On a Warm Night...
...coming over the 59th St. bridge with your hand out the window you can see your arm long and slim flicker flicker in the ambient light of the city. All of Manhattan guttering behind you, and all of Queens splayed out in front of you with her myriad limbs a pulsing and glowing. The bones in your wrist seem to curve to the contours of the river, slick and tender.
Somehow my clock has gotten an hour off...
...and so I woke up an hour before I was supposed to.
I think it's strange how much I wanted to start writing this blog, and how it's been a whole week now with no entries. Does nothing actually happen in my life? Don't answer that, or do... Sure things happen, but none of them feel inherently interesting.
I spent a lot of time waiting for doctors on Tuesday, and used the time to start reading Of a Fire on the Moon by Norman Mailer. Mailer intrigues me, but I've never read any of his books before. The prose is so dense and interior, that in my heightened state of "please anything distract me" every word stood out and seemed brilliant. Now, continuing to read on the train or in the theater it seems far more muddled. I need to chew each phrase thoughtfully, and the commute is much more conducive to literary gorging. I suspect Of a Fire isn't going to make a great traveling book for my July Chicago trip either for just the same reason. You can't read a paragraph, look around, notice something, and go back to your reading without loosing the thread of it. Maybe I'm wrong about that though: sometimes place and travel inform the reading in unexpected ways....
I had my first experience with the Mid-Manhattan Library last week too, speaking of place informing the reading. It's a strange world over there. The building is a beautiful monument to the published word, but I found it frustrating. Not only does the collection not circulate, but patrons can't access the books themselves. Each book has to be requested by filling out a form and submitting it at the proper window in the proper room. Some books are visible on their shelves around the room, but they're behind low rails and velvet ropes. Here's from the notes I made while waiting for my book to be delivered to me (Due to Staff Shortages, Wait for Requested Materials May Be 30 to 60 Minutes):
In other words, give me my damn book already, because I don't have nearly the time to sit here all afternoon reading all 300 pages of it! You may have the only copy in this city, but someday I'll get a Kindle, and I'll download it, and you can keep your wait time! Ha! (Just kidding, I have no desire to ever own a Kindle. I like paper too much).
Also, my favorite part of libraries and bookstores is wandering the stacks. Not being able to do that takes all the fun out of the fieldtrip. How do you know what you want if you can't look at your options and feel them all out? (Libra what? not me ;)).
Anyway, I've now used up my extra hour, and it's time to go to the gym. It's a truly beautiful morning out.
I think it's strange how much I wanted to start writing this blog, and how it's been a whole week now with no entries. Does nothing actually happen in my life? Don't answer that, or do... Sure things happen, but none of them feel inherently interesting.
I spent a lot of time waiting for doctors on Tuesday, and used the time to start reading Of a Fire on the Moon by Norman Mailer. Mailer intrigues me, but I've never read any of his books before. The prose is so dense and interior, that in my heightened state of "please anything distract me" every word stood out and seemed brilliant. Now, continuing to read on the train or in the theater it seems far more muddled. I need to chew each phrase thoughtfully, and the commute is much more conducive to literary gorging. I suspect Of a Fire isn't going to make a great traveling book for my July Chicago trip either for just the same reason. You can't read a paragraph, look around, notice something, and go back to your reading without loosing the thread of it. Maybe I'm wrong about that though: sometimes place and travel inform the reading in unexpected ways....
I had my first experience with the Mid-Manhattan Library last week too, speaking of place informing the reading. It's a strange world over there. The building is a beautiful monument to the published word, but I found it frustrating. Not only does the collection not circulate, but patrons can't access the books themselves. Each book has to be requested by filling out a form and submitting it at the proper window in the proper room. Some books are visible on their shelves around the room, but they're behind low rails and velvet ropes. Here's from the notes I made while waiting for my book to be delivered to me (Due to Staff Shortages, Wait for Requested Materials May Be 30 to 60 Minutes):
The building is beautiful and grand and inspiring. The brochure talks about the great democratization of knowledge, the idea being that public access to works of scholarship is societally important. ... If I am going to incorporate this history, scholarship, and critical thought into my life, it has to be in pieces, on trains, in rehearsals. ... To me, critical writing (on the rare occasions when I seek it out) is no less relevant than memoir, poetry or fiction. It can directly influence and inform daily experiences, so it is important to me to be able to live in and with the reading experience, rather than sequester myself in windowless rooms for study. I think the fluidity of information in my society has accustomed me to this, for better or worse.
