You are looking at posts that were written in the month of May in the year 2009.
Posted on May 26th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words.
Monday was a test day: Velma and I rode the Long Island Railroad, with fast changes, and we made it, though it was hard, especially my visit to a bathroom on our return trip. Turns out our car didn't have a bathroom; the bathroom was in the next car down. So I trudged the narrow aisle, assisted by left-sided seat handles, but I couldn't open the door; fortunately my friend Rob opened the door. Then heading back: and my face fell. The left-side seat handles were the only seat handles. So, very carefully, I made it back, trailing Rob in case I fell.
It was a good thing, because we had an excellent time. In fact, I had a wonderful time, the best time since the stroke. Good barbecue, seventy-ish, beautiful woods, and friends: Gavin and Jen, Bill and Theresa, Rob and Ally (and various kids). All of them except Bill seen for the first time since the stroke. Most of the discourse happily revolved around music; I gamely kept up the conversation, though it's hard, and sometimes I couldn't (I mean, I understand everything, but I can't participate).
And you know, I think for twenty years I had underrated myself as a writer. Rob, for instance, is a very good writer; I look up to him. (As I do also Gavin and Bill and Velma.) (Probably Theresa and Jen and Ally too, but I've never read them.) I found out Rob read lots of things here at Parlando, and enjoyed it. And, well, that felt good. Maybe I am good. (And sometimes, of course I am good; I am good, I am mediocre, I am somewhere between.)
The point is, now I am broken. I want my writing skill back again. And I really, really mean it: I will never take my writing talent for granted again.
Posted on May 23rd, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Short Stories.
"Virgin Violeta" by Katherine Anne Porter.
Violeta is fifteen, infatuated with cousin Carlos who writes poetry. But Carlos is taken by Blanca, Violeta's older sister. Carlos is casual with Violeta. But when the two of them are alone, Carlos holds her arm kisses her: "Violeta opened her eyes wide also and peered up at him. She expected to sink into a look warm and gentle, like the touch of his palm. Instead, she felt suddenly, sharply hurt, as if she had collided with a chair in the dark. His eyes bright and shallow, almost like the eyes of Pepe, the macaw. His pale, fluffy eyebrows were arched; his mouth smiled tightly."
Violeta is terrified; Carlos then does denial: He kissed her like a cousin. "'Ah, you're so young, like a little newborn calf," said Carlos. His voice trembled in a strange way. 'You smell like a nice baby, freshly washed with white soap! Imagine such a baby being angry at a kiss from her cousin! Shame on you, Violeta!'"
The story is a violation, and Violeta, while clear that something is wrong, doesn't know what it is. And she keeps it inside. But her infatuation with Carlos, and his poetry, has turned bitter.
Posted on May 22nd, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Short Stories.
[Katherine Anne Porter, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"]
Oblivion, thought Miranda, her mind feeling among her memories of words she had been taught to describe the unseen, the unknowable, is a whirlpool of gray water turning upon itself for all eternity . . . eternity is perhaps more than the distance to the farthest star. She lay on a narrow ledge over a pit that she knew to be bottomless, though she could not comprehend it; the ledge was her childhood dream of danger, and she strained back against a reassuring wall of granite at her shoulders, staring into a pit, thinking, There it is, there it is at last, it is very simple; and soft carefully shaped words like oblivion and eternity are curtains hung before nothing at all. I shall not know when it happens, I shall not feel or remember, why can't I consent now, I am lost, there is no hope for me. Look, she told herself, there it is, that is death and there is nothing to fear. But she could not consent, still shrinking stiffly against the granite wall that was her childhood dream of safety, breathing slowly for fear of squandering breath, saying desperately, Look, don't be afraid, it is nothing, it is only eternity.
