Watch Mike Seaver proselytize:
http://www.wayofthemaster.com/watchepisodes.shtml
http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/all/
These are the only things I know on the Internet. But I guess if you’re here, you’re probably already bored..
Thanks to my constant, B, for pointing me in the direction of many of these websites, and being more technologically savvy than I am.
“Every cell in your blood stream in asshole.” ~ my friend’s downstairs neighbor to her husband and babby daddy to be…again.
"Appreciation of Beauty", from Art in Portland
You almost wouldn’t notice the Midway’s front because it’s hidden by the sign that juts out and advertises DANCERS PRIVATE BOOTHS at the Hustler Club next door. Above the door is elaborate, multicolored florescent lighting that spells out “MIDWAY” above a seventies graphic of a drink. Jittery people stand outside flicking cigarettes and laughing a little too loud. There is one small window, and through it you can see the long, straight bar and the few patrons that sit toward the end of the bar, in the darkest corner. One woman, in her forties, with short, bottle blond hair, thick eye-make up and graying teeth, subtly sneers at me as I walk to the bathroom. Perhaps she thinks I am her competition. A man coos, “Come here, baby girl.”
Roy, the burly bartender with prison-esque tattoo on his left forearm, has to buzz you in to the bathroom, and once my companion and I enter, it becomes apparent why. Two young woman, slightly greasy and high as kites, bounce about the room. One is on her knees in a stall; her purse sits next to her. The other pulls her hair into a ponytail over and over again, almost violently, and expresses feverish concern over whether or not their belongings are blocking the stall.
“Can you get by, sweetheart? Can you get by? You need to get into the stall? You need to use the bathroom? We don’t wanna be in your way…”
“We’ll get in trouble…” the other says as she stands up and slips a plastic bag with a small white rock down her shirtt. She begins to wash her hair with a bar of hotel soap in the sink.
The graffiti is typical of places on the “down low”, as a security guard at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor characterized East Baltimore Street. Lots of limerick references to drugs, penned by someone named “Precious.” There is a furious, repeated buzzing, and the two girls dash out faster than you can say, “Crabs.”
Back out at the bar, Roy pours us drinks, 3/4 vodka, 1/4 soda. “I’ve never lost a customer,” Roy says. This year, there are two new waitresses, both of whom Roy describes as “pitbulls.” Everyone has that hard edge to them, that scratchy, nicotine-grated voice and dried out hair. Tough eyes. We strike up a conversation with the younger waitress.
“Were you buzzing because they were taking too long in the bathroom?”
“Yeah, those two girls like to do crack in the bathroom, but I don’t let it happen on my watch.”
A man walks in with one of the aforementioned girls-who-do-crack-in-the-bathroom trailing him, twitching. He sits at the bar and both crackheads, plus the older woman, whose get-up is straight out of John Waters, start to caress him.
“How long have you worked here?”
“Two years. I used to dance, before that.”
We assume dance also means “date.”
“How long did you do that for?”
“Twelve years. Things are different now, though. I’m older. 31. I got two kids, two little girls. Nevaeh and Tulia. ‘Nevaeh’ is ‘heaven’ backwards and Tulia’s just Tulia.”
“Did you make more money dancing or doing this?”
“Dancing. But I didn’t like it. This is better. And like I said, I’m older now.”
My companion goes outside to smoke a cigarette, and in the course of five minutes, tries to dissuade someone from snorting heroin and has to turn down a proposition for sex. I examine the glass cases neatly lined with bottles of Old Grandad and Jim Beam behind the bar. “Roxanne” comes on the jukebox. I look up to the framed portraits that line the top of the wall, fading glamor shots of old Hollywood pin-ups and movie stars. Their bodies are plump and nourished, butts popped, breasts pushed slightly forward. Their faces are calm and self-content. Their teeth are clean.
One of the last three books in my personal bibliography will be replaced by The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers by Daniel L. Schachter. Hold me accountable, non-existent audience!
Let's Stay Up All Night!
…even though I keep on yawning!
In this program, we have to pick a “personal bibliography”: twenty books we plan to read in a few months that will either inform our writerly existences or directly influence the manuscript upon which we are working. The following is a rough draft of my personal bibliography, just for kicks:
D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths
Beloved childhood classic, and one of the best customer reviewed books on Amazon I’ve ever seen. If you are even a little educated in these classic plot lines, you will realize how much Western culture descended directly from them.
