“Well, lady,” he said to her, “are you an artist too?”
“No,” said Miss Goering. “I wanted to be a religious leader when I was young and now I just reside in my house and try not to be too unhappy. I have a friend living with me, which makes it easier.”
~ Two Serious Ladies by Jane Auer Bowles
An unearthed mix CD given to me by a girl a few years my junior I knew while we were both hospitalized for general teenage angst, a Google search of whose name produces naught but an obit.
Blink 182 –– “Please Tell Me Why”
Nine Days –– “Absolutely”
Dave Matthews Band –– “Crash”
Duncan Shiek –– “Barely Breathing”
Gin Blossoms –– “Hey Jealousy”
Gavin Degraw –– “I Don’t Wanna Be”
Incubus –– “Drive”
John Mayer –– “New Deep”
Razorblades –– “Story of the Year”
Harvey Danger –– “Flagpole Sitta”
Live –– “Lightning Crashes”
The Rolling Stones –– “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
Gin Blossoms –– “Follow You Down”
The Killers –– “Somebody Told Me”
The Verve Pipe –– “We Were Only Freshmen”
Third Eye Blind –– “Semi-Charmed Life”
Tonic –– “If You Could Only See”
Wheatus –– “Teenage Dirtbag”
Email from _____ to me (and undisclosed recipients) at 4:26 PM, Monday, October 24th (this is the second email I’ve received from this person)
Hi Everyone,
Mimi and I are having another open gym this Sunday, OCT 30th from 1 – 3 PM. Would love for you to come and play. If you have any teammates, friends, sisters, etc. that want to come play as well they are welcome. Let me know if you can make it. See you soon!
Sincerely,
___
website
phone (Orange/San Diego County area code)
From me to ____, 6:05 PM
Please update your address book –– I am not the person you’re trying to reach. I live in New York City, I don’t have sisters and I don’t go to the gym.
You too can have one!
Step one: buy an alligator claw back scratcher, available at most south Florida drug stores or online here.
Step two: Saw off the stick.
Step three: paint its toenails a pretty color.
Step four: krazy glue a pin to the palm.
Step five: pin to a crazy jacket, and give Iris Apfel a run for her money.
So this morning on the subway I was looking over my shoulder as some lady was typing an email on her telefono intelligente (I don’t know why I felt that needed to be Spanish) and this is a pretty close approximation of the note:
Subject: Doctor O
Hi cutie,
I really think you should go see Doctor O. I’ll be happy to pay for it –– I’ll consider it an investment (I think you can get her down to $125/hr.) [Something platitudinous after this…]
So given the quotation of an hourly rate, I’m guessing this is about a psychiatrist or a mental health professional of some sort, and a Google search of Dr. O’s in NYC provides the following match:
Dr. S. O.
I’m a Clinical Psychologist who’s been in private practice for almost 15 years. My basic training is psychodynamic in nature, though I’ve worked extensively as a Dialectical Behavior Therapist (DBT), and it’s informed my practice of therapy enormously. Originally developed to treat patients with ‘Borderline Personality Disorder,’ DBT is also immensely helpful to those suffering a wide range of emotional disturbances, including depression, anxiety, anger management problems, eating disorders, difficulties with close relationships, and difficulties in the work place. It’s a treatment where the therapist is interactive and “real”, and the treatment process is de-mystified.
My working style is an integration of both of DBT, and my psychodynamic foundations. Classified as a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), DBT has a didactic component where patients are essentially taught important life skills (core mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotion regulation). Many find this aspect of DBT extraordinarily helpful.
I integrate the helpful techniques from DBT into my primarily psychodynamic practice. A session is a collaborative process. I am not silent and distant, but actively involved. My style is warm and direct. Patients often say early on that they feel very comfortable with me, and well understood.
—-
Ah, the cutie is Borderline! That is… super unfortch.
So in not one but two books I’ve read recently, the novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett have been cited as works that contain the most biting satire, the most ruthless quips, and the most rapid back-and-forth of any in literature. I never thought I would like her work as her name alone suggests her genre is one I like to call “mannered.” I know there’s an actual name for it –– Victorian-ish times, lots of activities take place in parlors, poor families are ashamed because they only have one maid, and jobs are frequently referred to as “posts.” I’ve never been an enormous fan of Edith Wharton & co., so I assumed this wouldn’t be to my liking. But then ICB was mentioned in The Art of Cruelty, which I devoured in less than three hours, and also by my darling John Waters, who speaks of her with a reverence much like mine for him.
