Signs you're a bonafide writer

I watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona this weekend. I loved it, which is no surprise. I have a thing for Woody Allen's sense of humor. I also have a thing for Spain. And Javier Bardem. And well, Penelope Cruz definitely deserved that Oscar. But more than anything, the character of Cristina, who seems to be trying on different personas and artistic outlets, reminded me of myself.

I'm always doubting myself and my writing. Even I'm getting tired of hearing it. Perhaps it's part of my mysterious, writerly persona. Perhaps it's just obnoxious and I need to get over it.

With that in mind, I've been trying to decide how you know when you're a writer, some real road signs that will shut up my inner skeptic. I think I found one today.

I wrote a poem. And it sucked. And I didn't care. It didn't say what I wanted to. It's not particularly original and the imagery isn't so hot. But it doesn't matter. Because I wrote it for no other reason than that I needed and wanted to. And because I'll keep rewriting it till it's right. And that's it, right there. That realization that just getting something on paper is an accomplishment accompanied by the unabashed recognition that revision is just a part of the process.

If only Tu-tu were mine.

Being sick sucks. It's uncomfortable and miserable. But, it also means a lot of time on the couch, which has its perks. And guilt-free movie watching. So, tonight, as I was perfecting my couch potato form and watching one of those guilt-free flicks, I heard the most pitiful mewing. I hauled myself off the couch and went to look out the window. No cat. I opened my door. No cat. I decided to venture further out, and one flight down there was the cutest kitten I have ever seen. Just look at this face:

I carried her up to my apartment, making plans for a "did you lose your kitten" poster and falling in love all at the same time. Of course, Nutmeg and Squishy were not pleased with the interloper's presence. The kitten wasn't thrilled either, and outdid both the adult cats with a display of fuzziness and hisses. But we settled down a little as I thought about what to do and who the cat might belong to.

I decided to knock on the door of the one family I knew who owned a cat. Of course, it was theirs, and I collected the little ball of fuzz and took it home, my heart breaking already. The owner informed me her name was Tu-tu, and the little part of me that I have to keep under lock and key so it doesn't run wild through the SPCA and bring home all the stray animals started to cry. But I handed Tu-tu over and headed back to my couch, where Nutmeg and Squish were very relieved to find out that this had all been a very short-lived arrangement.

And now, even though I should be heading to bed, I'm not because I am terrified that the family doesn't love the kitten, that they shoved it out the door trying to get rid of it and every time I hear a door open, I peer out like a crazy woman to make sure Tu-tu isn't back in the stairwell.

See, the woman didn't seem particularly upset when I asked if they'd lost a kitten, didn't seem relieved to have it back.

"It's my daughter's kitten," she said. A scene played in my head of some sweet girl who loved her kitten and the poor, beleaguered mother who was tired of scooping the litter box, couldn't afford the vet bills, was tired of the mewing, and saw an easy chance to just let little Tu-tu go.

"Oh, honey, Tu-tu must have run away," I could hear her tell her daughter in the little movie in my head.

Because something in that woman's voice and face didn't say "I love this kitten and am so glad she's back." And I can't understand how anyone could feel anything less than love for Tu-tu. Or for any other kitten or puppy or cat or dog.

Am I probably crazy? Yep. Does that family probably have a normal amount of like for the kitten, and it was late on a Monday night and the mom was tired and hadn't yet realized the cat was missing. I hope so. Does part of me want to slip a note under the door offering to take Tu-tu if they've decided they don't love her? You better believe it. But a bigger part of me says they'd think I was a nutso cat-napper.

Yes, I've accepted my fate as the crazy cat lady and general bleeding heart. And so I'll sit here a little longer before I go to bed, even though I should already be asleep, and listen for the sound of doors opening and closing and the thin little mew of an abandoned kitten.


In other cat-related news, Nutmeg and Squish received a care package from their country cousin, Wallet. They were understandably thrilled and have already given their new toys a run for their money.

Books going the way of the Dodo?

Check out this article on Read Street, the Baltimore Sun's book blog. I'm still digesting it and don't really know how to articulate what I feel about the idea. The idea of books being done away with makes me want to weep, and yet I keep thinking about how the things I know and love today are that way because they changed. But the thing about books is that they've been around in more or less the same form for so long that the thought of losing them is particularly sad.

