tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-360279742024-03-05T07:54:31.595-08:00rose and honeyhardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirsKateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-17252589662481673372011-01-11T20:50:00.000-08:002011-01-21T08:52:13.866-08:00Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>In the fall of 2006 I traveled to Peru to meet my best friend, who, being much braver than myself, had been vagabonding across South America for months. The trip was quick but memorable and at the airport giftshop in Lima I bought Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.<br />
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The book sat on my shelf for a long time, as books at my house are wont to do. Eventually I read it. I remember it being somewhat of a labor though. One of those books that you with effort and determination push yourself through. I don't remember being much taken by the plot or the characters but there were some interesting meditations on the convergence of creativity, romance, and sex, in the artist's life. There was also one of my all-time favorite quotes:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_7ne-7i9o1z2Y6dFkdZBDl3GfdlEfZLgZ60fPylZTCJc_A6QperbNvXQzgEiS7fzqMYHs8yv0SWCSbQBsbyQ5DoOB28-q89t67lIykG0Pqujqmgz8q1Tkf0QYKqk9U2-J9ABznA/s320/AuntJuliaAndTheScriptwriter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_7ne-7i9o1z2Y6dFkdZBDl3GfdlEfZLgZ60fPylZTCJc_A6QperbNvXQzgEiS7fzqMYHs8yv0SWCSbQBsbyQ5DoOB28-q89t67lIykG0Pqujqmgz8q1Tkf0QYKqk9U2-J9ABznA/s320/AuntJuliaAndTheScriptwriter.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Lower your pants, all of you; you're in the presence of a poet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In every vagina an artist is buried.</span>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-2637074723776434772011-01-11T20:39:00.000-08:002011-01-21T09:02:38.107-08:00Tell-All<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It's not always with pride that I read Chuck Palahniuk, but it is usually with some enjoyment. His cynicism in the face of popular culture and the darkness of his imagination and prose are consistent and welcome. Tell All is no different. It's not an amazing piece of literature but it's not meant to be.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://chuckpalahniuk.net/files/images/books/tell-all-med.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://chuckpalahniuk.net/files/images/books/tell-all-med.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Katherine Kenton remains among the generation of women who feel that the most sincere form of flattery is the male erection. <span style="font-size: large;">Nowadays, I tell her that erections are less likely a compliment than they are the result of some medical breakthrough. Transplanted monkey glands,</span> or one of those new miracle pills.</div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Each romance a type of self-destructive gesture...<span style="font-size: large;">Instead of plunging a sword into one's stomach, you repeatedly throw yourself on the most inappropriate erect penis.</span></div>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-45174137172207377752011-01-11T19:56:00.000-08:002011-01-11T19:56:46.400-08:00The Devils of Loudun<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/harperimages/isbn/large/6/9780061724916.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.harpercollins.com/harperimages/isbn/large/6/9780061724916.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Nature abhors a vacuum, even in the mind.</span> <br />
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Partisan loyalty is socially disastrous; but for individuals it can be richly rewarding--more rewarding, in many ways, than even concupiscence or avarice. Whoremongers and money-grubbers find it hard to feel very proud of their activities. But partisanship is a complex passion which permits those who indulge in it to make the best of both worlds. Because they do these things for the sake of a group which is, by definition, good and even sacred, they can admire themselves and loathe their neighbors, they can seek power and money, can enjoy the pleasures of aggression and cruelty, not merely without feeling guilty, but with <span style="font-size: large;">a positive glow of conscious virtue.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sex can be used either for self affirmation or for self transcendence</span>--either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous 'embarkation' and heroic conquest, or else <span style="font-size: large;">to annihilate the persona and transcend the ego</span> in<span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="font-size: x-large;">an obscure rapture of sensuality</span></span>, a frenzy of romantic passion or, more creditably, in the mutual charity of the perfect marriage.<br />
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Her home was not at Loudun, not <span style="font-size: large;">among these frumps and bores and boors</span>, but <span style="font-size: large;">with a god in a private Elysium</span> <span style="font-size: x-large;">transfigured by the radiance of dawning love and imaginary sex</span>.<br />
