... I would be a turtle. Typically, my writing process is quick. To the point. Almost exhausting. There are times when an idea has to fester in my head until I reach that AHA!!! moment, like a mad scientist, but I'm a mad writer... mad to live, mad to write, and mad for everything in between. I quit drinking coffee and I also quit smoking cigarettes, and now I'm wondering if I've demolished my metabolism.
During times of quiet in my head, I like to read. When my fingers aren't flying over the keyboard (pounding... I hit the keys so hard), I'm reading. I flood my head with words. I've read ten books in the last month and I keep downloading more. Each day, I say a prayer, thanking god for my Kindle and then I read the Chinese Tao and learn that I'm not supposed to worship material possessions, but I can't help myself. I love my Kindle. I want to become a Kindle spokeswoman. It compliments my impatience. It makes me smile.
I read books that I typically turn my nose up to: The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown), Twilight (do I even need to add author names here?), and Dean Koontz something or other. I like Dan Brown. I admire his reseach. And I love the characters that Stephen King develops. And I was disappointed in Twilight. I was waiting for that tension between Bella and Edward to... I don't know... GO SOMEWHERE and then it ends with a friggin' kiss. I thought of downloading the second, but refused. $14.99 for an eBook is sinful. It's sinful and selfish (of the publisher).
I also read Jillian Michaels' Mastering your Metabolism. The book is about going organic, and now I'm terrified to eat. Soon, I'll be the starving artist, solely because organic food is so expensive... and little.
7.08.2010
6.01.2010
Writer's Block. Is that apostrophe in the right place?
The best magic pill for writer’s block is surrounding yourself with literary greats. I’ve hit this slump, still full of ideas, but no motivation to actually move on with them. On the way to Nashua, NH, I see signs for Lowell, Massachusetts. And I get this feeling. I should know why, but I can’t put my finger on it. So I let it stew and sure enough, the moment I forgot to think about it, the answer came to me. Lowell Massachusetts is the birthplace of Jack Kerouac; by far my second most favorite author ever. Saul Bellow is the first and by chance I just so happen to be reading The Adventures of Augie March, which has one of the best opening lines ever:
I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.
On top of reading great literature to get out of my mental slump, I Google something like “Kerouac Memorial,” or “Kerouac Lowell Mass” and up pops
KEROUAC COMMEMORATIVE, Bridge Street, Lowell, Massachusetts
I decide to make the thirty-minute trip to Lowell the following day.
“It’s a really bad town,” my brother warned. Since moving to Nashua two years ago, he has become an expert on everything. He has never visited Lowell, but because he knows all, I assumed his assumption, making two asses instead of one. Kind of like a buy one get one.
We brought the dog and hoped for the best on a sunny afternoon. The town itself is an old textile city north of Boston. At one point, it was America’s largest textile center. It sits along the Merrimack River and was once prime fishing grounds for the Pennacook tribe. So, for the majority of its life, Lowell was a happy, wealthy town. When the town was “founded,” it was known as the Lowell Experiment. I’m assuming that this is where the creators of LOST came up with the Dharma Initiative.
When you first drive into Lowell, you see a city in the process of reviving itself. The Kerouac Commemorative is in the part of town that hasn’t been revived. The park itself is nestled in between an old textile mill and the city, along side a trolley service that tours the old mills. During our visit, the trolley passed twice. The only person on the trolley was the driver. This was a Saturday afternoon. The sun was shining. The plants and trees were green. If there were ever a day to tour the textile mills of Lowell on a trolley, today was the day.
I took some pictures and sat on the marble bench: part of four that surround the memorial. On the inside, I saw some graffiti and my heart began to sink into my belly, coming back up into my throat as a big burp and then I turned to my left to watch a man with two rottweilers hand over an envelop to another man passing by. The two did not acknowledge each other.
So I learned a few things. I learned a bit about Lowell. I saw the birthplace of Kerouac. I saw his memorial. And I learned how to do a drop off. Is that what it’s called? I haven’t watched The Wire in a long time.
But the point is this: When I got back to the hotel, I was inspired enough to write ten manic pages. I have no idea what I’ll do with the mess of words. But they exist. And my drought has received its rainstorm. I guess it was more like a hail storm. Words are more like pellets than droplets and pellets is one of the funniest looking words I have seen today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.
I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.
On top of reading great literature to get out of my mental slump, I Google something like “Kerouac Memorial,” or “Kerouac Lowell Mass” and up pops
KEROUAC COMMEMORATIVE, Bridge Street, Lowell, Massachusetts
I decide to make the thirty-minute trip to Lowell the following day.
“It’s a really bad town,” my brother warned. Since moving to Nashua two years ago, he has become an expert on everything. He has never visited Lowell, but because he knows all, I assumed his assumption, making two asses instead of one. Kind of like a buy one get one.
We brought the dog and hoped for the best on a sunny afternoon. The town itself is an old textile city north of Boston. At one point, it was America’s largest textile center. It sits along the Merrimack River and was once prime fishing grounds for the Pennacook tribe. So, for the majority of its life, Lowell was a happy, wealthy town. When the town was “founded,” it was known as the Lowell Experiment. I’m assuming that this is where the creators of LOST came up with the Dharma Initiative.
