REALITY: Morning Light

Posted on July 20, 2005 by Susan

Making love in morning light, still sleepy shreds of dreams hang in the mind, obliterating day’s realities and troubles, overcoming all.

Posted in REALITY | Comments Off on REALITY: Morning Light

NEW MEDIA: Future Think

Posted on July 20, 2005 by Susan

Via Weird Events, this post that points to Wired News’ article on Mind over Machine, technology driven by mind alone–hands off.  This is something I am fascinated by and only want to live long enough to see it happen, if not able to take advantage of the process myself!

Posted in NEW MEDIA | Comments Off on NEW MEDIA: Future Think

EDUCATION: English as a Second Language

Posted on July 19, 2005 by Susan

Understanding the jokes in Spanish told by our terrific Spanish instructor was much easier than understanding these online audio lectures.  I just logged out in frustration because the only thing I could hear for a couple of slides was the word "formula" and "times age" and a dog barking through the static.

Think that one’s going to be on the exam?

(I did post in the discussion board that I couldn’t hear enough to make sense of it and asked for help from other students who may have picked it out.)

Posted in EDUCATION | Comments Off on EDUCATION: English as a Second Language

REALITY: Ah, c’mon!

Posted on July 19, 2005 by Susan

Forgive me, but I’m reading my nutrition stuff and there’s nothing else on TV so I’ve got on "Average Joes:  The Joes Strike Back" and while I don’t know whereabouts we are in this thing with Anna and her male harem, but there she is, crying because she disguised herself as a waitress and spied on the ten guys she’s got to pick from and it’s because a few of them went after a couple of hot models that were a setup. 

Let’s get this straight:  She’s dating ten men and she’s upset because a couple of them made out with somebody else?  She’s hurt?  Betrayed?  They were drinking at least, so that’s one thing for their side.  Oh, I get it, it’s okay for her because she’s slowly and romantically getting to know each one. 

Oh look!  Now she’s crying happy tears because she still has four guys to take with her to Tahiti.

Wait a second, she just said something to the effect that "this is what happens when you like a good-looking person, they tell you something and don’t mean it, betray you, break your heart, yadda, yadda, yadda."  Talk about stereotyping!  Right, Anna.  All good looking people are true pigs.

Posted in REALITY | 2 Comments

REALITY: Nature and Natural

Posted on July 19, 2005 by Susan

It is no secret that my moods, thoughts and reflections are moved by nature, perhaps the very reason that a weblog suits me for my writing. 

A quick flash thunderstorm blew through late this afternoon, followed by the sun to dry up chairs and table fast enough to eat our meal outside.  The sun is shining bright, and raindrops spatter everywhere and me as well.  I tuck the book I read behind me in the shelter of the open doorway but that is all.  The rain, hand in hand with sunshine is somehow acceptable for getting wet.  I remember long ago in such a rain, a steady gentle rain that hit the asphalt and came up again as steam.  I changed into a bikini, brought a bucket, sponge and soap and washed my car.

Sometimes, it’s the timing of the rain that makes the difference.

Posted in REALITY | Comments Off on REALITY: Nature and Natural

EDUCATION: Learning Something Else

Posted on July 19, 2005 by Susan

Okay, obviously a bad case of the grumpies here and a whine that touches just short of a scream.  Let me explore my feelings, and take you along for the ride.

I am fifty-seven years old.  Five years ago I decided to actively pursue writing, and learn how to do it.  I believed that I also would not only need, but desired to obtain a degree to prove to myself (and everyone else hiring or accepting submissions from a mature woman) that I could still do it, still had the smarts that got me through the educational system in good form way back when.  Maybe it was just the female quivalent of a mid-life crisis, the foreseeing of one’s tombstone carved with "Here lies Susan, she washed dishes well."

Five long years later, a lot of effort and energy and time, I’m finally about to call myself a college graduate and I’m spending these last eight weeks struggling to memorize not the material but where in the notes and textbook the material is located because there’s damned little time to absorb this much stuff while listening to lectures albeit at my leisure, that are very, very, trying to listen to. 

