Fingering the text(ile)

Yesterday on my plane ride back from ye olde land of extremely extroverted relatives (Wow, they're a festive bunch! I'll say!), I read Cormac McCarthy's 2006 Pulitzer winner The Road pretty much in its entirety. It's a very short 287 pages long. And everyone I know LOVES this friggin' book.

But, I, alas, am left wondering, is the surface texture of a piece of writing enough to make it great?

Though it describes an utter burn-out of a post-apocalyptic wasteland (ash, ash, and more ash), it is lush and gorgeous. Of this, there can be no doubt. For those not quite in the know, the basic premise of the novel is that a man and his young son set out on a journey across what was once the North American continent, but is now primarily de-peopled and scorched due to some grave, unmentionable and unmentioned catastrophe. I say "primarily de-peopled" because, it seems, a few cannibalistic asswipes manage to survive and produce adequate menace throughout.

But the thing about this novel that makes me wonder for what purpose was it written is that it takes nary a turn that I didn't predict long before I got there. Of course the father has to kill a man in front of the kid. Of course the two come dangerously close to starving to death before happening upon a heretofore untapped cache of canned goods and blankets. Of course they make it to the coast and of course the coast is only more of the same ashy deathscapes. Of course the father dies a pitiful tubercular death (oops, spoiler-- but then, the whole premise is basically a spoiler, so, I'm not going to lose sleep. Sorry.).

So, then, what's left? A beautiful rendering? A few pithy truisms ("Where men can't live gods fare no better," to pilfer just one)? Is it enough to take a cliched cultural anxiety, pepper it with cliched plot points, top it off with a tentatively optimistic denouement, color all of the above in every shade of the lexical rainbow, smack a Pulitzer-Committee-Approved sticker on the cover and call it a day?

So, yeah, I'm pleased that I paused my holiday festivities long enough to run those cadences and all that inventive syntax through my brain, but I can't help but feel like it's not much beyond an poeticized, emo version of Independence Day (sans tentacles, of course. Well, and sans, uh, that victory-over-the-super-scary-Other business, too. And with more father-son-bonding. OK, it's a lame comparison. So, eat me.)

Shit. Somebody or other is really gonna slap me around for this one.

Ecstacy/Prolixity

Merry Almost X-mas, fair reader(s):

Here's a fantastic article on the love of big words and the pros and cons of using them in quotidian parlance. It speaks to my soul.

And then, there's this new addiction of mine. Soon, you'll enjoy, as I have, hours of time wasted as you learn the difference between pelf and peripateticism.

My gifts to you!

Etymologically yours,
M

sex-positive feminism, my life in emails, and other lighter notes

After that last dreary post, I figure I'd better sop up the mess with something more entertaining.

So, it seems, my new hero, Chelsea G. has gotten it right again. I think I'm just going to have to start linking her virtually every time she posts some darling little nugget of cultural commentary. Today, for example, I think all audiences should check out this post. She makes a millions points more illustratively than I ever have, so, mostly I'll let her speak for herself.

But, just because I'd like to back up her argument with a case in point, I'm now going to include a real-live email thread that occurred between myself and a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago.

Disclaimers:
Please note: All names have been changed to protect those who've already been completely defiled--uh, I mean, to protect the innocent. (Admittedly, I am one of the participants in the ensuing conversation, but I figure it's best to refer, henceforth, to the two of us as "Gossipy Bitch 1" and "Gossipy Bitch 2." And heretofore, I shall refrain from distinguishing one from the other.)

Please also note: Because myself and certain others who participate in my social circle have been embracing our CSS (see post from a couple weeks ago) status as of late, this thread has a distinct anti-breeder bias. Hey, we're cranky and we're spinsters. What do you want from us?

And now...

"my psyche might implode: an email dalliance"

GB1: "Dude" across the hall from me is back in the office for the first time since his wife had twins. I don't know if I can handle overhearing the proud-father-baby-excitement discussions all day long.

GB2: I am so sorry for you. I don't think I could handle it.

