paul's case

Still dragging my eyes through Independence Day. It hasn't gotten any better. The main character is really getting on my nerves with his "existence period" and hypocrisy.

I don' t know about you, but I loved My Antonia and O Pioneers! by Willa Cather. In the workshop class, I came across a short story by her, which I had never read. It's more urban than her two novels. I like it.

We had to write an essay on it for the class, so I've included that here as well:

Paul has a contradictory temperament. At home and at school, places in which he feels he doesn’t belong, he is rude and distant. Yet at Carnegie Hall, he is “a model usher; gracious and smiling.” His clothes are “frayed and worn; but for all that there was something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and a red carnation in his buttonhole.”

Paul’s primary character flaw is his lack of ambition to pursue an artistic and creative life, preferring instead to look on at those who have that life and to play the part of someone who would have that life. In essence, he has a life of disguises. “In Paul's world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty...he found this existence [the theatre] so alluring, these smartly clad men and women so attractive, that he was so moved by these starry apple orchards that bloomed perennially under the limelight.” Perhaps if Paul had been encouraged to use his creativity, rather than watching others use theirs and merely putting on the disguise of one who has that life, he would have been happier.

Paul’s teachers don’t make an effort to get through to him. They state their cases against him with “such rancor and aggrievedness” and “fell upon him without mercy.” Only the drawing master shows anything like sympathy in his description of watching Paul sleeping and stating that the boy is “haunted” and “not strong.” After his hearing, Paul’s teachers do feel guilty for feeling “so vindictive toward a mere boy,” but they make no effort to do anything about it.

We only see Paul’s father through Paul’s eyes, so it’s difficult to judge him. Paul obviously doesn’t have a close relationship with his father, who begrudges giving him money for carfare and would reproach him for coming home late from work. Paul’s father does want him to succeed, encouraging him to earn his own money, but conversely, he compares him to another young man in the neighborhood instead of seeing Paul as his own person. It’s never good for a child’s confidence to hear from a parent, “Why can’t you be more like…?”

Paul enjoys his temporary time in the “fairy world” of New York, and quite possibly he could have gone on with it for awhile, but sooner or later he might have gotten bored with it and seen that it has its flaws just as his old life did. Paul is good at putting on facades, both with his teachers and friends as well as in New York, but how long can one sustain a façade that really isn’t one’s true self?

Finding out that his father has repaid the money he stole and is coming to take him home is the turning point for Paul. It is “worse than jail” because Paul fears and despises going back to his old life, and he has clearly failed to be the young man his father compared him to, and now his father knows it. At the moment he dies, if Paul repents anything, it is his life unlived – the possibility of what he could have seen beyond New York: “the blue of Adriatic water, the yellow of Algerian sands.” He did not think to find some way to go further than New York, which is puzzling. Only at the end does he realize he might have an alternative to going home or dying if he had made an effort rather than relying on illusion. That is his tragedy.

dangerous beans

Yesterday was Terry Pratchett's 60th birthday. BBC 7 is airing audio plays of some of his stories.

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is probably my favorite of his Discworld stories. It's a fun and twisted re-telling of the Pied Piper story.

Good Omens is another favorite. Who knew the end of the world could be funny?

it's true, you can't

A bit under the weather today. This time-of-the-month stuff can really be a bitch as a girl gets older. I woke up with a headache, and instead of being sensible and taking it easy, which Karen-the-acupuncturist is always telling me to do ("you're losing a lot of blood, after all!"), I had to be stupid and go run errands in the prime heat of the day. So I got overheated and a little woozy and incredibly parched and a little edgy. A couple of protein bars and a bottle of water set me more-or-less to rights, and I've spent the rest of the day on the couch with cats and crochet and movies.

I just finished watching You Can't Take It With You on Netflix. Adorable movie! The kooky family reminds me of the Drinkwaters in Little Big. You can read some of the screenplay here. The play won a Pulitzer, and the movie won an Oscar. Both well deserved. Definitely one to add to the DVD collection.

Now I'm re-watching the first season of Heroes. I've missed bits of it here and there, so now that I'm able to watch it without commercials, it makes so much more sense.