In other words, give me my damn book already, because I don't have nearly the time to sit here all afternoon reading all 300 pages of it! You may have the only copy in this city, but someday I'll get a Kindle, and I'll download it, and you can keep your wait time! Ha! (Just kidding, I have no desire to ever own a Kindle. I like paper too much).
Also, my favorite part of libraries and bookstores is wandering the stacks. Not being able to do that takes all the fun out of the fieldtrip. How do you know what you want if you can't look at your options and feel them all out? (Libra what? not me ;)).
Anyway, I've now used up my extra hour, and it's time to go to the gym. It's a truly beautiful morning out.
In Which I Start a New Blog...
Descriptive, right?
It's kind of a funny thing, me starting a new blog. The last time I started a new blog (the only blog I've ever had), I was a college freshman. It was March of 2001. Very few people were blogging, relatively. I had gotten an email in response to my GeoCities homepage (which I had coded myself in basic HTML back in high school. I had animated bullets for listed items. I felt special.), which invited me to join a "weblog community." The writer, unknown to me, complimented my writing style and hoped I would be her friend. "Bianca Broussard," Xanga's spam bot, had recruited me.
Xanga was tiny at the time. Most of the people who wrote thoughtfully were aware of each other, and there are a couple of bloggers from that time that I still follow. I even remember vehemently resisting the term 'blog, (does anyone remember that it used to have an apostrophe?) which seemed like cheesey artificial slang to me. Now Xanga is massive, populated mostly by teenagers in Asian countries, and converting its format to a feed style cribbed from Facebook. Only my family reads my blog, and no one comments. Indeed, I hardly ever write.
I guess I feel like I've grown out of Xanga. I somehow feel inspired to capitalize the first word of my sentences. I seem to think that I should have structured paragraphs and something to say, rather than pure gossip. I want cleaner formatting, no annoying widgets blinking for my attention, an end to the constant stream teenybopper feedback logs and survey points.
I also finally feel like I have a few things to say. I've been indulging in whole lot of mental nothing for the past couple of years. It's time to create something again. Time to read criticism and have thoughts. Even if I only express them to myself, at least I'm forcing them out into a legible format, and maybe eventually there will be dialog.
So, welcome to the inaugural post of Because I Say So. I think I'm going to try this out for a while.
It's kind of a funny thing, me starting a new blog. The last time I started a new blog (the only blog I've ever had), I was a college freshman. It was March of 2001. Very few people were blogging, relatively. I had gotten an email in response to my GeoCities homepage (which I had coded myself in basic HTML back in high school. I had animated bullets for listed items. I felt special.), which invited me to join a "weblog community." The writer, unknown to me, complimented my writing style and hoped I would be her friend. "Bianca Broussard," Xanga's spam bot, had recruited me.
Xanga was tiny at the time. Most of the people who wrote thoughtfully were aware of each other, and there are a couple of bloggers from that time that I still follow. I even remember vehemently resisting the term 'blog, (does anyone remember that it used to have an apostrophe?) which seemed like cheesey artificial slang to me. Now Xanga is massive, populated mostly by teenagers in Asian countries, and converting its format to a feed style cribbed from Facebook. Only my family reads my blog, and no one comments. Indeed, I hardly ever write.
I guess I feel like I've grown out of Xanga. I somehow feel inspired to capitalize the first word of my sentences. I seem to think that I should have structured paragraphs and something to say, rather than pure gossip. I want cleaner formatting, no annoying widgets blinking for my attention, an end to the constant stream teenybopper feedback logs and survey points.
I also finally feel like I have a few things to say. I've been indulging in whole lot of mental nothing for the past couple of years. It's time to create something again. Time to read criticism and have thoughts. Even if I only express them to myself, at least I'm forcing them out into a legible format, and maybe eventually there will be dialog.
So, welcome to the inaugural post of Because I Say So. I think I'm going to try this out for a while.