But of course I’m smart enough not to give it all up for the matter of one week of what to me is relative torture.  And, the material in this Nutrition course is something that I indeed would think an excellent choice for inclusion in a college curriculum.  It’s all then, a matter of timing.  It’s like the course is a flash flood that washes out the bridge just before you reach your driveway.  An annoyance that shouldn’t be that, should be enlightening and uplifting but instead because of where it falls in the time and space of my life, is a giant pain in the ass instead. 

So only one more week of my crybabying it, and no more shall my wails be heard.  I shall be a college graduate, mature and ready to face life and take it head on.

Lord knows how I managed before that.

Posted in EDUCATION | 2 Comments

EDUCATION: Quality

Posted on July 19, 2005 by Susan

I’ve just gone through the first 25 of 200 effing slides and I am doing my damnedest to stick with it through the static that just never did go away as promised. 

One more freaking week.  I keep repeating that to myself.  175 more freaking slides.  One last exam.  I’m too old for this bullshit.  I’ve much more important and interesting things to do than to try real, real hard to understand a lecture through crackling and pops about how being 6′ 0" tall and weighing 185 is obese. 

Posted in EDUCATION | Comments Off on EDUCATION: Quality

LITERATURE: Glimmertrain #47

Posted on July 19, 2005 by susan

"Lists" by Mika Tanner is a story about a couple undergoing a divorce, and the wife’s visit back to their apartment to go through their material possessions to equitably dispose of them.  It is very well written, first person pov (the husband’s), and the theme is one of changes and seeking happiness.

In my "editorial" mode, I find only this:  the over-dependence upon adverbs that writers warn us about, and in fact, Ms. Tanner doesn’t need to use at all because her dialogues are right-on with setting the moods and revealing the characters, as well as action verbs such as "snaps" instead of the simple "said."

"So," she says softly.

Then she says sharply, "…"

"Hey Yumi," I say softly.

"You’re right," she snaps.

"Of course," she’d snap.

Then softly, more wistfully, "Please, Minoru, please think about it."

"Move on to what?" I snap.

"Yumi," I say sternly.

Because Ms. Tanner has set up the delicate nature of this relationship and the thing they must do as part of their separating, the emphasis on the verbs of conversation are not at all necessary.  A minor thing, but something that did distract me from the reading.

Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Glimmertrain #47

LITERATURE: Glimmertrain #47

Posted on July 19, 2005 by susan

What is good about reading let’s say, short story collections continuously for example, is that the reading mind adjusts to a certain set of points that are consistently sought, noted as present or lacking.  New things come up, as in the story "Crossing with Sassafras" where the time play within the narrative structure was skillfully manipulated so that the flow was easily read and comprehended.

In another story in this same issue, "Berlin Station" by Laurence DeLooze, the time segments are not, I feel, so well manipulated because they are stories of several generations, different episodes broken into segments, and while the author seemed aware of this, the solution of titling and numbering the series hit me not as guideposts but as stop signs, or perhaps a better analogy might be streetsigns in a major big city while I’m toting around three suitcases and an umbrella.

The story is wonderful, and the potential power of it is reduced by the too narratival approach to all that’s going on (lotta tell, little show) and perhaps a more linear line would help to lessen the push-pull of the reader through the story. 

Aside from this, I also was a bit surprised by the ending, but surprised not by the story ending but how the writer chose to reveal it almost as a spiritual or ghostly visit that spurred a tough decision.   

My, my, aren’t I the picky one lately.

Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Glimmertrain #47

REALITY: Early, Very Early Morning

Posted on July 19, 2005 by Susan

No backyard waking up to dawn to greet me and inspire me, only blackness of the first few hours of day.  I sit in the garage, coffee cup in hand, peek through the curtained window on the door and frightened somewhat by the misty Transylvanian view, I stay inside.  There be bears, or at the very least a sullen skunk to skulk within the swirling dew that stretches to the sky. 

I listened to my man, went to bed instead of falling into slumber on the couch at ten o’clock.  So here I am at two and three a.m. awakened and alert.

I pondered darkness.  Closed my eyes to make it darker still and wondered if the little bit of change made any difference.  Mental mapping guides me from one doorstep to another and finds the cup I set down on the step.  I take a sip, close my eyes and touch my face.  What if I never had before seen it or any other human’s?  Does the curve my fingers follow down my cheek tell me a shape?  Can I learn what I or others look like by the bumps of eyelids, projection of a nose?  What big difference is there in being suddenly blinded and given that at birth?  What are perceptions formed of when there is no likened basis of knowledge?  If I run my hands on either side of me down from my face, my neck and down my shoulders, out my arms, do I visualize by touch alone an image? 