Granite walls, whirlpools, star are things. None of them is death, nor the image of it. Death is death, said Miranda, and for the dead it has no attributes. Silenced she sank easily through deeps under deeps of darkness until she lay like a stone at the farthest bottom of life, knowing herself to be blind, deaf, speechless, no longer aware of the members of her own body, entirely withdrawn from all human concerns, yet alive with a peculiar lucidity and coherence; all notions of the mind, the reasonable inquiries of doubt, all ties of blood and the desires of the heart, dissolved and fell away from her, and there remained of her only a minute fiercely burning particle of being that knew itself alone, that relied upon nothing beyond itself for its strength; not susceptible to any appeal or inducement, being itself composed entirely of one single motive, the stubborn will to live. This fiery motionless particle set itself unaided to resist destruction, to survive and to be in its own madness of being, motiveless and planless beyond that one essential end. Trust me, the hard unwinking angry point of light said, Trust me. I stay.
Posted on May 20th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Short Stories.
"Hello," said Dr. Hildesheim, "at least you take it out in shouting. You don't try to get out of bed and go running around." Miranda held her eyes open with a terrible effort, saw his rather heavy, patient face clearly even as her mind tottered and slithered again, broke from its foundation and spun like a cast wheel in a ditch. "I didn't mean it, I never believed it, Dr. Hildesheim, you mustn't remember it--" and was gone again, not being able to wait for an answer.
The wrong she had done followed her and haunted her dream: this wrong took vague shapes of horror she could not recognize or name, though her heart cringed at sight of them. Her mind, split in two, acknowledged and denied what she saw in the one instant, for across an abyss of complaining darkness her reasoning coherent self watched the strange frenzy of the other coldly, reluctant to admit the truth of its visions, its tenacious remorses and despairs.
"I know those are your hands," she told Miss Tanner, "I know it, but to me they are white tarantulas, don't touch me."
"Shut your eyes," said Miss Tanner.
"Oh, no," said Miranda, "for then I see worse things," but her eyes closed in spite of her will, and the midnight of her internal torment closed about her.
[Katherine Anne Porter, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"]
Posted on May 13th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words.
Linking words, helping words, are really hard. Articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions -- especially conjunctions; sometimes I will fill up with nouns and verbs, but I can't complete the thought. Today I explained why Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is important to me (it's directly about the 1918 flu pandemic, which Porter nearly died from) to my speech therapist. And nearly every time, thirty or forty repetitions, I said "he" instead of "she" (and my speech therapist corrected me). Sometimes I marvel that my mind is fucked up this way; I mean, I never mislabeled pronouns since my infancy. Most of the time, though, it's really irritating.
Posted on May 11th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Short Stories.
Friday I finished Porter's "María Concepción", the first story in Porter's oeuvre, and my first story since my stroke.
"María Concepción" is the story of a young murderess in Mexico. She was left by her husband and his lover, fifteen-year-old María Rosa, to go to war. The two come back as deserters; Concepción kills Rosa. The town bands together behind Concepción; she was liked, and Rosa was not.
María Concepción is impressively numb. At the end, she is happy, but her husband is now numb.
Posted on May 9th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words.
I ran across an old post, one of my favorite poems, by John Clare. Now I love it even more; it fills me with inner peace, and believe me, right now that's hard:
I am -- yet what I am, none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish in oblivion's host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes:
And yet I am, and live -- like vapours toss'tInto the nothingness of scorn and noise --
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best
Are strange -- nay, rather, stranger than the rest.I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below -- above the vaulted sky.--John Clare, c.1842
I know, it's distraught, not at peace. Clare was crazy, inside an institution. (And of course my friends have not abandoned me.) But I feel it; especially the longing, in the long past.
Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Writers, Short Stories.
Today we began with pain. My physical therapist was switched; Douglas was now my PT. And boy, he caused hurt for a half an hour. And I mean, I wept. My arm was bad -- the tone was steadily worsening, and finally it was time to do something about it. It will be bad every day for at least a while. But what can I say? This is the road to being better. I hope.
So I rewarded myself. I sat down, coffee in hand, and I read a story from The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. This was my first story, for pleasure, since my stroke. It's ten times harder than before. But I can do it. I chose Porter because, A) she's adult; B) she's awesome; and C) she's pellucid; she's not difficult, but she's very very good.
Now it's been half an hour writing this post. It's tiring. But still: I am improving, every day. And now I can read fiction. It's good. It's funny; for the past ten years, my fiction reading dropped to nearly nothing (except for pay). But now, post-stroke, I'm itching for fiction. And now, I can. Slowly; but I can.