“She was English, looked exactly like the illustration on the Old Maid card, never had sex even once, and wrote twenty dark, hilarious, evil little novels between the years 1911 and 1969. Pick any one of them. They’re all pretty much the same. Little actual action, almost no description, and endless pages of hermetically sealed, stylized, sharp, cruel, venomous Edwardian dialogue. ‘Once you pick up a Compton-Burnett,’ Ivy commented about her own books, ‘it’s hard not to put them down.'”
The deal was totally sealed (hermetically?) when I was perusing old posts in this blog (yes, to survey my kingdom) what do I discover/re-discover but LO AND BEHOLD! The novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett are an example of “camp” according to Susan Sontag! Woah. Woah. I had to reach out to Amazon STAT. So now I have begun Parents and Children, and while there are definitely some zingers (“I suppose actions speak louder than words” is met with “I have never found fault with silence”) it is, as the Penguin Modern Classic synopsis says, “less savage in them” than her other books. Boo!
Full report upon completion.
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart
“Few novels can change your life. This one will.”
Bored psychiatrist Luke Rhinehart lives with his wife and two children in their apartment in Manhattan. Dissatisfied with both Western and Eastern philosophies’ alternate embrace of the meaningful and the meaningless, Luke is forever changed when he finds religion through a simple roll of the dice. Rhinehart and his patients soon find that the only path to salvation is in letting the dice decide. Rolling his way through sex, drugs and therapy, Luke spreads his new religion with a hilarious combination of evangelical fervor and moral depravity, turning his life –– and the world –– on its head. Once you hand your life over to the dice, anything can happen.
****
This reminds me of a much more extreme version of my decision-making process sophomore year of college, during which I decided all yes or no quandaries by flipping a coin… lasted about a week.
Graphology
Some with Micrographic Tendencies include:
David Foster Wallace
Simone Weil
People exhibiting symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease
Charles de Foucauld
Roy Norris
Walter Benjamin
and me.
…
I am so fucked.
I have been doing art projects with butterflies. Here is a description of one thing you must do to “relax” the dead butterfly so it can be opened. (That sounds sooooo dirty.)
Step #2, a la Laurie from the American Museum of Natural History’s Blog (just Google it, I’m too lazy to put in the link):
The relaxing chamber is very easy. You can use any type of air tight container – I use Tupperware. Place 3-4 damp paper towels in the bottom of the container. This creates humidity, which will seep into the butterfly. You also need to add a cap full of either Listerine or Pine-sol. These act as mold inhibitors so your butterfly doesn’t get all yucky. The last thing you need is something to prevent the butterfly from touching the paper towels. I use wire mesh that I cut to the size of the container and put it on top of the towels. I usually leave the butterfly in here for 2 days before I check on it.
Dead insect sauna.
“During her stay in Bourges, Simone also made a few attempts –– most of them disastrous –– to get in touch with the peasant classes. Once, when she was taking a walk in the country, she talked a farmer into letting her use his plow; to the man’s fury, she quickly overturned it. Some weeks later a lycee colleague introduced her to a couple, the Bellevilles, who had a small farm in the environs. They agreed to have her come for a few hours a day and do basic tasks –– dig up beetroots, prepare the cows’ fodder, pile up manure, draw water for the trough. But how many questions Simone asked them as she helped them prepare the noon meal! ‘How much do you make? How do you make ends meet? Do you consider yourself happy?’ The Bellevilles were perplexed by such queries, and never more embarrassed than when she asked them to ‘sum up their desires.’ When she asked them if she could live with them full-time, pay them rent, and ‘mingle with the peasants,’ that was the last straw. ‘Life would have become impossible for us,’ they told their daughter, pleading that Mlle Weil desist from visiting them again. Not only did she never change her clothes, they complained, but she failed to wash her hands before milking the cows, and when they offered her a fine cream cheese she pushed it away, saying that the Indochinese were too hungry. ‘The poor young girl,’ they commented. ‘Too much study has driven her out of her wits.'”
Simone Weil, Francine du Plessix Gray
Itinerantdaughter's Blog 