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But falling in love, as she now perceived, was not the same as loving. <span style="font-size: large;">It was as an imagination that one fell in love, and <span style="font-size: x-large;">what one fell in love with was only an abstraction</span>.</span> When one loved, <span style="font-size: large;">one loved a complete existence and loved it with one's whole being, with the soul and every fiber of the body, with the self and this other, this <span style="font-size: x-large;">new found alien beneath, beyond and within the self</span>.</span> She was all love and only love. Nothing but love existed--nothing.KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-38462054428913831882008-11-03T19:47:00.001-08:002008-11-03T20:25:26.068-08:00Bus reading<span style="font-size:180%;">Idiot city</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I inherited <span style="font-style: italic;">The Royal Nonesuch: Or, what </span><span style="font-style: italic;">will I do when I grow up?</span> from my brother. He reads a lot. Sometimes, I'm not sure how, but he does. Sometimes, he reads good books, like the ones I recommend, and sometimes he reads unbelievably technical and unceasingly empowering books on growing your fortune, living the life you want, and playing the stock market just so. Then he reads books magazines tell him to read, like this one...I think. I honestly have very few positive things to say about this book, so I won't. I found it to be vapid and painfully name-droppy, without emotion, and completely unrelatable. It is tiresomely self-involved without being self-aware and pervaded by a false-sense of entitlement born of past success rather than current merit. But it's about L.A. And it's a memoir of a gifted twenty-something who becomes a prozac-swaddled failing thirty-something. So maybe it sucks, but maybe it's just accurate. What undoubtedly is accurate and good in this book is this single phrase describing L.A. from above:<br /></div><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.popsyndicate.com/images/uploads/RoyalNoneSuch2.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 229px; height: 300px;" src="http://www.popsyndicate.com/images/uploads/RoyalNoneSuch2.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><blockquote>I felt pleasantly adrift up there in the sky, floating with my <span style="font-size:130%;">forehead pressed against the glass</span> over the <span style="font-size:180%;">sunstruck idiot city</span>.</blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[An added note on entitlement/pretension/douchebaggery, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Royal Nonesuch</span> is apparently an allusion to <span style="font-style: italic;">Huckleberry Finn,</span> something I wouldn't have known without doing a google image search for the cover art, but something that now knowing makes me dislike the book and the author even more.]</span><br /><blockquote></blockquote>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-59597553554909784432007-12-29T20:28:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:00:58.090-08:00On the nod<span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, frightened flesh</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Several years ago, probably six or so, I bought William S. Burrough's novel <span style="font-style: italic;">Naked Lunch</span> and failed pretty miserably to get anywhere with it. This Christmas my brother gave me the 50th anniversary edition of his first novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Junky</span><span></span>. I was not optimistic. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">Despite my initial hesitation (I read the 30+ pages of introductory material in full just to delay actually having to deal with the text) I found <span style="font-style: italic;">Junky</span> to be much more approachable (a serious understatement) than <span style="font-style: italic;">Naked Lunch</span>. The novel reads for the most part like the twenty-five cent sensationalist paperback that it was, exploiting the public's desire to explore the seedier side of society and to become "hep" to the new underground jargon. It also, however, shows flashes of true narrative beauty and Burroughs' characterizations are some of the best that I have ever come across.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb0wn0MNmd_aONXvnPd0ehkTMMKq0bFc4Z7EydqGG5u5Zh4EbOBtN4fdz0IXW1gxYlgSarWVAmrf-IbG4RTp6QuCMGx9wmb2IDAnX4dZA2gjmI9N76gBLeT6HgHvRbFr8GIAZy9w/s1600-h/200px-Junkieace.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb0wn0MNmd_aONXvnPd0ehkTMMKq0bFc4Z7EydqGG5u5Zh4EbOBtN4fdz0IXW1gxYlgSarWVAmrf-IbG4RTp6QuCMGx9wmb2IDAnX4dZA2gjmI9N76gBLeT6HgHvRbFr8GIAZy9w/s320/200px-Junkieace.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149623512442135554" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"></span></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:180%;">His face was lined with suffering in which his eyes did not participate.