Reading Nabokov

The last line from the story, “Spring in Fialta”:

But the stone was as warm as flesh, and suddenly I understood something I had been seeing without understanding–why a piece of tinfoil had sparkled so on the pavement, why the gleam of a glass had trembled on a tablecloth, why the sea was ashimmer: somehow, by imperceptible degrees, the white sky above Fialta had got saturated with sunshine, and now it was sun-pervaded throughout, and this brimming white radiance grew broader and broader, all dissolved in it, all vanished, all passed, and I stood on the station platform of Mlech with a freshly bought newspaper, which told me that the yellow car I had seen under the plane trees had suffered a crash beyond Fialta, having run at full speed in to a truck of a traveling circus entering the town, a crash from which Ferdinand and his friend, those invulnerable rogues, those salamanders of fate, those basilisks of good fortune, had escaped with local and temporary injury to their scales, while Nina, in spite of her long-standing, faithful imitation of them, had turned out after all to be mortal.

Sorry to be so lax with the posting, friends, but I am writing other things. But this, I wanted to share.

Well, Hello There

I got off the train in Victoria Station and this is what I saw across the platform. It lifted my heart a little. It’s just his picture, in front of 10 Downing Street, apparently. I have no idea what they’re advertising. Hope, maybe?

Gotta REPRESENT

This just in from my sister over the email:

word.   I am wearing it to wal mart today…hope I don’t get shot!!

ha!ha!

It’s Official: I’m Obsessed With Sarah Palin

John McCain’s VP pick has absolutely knocked me for a loop. I am utterly dismayed at how the Republican noise machine has once again co-opted actual debate about actual issues in America. We continue to be at war, the price of fuel is soaring, the economy is in the crapper, and I am absolutely obsessed with Sarah Palin. Rovian politics work, apparently.

But I am obsessed also because I am waiting for the other shoe to drop—waiting for the big miss-step, for the tide to turn, for the population to wake the fuck up. So I’m surfing, obsessively, looking for signs of hope and humor, and I thought I’d share for those of you with less time and better things to do.

Let’s start with Funny, because we need that in these troubled times, eh?

The SNL Sketch, with my idol, Tina Fey, in case you missed it (surely you didn’t miss it?) I think Amy Poehler also deserves mad props for this sketch—she doesn’t nail her Hillary impression in quite the same way, but I think the portrayal itself is fantastic. Funny, and flattering, in its way. I had to take down the video because I couldn’t get it to stop playing a commercial every time my site came up, but I’m leaving the link if you want to check it out: http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/palin-hillary-open/656281/

My Girl, Samantha Bee, On the Issue That I Will Not, Would Not Ever, Vote Against:

more about “Bristol Palin’s Choice | The Daily Sh…“, posted with vodpod

Scott Bateman: The Palin Interview
I used to be a Salon addict, and Video Dog was where I spent too many happy hours watching clips. Scott Bateman’s work is new to me—but apparently it’s regularly featured there now. His method of stripping away the visual we’re used to seeing, and pairing the naked audio with animation gives the words people are using a greater impact. And his textual asides are, of course, hysterical:

more about “Bateman: Sarah Palin — the ABC inter…“, posted with vodpod

This isn’t actually about Palin, but it’s really short, and I couldn’t resist it. It’s just so stupid.

more about “Bateman: Meghan McCain on the “Today”…“, posted with vodpod

Red State Update (not for the faint of liberal heart). People of America, these guys are out there, make no mistake. I grew up in small-town red state America, and I have met them.

more about “Red State Update vs. the liberal medi…“, posted with vodpod

Alright, moving on from funny to Thought-Provoking. Rebecca Traister, as usual, gives eloquent voice to the things that concern us as citizens and as women. She opens the essay by describing actual nightmares she’s been having since the Palin furor began, and she really touches a nerve for me with this. So many women I know and respect for their intelligence have been absolutely outraged by the way that Palin’s selection has co-opted the debate in this election, and also, we’re a little confused by how strong, and how complex our feelings about Palin are. Traister says, in part,

What troubles me most — aside from the fact that there is suddenly a Republican candidate potent enough to so ensnare my psyche — is my sense that these are dreams in which it matters very much that Palin is a woman.

I have been writing about feminism for more than five years; I have been covering the gender politics of the 2008 presidential election for more than two. And I am absolutely gobsmacked by the intensity of my feelings about Sarah Palin. I am stunned not only by the way in which her candidacy has changed the rules in the gender debate, or how it is twisting and garbling the fight for women’s progress. But I’m also startled by how Palin herself is testing my own beliefs about how I react to women in power.

Read the entire article, “Zombie Feminists of the RNC”.

And Cintra Wilson’s “Pissed About Palin”. If you’re pissed off already (like me), then this will resonate. If you’re not pissed, you should be, and hopefully you will be by the time you finish reading.

Adam McKay, with “We’re Gonna Frickin’ Lose This Thing”, voicing what a lot of us are worried about, what with McCain and Palin lying their asses off, and our corporate media not holding them accountable.

Andy Ostroy, with even more strategy advice for Obama (it’s all over the web), but Ostroy’s suggestion is novel, to say the least: “Why Replacing Biden With Hillary Makes Perfect Sense for Obama”.

Finally, I’ll close with “Keep Hope Alive.” This report on an anti-Palin rally in Anchorage really raised my spirits. Do scroll down to the bottom of the post and check out all the homemade signs. Those signs really warmed my heart. Real people taking the time to turn their concerns into art projects, and waving them around on the street. There’s video, too, and you hear the honking and shouting–makes me really wish I were home, so I could participate in this historic election more fully.

