Beloved

The world is in this room. This here's all there is and all there needs to be.

Sethe, from Beloved 

It seems like everyone is mourning the death of Toni Morrison, and I've been tearing up off and on all day thinking of her, of her spirit, her words, her regal presence, her books, what she meant to me my entire adult life, as a reader and a writer and a human being, and then I was thinking of all the people slaughtered over the weekend, of the piles of dead children, of the human stain of racism in our country, of all that we have to do, to fix and how to be. I first saw Toni Morrison at Spelman College in the late 1980s, shortly after Beloved was published, and I sat in a huge auditorium with hundreds of people, mostly African American young women, and before She walked out onto the stage, a group of women played drums, the beat so steady and rhythmical they presaged her voice, her voice with the words, always, that she put on the page. She walked out, probably at the age I am now, and I was struck then by her presence and by the impact she had had on the women in the room. She was their voice. I read nearly every single thing she wrote. The second time I saw her was not too long ago in Los Angeles, in a theater downtown filled with the mix that is Los Angeles, yet when she walked into the room, she was so grand, so regal, her voice so rich and deep with humor and wisdom, all of us so rapt and smiling and nodding our heads that I thought then: she is all of our voices.

Rest in peace and power, Toni Morrison. Thank you.


This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.

Toni Morrison, in an interview with writer Pam Houston, Oprah Magazine,  2003

What the Creature Read

I haven't really looked at myself in a long time, but I think this is what I look like to my students, especially today when I sort of lit into them about rudeness and respect and the difficulty of teaching when they're walking around making cup o'noodles and chatting to one another and blurting out questions completely unrelated to the subject I'm talking about. I'm not kidding about the cup o'noodles. I think they got the message, though, because they got really, really quiet and apologized and then sang me some kind of song which was kind of embarrassing, but, damn, they're sweet and I just love my new job. I had them do this presentation in small groups about What the Creature Read, and each presentation was so original and interesting and funny and intelligent, that all my frustration melted away. If you're interested, we are finishing up a unit on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and since the theme I chose to dwell upon was empathy in the novel, and I found a really good curriculum on the world wide webs, the project was for each group to review a famous novel or work of literature that the Creature read when he found a bunch of books in a bag outside the home where he was staying. They had to answer a series of questions about why Shelley had chosen for the Creature to read those books and think critically about all of it. (Lord the whole phrase critical thinking!) The books Mary Shelley had him read included Milton's Paradise Lost, Goethe's Young Werther and Plutarch's Lives, and in lieu of my students reading all of those, I printed out some summaries and they went from there. If you're interested, The Creature basically learned from these books how to feel and how to live, so my students worked in groups and placed themselves into the Creature's shoes. They were incredibly creative, down to re-titling the books themselves, which was part of the assignment. For Paradise Lost, they changed it to Garden Gone Wrong. The Sorrows of Young Werther became The Book of Sad Love. One group did a silly play that was quite funny and each group made astounding drawings.

I hope it's okay that I put this up on the old blog. I am filled with delight over these girls when I'm not wildly distracted by their chattiness and unruliness and devotion to cup o'noodles. I'm looking for book selections for the 3rd term for the 12th grade -- thinking of Virginia Woolf perhaps, but which one? For the 11th grade, I'm thinking of Song of the Lark by Willa Cather. It's so profoundly American and has lots of music in it to break up the dryness. What do you think? Any ideas? Remember that I have massive restrictions on what I can teach -- no sex or romance or extreme violence or teenage pregnancy or suicide or mutilation or abuse or or or or or or.


The Bird-Catcher

When fighting time is on, I go
With clap-net and decoy
A-fowling after goldfinches
And other birds of joy;

I lurk among the thickets of
The Heart where they are bred,
And catch the twittering beauties as
They fly into my Head

Ralph Hodgson, b. 1879, Northumberland 







Thank you, dear Andrea, for sending me this poem.