</span> It was a suffering of his cells alone. He himself--the conscious ego that looked out of the glazed, alert-calm hoodlum eyes--would have nothing to do with this suffering of his rejected other self, a suffering of the nervous system, of flesh and viscera and cells.<br /><br />There was something boneless about her, like a deep-sea creature. <span style="font-size:130%;">Her eyes were cold fish eyes that looked at you through a viscous medium she carried about with her.</span> I could see those eyes in a shapeless, protoplasmic mass undulating over the dark sea floor.<br /><br />He was simply the focal point for a hostile intrusive force. <span style="font-size:130%;">You could feel him walk right into your psyche and look around to see if anything was there he could make use of.</span><br /></span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">The conversations had a nightmare flatness,</span> talking dice spilled in the tube metal chairs, <span style="font-size:180%;">human aggregates disintegrating in cosmic inanity,</span> random events in a dying universe where everything is exactly what it appears to be, and no other relation that juxtaposition is possible.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span></span></span>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-9952631812412694262007-11-13T08:34:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:00:58.246-08:00Live the dream, Potato<span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" >No One Belongs Here More Than You</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">It's not often that on wine-soaked nights the conversation turns to current avant garde fiction. Though I am certainly a literature nerd, it's unusual that I force that upon others without some sort of accomplice. My roommate's sister Lindsay was in town last week and, as a hopeful doctoral candidate in poetry, she fit the bill. The topic at hand was a book of short stories that my roommate, Anna, had purchased for me while in Paris with Lindsay, <span style="font-style: italic;">No One Belongs Here More Than You.</span> Anna read the book but was taken aback by some of the sexual content, Lindsay read parts of the book and was frustrated by the use of sexual content. I read the book and barely noticed the sexual content. Just call me Jaded.<br /><br />Despite the possible shock tactics and questionable merit (the author is no Proust...well actually she could be. I've never read Proust. But I highly doubt that she's Proust.) I did come across some interestingly, at times beautifully, phrased ideas and perhaps the best name for a dog ever...Potato.<br /><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-_ZKm50CdvmWCDjaAG8g5-toidg93R2zZUts43IVbItP2ApAHciJw_nb___R2pBx98MukrKOGxtG3TigZIMBI27J3MHtbe_qIve1lrD8EWyaIQux3V95EVtgd9Bdy0mrKwhW1iA/s1600-h/no+one+belongs+here.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-_ZKm50CdvmWCDjaAG8g5-toidg93R2zZUts43IVbItP2ApAHciJw_nb___R2pBx98MukrKOGxtG3TigZIMBI27J3MHtbe_qIve1lrD8EWyaIQux3V95EVtgd9Bdy0mrKwhW1iA/s320/no+one+belongs+here.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132368212927961218" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.<span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">We wetted each other's blouses and pushed our crying ahead of us like a lantern, searching out new and forgotten sadnesses, ones that had died politely years ago but in fact had not died and came to life with a little water. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:130%;">We had loved people we really shouldn't have loved and then married other people in order to forget our impossible loves,</span> or we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.<br /><br />Always running and always wanting to go back but always being farther and farther away <span style="font-size:130%;">until, finally, it was just a scene in a movie where a girl says hello into the cauldron of the world and you are just a woman watching the movie with her husband on the couch and his legs are across your lap and you have to go to the bathroom.</span><br /><br />We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">This made her so angry that she did the dishes.</span> <span style="font-size:180%;">We never did this unless we were trying to be grand and self-destructive.</span><br /><br />Then Potato ran by. He was a little brown dog, just like the woman said. He tore past me like he was about to miss a plane. He was gone by the time I even realized it had to be Potato. But he looked joyful, and I thought: Good for him. <span style="font-size:180%;">Live the dream, Potato.</span><br /></span></blockquote></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-74678894342475297322007-11-05T10:36:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:00:58.463-08:00When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder<span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" >Everything will be <s>OK</s> <s>perfect</s>.