GB1: Oh, dear god. It's all men, too! It's all these men, coming in and sharing their own baby stories. I really think I'm going to lose my mind.

GB2: Too bad you can't close your door. Maybe [I should travel to your neighborhood and] we could just have some more of our inappropriate conversations so they can see what they are missing out on...great sex or babies. Tough choice.

GB1: Really, you should come over and I'll say, "so, last night so-and-so came over and I let him cum all over my bare chest." And you say, "yeah, I love when that happens. I'm sure glad I'm not married! I hear married men don't really even like blowjobs anymore." And I'll say, "I hear that too! Isn't that strange??" And then you say, "I'm sure glad I haven't had any babies because my ass looks friggin' fantastic today." And I'll say, "yeah, mine too. I just feel so bad for women who've destroyed their bodies with all that breeding. It must suck to be a mom. Not to mention all the cleaning up of puke and intellectual bankruptcy."

Let's create a real grass-is-greener-on-the-single-side sensibility around here!

GB2: And I'll say, "yeah the bare chest is good, but I like it even better on my face." And you say, "yeah that's good but not as good as giving blowjobs." And I'll say "yeah, I hear women stop giving them when they get married. I'm glad I'm not married. I love giving them." And you'll say "I also hear women's bodies stretch out, ahem, down there, after giving birth." And I'll say "I'm glad I do my Kegels!"

GB1: And who gets to deliver a poetic monologue on how fabulous semen tastes? Me, oh, let it be me!

OH, my god. That is SO much better than the "what kind of antibacterial hand sanitizer do YOU use? I mean, my kids ARE preemies, after all..." conversation!

GB2: An "Ode to Semen"? As you do.

You mean you don't want to hear about dirty diapers?

GB1: Nope. Already have, though. Including the "how do you keep the boys from pissing in your face during diaper changes" Q&A session. Since when did men become such effin' mother hens????

GB2: Uh, you hold it down (that's what she said). Even I know that, and I was adept at avoiding changing my nephew's diaper when he was a baby.


Fin



Enjoy!

de facto hiatus

It's not that I really have intended to stop writing. It's just that it seems I can't. I have ramblings I'd like to express and films I'd like to discuss. But I can't.

As I think I mentioned a few posts back, this Seasonal Affective crap has really thrown me for a loop this year. And yes, it's a real thing. Palpably real. And miserable.

Actually, it hasn't been this bad since my freshman year of college, when I'd just moved to New Jersey and the snow didn't ever completely melt from the middle of October until the beginning of May. I really thought I was losing my marbles. The only comparable experience I've had was when I decided it would be a good idea to screw around with my usually very evenly regulated hormones (i.e., I went on The Pill for 6 months-- never again!).

So, nothing's wrong. I don't make enough money and my job alternates between frustrating me and boring me and, of course, I seem to be entangled in some typically unconventional relational situations (or, at least, I'm entangled in my own head. Participation of others is subject to interpretation)-- but none of that is any different from the usual year-round rhythms of my life.

But I can't stop crying. I wake up and I feel ok, even though my sleep cycles are even more out-of-whack than usual (typical fire-sign insomnia, exacerbated) and then I get into my car to drive to work and the only thing preventing me from falling apart is the simple vanity that I don't want to show up at work with mascara rings under my eyes. Or I get to work and manage to hold it together through the morning hours, but I soon find myself staring spacily at the grid on my office ceiling, willing the tears away (I will not cry at work. I will not cry at work. I will not cry at work.). Or, I proudly soldier through an entire work day and then I collapse into passionate, unweildy sobs as I navigate Georgetown traffic on my way home.

And still, nothing is ACTUALLY wrong, other than my brain chemistry being all half-mast and off-kilter. About the only reprieve from feeling sad that I've been getting is when I feel frustrated and annoyed that I'm so sad all the time. Frustration and annoyance are clearly preferable to this other overwrought, heightened, interminable sadness. Clearly.

Either way, I feel crazy.