Head Swimming with Wants

We're getting rain here in Los Angeles -- buckets and buckets of rain -- and the most beautiful winter sunsets. That picture above was taken on Saturday in Santa Monica. Carl and I were on the beach, and that's facing east, away from the ocean.

Turn around.

Today marked the first day of the second week of my new job teaching English to a group of eleventh and twelfth grade girls. I have three classes, two groups of eleventh graders and one group of twelfth. Each class is unique and one is particularly challenging. Anger and resistance make the air crackle in that room. Heads swim with wants. Take notes, I think. Keep taking notes. I have a mind and a memory like a steel trap, and these girls will join all the other hostages that wander the labyrinthine paths.

I get this newsletter every day from The New York Times newspaper cooking section. It's called What to Cook Right Now. I love it so much -- the recipes, the commentary, the links. Today I learned that it's the writer John Dos Passos' birthday (1896). I read nearly everything he wrote back in the last century, in my early twenties. I probably read him lying on a bed somewhere, maybe in the apartment where I lived with my first love, out in the country in Chapel Hill, a mattress on the floor at the top of the stairs, sandwiched between two walls and a window at the foot, a bookcase stuffed with used paperbacks. I might have been chewing on some Twizzlers when I read Dos Passos, red plastic mingling with brown must. Dos Passos was a hostage, though, wandering around my mind, lost down some dark corridor, until I read about him today.

Teaching these girls, doing the research for lesson plans, revisiting stories and poetry -- it's all packed in there, in my mind, and it seems that there's no end to what one can stuff into it. So, yeah. Take notes, I think. Keep taking notes.

Here's a passage from The 42nd Parallel that Sam Sifton, the guy from the NY Times newsletter thinks describes the writer's life. I agree.


The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the want ads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boarding houses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone.

Recalcitrance

Blackboard by Winslow Homer, 1877

I've completed my first week of teaching three English classes of eleventh and twelfth grade young women. Here are some observations and notes:

• a bit of Emily Dickinson -- hope and the thing with feathers -- inspired a group of let's say recalcitrant girls to write their own three stanza poems using extended metaphor and dang if they didn't do a beautiful job

• have argued over whether or not to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (only the 12th grade girls are reading it, now). It's old. It's hard. Cry me a river.

•  read aloud Christina Rossetti's The Goblin's Market and are now doing a fine analysis of it (thank you, LP, for turning me on to this strange and wonderful poem). I felt a tad uncomfortable reading the provocative parts of the poem, given the sensual imagery of juices running out of mouths, etc., but this poem! the language!

• have begun reading Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter. Remember that? I loved Hawthorne stories as a young reader and hope to pass along the weirdness (not of me but of him) to these students. 

• have worn black tights three times this week which is more times than in the previous twenty years. This is not hyperbole

• who knew I had so little modest clothing? I've had to purchase some things that make me feel strangely invisible which provokes thought -- interesting thoughts --we think the ways in which we adorn ourselves speak to identity but maybe they don't because I am still me however much I look like an Italian widow 

• (the question of being told what to wear and what constitutes modesty and the concomitant questions of male authority and hierarchy and what it means to be reverent, etc.) 

I am both exhausted and exhilarated, my voice hoarse at the end of the teaching period, warranting a Rules and Expectations hand-out that includes some communication pointers and a stern demand for respect for me and for one another which translates into Refrain from interrupting and talking over one another and me. 

Listen


Listen


Listen

She In There

This is what Sophie looks like when I take away even the tiniest bit of Onfi, the benzo that we've been trying to wean her from for four years. I'm still weaning the damn drug, a tiny, tiny bit at a time. I tinker each time, as well, with the various cannabis medicine products, and good things happen. Every day is different, though, and we continue to live this life as an experiment in progress.

Like my dear Dr. Jin said, so many years ago, She in there, she know.

