Recently I went on TVTropes in search of information about the wine/book club mom trope, which I swear to god exists both in real life and on television. On the message board I was told that the wine/book club mom trope is not substantially different from Cute Bookworm—which is straight up wrong. A wine/book club mom is neither a nerd nor a girl, nor is she a Hot Librarian. Anyway, I’m mad about it.
Author: Serena
Gneiss
Beneath swept rock, groundwater
buffs cave walls to silver.
These metal reinforcements
hold earth from under earth.
I would wrestle the poem
into the world like tracts
of red clay plaiting
switchbacks to the mountain.
To think I wrote all my life
when in fact I was only tracing.
Severance by Ling Ma
Severance by Ling Ma
“Yes. I took a sip from the wineglass. It tasted bloody. I wanted to tell them that they had made a mistake. I wasn’t like them. I didn’t want the same things that they wanted and they should know this. They should know my difference, they should sense my unfathomable fucking depths. All of these distinctions, of course, belied the fact that I very much wanted to work in Art. I wanted to be an Art Girl.”
Nosebleed (parataxis/epistaxis)
And there was a space in the copse
we did not call a clearing
And we know that when Dad sells the house
we will not return here
And a drop of acid on a flame
creates a brilliant flash of color
And a poem in the new book is blue
And at work the cyan cartridge leaks
And when I first learned to drive I bled
And quickly cooled and turned obsidian
The sound of cats fighting under my window
is oddly comforting.
Today I cooked and ate pasta twice.
I watched three quarters of a Scientology documentary and the first two episodes of the new True Detective. I thought it was lame that they called the TV show they’re making on the TV show True Crime. Also I screamed when that lady said “a seminal work of literary nonfiction.”
Can a good book about a crime be literary? I think not, if you define “literary” as “equally interested in the writing and the content.”
Which reminds me of a family friend whose daughter wrote a book about her father’s murder. Sorry to say it was not such an interesting memoir. I wonder what else is going on in the world of only-OK memoirs.
On the other hand, this Leah Remini Scientology memoir is killing me right now. Whoever ghostwrote/edited it did a masterful job on Remini’s voice:
“The series that I had just come off of in the fall of 1991, The Man in the Family, lasted for only seven episodes. It left me back where I was before Dolls, auditioning for guest appearances on popular sitcoms. I just wanted to belong somewhere again, on a show I could call my own. I was exhausted already. I did a pilot, it didn’t go any further; I got another series, it got canceled before it aired. Each time I swore I was going to give up, but then I’d just get back up and keep going. (All told, I’ve been on more than twenty-five eventually canceled television shows in my career, and have appeared in even more pilots that never made it to air. While I would never complain, I certainly did feel anxiety. This is not an easy business to be in.)”
Here’s a list of memoirs that have been important to me:
- Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
- Boy and Going Solo by Roald Dahl
Wow, I really can’t think of any others. I had moments with Joan Didion and David Sedaris, I guess.
In my only-OK memoir, today was not a total waste because I did three (3) loads of laundry and folded two thirds of that laundry and went grocery shopping.
I’m gonna sidle over to the images tab and post some of my backlog. Thanks for tuning in.
Surveys by Natasha Stagg
Surveys by Natasha Stagg
“Jim was one of those people who’s so good at making it seem like his only interest in the Internet was the Internet itself. How interesting it is, as a thing. But of course this is self-interest, and my relationship with it has always been far more transparent, and he said he got that, and liked it about me. I liked that he got it and liked it, and that he could tell I got him and that he wasn’t ashamed. What we got was that there were all these unwritten codes, that every message, because it was coded, was sitting on a mountain of meaning. Literally, everything is code and coded, but on top of that, coded into a context, online. Showing a circuit board look and MIDI-style sound felt like less code, like baring the bones. But these aesthetic choices were cluttering up the streamlining of the universe, not minimalizing it. We were asking about art and representation, and about the modern notion of a man and a woman devoted to each other. We were dropping in U-turn signs on everyone else’s roads, smiling at each other, driving forward.”
Tracks I loved this winter
- Nasty – Shygirl
- NVR – Shygirl
- Loud Places – Jamie xx
- Tommy – Tommy Genesis
- Miami – Tommy Genesis
- 100 Bad – Tommy Genesis
- Mia Khalifa – ILoveFriday
- College – Balam Acab
- AS Crust – Amnesia Scanner
- Cos I Love U – A. G. Cook
- Stamina – Coucou Chloe
- Dance the Night Away – Twice
- Poly – Daphni
Notes:
- The video for 100 Bad reminded me of the video for All About the Money, which is way cooler.
- Shygirl is criminally slept on (you know, for a famous person). “Your breathing makes me hate you / him watching makes me cry / why do I care / wasting thoughts I’d rather die.” Edit: she’s playing NY on Mar 9
- Twice rehearsal videos. I’m sliding into a Momo bias as we speak. She’s the one in the maroon crop top in the rehearsal vid.
- I’m the kind of person who listens to the same 10 songs over and over for months. Not much to be done about it.
- Am I guaranteeing myself hearing loss blasting all this heavy stuff in my earSs? Mayb
Eyebrows
I never learned how to apply eyeliner correctly and I have thin lips, so the only makeup I ever really got into was doing my eyebrows. It started late, in college, because my roommate had a makeup routine. She never showered but she always looked like she had her shit together. I experimented with all sorts of products (my favorite was this brush/pencil in grayish brown). In my last year of college I had a bad mental health spell and started drawing them on darker and thicker. They had to be symmetrical, but they aren’t naturally symmetrical, and in the end I looked like a cartoon character. When I got to grad school I stopped doing them altogether. As the only woman in my four-person cohort, and because I felt increasingly comfortable in more masculine clothing, it didn’t make sense to be painting my face every day.
These days I live in a city where looking put together at the supermarket is a real thing. I’ll go six months or longer without putting on any makeup, and then one day I’ll be at the drugstore and buy a crayon and suddenly eyebrows will be my look for the season. You would think I would have figured out the face I want to present to the world by now, but I haven’t. I guess that’s just how it goes.
Confession
I love naked pictures of celebrities. To me they’re some of the most riveting images you can find on the internet. Even if you’ve seen the person naked in a movie, seeing them from a regular-person angle still gives you that jolt of recognition, as if they’re someone you know.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Long Drive East
In the mornings I touch my face, massage lotion, think of the rough
& jaw crooked, patched cheek—I’m Oklahoma burning March 6th
cattle singed, walking out of my hooves—I’m the borrowed rifle
& the end of whinnying—sleeping one man’s form from the exit
field—it’s my instinct to put someone between the door & me
The next day, like anyone, I spend stoned—at home & then the fire
OK, the escape—my view of the street tree-blocked—I’m a single car
on the expressway expanding like dimpled skin, mostly flat, slipped
through like a nipple & a needle—my heart a big gulp in the cupholder
pig & flag—if nothing else, I thought, I would know America
I fall asleep for three years, wake up, / & take a walk around the block,
R writes—& the city turns over in its ketamine dream—like a semi
groans & rolls into a snowbank—a girl at work has cartilage replaced
around a mouth I almost find alluring—another hour pleasantly
murdered—the country disappears as I doze & drive through it
Miss Forceful Wants You 