Mirrors

I desperately want to write a story about mirrors, because they’re so versatile. They’re vanity, fragility, beauty, twinning, and that’s just off the top of my head. My idea is to equate mirrors with failed relationships, like a mirror breaking before a date or something. Or using another mirror for makeup, only to get it wrong. And sometimes mirrors lie.

But alas, the other Muse is in Madagascar making homemade vanilla extract.

Uninspired

The Muse is taking an extended vacation in Antigua. She’s not coming back any time soon. I came up with two lines, none of which are even remotely related.

Growing up by satellites

They provide a good riff

I have these notes in my Stickies application:

-post/modernism

-TV, bras, pills (pharmies)

-“I love to watch things on TV”

–Sputnik/Space race

I guess I was thinking about Sputnik at the time.

 

School

This is what happens during the insomniatic periods. (So “insomniatic” is not a word. I’m making it one.) It seems really, really good at the time. I think it’s kind of fun, if a bit mean-spirited, but that’s how I roll.

Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy (2005)

The book might seem dated even though it’s only five years old, but the porn-ization of the culture is still continuing—every C-List celebrity has a real or rumored sex tape and the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards, the Oscars of porn, get mainstream press. But five years later, the culture isn’t as dire as Levy predicted—the resurgence of the Playboy clubs never happened, and Joe Francis, creator of Girls Gone Wild has been the target of several lawsuits for the very thing that made his videos popular.

Sometimes Teens Have All the Luck

They get free art classes at Cooper Union and other artistically-inclined perks in this city. (I’m still searching for free art classes for adults. Where are they? Do they assume we have money for classes? I guess so. 3rd Ward, as much as I want to support you you’re not cutting it, though “Drink and Draw” is a brilliant idea.) Now they have a website called Figment in which to share their written work. What are “young people” anyway? Does that include those of us who weren’t born in the 90s? I hope so, because Figment sounds like a great endeavor for those looking for some exposure.

As I Further the Lament…

It’s not a secret that writing for TIA gives me some anxiety. I put pressure on myself to write something every day, no matter how small. I really enjoyed live tweeting Top Chef All-Stars last night, and I hope to make it a weekly thing. It’s something that really works with Twitter’s format, as it is microblogging after all. I’m also waiting to interview for some editorial positions next week, and I’m not worried about the interviews per se, but more like what happens afterward. What if I do get the job? What if I’m not able to perform up to my very high standards? It’s also this interim period that can be stressful, the waiting for emails part. I like having assignments ready so I can work on those. I worked on a “holiday confections” piece the other day and had fun with that. (I don’t want to print that here, as it might make it on the company’s website. An exciting prospect indeed!) But yes, I feel as though I have to constantly add more, that it’s never enough. I’m probably writing a couple hundred words a day on average, and that should be satisfactory but for some reason it isn’t. I blame the underemployment.

Rejection of “Badger”!

Earlier today I got the rejection email from Corkboard, my alma mater’s literary journalism magazine. While a bit disappointed, I’m not upset. (It’s not like I haven’t shared something like this before!) Below is the submission. (Also, on a small tangent, I submitted the piece without a title, but the editors referred to it as “Badger.”)

Children Are Occasionally Brilliant

I love the wedding announcements in the Sunday New York Times. They truly are the sports pages for women. I could start with a weekly analysis, but there are tons of sites that do it already. There was a gem in today’s “Week in Review” section concerning children’s letters to Michelle Obama and her family. Some are sad, some are brilliant, some are both. Below are some highlights:

• Dear Sasha, How cool I have a dog too! My friend knows how to tap dance. I am going to learn how to play piano too. Tennis is cool one of my friends plays tennis. I also have an alowance [sic]. I am nine too. Do you like the garden? P.S. I wrote a letter to your dad.
• Dear Mrs. Obama, If I was to get invited to eat dinner with you, I’d have so much fun. What if I was your daughter? I’d love you a whole lot and I would always play with you. Malia and Sasha are beautiful children and are so sweet to other people that they see. I would like to become friends with your two daughters. Can I?
• Dear First Lady Michelle Obama, My parents are divorced. I am having trouble moving on. Do you have any tips? I am confused and sad.
• Dear Obama family, I am going to be in the second grade. Do you get a lot of threats?
• Dear Michelle Obama, One of the solutions to greenhouse gas is hydrogen fusion. It’s when you fuse four H’s and you make an He and that releases a tremendous amount of heat. And after boiling the water and making electricity, it turns out that it makes, I think, 10 times the amount of electricity it takes to create the heat. The only problem with this is that it makes enough electricity to charge all the houses on a street for a couple of weeks, but while traveling through the power lines two-thirds of the electricity is lost by the time it reaches the house. So it will be good to invest money in the power lines problem.
• Dear Michelle, I want to be a teacher when I grow up because I want to teach other kids things they like learning, like how to take a test.
• Dear Michelle, You are eating 100 percent healthy. Can you put my dad in a job? I’m eating healthy. I’m eating watermelon, melon, mango and persimmons. I just want to have $200.
• Dear Michelle Obama, I think your husband should legalize immigration. Please put a statue of me in Echo Park. Thank you. J.K. No, really. I want a tuxedo on the statue.
• Dear First Lady, Could you tell Obama to stop the war because people are dying and give paper to the people that do not have paper? Also my dad works for the city. Can you give him more money? His name is Manuel and he is in the airport. And how many rooms are there in the White House? I live in 4142. The manager does not let us have a dog and people that live there have a dog. Could you tell the manager we got to have our dog back? Thank you.
• Dear Michelle Obama, I want to ask you why do people make up weird names like hot dog or runny nose, or even smelly feet? Because a hot dog should be a dog that’s hot and a runny nose should be a nose running, and a smelly foot should be a foot that has a nose on it. Do you get these? And do you have a nose on your foot? Here is a joke: What is a hissing cockroach’s favorite subject in school? Hissssstory…. Why do brooms and vacuum cleaners think people are mean? Because they keep on pushing them.
• Dear Michelle Obama, I think that you should shut down cigarette and liquor companies and try to keep drugs off the streets. Robots may be able to help you.

Tarot Can Only Answer One Question Appropriately

I’ve had this tarot deck for at least ten years, and once in a blue moon I’ll give myself a reading. The guide is way too New Age-y and vague for my taste, but they’re based on Aleister Crowley’s set, so they’ve got something to them. However, there was one great moment today. The guide asked me, “What’s the framework for your creativity? Draw a card.” I got the Nine of Swords i.e. Cruelty. Ummm… okay.

I’ve written about that before, but part of me doesn’t want to create something out of spite/hatred/cruelty. I don’t always see the point in that – I mean, how many songs are about disappointment in lovers and other intimates? Devil’s Advocate: But isn’t disappointment one of the biggest impetuses for art, if not the biggest one? Off the top of my head, I’m like, “Dear Johnny, I hate you. Love, Kate.” I also recently wrote some lyrics about sociopaths, which was kind of fun. It goes a little something like this: Sociopathy/It’s how you get your kicks/And I know all of your tricks, boy/Sociopathy/It’s how you get your kicks/’Cause I know all of your tricks, girl/You can make me scream/And you can make me cry/You can make me bleed/But I can say goodbye

Eventually, anyway.

Sometimes I really, really hate what I write. Why put it out there? Oh yeah, because I’m a masochist. This is like the sequel to an earlier post from this week. Anxieties 2: This Time It’s Personal.

Daytime Meeting New Anxieties*

Today is one of those days where it’s Friday, nobody responds to emails, and all that jazz. It’s like, my inbox is just sitting there, untouched. This week was full of highs and lows, and that’s about as personal as it’s gonna get. (A huge rule for TIA: This is WordPress, not LiveJournal. No one over the age of 16 should have the latter anyway.) Continuing: The only frustration in my life that I will discuss in public is the creative process and feeling stifled. Like I have to make myself write this just so I get something out there. It has to happen. And yeah, it causes a fair amount of anxiety. I need to be doing something so I don’t go totally nuts. And even when I’m doing stuff I can’t share it, because I think it’s shit or hurtful or both. One time not too long ago I was up all night and started writing at six in the morning about everyone I’ve encountered from roughly the ages of 5 to 18 that pissed me off. It was pretty venomous, but it was pretty good too. (One of the themes is terrible skin and I compared one girl to Ann Coulter. That’s about as insulting as it gets.) I can’t share that because I used people’s real names and maybe I’ll do the Mark Twain thing and stipulate in my will to have it published 100 years after my death. Technology can work against you, especially on social networking sites. My first commandment of the internet: Thou shalt not put online what you wouldn’t put on the front page of The New York Times. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this rule before. Yes, you can’t control everything that gets put on Facebook (Hi underage drinking photos! Please disappear!), but there’s more control than a lot of people believe. It’s amazing how people (college graduates no less!) will openly talk shit about others and think it’s private. It’s not and it’s your own damn fault. For those wondering: I barely Facebook stalk anymore – I mean, everyone does it but it gets boring very quickly. Music is so much better for venting anyway!

Part of me is afraid to post this, but it’s totally honest if a bit vague, and that’s the only thing you can ask for from a creative type.

(*This is totally plagiarized: The original lyric goes “Nighttime meeting new anxieties.”)