I am sorry that I've left you readers high and dry, an occasional post once or twice a week. I haven't visited blogs or left comments, have been deleting newspapers and articles from my Inbox and have just generally avoided -- well -- everything. I've been down and blue and struggling a bit with I don't know what, but I feel it lifting a bit and hope that I will soon be back in writing daily order. I'm engaged in the world as I've always been, but man oh man every single day we wake up to that vile emperor with no clothes and his persistent presidency. It's a freak show and a clusterfuck, and like we say in the writing biz, you just can't make that shit up. I'm not underestimating its effect on my psyche -- nor should you if you're of the same persuasion. If it doesn't bother you or you're one of his supporters, well, I'd bless your heart if I felt any respect for you at all. May it all be over soon and not because some bomb is dropped on us for being such idiots. The thing is, though, that what's rent is rent, right? The veil has been pulled back. The core is rotten, isn't it? So much work to do and most of it is about coming to terms with our privilege and our whiteness.

I've been reading a lot lately -- have been able to dig in deep and get through to the end of novels and bask there glad and filled up. I recommend Lisa Halliday's Asymmetry, Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing, Terese Mailhot's Heartberries: A Memoir, Claire Dederer's Love and Trouble and An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. I had ordered a book from the library that finally came in, so many months after the request that I forgot where I'd read about it, but I really liked it -- a novel called Elbowing the Seducer by T. Gertler.

Oh, and then there's Fire Sermon by Jaime Quattro. I'm obsessed with her and her writing, her brain and mine.

What else?

I've tried to wander into museums, too --saw a beautiful David Hockney show at LACMA over the weekend and an amazing exhibit that included a multi-media show by Kara Walker at the Hammer last week. I'm so grateful for the sustenance of art -- of words and painting wrought, especially, from great struggle and suffering. Our lives are enriched even as our own troubles recede and perspectives enlarge.

Taking Down the Patriarchy

Ocean Park Beach
photographer: Carl Jackson

I've been reading Nobel Prize winning writer Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. Yeah, light reading. Just kidding. I'm reading it in Russian, too. Just kidding. Actually, I'm not into the light reading thing. Light reading makes me feel anxious and depressed, seems to exacerbate my feelings of there never being enough time to read all the books. I feel the same about movies. Reading "light" or watching crap makes me want to throw myself in front of a train. Getting through my days, sometimes, is only possible because of the art of others. Right now, speaking of trains, I'm listening to Anna Karenina in the car as I drive around the shitty. Dang, ya'll. That novel is relevant, and it's not about throwing oneself in front of trains. It's about love and bullshit, about peasants and patriarchy. There's even a passage about doctors and their uselessness that yours truly could have written!

Reading the extraordinary accounts of survivors in Alexievich's book doesn't just give me perspective but highlights just how resilient and dogged and strong, human beings can be, not to mention black-humored (the best humor, at least to me). The oral histories aren't for the faint of heart, though, as you can imagine. They're as much about vulnerability as they are about strength, and that's why, I think, they appeal to me. I have been feeling particularly vulnerable and fragile of late, for obvious reason. Not a day goes by that I don't have some sort of fantasy of fleeing in either body or mind or both, and whether it's because of the poisonous political atmosphere (don't pose false equivalencies to me: #Imwithher), or the thought of living in the same country with those who support or make excuses for you-know-who or struggling with caregiving and Sophie's epilepsy, acknowledging that vulnerability and fragility restores me. Really great literature -- whether it's fiction or non-fiction or poetry -- restores me. Not long ago, a relative accused me of having my head up my ass as far as my politics go. I think she was also pretty disdainful of the poetry that I put up here. I really don't think it's one or the other. For me, the personal is political and the political is personal and the only mitigation is art.

I got distracted. I was going to make this post about my optimistic feeling that despite all the acrimony in the country, I honestly think the patriarchy is coming down. It might be messy, and it might get even messier, but it's coming down.

Here's some "poetry" from Alexievich's book:

Bulgakov writes in A Cabal of Hypocrites: "I've sinned my whole life. I was an actor." This is a consciousness of the sinfulness of art, of the amoral nature of looking into another person's life. But maybe, like a small bit of disease, this could serve as inoculation against someone else's mistakes. Chernobyl is a theme worthy of Dostoyevsky, an attempt to justify mankind. Or maybe the moral is simpler than that: You should come into this world on your tiptoes, and stop at the entrance? Into this miraculous world...