</span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />While in college when revealing to family friends or acquaintances the direction of my study (English Literature, duh!) the endlessly repeating follow-up question was nearly always, "Oh that's great. Who's you're favorite author?" At the time I never had an answer. Never. I've liked a lot of books in my time but I never felt concretely that my appreciation was of the author. There was never an authorial focus centering my pursuit of material. I did love Oscar Wilde, but in a different way. I loved his character and his history and his brazen yet refined personality. I don't particularly love his books.<br /><br />Now post-college I absolutely have an answer to that plaguing question. Jonathan Safran Foer is maybe the best thing that has happened to me in the last two years. His books are everything that I think books should be. He is the author that you can't help but be frustrated by because you love his work so much that you wish it was yours. And he's only 26 so why couldn't it be yours? It can't be yours because you can't even begin to understand how he does it. The composition seems so difficult but the end product is so seamlessly integrated.<br /><br />Here's some stuff from <span style="font-style: italic;">Extremely Loud and</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> Incredibly Close</span>, his second novel:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXMR9Z1EjFhMYeihEGb2Qq2SvvbT99NxMe978Jg9rJoXHtCV2fIc4Imf4iN8YNGYFxgX6j7s5HoEDVSU53fHGmWOf0CFhZE3mTBr1q2Pi3FHS9QTE_mKIvBMCH-uKuiKFHAEsZ-A/s1600-h/extremelyloud.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXMR9Z1EjFhMYeihEGb2Qq2SvvbT99NxMe978Jg9rJoXHtCV2fIc4Imf4iN8YNGYFxgX6j7s5HoEDVSU53fHGmWOf0CFhZE3mTBr1q2Pi3FHS9QTE_mKIvBMCH-uKuiKFHAEsZ-A/s320/extremelyloud.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129432365868645506" border="0" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote> <p class="MsoNormal">My first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago.<span style=""> </span>Self-defense was something that I was extremely curious about, for obvious reasons, and Mom thought it would be good for me to have a physical activity besides tambourining, so my first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago.<span style=""> </span>There were fourteen kids in the class, we all had on neat white robes.<span style=""> </span>We practiced bowing, and then we were all sitting down Native American style, and <span style="font-size:130%;">then Sensei Mark asked me to go over to him. “Kick my privates,” he told me.<span style=""> </span>That made me feel self-conscious.<span style=""> </span>“Excusez-moi?” I told him.</span><span style=""><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span> </span>He spread his legs and told me, “I want you to kick my privates as hard as you can.”<span style=""> </span>He put his hands at his sides, and took a breath in, and closed his eyes, and that’s how I knew that actually he meant business. “Jose,” I told him, and inside I was thinking <i style="">What the?</i> He told me, “Go on, guy. Destroy my privates.” “Destroy your privates?” With his eyes still closed he cracked up a lot and said, “You couldn’t destroy my privates if you tried.<span style=""> </span>That’s what’s going on here.<span style=""> </span>This is a demonstration of the well-trained body’s ability to absorb a direct blow. Now destroy my privates.” <span style="font-size:180%;">I told him, “I’m a pacifist,” and since most people my age don’t know what that means, I turned around and told the others, “I don’t think it’s right to destroy people’s privates. Ever.”</span> Sensei Mark said, “Can I ask you something?”<span style=""> </span>I turned back around and told him,” “‘Can I ask you something?’ is asking me something.” He said, “Do you have dreams of becoming a jujitsu master?” “No,” I told him even though I don’t have dreams of running the family business anymore.<span style=""> </span>“Do you want to know how a jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master?” “I want to know everything,” I told him, but that isn’t true anymore either.<span style=""> </span>He told me, “A jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master by destroying his master’s privates.”<span style=""> </span>I told him, “That’s fascinating.”<span style=""> </span>My last jujitsu class was three and a half months ago.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder.<span style=""> </span>Everything moved me.<span style=""> </span>A dog following a stranger.<span style=""> </span>That made me feel so much.<span style=""> </span>A calendar that showed the wrong month.<span style=""> </span>I could have cried over it.<span style=""> </span>I did.<span style=""> </span>Where the smoke from a chimney ended.<span style=""> </span>How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.<span style=""> </span><span style="font-size:130%;">I spent my life learning to feel less.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:180%;">Everything will be <s>OK</s> <s>perfect</s>.