatred and the Jews by David Mamet

The world hates the Jews. The world always has and will continue to do so.” So says celebrated playwright and novelist Mamet in this new entry in the Jewish Encounters series, as he sets his sights on both anti-Semites and apostate Jews, whom he refers to as “the Wicked Sons.” Mamet marshals his passion and mastery of language to argue that only religious observance is an authentic, non-self-hating expression of Judaism.

Ambrose Bierce’s Write it Right: The Celebrated Cynic’s Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised And Annotated for 21st Century Readers Ambrose Bierce and Jan Freeman

In 1893, Ambrose Bierce declared “I am for preserving the ancient, primitive distinction between right and wrong.” In Write it Right, originally published in 1909, Bierce turned this considerable zeal on the English language. The result revealed that the satirical author of The Devil’s Dictionary had a keen ear for the vernacular—and that he hated it. This slim volume of his three hundred or so reviled words and expressions contains many we use today with no hesitation at all. (Of “electrocution” he says, “To one having even an elementary knowledge of Latin grammar this word is no less than disgusting, and the thing meant by it is felt to be altogether too good for the word’s inventor.”) Jan Freeman, acclaimed author of the weekly column “The Word” for the Boston Globe, annotates Bierce’s rulings with style, humor, and in-depth research, revealing what Bierce got right—and what he didn’t—and giving insight into how the language has changed over the past century. Write it Right, with its incisive wit and insight into the history of American English, is the perfect gift for word curmudgeons.

(Me: be still my heart!)

A book on Trotsky, but I’m not sure I’m well versed on the Russian Revolution enough to do this one…this could be my chance to learn more?

Out of My Life and Thought by Albert Schweitzer

His autobiography. I’ve always admired him, but for reasons which aren’t too clear to me…! I used to know!

(I have decided, as of this very moment, to not look on Amazon anymore because I can’t help but read just a leeeetle too much, so only titles from now on! If you don’t eat your meat, how can you have any pudding?)

Trotsky: A Biography

Another one? What’s with the wave of interest in Trotsky?

How to Be Inappropriate

On second thought, don’t really need to read a book on that…

So…what would YOU pick?

This entry (I am in denial about blogging; refuse to call it a “post”) reminds me of the other name I was considering giving this blog, “Unmistakeable Animal.” Sort of self-aggrandizing.

I am feeling: tired, inadequate, weepy. Three faculty members of the program read aloud tonight, and I had one of those, “Dear God, I should not be allowed near a typewriter or a pen or an inkwell, EVER” moments. One man used the word “rhapsodic” and my heart melted. I had forgotten about that word. Our faculty members (all brilliant and intimidating) bombard us with their choice of readings, tight, profound little tearjerkers, sidesplitters, pontifications on Love and Life and Death…things that make you think.

But I come back to my room and no rhapsodizing for me. I stare at the word count on my manuscript and feel immediately and entirely depleted. Everyone says it is good, but it feels…lacking. Maybe it’s Tuesday. Maybe my headache is getting in the way. I think about my boss and my ex-boyfriend, the way he mined my persona for idiosyncratic nuggets, for Inspiration (that ephemeral bitch), and called me Gala, after Dali’s wife and muse. It sounds laughable now. I remember the man on the street in Paris who wanted to draw my face (not in Montmartre, Mon Dieu), and the way my friend said, upon seeing him sketch, “I think you should be a muse…for an artist.”

But one cannot be both an artist and a muse, right? You’re either one, or the other. So maybe I’m going about this all wrong. Maybe I’m supposed to abandon the practice of creating myself and focus on nurturing the creative spirits of others. I’ll make tea for sculptors and pray for avant-garde filmmakers to have hallucinogenic dreams. I’ll pretend not to notice when a painter examines my profile, and though I don’t think of myself as “pretty” now, there is still time. “I’ve never met a writer’s wife who wasn’t beautiful,” Kurt Vonnegut said. If I become beautiful by being the object of artistic scrutiny, then I can marry a writer, maybe, and help him up when he stumbles, drunk, hold his clammy arm to steady him over the threshold of our beach cottage.

But this is wishful thinking, I know. The “writer” in me longs to be free of words, of the urge to wrestle to communicate, a losing battle, always. Never is it more apparently sad and invigorating and overwhelming than it is here, at writing camp.

And the cafeteria food! Oy vey.

And if you read the below and thought to yourself, “Damn, this bitch has got some nerve comparing herself to Joan Didion and James Baldwin as she’s only twenty-five and BLOGGING, for God’s sake!”

Well…you must be right.