Aleksandr Revalskiy, historian 

Bookworm Chronicles

In books we never find anything but ourselves. 

Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure,

and we say the author is a genius.

Thomas Mann

I just finished the new memoir by Joseph Luzzi, In a Dark Wood. Luzzi is an Italian professor at Bard who lost his wife in a terrible car accident. She was eight months pregnant with their first child when she was killed, but the baby was saved. Luzzi uses Dante's The Divine Comedy and other writing to frame his own grief and loss and emergence back into life. It's one of those books that I picked up because the cover design on the hardback is so spectacular and not because I'd heard about it or him. I saw the subtitle What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing and the Mysteries of Love and had to buy it. If you read that quote of Thomas Mann's above (thanks to my friend Liz for sending it to me), you'll know everything about my reaction to the book. 

I've got an embarrassing backlog of books going on over here. In addition to the ones you see in the photo above, I sent a big box to Hedgebrook ahead of me with the following titles inside:

Raising Demons and Life with Savages - both by Shirley Jackson

Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann

Being Human: Readings from the President's Council on Bioethics

Early Warning by Jane Smiley

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

My Kindle (leaning against the books in the photo above) has the following titles waiting patiently to be read:

Alligator by Lisa Moore

The Sunken Cathedral by Kate Walbert

The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

The Steady Running of the Hour by Justin Go

On Elizabeth Bishop by Colm Toibin

I've got plans to re-read some favorites, like To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolfe, probably my most favorite novel of all time and, thankfully, shorter than my other favorite The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky which is too long to re-read at this point in my life. Maybe I'll look over The Grand Inquisitor section. I also packed some favorite poetry -- William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson and -- well -- I can't remember who else I tucked in with the novels and the rain boots (rain boots!) and the knitting (the sweater that I've been knitting for over three years). 

Can you even imagine being squirreled away for three weeks in a cottage with all the books you've wanted to read and all the time to write your heart and mind out, to finally finish the book you've been working on for ten years and begin to organize the one that's in your head? I could never have imagined this opportunity that's been granted to me, but it's about two weeks away from being a reality. 

Reader, what are you reading and planning to read this summer?

Books and Bakes

I've been plotting and scheming in my mind for quite some time to establish a sort of reading and eating salon and this weekend, with the help of my sister Jennifer and my friend Moye, I designed my first announcement and put it up on Facebook. Within about 30 minutes, the ten spots were filled, so I added another date and those are just about filled up, too. In case you're in California in January, and particularly in Los Angeles, I'll show you what I advertised, so you can sign up as well! I plan on having these groups twice monthly and envision a lively literary thing where we eat, drink, make merry and discuss some literature, facilitated by me. Part of my life plan is to morph into Gertrude Stein and be surrounded by interesting people all while paying no attention to what I'm wearing or how short my hair is or how monolithic my body and head (literally, as I don't want a big head figuratively). I'd welcome an Alice B. Toklas, too, but it'd be a stretch for me to go all the way, if you know what I mean.

BOOKS & BAKES

A Literary and Food Salon

January 9th, 2015 from 7 to 10 pm

January 23rd, 2015 from 7 to 10 pm

Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Are you a lover of literature but stuck in a book group that never really discusses the book? Are you a lover of food but want to cut through the pretension of the foodie world? Do you revel in devouring both beautiful fiction and food, especially when they intersect? Are you looking for a unique gift for your loved ones or yourself? Come join a community of like-minded souls and share your love of literature and food at my first Books & Bakes literary and food salon. Salon size is limited to 10, so rsvp early! A light dinner, drinks and stimulating conversation are included.
$75.00 per person includes facilitated discussion about Strange Pilgrims, related food and alcohol.