</span><br />I started to cry.<br />It was the first time I had ever cried in front of him.<span style=""> </span><span style="font-size:130%;">It felt like making love.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">He squeezed my sides so hard, and pushed so hard <span style="font-size:130%;">like he was trying to push through me to somewhere else.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Hey, buddy.”<span style=""> </span>“Actually, I’m not your buddy.” “Right. Well.<span style=""> </span>It’s great weather today, don’t you think?<span style=""> </span>If you want, we could go outside and toss a ball.”<span style=""> </span>“Yes to thinking it’s great weather.<span style=""> </span>No to wanting to toss a ball.”<span style=""> </span>“You sure?” “Sports aren’t fascinating.” “What do you find fascinating?” <span style="font-size:130%;">“What kind of answer are you looking for?” “What makes you think I’m looking for something?” “What makes you think I’m a huge moron?” “I don’t think you’re any kind of moron.” “Thanks.”</span> “Why do you think you’re here?” “I’m here, Dr. Fein, because it upsets my mom that I’m having an impossible time with my life.”<span style=""> </span>“Should it upset her?”<span style=""> </span>“Not really.<span style=""> </span>Life is impossible.”<span style=""> </span>“When you say that you’re having an impossible time, what do you mean?” “I’m constantly emotional.”<span style=""> </span>“Are you emotional right now?” <span style="font-size:130%;">“I’m extremely emotional right now.” “What emotions are you feeling?”<span style=""> </span>“All of them.” “Like…” “Right now I’m feeling sadness, happiness, anger, love, guilt, joy, shame, and a little bit of humor, because part of my brain is remembering something hilarious that Toothpaste once did that I can’t talk about.” “Sounds like you’re feeling an awful lot.”<span style=""> </span>“He put Ex-lax in the pain au chocolat we sold at the French Club bakesale."</span> “That <i style="">is</i> funny.”<span style=""> </span>“I’m feeling everything.”<span style=""> </span>“This emotionalness of yours, does it affect your daily life?” “Well, to answer your question, I don’t think that’s a real word you just used.<span style=""> </span>Emotionalness.<span style=""> </span>But I understand what you were trying to say, and yes.<span style=""> </span>I end up crying a lot, usually in private.<span style=""> </span>It’s extremely hard for me to go to school.<span style=""> </span>I also can’t sleep over at friends’ apartments, because I get panicky about being away from Mom.<span style=""> </span>I’m not very good with people.” “What do you think is going on?”<span style=""> </span>“I feel too much.<span style=""> </span>That’s what’s going on.”<span style=""> </span>“Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?”<span style=""> </span>“My insides don’t match up with my outsides.”<span style=""> </span>“Do anyone’s insides and outsides match up?” “I don’t know.<span style=""> </span>I’m really only me.”<span style=""> </span><span style="font-size:130%;">“Maybe that’s what a person’s personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.”<span style=""> </span>“But it’s worse for me.”<span style=""> </span>“I wonder if everyone thinks it’s worse for him.”<span style=""> </span>“Probably.<span style=""> </span>But it really is worse for me.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> </blockquote></div>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-77407036383075382902007-10-27T11:30:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:00:58.614-08:00Shit Happened<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" >Pink Fucken Speed</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtf2LBHWUfpBJGboxwP2rWfJiwHoTqZQ3iqJVETUyu9W9bznrlrKboBSRJCWt00rusDxPyMeYp-T8fv2gigQ6igoxF6ZeB0lX1Jnghg79pSyVUemIoh5-JhCxBGTSvERj196oqow/s1600-h/vernon.jpg"><br /></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"> <p class="MsoNormal">I have this annoying habit of starting twenty books and only getting through two. I usually get about fifty pages in and then find myself distracted by all the beautiful and shiny and completely unnecessary new books that I just purchased to keep my old books company. In the past I have never been able to return to one of these neglected tomes, tossed aside for the younger, flashier model...until now. Having undertaken a monetarily imposed ban on new books coupled with another fine induced absence from the library, I have been forced to scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel and revisit the previously abandoned. The first book that I was ever able to successfully finish after a five month hiatus was <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><i>Vernon</i></st1:place></st1:city><i> God Little</i>. The San Francisco Chronicle described it as a <i>Huckleberry Finn</i>-like story (apt) written a la the creators of South Park (inapt, kinda lame and lazy, i.e. a 17 year-old saying fuck a lot doesn't make him like Cartman). Despite my qualms with SFC I did find some pretty amazing descriptive passages, all the better for their bluntness and the narrator's obsession with panties. In the course of this novel I was forced to confront some of life's more profound questions, particularly, when the plural noun panties is used in the singular is it still "panties" like "pants" or is it "panty?" I'm still open to all theories.