Sock fishes and pillow stairs

One of the most beautiful music videos I've seen in a long time. I heard the song itself a few days ago and jotted down a piece of the lyrics as quickly as I could. I went searching for it today online and discovered the video, which I think I could watch over and over. The song is by Oren Lavie, and it's called "Her Morning Elegance."

Kazooish

Listening to Stina (a friend from Silver City) on KZMU in Moab, UT. If you're sitting around wondering where to get your music fix, consider listening online at kzmu.org

Thoughts on shuffling

Excellent essay by James Wolcott in the latest issue of Vanity Fair on the subject of death and the baby boomer.

Slipping off the mortal coil is no excuse for slacking off. Only in America could the prospect of dying be promoted as a motivational tool to rack up frequent-flier miles. Bookstores and Web sites abound in self-help guides listing the 10 (or 100, or 1,000) things and places you must do and visit before you die (there's even a 100 Birds to See Before You Die catalogue), as if life were a race through the supermarket aisle to grab as many experiences off the shelves as possible before collapsing at the checkout line.

I've not often contemplated my own mortality, but Wolcott presents an interesting discussion of the business not of dying, but of facing one's own impending death. As a writer myself, it was a good reminder not to get too wrapped up in one's own importance and wisdom. Read the piece in its entirety.

And, because no one knows death better than the tall, dark, and cowled man himself:

"PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED 'LIVING'." ~Death in Terry Pratchett's Last Continent

Little pieces of happiness

Happiness is three-day weekends and Mondays without work.

The best Valentine ever.

This video:

Rockwell would be pleased.

Hooray something fun and worthwhile for my Project 365 self portrait series!

wrinkled as a walnut shell [excerpts]

I'm currently reading The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar. It's a beautiful story of Sera and Bhima, an upper middle-class Parsi woman and her housekeeper, respectfully. I've found an honesty in this story about life and prejudice that one seldom sees. One excerpt in particular has stuck with me:

From the time she was in her teens, Sera has been fascinated by this paradox--how a body that we occupy, that we have worn like a coat from the moment of our birth--from before our birth, even--is still a stranger to use. After all, almost everything we do in our lives is for the well-being of the body: we bathe daily, polish our teeth, groom our hair and fingernails; we work miserable jobs in order to feed and clothe it; we go to great lengths to protect it from pain and violence and harm. And yet the body remains a mystery, a book that we have never read. Sera plays with this irony, toys with it as if it were a puzzle: How, despite our lifelong preoccupation with our bodies, we have never met fact-to-face with our kidneys, how we wouldn't recognize our own liver in a row of livers, how we have never seen our heart or brain. We know more about the depths of the ocean, are more acquainted with the far corners of outer space than with our own organs and muscles and bones. So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long-ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a warehouse of remembered slights and cruelties.

But if this is true, surely the body also remembers each kindness, each kiss, each act of compassion? Surely this is our salvation, our only hope--that joy and love are also woven into the fabric of the body, into each sinewy muscle, into the core of each pulsating cell?

That leaves me only one thing to say: read it.

Garden of Forking Paths: Fork 3

The Garden of Forking Paths . It puts me in mind of Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. It is a story that does indeed require a lot of though upon reading, but if you let it wash over you, it is easier to digest.

I've always had an interest in theories of time. Pondered just how it is that time unfolds or circulates or bends or collides. Needless to say I haven't got an answer. I just continue to exist in whatever reality this is.

At the end of what I would call a rather exhaustive search for information on Borges' story, I still have only found one (working) example of the story as a hypertext narrative.

But the crown jewel of my search is this website, which explores the idea of the hypertext narrative, with focus on it's relation to Borges (and Vannevar Bush, who did important work with analog computing, the atomic bomb, and the idea of the memex). It is even a hypertext narrative itself.

She also links to two beautiful hypertext works (as a note, there's some adult content in both of these):

Caitlin Fisher's These Waves of Girls

Shelly Jackson's My Body

The Garden of Forking Paths: Fork 2

The Garden of Forking Paths
Originally uploaded by magic fly paula

After spending hours this week searching for hypertext versions of this story, I am beginning to feel a bit discouraged. I have quickly come to realize that a gajillion people out there have taken inspiration from, written critical discourse on, and quoted from Borges’ story.

And broken links abound.

