Is this like something you have to be? Or automatically become?

And why are there these special, all-cringeworthy words for getting older?

Why aren’t I the same person, in somewhat different form? Read the rest of this entry »

Verrry interesting. The slow tap tap of her heels … in all that silence. Just devastating.
Read the rest of this entry »

On Richard Brody’s New Yorker Blog, the DVD of the Week is that fave, that treasure, Terrence Malick’s Badlands.  Read the rest of this entry »

After reading Partial Objects today, an amazing post, all about things like Lacan and the Soul—

All I know is, my soul is a pest. Or whatever that internal thing is that has kept yammering away, lo these many decades. Always with a very clear idea of what is right. Read the rest of this entry »

Of all the scenes in the book, the one most resembling the later life of the Tolstoys is not a Levin-Kitty scene, but the final row between Vronsky and Anna just before she goes out to throw herself under a train. Tolstoy’s mastery of the feat of simultaneously putting the reader inside the heads of both characters as well as his own, as if the ball is being tossed from Anna to Vronsky to the narrator at high speed without ever being dropped, is one of the supreme moments of craft in all fiction … James Meek, LRB

… A statement so disarming, I had to go find it.
Read the rest of this entry »

Burning down the cloth house. Have you a shred of a chance of realizing all that you know in your heart are your dreams withheld, stifled, lost? And does this loss, what you have already lost and what will come, does it resonate anywhere? Or do your struggles as women rise and disappear like waves in the ocean, what does one woman matter, in a world you know is Wrong. Misguided, stupid to the core. Could you do better with one little finger than the men you refuse to call, anymore, leaders. And don’t you have to live with the terrible obviousness. Your perfect skill to find the moral balance midst conflict. Isn’t it all a big pissing contest, no more than gang behavior … and aren’t you, as a woman, with your maternal, familial skills, aren’t you the hope of the world?

{ fin }

As a result of the blending of reality and fantasy, some women have chosen to willingly play along by a new set of rules in order to keep their men interested: They’re intentionally impersonating porn stars. Sadie, a real-estate agent, says, “A lot of guys have come to expect P.S.E. [the “Porn-Star Experience”] as a common thing—snatches waxed bald, access to every hole—and plenty of women are more than happy to provide. A few might enjoy it, but for most it’s harrowing. I think there’s a fear that if they can’t make it happen, their boyfriend will retreat online.” New York Magazine

Read the rest of this entry »

If only it weren’t now necessary for most women to work to provide basic support to their families, Nance writes in her comment yesterday …

And of course I had told only part of it, the overall story is one of sadness and powerlessness—make no mistake, on the part of all of us, and ironically, that much harder to tell. For is there ever a single pointedness to history. Chomsky, Lowe and others tell us, No.
Read the rest of this entry »