And finally, Tim Fernholz, on all the advice Obama’s getting to get aggressive and give McCain a dose of his own bitter medicine, for all the Chicken Little Democrats shouting that the sky is falling. Hold on, he says, just hold on, “Everybody Calm Down! Obama Is Hitting Back”.

I’m trying.

Sad, Sad, Sad. David Foster Wallace Is Dead

Celebrities die, I know. We all get the the news however we get it: on the internet, the TV, the radio, the paper. If it’s someone we knew, someone whose work we followed, we feel a momentary loss, a sadness that a little something beautiful has gone out of the world. Then we go on. We didn’t really know them, after all.

But this, this was like a gut-punch for me. I gasped. I sat down. I whispered, “No, no, no,” to my computer screen as my eyes got hot and teary. Because a writer, more than an actor or a singer, you feel like you know. I didn’t know him, but I read his words, I was inspired by his ideas, his sense of humor, his astounding, amazing, mindblowing intellect.

I tell people I write, and sometimes they ask me, “Who are your favorite authors?” or “Who do you like to read?” When they ask, D.F.W. is always on my list. A formalist fiction writer with realistic tendencies, a brilliant essayist, a poetic sensibility that has consistently made my heart swell with joy at the beauty of words and language. Consider this, one of those passages that has lodged in my mind because it renders so vividly my memories of summer days at the public pool, when I was younger and prettier, and when my own sexuality was as much a mystery to me as to the boys whose attention I hoped to capture. It’s taken from “Forever Overhead,” a coming-of-age story about a 13 year-old boy in Brief Interviews With Hideous Men:

And girl-women, women, curved like instruments or fruit, skin burnished brown-bright, suit tops held by delicate knots of fragile colored string against the pull of mysterious weights, suit bottoms riding low over the gentle juts of hips totally unlike your own, immoderate swells and swivels that melt in light into a surrounding space that cups and accommodates the soft curves as things precious. You almost understand.

Oh, God, the words. I could weep over “fragile colored string”. The surge of joy I feel at, “You almost understand,” because, still, I almost do.

I don’t know what else to say. I’m going to miss him. I wish he hadn’t been such a tortured, selfish genius.

Geography Lesson

Over dinner, discussing the potential trip to California for Christmas, words like “Grandma” (who lives in L.A.) and “Sacramento” (where our house is) were being bandied about. Girlish, who gets pretty focused about food, looked up from her quinoa and said, “What? Did you say Grandma’s moving to Sacramento?”

Me: Um, no. I wish.

Goodlooking: Grandma still lives in L.A.

Boyish: And L.A.’s in Sacramento–DUH.

Homesick

I seem to have overcome my unproductivity, and am working diligently again on stories, reading a lot of great stuff, and feeling good about it. We’ve been in London a full year now, and although I still find this city unbelievably vibrant and exciting, I find myself often thinking, with uncharacteristic fondness, of the US. I feel out of touch with the election. I miss Trader Joes. A lot. I miss the ease of suburban life, the personal space, the expansive blue sky and cheap electronics. Staring down the long grey tunnel of another English winter I am missing beautiful, sunny (SUNNY) California. I didn’t go swimming once this summer. For the first summer in my entire life I did not submerge my body in water and soak up the sun.

But, at the same time, I’m not ready to go home for good, not yet. I’m just getting some real things going here. I’m working on an important project for English PEN, and hallelujah, they are paying me. The kids are starting their second year of school here, and we have a social life, with interesting people, that I am enjoying. I haven’t been to Italy, or Amsterdam, or Portugal yet. So I’m feeling caught between worlds a bit right now, and just trying to get through the melancholia day-by-day, doing the work I need to do, and dreaming of December, when I can be in California again, if only for a little while.

Overwhelmed

Seriously. I can’t seem to get it together. I have been daily making an effort to write, but I just can’t get a handle on the story I’m trying to revise. I’m just dicking around with it, and not getting anywhere. Can you tell it’s pissing me off?

I think I’m still recovering from my vacation. Returned to cloudy England from sunny France and am having to force myself to leave the house. And the weather’s not even bad here–it’s just not warm.

One good thing, actually a very exciting thing, is that Sugahill, a local cafe here in Sydenham, is displaying some of my work. I finally got it all up yesterday and thankfully, none of the photographs are embarrassing to me. I think I feared that once I blew them up they’d look terrible–all their flaws painfully visible in large format. I was actually afraid to open the package from the lab until the day I was supposed to hang them. I just didn’t want to know; I was afraid I’d lose my nerve. But, actually, they please me. We put them up on the walls and they all evoke a kind of mood. They go together, and I think they’re interesting enough to look at over a cup of coffee.

But, my story is stuck and so I can’t even enjoy the moment.

And I have so much to DO, and I’m not doing it, and so my blog is getting neglected. It’s the way it has to be for a little while. I have to get some good revisions done this semester. My time at WW is limited, and I will not waste it fucking around online, or even taking pictures. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to take pictures–clearly I can’t help myself–but I have to prioritize. I have to, and I still haven’t told you anything about my vacation. Which was awesome. Maybe my best vacation ever. Maybe that’s why I can’t work. I can’t get over the best vacation I ever had.

Tenth Anniversary

Tenth Anniversary, originally uploaded by elladog.

Yesterday marked 10 years of marriage to my gorgeous sweet man. We celebrated with a night on the town with my soulmate girlfriend and her sweet man. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun. (Photo by Aaryn.)

North Carolina Strangers

12/100: Maria, who was cool until I tried to return a burnt muffin she sold me.

We talk about her cool specs here:

13/100 Alex:

Plays really nice guitar

And 14/100: James.

Talks to me about, what is “body work,” anyway?