Email Elizabeth Aquino at elsophie@gmail.com for more information

Listening to Ray Bradbury on the Ventura Freeway

There must be something in books, 

something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; 

there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 

Since my carpool in the mornings fell through, I've been spending a lot of time in traffic on one of Los Angeles' most notoriously congested highways. The ride to Henry's school is manageable, but the ride back can take more than twice as long, and it's difficult not to feel rage rising up, the rage that is born of rue for choices made. Something about the silence of cars, the endless glint of steel below the bluest of skies tinged pink with a still rising sun, the muffled horns and set faces of the inhabitants makes for desolation, at least for me. Why do I live here? I can't listen to music. I can't listen to the talking heads of commercial radio, nor the droning ones of NPR, and while I've learned to surrender my rage, to breathe deeply through it in a sort of mindful daze, it's been the husky voice of Tim Robbins reading Fahrenheit 451 that's literally erased it, turned frustration and a self-absorbed samsara into -- dare I admit it -- anticipation of more hours spent on the road listening?

Yes. I'll say it. Since I've been listening to the great actor Tim Robbins read the great writer and human being Ray Bradbury's sinister yet beautiful masterpiece Fahrenheit 451, I look forward to getting into my car every morning at 6:45. I spend the first half hour in the passenger seat with my son Henry who is earnestly and quite capably learning how to drive. After I drop him off, I spend the next hour or so, along with millions of other humans, sitting in my sexy white Mazda inching south on the Ventura Freeway, and listening to the riveting story of Guy Montag. I read Fahrenheit 451 a million years ago, and despite a memory like a steel trap, I honestly don't remember it other than the burning books stuff. I don't know if it's the time in my life, my stifled, seeping-out rage, the city I find myself struggling in or just the damn exquisite prose and grim prescience of the story, but listening to this novel is knocking my Birkenstocks off.








***Disclosure: Audible gave me a free download of the book but with no obligation to write about or review it. Thank you, Audible, because I know I never would have done so, and I'm grateful to not only avoid the extreme frustration of navigating the highways of Los Angeles, but Bradbury's novel is a work of art that I'd forgotten. For anyone interested, exclusive audio excerpts of these new Audible Studios Bradbury titles are available at www.soundcloud.com/audible.

Silenced Women, Books and Poetry

via The New York Times

I've been listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's novel The Signature of All Things on the recommendation of our dear Mary. To be honest, I was not a big fan of Eat, Pray, Love but have always admired Gilbert's writing and speaking, her take on life and her gentle demeanor (I saw her once, live, with Annie LaMott). Her new book is read by Juliet Stevenson, the great English actress, and perhaps part of the love affair I'm having with the story and the writing is due to Stevenson's exquisite interpretation. I think, though, that the book is just plain interesting and beautifully written. I generally take forever to listen to an audible version of a book -- I have a hard time staying with the story and don't think my ears are as connected to literature as my eyes, if that makes sense. In any case, though, I'm getting toward the end, unable to listen to it in my car because of some lurid details that I don't want the boys to hear, and I might even lie on my bed and finish it up -- just lie there and stare at the ceiling with earplugs in my ear. 

I'm struck, over the last few days, as I immerse myself in listening to this story of a late eighteenth, early nineteenth century woman by just how constrained women's lives were for most of written history. The constraints were so pervasive and affected every aspect of their lives, including sexuality -- maybe especially sexuality -- until very recently. And then I think about how women are shamed and silenced even today, sometimes spectacularly but more usually, silently and subtly -- even by themselves. I can honestly say that I've felt stifled over the last couple of days, perhaps over-aware of my opinions, my outspoken-ness, my sharp tongue. I wonder if men feel this way regularly, whether they feel the need to second-guess their intentions, apologize for the way they deliver their thoughts or feel "less than" because of them.

Although I can't begin to fully understand it, I think Emily Dickinson was hinting at these things -- at anger and constraint -- when she wrote this poem.