The Apartment is on tonight, too. Great flick. Sad and real and funny. Especially Jack Lemmon straining spaghetti with a tennis racket.

talking clocks

You know you have a cool mom when she sends you one of these as an early birthday present. If you click on the icons on the left, you can hear the phrases. Hilarious!

watching

This morning, I watched Robin Roberts decide that she wasn't going to wear her wig anymore on Good Morning America. She's finished with her cancer treatment, and her hair is starting to grow back, so no wig needed. Pretty damn courageous. You can also watch her make her runway debut sans wig.



Here's a fun video of an engineer's guide to cats. Make sure you watch the credits.



This weekend, I worked on the draft of the first two chapters of what will become my thesis. It's great that the university lets us get a head start on the thesis while we're still in the workshop classes. I also had a fit of cleaning frenzy. What remained of my weekend was spent indoors because we had bouts of rain so severe I could barely see the tree outside my window. I kept myself out of trouble by crocheting a new blanket and re-watching the third series of Doctor Who, with a break to watch My Boy Jack, which was excellent. If you get a chance to see it, do.



I recommend the following episodes from the third DW series:



"The Shakespeare Code" - all about Love's Labors Won, the Dark Lady, and where those great one-liners could have come from



"Gridlock" - There are lots of cats in this one, and you think YOU have a bad commute.



"Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks" - This gives an alternate reason why the Empire State Building was built. And why not have Hoovervilles and showgirls and pig people, too, and a nod to Frankenstein to round things off?



"Human Nature"/"Family of Blood" - This is what happens to the Doctor when he becomes temporarily human (temporarily fully human? He is half-human, after all.) to escape detection by The Family. Hopefully, this one will satisfy everyone who's wanted a love story for the Doctor - it reminds me of the X-Files episode in which Mulder kisses Scully, but it's not really Scully. This episode also has a psychic boy with a cool pocket watch, stalking scarecrows, and some foreshadowing of World War I.



"Blink" - This is probably my favorite episode from the third series, and yes, you CAN combine Gothic and sci fi. It features a creepy abandoned house, a plucky, can-do girl named Sally Sparrow who is the heroine of the story (the Doctor is only helping her remotely, literally), weeping angel statues that can send people back in time (you'll never look at statues the same way again after you see this episode), Easter eggs, and events in seemingly the wrong order, but really the right order because time is not linear. I'm still a little confused about the message on the wall, and who threw what at Sally, but perhaps a re-watch will explain it. This is a particularly creepy episode, and I dreamt of stone angels all night.

movie day

Anyone going to watch My Boy Jack tonight? Kim Cattral is apparently a big Kipling fan (she plays Jack Kipling's mother). And then there's Daniel Radcliffe, as Jack, in yet another pair of glasses, and a somewhat silly-looking mustache, and smoking. I've heard good reviews about this film. David Haig, who plays Rudyard Kipling (and looks eerily like him), wrote the stage play and the screenplay. The title is taking from a poem that Kipling wrote about looking for his son, who went missing in the Battle of Loos in World War I. Jack's grave supposedly was found in the early '90s, although there's some dispute about that. Only one of Kipling's children, Elsie, lived past age 18.

Right now, I'm watching One, Two, Three - a Billy Wilder film with James Cagney. It's funny, weird, a little kitschy. Communism, Socialism, Capitalism - yes, they can be funny.

TCM is showing Another Thin Man. The TV magazine blurb describes it as "Nick and Nora Charles visit a Long Island estate, where Nick drinks Scotch and solves murders."

My friend, Gwen, (ha!) is hosting a weekly movie quote contest on her blog. You can win a pendant from her etsy shop.

epoxy art

I've recently discovered the artwork of Eric Finzi. His day job is cosmetic surgery. On the side, he creates paintings using epoxy resin, which is toxic stuff. If you click on the "process" link, you'll see how he protects himself.

I like the the ethereal, watercolory atmosphere of the paintings. It's like looking at images you might see if you let yourself inhale the fumes of the epoxy resin. They give me ideas for watercolor painting, which I've not done much of since I started grad school.