One dead end was more interesting than all the rest. That is that Stuart Moulthrop, a professor at UB, created his own hypertext version of GFP, called “Forking Paths.” I was quite disappointed to discover, however, that it is not available anywhere online. It is only available through something called New Media Reader, which one can purchase for $45 if one is so inclined. I am not, sadly.

Another interesting and seemingly dead end is this website, which pulls up simply a picture of a labyrinth, nothing more (at least so far as I can tell).

This website seemed promising, but if there was an ability to navigate from the main page, I couldn't figure it out.

And what I started to realize as time slipped by, was that the internet itself is a garden of forking paths. Presumable, we students all started out from the same (or a very similar) place, and have wandered through the garden, all winding up in different places. This action, more than anything, seems to me to embody the story.


Sticks, flowers, and rocks I’ve found on my wanderings through the garden:

Eastgate (publisher of hypertext works)

Conceptual art inspired by GFP

Tekkalogue, a chronicle of innovative new media

Navigating the garden

Garden of Forking Paths: Fork 1

Our assignment for electronic publishing this week was to read Jorge Luis Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths and then look for examples of the story treated as hypertext narratives.

Example the first (quite literally)

I found this example on Wikipedia's article on Borges' story (it is one of the most linked to hypertext versions). It is the first hyptertext version I looked at, and yet I think it is worth posting, simply because I like the design so much. It simple takes parts of the stories and links you to them from different words in different passages (indicated by red, underlined links). The design isn't super fancy, as a matter of fact, you can see some raw edges, but I like the asthetic, the feel. I think it provides a good example to start with when considering other hypertext versions.

P.S. If you're just interested in reading and thinking about the story, this website has some useful info on themes and study questions.

P.P.S. Visit this website for a sampler of songs entitled Garden of Forking Paths to download and listen to while you read and consider Borges' story.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Thereafter Benjamin contrived to break something every day, but he did these things only because they were expected of him, and because he was by nature obliging.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I haven't seen the movie yet, and I didn't know it was based on Fitzgerald's short story, but I did learn today that the movie makers are facing a lawsuit. Read all about it at Read Street, the Baltimore Sun's book blog.

And if you're feeling, ahem, curious, check out Fitzgerald's story here (in it's entirety).

Wise and wizened.

Tomorrow I shall go forth and have two wisdom teeth extracted from my head. I am not thrilled about this idea.

I asked the dentist if could have the teeth. He said that normally they send them away with all the other biohazard materials, but that I could have them. I would just have to remind him beforehand or he'd forget.

Something about my teeth, forlorn at the bottom of an orange biohazard bag, made me sad. And I got to thinking about some scrap of memory that I had. Some long lost recalling that Jews must save all the body parts of a person to bury them. I think I heard about it in reference to terrorist bombings in Israel, and that people have to go out to look for the pieces of their loved ones.

(Thanks to Google, I know that this is in fact true and that Orthodox Jews save teeth, amputated limbs, and excised appendixes for eventual burial.)

There is something about that idea that appeals to me. According to The Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, "The body of a dead Jew retains sanctity even after death. The body is not just a container which houses the holy soul, but the body itself has intrinsic holiness."

I'm not Jewish. In fact, I'm only mildly religious at all, so I come at it from a slightly different stance. It seems to me that this body is what we go through life with, it is our companion, our host.

I know it seems absurd to feel connected to one's teeth, particularly those teeth that wait so long to appear and then have no particular function except to, at best, simply exist and, at worst, cause severe pain.

But I've spent all day tonguing the little stub of a tooth back there and trying to imagine it's absence. It's a lonely type of feeling.

And so tomorrow, when I walk into the dentist's office, I will ask him to save my teeth.

Safe Haven

Teterrimous. A word (meaning) most foul. I adopted it today on savethewords.org, a website collecting and offering sanctuary to a deluge of forgotten and unloved words. A few choice words:

pigritude
pantdress
mulomedic
seplasiary

With such beauties already in existence, there's no need to invent your own (though if that tickles your fancy, don't let me stop you).

If you are a writer, a reader, a speaker, a lover of language, I recommend you check it out and do your part by taking in one of these fallen words. Love it, use it tomorrow in a sentence. Astound friends and family with your burgeoning vocabulary.

In addition to being a generally worthy cause, the website itself is beautifully designed and quite fun to peruse. There is sound, so if you're sharing an office or room with someone, check your speaker volume.