Here's the poem for your eyes:


My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him -
The Mountains straight reply -
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through -
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head -
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die--


And here's the poem, read by Juliet Stevenson (!) for your ears:


Emily Dickinson - My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun by poetictouch

Post Easter Melancholy, Robert Burton and Language, Really Great Literature

This post is dedicated to my comrades in epilepsy arms but might amuse anyone

Much of today was spent like this:

I guess there's something to be said for staying in one's pajamas nearly all day, reading two collections of short stories -- one by George Saunders and the other by Jamie Quatro -- and allowing both of my sons to play video games all day and to somewhat neglect my daughter. Both books were so fantastic that I was nearly yanked out of my Easter Sunday melancholy, but not quite. I'm feeling obsessed by the Quatro book in particular and am sorry that I finished it. I won't tell you what the short stories are about but think infidelity, sex, religion, the south, Flannery O'Connor weirdness and you'll have some idea. It might be my Every Five Years Or So Book.**

Speaking of literature, I got this email and thought to make it just one post, titled The Bastardization of Language.

Reader, why?

I suppose the definition of literature might include those writings of scientific or medical interest, but the literature on pediatric antiepileptic drugs? To be read on Easter Sunday when in a state of melancholy? Speaking of melancholy, even Robert Burton, the esteemed writer of the seventeenth century titled his tome The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up. That was in 1621. 

If Robert Burton were to have written a book about pediatric anti-epileptic drugs, I figure he'd title it something like The Anatomy of Hell, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Side Effectes, False Prognostickes, and Never a Cure for the Epilepsies. In One Thousand Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, The Braine Opened and Fucked Up.




**I read pretty voraciously -- sometimes up to fifty books a year, not counting poetry and The New Yorker, but it's only every five years or so that I read a novel that knocks me out. The last one I can remember doing so was Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, and that was in late 2009, so it's a little early to be counting it, but I Want to Show You More might be a contender.

Gertrude Stein, IEPs, Conservatorships and Books

I'm doing laundry and researching conservatorships. Sophie turns eighteen next March, and I have to divest her of her rights, basically, and become her guardian. Sigh. I'm also preparing for her IEP is this Friday morning, and her teacher asked whether I wanted her to be there. I told him that no, IEPs are always about what she can't do, and I don't want her to hear that. I also don't want to fill what peaceful, hard-working spaces are left in her brain with the educational jargon the IEP demands. Those of you in the know, know what I'm talking about: achieve 65% success with 92% accuracy and 50% prompting. When this involves using a spoon to feed yourself, you get my drift. I'm also listening to a cool recording of Gertrude Stein from 1934, where she chastises the interviewer on what it means to understand a text. I loved reading Gertrude Stein in college -- read nearly everything she wrote and relished the weird cadence of her language, the koan-like nonsense. Evidently, my enjoyment presupposes understanding, and in this one wonderful interview, Stein affirms what I've always believed and never articulated: either you like a book or not, and the liking is the understanding. I wish I'd known that when I labored for hours in an all-male book club in New York City, nodding my head in deferment to wiser minds that appeared to understand but not enjoy. In another life I was married to a PhD student in English literature, and I remember suffering through interminably boring get-togethers and parties where graduate students spoke of literature with verbal gymnastics that made my head spin (I was always a terrible athlete) but never of liking something or disliking something, of joy or its opposite. Do these people even like to read? I asked my husband at the time. Maybe I'm just slightly off -- I've written before of my envy for Gertrude Stein, for her massive head and unattractive hair, for her seeming comfort in her own bulk and obtuseness. After five straight days of exercise and yoga, I can feel every muscle and sinew in my body, and they ache. Would that I were Gertrude in a voluminous black dress, sitting in a salon with a mousy helpmate cooking something delicious in the kitchen, spinning words into stories that make no sense except to those who enjoy them.

Look here. Being intelligible is not what it seems. You mean by understanding that you can talk about it in the way that you have a habit of talking, putting it in other words. But I mean by understanding enjoyment. If you enjoy it, you understand it. And lots of people have enjoyed it so lots of people have understood it. . . . But after all you must enjoy my writing, and if you enjoy it you understand it. If you do not enjoy it, why do you make a fuss about it? There is the real answer.

(via brainpickings.org)

The dryer just binged, so it's back to folding clothes.

Reader, what are you doing today?