Reading, Writing

Fond of my Kindle (say it 3x, fast)

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The main thing I don’t like about the Kindle is its lack of heirloom value. “Yes, daughter. This DRM’d edition of ‘Middlemarch’ has been in our family for months and months. Is its format now obsolete? Regardless, (cough cough – consumptive hack into my greening lace handerkerchief) pass it along to your children so long as THEIR e-reader is adjoined to your account. No, wait. It should be my account to have access to it. Can we merge our accounts? Oh, FUCK IT, just put my Kindle on the photocopier and print out the book for yourself.”

Okay, and its lack of color. And its lack of a touch screen.

Otherwise, and especially for books that are current and not likely to be read by my descendents, it’s been a boon.

The ability to highlight notes and save them as text files has saved me dozens and dozens of hours of typing highlighted paper pages. Aaah.

Marvelous battery life. High contrast, no backlighting. Weird feature allowing Twitter and Facebook sharing with a few thumb gestures (easy e-erudition!) to clog up Feeds of friends with “Here’s something someone else said.”

I read faster with a Kindle, and am fairly certain I retain as much (or as little) as with a regular book.

Online dictionary. A rudimentary web browser – using it is like examining the runty spawn of a tablet and an Etch-a-Sketch. Look at it, go “Hunh. Kinda surprised it works at all.” and find it unusable after two minutes.

And walking around with eBook versions of novels that are near and dear grant a sense of power. I could look up pet phrases and be able to cite them in, like 30-45 seconds! Shake-n-Bake pretension in less than a minute! Assuming the eBook version isn’t riddled with typography errors. They often are, which might lead to my pronouncing “Slouching towards Bethel men to be born.” to grave embarrassment, point lost, dash into the bathroom until the other denizens of the salon have ceased with their clucking at my expense, embark their carriages, and return to their estates.

Having a Kindle in my possession makes each step a stomp with tremors that make the hordes of cretins tremble. That’s how it feels. Truer effect: puts even more of a lilt in my step, making it anthropologically MORE likely I will be selected out for abuse. Do your worst, bullies. My kids’ll be the boss of your kids.

Writing

Mebbe the world is fulla weirdos?

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Midway through a lunch hour I’ll break out the journal book and start scribbling. High-minded stuff occasionally, mostly dirty stuff. Deeply inward, slouched over, intermittently leaning back and laughing, other times frustrated how it reads like other parts I’ve written. A burst of goofy inspiration splashes on the page, I get happy, lean back again with another laugh or shake my head at some in-joke that’s been embedded and whether it will get a laugh. Then I’ll wonder what scene this behavior paints:

A gangly-ish, frumpy-ish dude in, as a neighbor described me, “corporate Joe” office regalia, seated solo making a series of pained faces, O faces, smirky faces. Occasional fidgeting and perusal of books, Kindle, reference sheets, notes. More smirking/anguish/maniacal rotations of postures and sounds.

Then I’ll look around and see a sprinkling of other hermits seated alone among the crowd. Some of them working intensely on something (usually on a laptop). I tend to write in places with lots of people around. Then I’ll glance at the tables with conversations going on. Presumably folks arrived in troupes from nearby workplaces. Maybe they choose each other’s company. Maybe some of them were press ganged and wish they could have a patch of solitude away from work.

Photo is of my pen, my notebook (at the time – now FILLED, bay-bee!, like, three journals ago!), and a fragment of pencil lead left behind at the table by a previous occupant.

Poetry, Writing

Anne Sexton at home

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Don’t know why this footage exists, but it’s compelling. The Spanish subtitles add to it. Does attunement and sublime expression require someone to be cracked?

Writing

Writing is grouchy-making (sometimes)

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During the last serious writing jag 10-12 years ago I wrote a rough novel (167,000 words) about a lot of things, among them the anxiety of impeding parenthood (a meticulously planned process – we were following a choose-your-baby’s-gender book and recording daily temperatures and environmental descriptors on a spreadsheet. Really.). First child on the way providing fuel to finish off an outline I’d been dragging around for 3-4 years.

Went through a LOT of giggling to myself, writing during lunch breaks at my corporate job. Then typing late into the night, or on weekends, back to the world. Highs of enjoying what I was doing, or at least making something, good or bad, that would last to the next day. Better than marking time by passively consuming media.

What I did NOT like was the attendant touchiness. Not about the work itself, but a higher susceptibility to perceiving slights (real or imagined) and crankiness. I had less patience for not-writing moments.

Life has been very even-keeled for me, and I didn’t have the wisdom to think “Aah, this is a biochemical phase as a come-down from peak creative moments.” and ride the wave out. I didn’t have a coping mechanism. I could WATCH myself shorter-tempered around the house “Ugh, you mean I have to go to the STORE? Oh, the impertinence of it all!” and generally behaving above the baseline for assholery, but hadn’t sorted out where that came from.

Spouse tolerated it all, didn’t even remark on my change in behavior. [Note to self: Maybe I only felt assholy INSIDE, while externally I projected the same … uh … Oh, shit. I may be an asshole alla time.]

The start of 2010 marked another writing jag pushing now into 2011, and I find I’m monitoring exercise, diet, and dosing myself with copious amounts of dark chocolate. 119,000 words on the current project, and over halfway done. My guess is that editing will cut the final version by at least 1/3. But I’m enjoying creating something that lasts to the next day, even if crappy. And this project FEELS different. Instead of writing up a LOT of inside jokes for only myself, while in the zone of inspiration I find I’m embedding jokes for 1-2 other people. That’s growth, write?