And it doesn't help that it's just barely mid-December and the DC area has already seen a significant snowfall and another is predicted for this weekend. Nor does it help that I can't actually remember the last sunny day we had here.

Nor does it help that I arise in the dark, leave my apartment shortly after sunrise (spending a grand total of 25 or so seconds outside as I walk to my car), park in a garage underneath my office building, elevator up, work all day in an office with no windows, elevator down, drive home after dark and spend another 25 or so seconds walking from my car to my apartment. Clearly, three quarters of a minute is not adequate time for my retinas to register enough sunlight to create a sanity-sustaining serotonin level in my puny frenzy of a brain.

I am a mole-rat.

Most of the time, I can manage a little yogic trick. If I adopt the stance of the objective spectator in relation to my own self, I can watch myself feeling so sad, realizing it's a physiological sort of sad (as opposed to a psychological sort), and muster enough sense to realize that I'll weather the storm-- but even this variety intellectual detachment doesn't much help me turn off the friggin' waterworks. It's merely a management tool and does little in terms of solving the problem.

So, thank god the winter solstice is only 10 days away. I can only hope that, as the days begin to lengthen, I'll be able to think like a person again-- and maybe write something of substance.

Until then, fair reader(s).

Somebody had to say it.

Thank you, Chelsea G., for hitting just the right note of amalgamated fury, indignation and pointed egalitarianism here.

On an almost-related note, someone who doesn't know me very well recently told me that I'm too hot to fall into the sorts of complicated relational entanglements that I do-- as in, I could get anyone I wanted, so why make it so hard for myself? Even if it was true (which it's not) that I could bag any simple, available, easy boy who crosses my path, I'm pretty unmotivated to do so. It would be a waste of time (and also, boring) for me to engage in solipsistic and ruthless self-analysis in which I parse out why I choose the particularly stumbling blocks that I do (over and over and over again) in this forum, so I won't. But I bring it up because Ms. Chelsea's point about how it's not all that easy for even women far more attractive than myself to get laid on a whim --or even, in a more calculated and mindful manner-- is an awfully good one. I mean, yes, absolutely. If it gets that bad, I have people I can call. But I'm always disappointed afterwards. As much as I'd like the girl who can do it without ladeling out a puddle of what Chelsea calls "steaming emo pudding," I'm not. And I'm drawn to challenge and complication, so, no, I can't make it easy on myself.

Fomenting attachment with another human being is bound to be rife with anxiety. Love -- and the fear of not obtaining it, the fear of losing it once it's obtained, the fear of never finding it again once it's been lost -- is an anxiety-ridden condition by definition. And that's WHY it's desirable. In other words, it's not boring. And being bored is a lot worse than being anxious. We don't fall in love to make our lives easier in the first place, so why would anyone assume that I would opt for an easier road just because my physical appearance and the fact that I'm a woman might provide a slim little by-way through the barricade that usually blocks said road?

Nary a moment to spare and a newly-minted CSS

Somewhere between the too-intense-for-public-consumption intrigue going on inside my head and my somewhat ramped-up social calendar in November, I've had plenty of time to, uh, neglect my blog. I'm really hoping December will be better, but it doesn't look like the excitement will let up until the new year begins. I miss the writing and the discipline, though, and I would very much like to return to it soon. Also, I miss the movies, as I haven't had too much time for those, either.

And tomorrow, I turn 31. A few of my friends and I have agreed that this birthday marks the official onset of Cranky, Spiteful Spinsterdom. So, please be prepared, in the upcoming year, for posts in which I bitterly avow that if you are married or have babies or both, you are a gigantic loser. That's what spinsters do. You can thank me later.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether or not celibacy is a prerequisite for considering oneself a Cranky, Spiteful Spinster (heretofore known as the CSS). If you would like to weigh in on this matter, please feel free to post a comment, but be kind. Do not banish me to the hinterlands of sexual deprivation. I beg of you! It's only a birthday and I still get carded every-damn-where I go.