a dash of ash
I stepped on the scales this morning, and to my horror, saw numbers I had never seen before between my toes. And while ever tightening waistbands and unzippable zippers have subtly suggested my love handles were becoming too much to handle, I was unprepared to see in very real numeric proof the score of pounds at the root of the problem. This "heav-alation" presented a problem that must be tackled (before it makes it to the buffet line), and so I've drafted a few action steps:
July 3, 1988*
Denise was a visiting professor during my MFA tenure in Wilmington. We had our disagreements (like whether or not Sophie's Choice lived up to its reputation), but we also agreed on other things - the novella is an amazing form and Francine Prose is amazing in it. I've kept this e-mail from her for more than 7 years. It's her response to me after I complained of harsh criticism from another professor, who referred to my writing as a donut: pretty on the outside, empty on the inside.
I read this article from Saturday's New York Times about how the hippest new accessory for the Brooklyn hipster (of the male varietal) is the pot belly. The article suggests that the pot belly-volution is a ripple effect - backlash against the six-packed bicep baring men's magazine models. Not to diminish the pressure that men feel to be buff and bulging, but I couldn't help feeling a wee bit like...excuse me? As though the rise of the uber-fit male can somehow trump the endless barrage of women's magazines (not to mention television, movies and advertising) touting the tall toned tanned Air Brushettes. It seems like the guys got to rebel before they were even oppressed.
It's amazing how quickly you can go from gung-ho to heave-ho. I started emdashery, all zeal and zest and dedication and fell flat within weeks. I have plenty of excuses for what went wrong, but in the end, I realize that F. Scott Fitzgerald was right: "A writer not writing is a maniac within himself." And while I'm in no way lumping myself into the category of FSF's greatness - nor am I suggesting that blogging will be the cure-all for my mental faculties - I am quite certain that more regular postings will make for a less em-bittered ash. Even though I don't have a presidential pardon to show for it, I do have a list of "buts" to explain my absence.
Blergh (blairg or blurg) - An expression of dismay tinged with frustration or exasperation, often said with little to no emphasis because one is simply too tired to emote it. "I overslept again, am late for work and left my lunch on the counter. Blergh."
1) Cold Feet - As a bonafide southerner, Mom has little to no tolerance for cold weather and, by extension, being cold. Particularly offensive to her are cold feet. Which could explain her near-obsession with socks. I'm not absolutely certain, but I think that when her chicks have cold piggies, she knows about it.
3) Wrinkled Clothes - A constant in our house growing up was the giant can of Fautless Spray Starch that occupied the table in the corner by the ironing board. Most people would swear my dad's work shirts were dry cleaned and starched, but they were simply attended to by the master laundress. I think I might have been the only girl on my hall my freshman year of college who had a full-sized ironing board in her tiny 10x10 shared space. I remember ironing a pair of pants one day and my roomate inquiring about why it mattered so much. "I just know she'll know if I wear wrinkled pants."
I am a Wikipedia junkie. I'm prone to time-warping through what I refer to as "Wikipedia rabbit holes." It usually starts with a headline on Yahoo! news. Take, for instance, Saturday's featured Yahoo nugget on child star survivors. It mentioned Drew Barrymore, who was recently featured in the HBO film Grey Gardens. Her performance in the film is garnering acclaim from critics, so I went to IMDB to see the details, and I discovered that Grey Gardens chronicles the sensational story of the riches-to-rags branch of the Bouvier family tree. And that's when the time-warp opened up and sucked me into the Wikipedia rabbit hole.
"Little Edie" suffered from alopecia and wore colorful, dramatic headscarves to mask her condition. Though she lived in a weed-choked dilapidated house filled with catfood cans and raccoon feces, Little Edie managed to pioneer a fashionable garbage chic that turned her into a style icon.
Last Saturday, I spent the better part of the day in the dimmed corridors of several abandoned buildings. Strapped with cameras, my friend Tommy and I worked our way through the slightly damp and musty innards of empty factories and their dilapidated outbuildings. The factories themselves were cavernous - at the same time airy and stifled. The other buildings were in varying states of disrepair, from splintered roofs that let slivers of sunlight cut through the dust to completely open to the blinding blue sky that looked all the more clean and bright against the gloom.
was something poetic about it. Perhaps it was the contradiction of silent factories. Quiet spaces that once hummed. Empty stillness instead of deafening industry. Concrete fortresses filled with rain pools and lush vines. The mundane items that somehow seemed exceptional because they had been abandoned. The strange beauty of neglect.
For well over a year now, I've been posting photos on Spare-Time Shooter. It started as the forum for playing 26 things and continued as an irregular posting place for the latest of my shooting expeditions. I realized recently that it was ironic for me to have a blog for my burgeoning photography hobby and not one for my lifelong love of writing. I didn't pick up the camera seriously until I was about 24 or 25. But I picked up a pen when I was six.