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
The Pulitzer Prize winning effort by Ernest Becker to evaluate all human behavior in light of fear of death.
Her Husband by Diane Middlebrook
I’m reading this now, in my breaks from Infinite Jest; story of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath’s marriage.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
DFW!
Appetites by Caroline Knapp
What I’m up against, I think.
A Writer’s Life by Gay Talese
Self-explanatory.
Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy by Irving Yalom
Part of my manuscript deals with the potentially negative effects of group therapy, and so I’m going back to one of the pioneers of the practice, Irving Yalom. He wrote quite a few seminal books on therapy but this one feels most relevant.
Girl, Interrupted by Susannah Kaysen
This will be a re-read. It relates to my MS as well. I don’t want to give too much away, otherwise you won’t buy it on Kindle!
Can Somebody Shout Amen!: Inside the Tents and Tabernacles of American Revivalists by Patsy Sims
Patsy Sims runs the program here, and she’s the sweetest little old Southern woman who, in her youth, infiltrated such potentially hostile, male-oriented spheres as prison, the Klu Klux Klan and snake handler’s churches. I myself have a fetish for communities on the fringes of society (I’ve expressed this before, I’m sure, a million times) and am really interested in how these groups operate. She’s given me driving directions to a snake handler’s church, which ought to be pretty interesting, when I’m ready…
Diary of a Genius by Salvador Dali
Anyone who has the balls to title his book so deserves to be worshiped. (I jest. Infinitely.)
The Next American Essay edited by John D’Agata
I met John D’Agata in California last year…he’s considered one of the pioneers of the “lyric essay”, and this volume (apparently, I obviously haven’t read it) attempts to showcase some of the new, inventive forms of the essay.
Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
Frame is one of New Zealand’s most famed writers. This is a fictionalized account of her eight year on-and-off stay in a mental hospital for schizophrenia, a diagnosis that was later reneged. Like Kaysen, she’s interested in the lines we’ve drawn that demarcate “crazy” from “sane”, and how it was that she came to be in the first group for a time. Her Autobiography, which I have read, is superb, as is Jane Campion’s film version, An Angel at my Table.
Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass
The formidable German writer examines his past and the fallibility of memory.
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealey
I’ve always wanted to read this. I’ve heard it’s just stunning, and it works because I’m trying to study the way people construct the narratives of their lives.
Play of Consciousness by Swami Muktananda
This is the “spiritual autobiography” of the guru of the guru I occasionally visit when I’m “home” in order to chant and calm the eff down. I’ve heard parts of it read aloud at “services”, and am curious to hear more of it, and to learn more about the teachings of “Baba”, as he’s called.
Architect of Desire by Suzannah Lessard
This is the memoir of a former mentor of mine, a fiercely smart writer with a history at the New Yorker and an eye sharper than a scalpel. The book is about her grandfather, famed New York City architect Stanford White, and his many dalliances, bad habits, and eventual demise.
Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
I haven’t read a lot of Sontag, and I really want to. There was something else of hers I wanted to read, but I forgot which…this seemed thematically appropriate, as I’m also interested in catharsis via observation…Aristotelian tragedy, I guess. I have to work on unpacking this subject, and building up my vocabulary/knowledge of it. I once read that Susan Sontag directed a production of Waiting for Godot in a ruined church during the War in Bosnia, and the concept of this has been lodged in my brain ever since.
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
The New York Times Book Review calls it a “hectic, gaudy saga.” Kickass.
The Story of O by Pauline Reage
French erotica. Done.
Strangeland by Tracy Emin
The “autobiography” (diaries?) of a visual artist. I don’t know too much about this one. I found it on an old reading list I made while living in Paris. I’m not entirely sold on this choice…
“This little keyboard is really bothersome too- feel like the iPhone’s for people with identity problems ie it will tell you were you are, remind you what you look like, what to do next, where friends are & what they look like etc.”
“The alley was dark as a pocket.”
I have been thinking and I believe that there should be a shuffle option for Netflix. Many people go through spurts where they put a line of documentaries or chick flicks or ____ (some genre) films on their lists, and theyd like them to be arbitrarily mixed up, much like people feel about their iPods. I am not good with technology, but it seems like it should be pretty simple? If you do it, I think you should just put on the bottom, by way of credit, This was Itinerant Daughter’s (obviously not what I wrote) genius idea.
PS Excuse me if this doesn’t fit under the category of “Business Development”; I didn’t know where else to put it.
