eureka

When I realized that much of what exists on the internet are LISTS (think about it) I shuddered with horror, like seeing your mother in your own hands. The List has become our preferred method of communication, perfect for quick jabs & impressions, an easy yet flashy way to seduce or baffle, to lord it over someone less "in the know", to bond w/someone who "thinks like you". It's the Snickers bar of intimacy - quick sugar rush, like what makes happy-hour sexy. It's here but it's passing quickly, it's well-lit, that ambiguously satisfying lie of not being alone when you don't want to be with anyone in particular. So I have to break the habit! I'm guilty, I'm an advocate! (Tho' the List as I've known it as handed down to me via Fork & Robert via Brian Moran is somewhat more abstract & ... creative? Dare I say?) What I gain from this realization is that I have to work through my fears of intimacy & committment (ie: complete sentences and then paragraphs!)

Twilight & I'm not in the pub I'm on the porch. All the lake birds are soaring, big strong crow just waved at me. I got mail today. The geranium's in full riotous yowl, hibiscus trumpeting, my fuschia is dripping her six lush blooms. I have 17 gladiolas coming up in the bed I made underneath my bedroom window. The peony & lily of the valley appear to be duds. Sunflowers, 3 fat ones, are fixing to bust. And the backyard is a tangle of passion-flowers. This lawn is dense with clover cuz I am a bad neighbor & don't cut it enough. (The mower's broke!)

Finished William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" shorts. Prefer the ones he wrote solo. They're like candy to me. It's always thrilling to read the formative beginnings of one of your favorite authors - to see the themes peeking out, the characters creaking away, shaking off the chrysalis. When I read "Memoirs From The House of The Dead" all of a sudden "Crime and Punishment" made that much more sense. A short story in the New Yorker can illuminate the path for a whole career.

Been at the lake every evening at twilight with the dog. That lake, it's ---- it's kindof just one thing. Not like Lake Superior or Michigan even. But I remain a stranger to Ponchatrain; I will return until I get a feel for her. I like living this close to the lake - tho' it's dangerous, with the hurricanes. I dream about renter's insurance.

I've begun Stanley Elkin's "The Magic Kingdom" and it's got me laughing with my eyes and hooked.

I think of C. and her realization that with a "no" there are things to gain, things that will present themselves to us as rewards, traces of the new path eeking outta the old forest. It's not like we'll be banished to the desert. "No." Even if all you gain is solitude. Solitude is sexy.

Comments

[indy 500]

solitude IS sexy and your lists are too though I think you are right about the ... superficiality of them/that phenomena

[Detroit Shite]

When I got renter's insurance I knew I am not a punk rocker anymore

"...satisfying lie of not being alone when you don't want to be with anyone in particulair..." yep- I hear dat and dats OK.
T

Hi,
I like how I'm inside of more than one story when I'm reading one entry of yours and it is not boring. A lot of journals are boring for other people to read.
AunTmai shared the listing thing with us. I start a list and then I see flickers from my day or week, that maybe I would not have noticed that I noticed. And sometimes my listing opend a creative door and I can expound. Expound was number 32. Thanks for letting us read your journal.
Bye,
lil Jane

[eau]

Hi Lil Jane
Thanks for reading! It's supposed to be a public diary but I like to make it not so much about me and yet about me. I want it to be interesting. I get tired of the sound of my own voice sometimes.
& thanks for reminding me of what's great about a list. I am just so in the habit of making them that I feel like I have to push myself into a different way of writing.
"Satisfaction is death" George Bernard Shaw
xox
Eli.