<br /><br />*P.S. the following quote is not for the sexually modest or easily embarrassed.</p> <span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><br /></span></span></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtf2LBHWUfpBJGboxwP2rWfJiwHoTqZQ3iqJVETUyu9W9bznrlrKboBSRJCWt00rusDxPyMeYp-T8fv2gigQ6igoxF6ZeB0lX1Jnghg79pSyVUemIoh5-JhCxBGTSvERj196oqow/s1600-h/vernon.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtf2LBHWUfpBJGboxwP2rWfJiwHoTqZQ3iqJVETUyu9W9bznrlrKboBSRJCWt00rusDxPyMeYp-T8fv2gigQ6igoxF6ZeB0lX1Jnghg79pSyVUemIoh5-JhCxBGTSvERj196oqow/s320/vernon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5126093320853781618" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>She tries to close back her legs, wriggles hard, but she's lost, I'm on fire, committed even more now she's shy of her musky damp. I pull aside her weeping panty to face a delta writhing with meats, <span style="font-size:130%;">glistening with sweat carrying spicy coded silts</span> from her ass; <span style="font-size:130%;">olives, cinnamon dust and chili blood</span>. She gives up, beaten, without a secret left in the animal world. Her knees bend up and she takes in my tongue, my finger, my face, she cries and bucks, horny ridges, ruffles, and grits suck me up, <span style="font-size:130%;">suck me home to the stinking wet truth behind panties, money, justice, and slime, burning trails through my brain like acid through butter.</span> Pink Fucken Speed.<br /></blockquote><br /></div></div>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-52840204061654755522007-01-21T19:40:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:00:58.803-08:00Nostalgia is fear smeared with Vaseline<div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"><em><span style="font-size:180%;">We'll chance anything to destroy ourselves, but we're such chickenshits when it comes to happiness. </span></em></div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify">My brother makes great Christmas lists. I think for the most part GQ makes the lists and he sends them out, but there are generally, (amongst the over-priced gadgets, over-priced man totes, over-priced man cosmetics) some really great books. Two years ago <em>Home Land</em> by Sam Lipsyte made GQ's list and thus Zach's. I bought the book for Zach but as soon as the wrapping came off, I stole away with it into my room and promised to send it to him when I finished. It was hysterical, bizarre, and poignent, my favorite combination. Also, how can you not love a guy who spells <em>wang </em>with an <em>h</em>? Exaggerated pronunciation of penis words...always fun.<br /><br /><br /></div><p align="center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIbX1TLHIUDihS8MhyyMb-cfsDoouRKJ5iplkJNNxDTrDVLPJcwk6rZceFDOP-moNmUdmP6To-oF9ILc3onXfdC1jVc67wxnVHeD1WwmmAXfY3tOic4d45VlhZXsdVx-RUy0_A_A/s1600-h/homeland200.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5022698848693369138" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIbX1TLHIUDihS8MhyyMb-cfsDoouRKJ5iplkJNNxDTrDVLPJcwk6rZceFDOP-moNmUdmP6To-oF9ILc3onXfdC1jVc67wxnVHeD1WwmmAXfY3tOic4d45VlhZXsdVx-RUy0_A_A/s320/homeland200.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><em>How much whang could a man spank in this world?</em></span> </p><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p align="justify">My father demurred, begged off, wasted his shot. Yes, those jazzbos spiraled into smack hells of their own devising, but not before slapping down some landmark lite wax.<br />"Failure of nerve," my father had once said, the words hard, soothing candy in his mouth.<br />"That's a good phrase for it," I said.<br />"I didn't make it up."<br />"No, but it's still good. <span style="font-size:130%;">I usually just tell myself I'm a pussy."<br /></span>"Me, too," said Daddy Miner.<br />I knew I was in the vicinity of<span style="font-size:130%;"> a serious lesson, if not about how to live life, then at least how to put some poetry into your craven retreat from it.<br /></span><br />There are some who consider him <span style="font-size:130%;">an evolutionary cul-de-sac.<br /></span><br /><br />It occurs to me, Catamounts, sitting here composing this latest update, that someday, if and when the collected works of Lewis Miner ever see the light of day, some futuristic editor-type might attempt to assemble these dispatches in a certain manner, to, for example, tell a story, or else<br />effect some kind of thematic arrangement of interwoven leitmotifs: <span style="font-size:130%;">Work, Love, Masturbation, Gary.<br /></span>This would be a grave mistake.<br />There are not themes, no leitmotifs. There is no story.<br /><br />What's all this storytelling stuff, anyway? Stories pour out of us daily, and most of them might not unfairly be lumped under the taxonomic heading: <span style="font-size:130%;">More Boring Than Your Neighbor's Spork Collection.