When you first drive into Lowell, you see a city in the process of reviving itself. The Kerouac Commemorative is in the part of town that hasn’t been revived. The park itself is nestled in between an old textile mill and the city, along side a trolley service that tours the old mills. During our visit, the trolley passed twice. The only person on the trolley was the driver. This was a Saturday afternoon. The sun was shining. The plants and trees were green. If there were ever a day to tour the textile mills of Lowell on a trolley, today was the day.
I took some pictures and sat on the marble bench: part of four that surround the memorial. On the inside, I saw some graffiti and my heart began to sink into my belly, coming back up into my throat as a big burp and then I turned to my left to watch a man with two rottweilers hand over an envelop to another man passing by. The two did not acknowledge each other.
So I learned a few things. I learned a bit about Lowell. I saw the birthplace of Kerouac. I saw his memorial. And I learned how to do a drop off. Is that what it’s called? I haven’t watched The Wire in a long time.
But the point is this: When I got back to the hotel, I was inspired enough to write ten manic pages. I have no idea what I’ll do with the mess of words. But they exist. And my drought has received its rainstorm. I guess it was more like a hail storm. Words are more like pellets than droplets and pellets is one of the funniest looking words I have seen today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.
5.18.2010
Birth of an Idea
I haven’t showered today. Every twenty minutes I think to myself, “in twenty minutes you should shower. Maybe brush your teeth.” But I can’t. Because this morning when I woke up I became inspired and now, for some odd reason, I feel that it is my duty to research Sophia.
The whole idea came about during a rather nerdy conversation with an old high school friend. She’s not old, though I guess that soon we will both be old because thirty is only a year away and then “it’s all downhill from there,” unless we choose to live for a really, really long time. So we are having this conversation about the first ever library in Turkey because I was reading about Greek architecture, which is in a class of nerdy all by itself. I’d say it’s level-three nerd. And this would make my friend a level-four nerd, because not only was she able to follow the conversation, she was able to add to it.
“It has four statues of goddesses in the front and each one represents something to do with knowledge. You should write about that.”
And now I’m reeling. I’d just finished reading The Ten Books on Architecture (Vitruvius) and I remembered learning about Caryatides: women frozen in the form of architectural columns, representing the women of Caryae. The people of Caryae were at war with the Greeks and having lost, their women were enslaved to Greece, thus being locked in stone forever. The Greeks were so metaphorical. Though I don't know if that's metaphorical or just dramatic. Probably a bit of both. I digress.
In my head, the women in stone (Sophia, Episteme, Ennoia, Arete) became four modern day women. Each of their mythological stories will reflect the life of each of the women in stone. But before I get that far, I have to know the meaning of the name Sophia.
Socrates understood philosophy as philo-sophia, literally meaning the love of wisdom. It is only fitting for a statue of Sophia to exist outside of Celsus, the first known library.
So the topic, or general idea, is to create a book based upon the Celsus Library in present day Turkey. I plan to mimic the structure and its four stone statues with language. I also plan to drink copious amounts of coffee and stay away from cigarettes, as I picked a rotten time to quit smoking, having just birthed another literary idea.
Now I’m back to research. Still without shower. Abusing punctuation and abandoning all hopes of being social today.
The whole idea came about during a rather nerdy conversation with an old high school friend. She’s not old, though I guess that soon we will both be old because thirty is only a year away and then “it’s all downhill from there,” unless we choose to live for a really, really long time. So we are having this conversation about the first ever library in Turkey because I was reading about Greek architecture, which is in a class of nerdy all by itself. I’d say it’s level-three nerd. And this would make my friend a level-four nerd, because not only was she able to follow the conversation, she was able to add to it.
“It has four statues of goddesses in the front and each one represents something to do with knowledge. You should write about that.”
And now I’m reeling. I’d just finished reading The Ten Books on Architecture (Vitruvius) and I remembered learning about Caryatides: women frozen in the form of architectural columns, representing the women of Caryae. The people of Caryae were at war with the Greeks and having lost, their women were enslaved to Greece, thus being locked in stone forever. The Greeks were so metaphorical. Though I don't know if that's metaphorical or just dramatic. Probably a bit of both. I digress.
In my head, the women in stone (Sophia, Episteme, Ennoia, Arete) became four modern day women. Each of their mythological stories will reflect the life of each of the women in stone. But before I get that far, I have to know the meaning of the name Sophia.
Socrates understood philosophy as philo-sophia, literally meaning the love of wisdom. It is only fitting for a statue of Sophia to exist outside of Celsus, the first known library.
So the topic, or general idea, is to create a book based upon the Celsus Library in present day Turkey. I plan to mimic the structure and its four stone statues with language. I also plan to drink copious amounts of coffee and stay away from cigarettes, as I picked a rotten time to quit smoking, having just birthed another literary idea.
Now I’m back to research. Still without shower. Abusing punctuation and abandoning all hopes of being social today.
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