I go back inside into the light and touch my fingers to my forehead, shoulders, heart; to cross myself in thanks.

Posted in REALITY | Comments Off on REALITY: Early, Very Early Morning

LITERATURE: McCarthy

Posted on July 18, 2005 by susan

Thanks to Slushpile for the heads up on Cormac McCarthy’s latest, Country for Old Men, due out tomorrow.  He includes an excerpt and link to Jeffrey Lent’s review in the Washington Post (critique MY McCarthy?  Why he’s right up there with Willie in my heart and mind).  Needless to say, this will be in the shopping cart I’ll be wheeling through Amazon.com in the next week or two. 

And, just after posting this I found at The Reading Experience a note on James Wood’s review of the man and his work at The New Yorker. 

Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged | Comments Off on LITERATURE: McCarthy

WRITING: Finding New Ways of Saying

Posted on July 18, 2005 by Susan

Outside the door the world is hot and steamy.  What better way to say it?  The time that follows a summer late afternoon thunderstorm that can’t refresh with cooling breezes from the north that blew the rain across the day.  From the south this came, but without the ocean wind for strength and diminishing degrees.  No, this meandered up through the southern belt as if revenge is still a dying issue and the the weather marked by marching Rebel boots.  Now all is wet, and in the lingering July heat, steamy.  Or maybe foggy with the smoke of rifle fire.

Posted in WRITING | 2 Comments

STORIES: Horizon

Posted on July 18, 2005 by Susan

From the southwest the heavens grumbled deep and long, enough to shiver the ground beneath his feet, though Art could see no dark clouds from his vantage point.  Out west, the mountains rose and shadowed the town an hour earlier, the sun snickering at them all as if in playing hide-and-seek with children too naive and trusting to guess it could be found behind the same grey sheave of rock each time.  Art trusted the sun.  He had learned by now that it was the only thing he could depend on. 

Posted in STORIES | Comments Off on STORIES: Horizon

LITERATURE: Didascalicon

Posted on July 18, 2005 by susan

"Now it was a Pythagorean teaching that similars are comprehended by similars: so that, in a word, the rational soul could by no means comprehend all things unless it were also composed of all of them…"

"But we ought not to suppose that men most familiar with all the natures of things thought that simple essence was in any way distended in quantitative parts.  Rather, in order to demonstrate the soul’s marvelous power more clearly did they declare that it consists of all natures, ‘not as being physically composed of them, but as having an analogous type of composition.’ "

Without reading any further, what comes to mind as being analogous would be knowledge, or the ability to learn of something and then have it become part of one’s being, one’s memory and self.

You do not have to contain fire as an element of the body (although its components, atoms or whatever may [and I’m showing my ignorance here] indeed exist within), to learn by experience (whether of reading or watching it exist or sticking one’s finger in a flame) that it is hot, will burn, produces heat, is bright, produces light, and changes composition and form of that which it consumes. 

But here I am, trying to best comprehend Hugh of Saint Victor while I am only a coreopsis seeking to be a phlox.

Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged | 2 Comments

LITERATURE: Learning the Language

Posted on July 18, 2005 by Susan

071805l I thought I understood Squash.  I thought my Butternut was fairly good.  This morning though, I found a twist in the plot that quite surprised me.  A flower that will develop into a squash has budded and bloomed before the plant has grown its usual leaves and size.

I worry, it is not something that I’ve seen before, and wonder if the plant has reacted to the sun instead of following the DNA that is part of its genetic plan.  Or has it made adjustments to its late entry into soil and speeded up to meet September’s deadline?

Hmm, just when you think you know the plot something makes you stop and reconsider.  Takes you by surprise, and yet, there’s other information that you remember from somewhere else, and need go back to files stored in the mind.  Where had I read, from text or some late summer coming long ago, that warm nights are a signal to the earth and living things, just as the slant of sunrays guide like puppet strings what grows and enters stage left.

Posted in LITERATURE | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Learning the Language