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-1278491810411410712006-11-25T16:56:00.000-08:002006-11-25T17:26:34.507-08:00concentrate on sex<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" >Didn't he know that words carry colors and sounds into the flesh?</span><br /></div><br />Anais Nin wrote what was eventually published as <span style="font-style: italic;">Delta of Venus</span> for $1 a page. The pages were purchased by a wealthy patron never known to Nin. She was repeatedly chastised by the patron for being too poetic and directed to "leave out the poetry and descriptions of anything but sex. Concentrate on sex." These seem fairly simpl requests and some that undoubtedly could be and are met by women writing today. But, for Nin, it was impossible to separate sex from poetry, from emotion, from art. The sex she writes about is at times savage, unequal, and base, but never detached. There is always emotional presence, consciousness, desire, enjoyment, and fulfillment. The perspective is also undeniably female. She creates a uniquely female sexual/sensual voice that is at once at odds with even modern gender sensibilities and extremely comforting. Considering the nature of the project, the merit in these stories lies in Nin's expression, despite her patron's instructions and perhaps against her own attempts at supression, of the emotional and psychological life behind sex and intimacy for women.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/7750/4397/1600/978867/k.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/7750/4397/320/628/k.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">She was raised on <span style="font-size:130%;">a pedestal of poetry</span> so that her falling into the final embrace might seem more of a miracle.<br /><br />You and I exist together in <span style="font-size:130%;">all delirious countries</span> of the sexual world. You draw me into the marvelous. Your smile keeps <span style="font-size:130%;">a mesmeric flow</span>.<br /><br />She was a magnetic center for the world of women who considered themselves condemned by their vice.<br /><br />Her cravings were vague, poetic.<br /><br />Women were not as tolerant as men towards women who made themselves small and weak by calculation, thinking to inspire active love.</span></blockquote>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-41868334868088761212006-10-16T17:10:00.000-07:002006-10-16T18:09:07.371-07:00dog-eating, crotch-busting fools<div style="text-align: justify;">I read <span style="font-style: italic;">Hell's Angels</span> by Hunter S. Thompson this summer. So did some of my friends. The general conclusion seems to be that overall we don't really care about the Hell's Angels anymore. The roving menace that they were or were made out to be in the 60s and 70s no longer frightens us. That being said, the book is still worth reading. It's a testament to Thompson's journalistic and literary ability that my friends and I would continue to read and finish reading an entire book on a subject that has become completely irrelevant. His language has a way of shocking you into continuation. Things will be blah, blah, blah, motorcycles, blah, blah, blah, rape and then he throws out a phrase like "tender young blondes with lobotomy eyes," and you keep reading just hoping to find another something like that. lobotomy eyes. wow. He also has an almost prescient understanding of what would in our generation become the media circus. It is so subtle that one can't be sure if he is even aware of it, but it's there and it's interesting. He is much more vocally and satisfyingly political and bitingly if humorously takes on racism, the military, and backward thinking.<br /></div><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/7750/4397/1600/hellsfront.1.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/7750/4397/320/hellsfront.1.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" >...it is a time for sharing the wine jug, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" >pummeling old friends, random fornication and </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" >general full-dress madness.</span><br /><br /><blockquote>The girls stood quietly in a group, wearing tight slacks, kerchiefs and sleeveless blouses or sweaters, with boots and dark glasses, uplift bras, bright lipstick and the wary expressions of <span style="font-size:130%;">half-bright souls turned mean and nervous from too much bitter wisdom in too few years.</span><br /><br />All three major television networks would be seeking them out with cameras and they would be denounced in the US Senate by George Murphy, <span style="font-size:130%;">the former tap dancer</span>.<br /><br />They would owe most of their success to a curious rape mania that rides on the shoulder of American journalism<span style="font-size:130%;"> like some jeering mastubating raven</span>.<br /><br />Here, sweet Jesus, was an image flat guaranteed to boil the public blood and foam the brain of every man with <span style="font-size:130%;">female flesh for kin</span>.<br /><br />...they were lodged in the Monterey County Jail in Salinas...out there in Steinbeck country, the hot lettuce valley, owned in the main by smart second-generation hillbillies who got out of Appalachia while the getting was good, and who now pay other, less smart hillbillies to supervise the work of Mexican braceros, whose natural fitness for stoop labor has been explained by the ubiquitous Senator Murphy: "They're built low to the ground," he said, "so it's easier for them to stoop."<br /><br />They rode with a fine, <span style="font-size:130%;">unwashed arrogance</span>, secure in their reputation as <span style="font-size:130%;">the rottenest motorcycle gang in the whole history of Christendom.</span><br /><br />they are better constructed for the mindless rape of any prostrate woman they might come across as they scurry about, from one place to another, <span style="font-size:130%;">with their dorks carried low like water wands.</span><br /><br />The reasoning was sound; the beasts were put off in a place where they could whip themselves into any kind of orgiastic frenzy without becoming dangerous to the citizenry--and if things got out of hand, the recruits across the road could be <span style="font-size:130%;">bugled out of bed and issued bayonets.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></div>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36027974.post-1160852180964446262006-10-14T11:03:00.000-07:002006-10-14T18:25:19.739-07:00raison d'etre<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;">writers. good ones. writers who say meaningful things. writers who say beautiful things. writers with more original minds than my own.<br /><br />words. good ones. words that when paired are more than black marks on white paper. words that when paired are more than words. words that when paired are more than ideas and ideologies. words that are experiences.<br /><br />In the manner of Hunter S. Thompson's Hemingway and Fitzgerald retyping, hopefully the repetition of all these amazing things will help me to learn what it is about them that makes them great and will cause them to rub off on me, just a bit.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" >disclaimer:</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> I am particularly, if not overly, fond of figurative and romantic phrasing. I am drawn consistently and egregiously to themes of beauty, love, and sex, and to images of flames, ghosts, gems, and sweets. Know this about me.<br /></span></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />Also, I will try to refrain from over-contextualizing and analyzing because as the aesthetic esthetic of Lord Henry Wotton purports:<br /><br /></span><blockquote></blockquote> <span style="font-size:100%;">"Beauty, real beauty ends where intellectual expression begins.</span>"<span style="font-size:78%;"> - Oscar Wilde<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote></span>That being said, here's my first post:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" >"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming."</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I have always been a collector of quotes, but not in the Bartlett's sense. I don't collect quotes because they are quotable. The things that stand out to me are not those that fit neatly into categories like "on success" or "on dreams." Oscar Wilde seems to me to exemplify both the exception and the rule. He is endlessly quotable and a master of the bon mot. His quotable quotes, however, are so interesting because they are in a way anti-quotes, anti-proverbs. They are often destructive paradoxes espousing the values of aestheticism. Their self-negation models the idea that art has no use, no morals, and no purpose aside from beauty. In this case, words for words' sake with no meaning or message beyond them. And sometimes he just says beautiul things.<br /></div><br />Some of my favorites from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Picture of Dorian Gray</span>:<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>"...<span style="font-size:130%;">I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.</span>"<br /><br />"'What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and <span style="font-size:130%;">the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.</span>"<br /><br />"People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. Beauty is the wonder of wonders. <span style="font-size:130%;"> It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.</span>"<br /><br />"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. <span style="font-size:130%;">The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts longer.</span>"<br /><br />Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnm, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><blockquote></blockquote></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote>KateShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01194020140107389305noreply@blogger.com0