Currently, he has two exhibits in Maryland, one in California, and one in Florida. Cool stuff!

radio, meet your descendent - the podcast

Have you noticed that podcasts and streaming Internet really are the 21st century version of classic '30s and '40s radio? And it goes a step further thanks to technology because there are no radio frequency range limits. So as long as you have an Internet connection, you can listen to podcasts and streaming Internet from anywhere in the world. There are podcasts for virtually any topic you can think of. My co-worker's boyfriend does a weekly music podcast that has quite a following - people from all over the world send him CDs to play on his show, and his show has even been mentioned in Rolling Stone.

I've been building up quite the podcast library over the past year or three. A lot of the ones I listen to are writing-oriented, but I also regularly tune in to podcasts on creativity, a weekly yoga routine, Stephen Fry's podgrams, Celtic myths, and lots of audio plays. BBC 4 and 7 broadcast audio plays, documentaries, and even just actors reading books that you can listen to on the Internet, some of which are podcast-able, and there's also Wireless Theatre Company and Drama Pod. You can even listen to old-time radio on the Internet. How's that for irony?

Odd how with the advent of TV, radio plays more or less died out in the US, with the exception of what Garrison Keillor does on NPR on the weekends. In the UK, however, radio plays are alive and well. In fact, some radio plays get turned into TV shows and vice versa.

Did anyone watch Remember WENN in the 90s? I loved that show. The premise was the kooky antics of the staff at radio station WENN in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the '40s. Great casting with a bunch of theatre actors, period-correct sets, and amazing costumes and coifs for the ladies (ain't no way Betty Roberts could have really afforded her wardrobe on her radio writer's salary of $30 a week, let alone her apartment at the Barbicon Hotel for Women).

I think Betty had the best job - writing all the scripts for the shows the station broadcast - The Hands of Time, Sam Dane - Private Detective (Hamlet and The Maltese Falcon all in one), Wee Mary MacGregor, Beside Manor, The Vagabond. Cleverly, the actors were performing radio plays within the storyline of each episode. Unfortunately, this show never made it to DVD because AMC decided not to play nice. Still, I have most of the episodes on VHS tapes (remember those?), and there are a few clips on youtube. Amazing that no one ever thought to do a radio version of this series. Talk about ready-made.

newsflash!

Interesting developments yesterday. The company I work for was acquired by WellPoint. I'm allowed to reveal this because the press release went out at 8:30 this morning.

So far, everything looks positive for everyone. We all keep our jobs, the company keeps its name and a large portion of its autonomy (so more-or-less business as usual). Our benefits improve - better health insurance, 6% 401K match, 18 days of PTO, and company stock that is actually worth something (I now have an eTrade account!). The stock we had pre-acquisition was converted to WellPoint stock, and some of it is already vested.

For me, the big change will be that instead of my writing going out to 5 million people, which it does now, it will go out to 35 million people (WellPoint covers 35 million lives). I once got a fortune cookie that said, "You will be widely read and quoted." Not quite how I pictured it.

And in unrelated shopping news, Neverwear now has a mousepad and car sticker. I've already placed my order. I wonder what my colleagues will think when they see the mousepad.

forced reading

I'm trying to get through Independence Day by Richard Ford for a workshop class, and I'm having a hard time of it. (Not to be confused with the sci-fi Independence Day.)

It's an "accomplished meditation on the middle-aged confusions of the suburban American male" who is divorced, has an NSA fling with another woman, sells real estate, and is trying to be a father to a son who may or may not have "problems."

It won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1996, and I'm sure it was well deserved. The writing is good. I simply can't get into the story.

Part of me says it's good to read things I wouldn't normally read - expand one's horizons and that. Part of me says that if I'm several chapters in and still feeling completely indifferent to it, then it's likely a lost cause. I'm not getting anything out of it. It reminds me a lot of Anne Tyler's books, another author I struggle with. She writes well, but her stories don't interest me. That's allowed, isn't it?

Unfortunately, I have to keep reading Ford for this workshop. I've taken to speed reading and skimming through the chapters, just to get it over with, and then I let myself read a few chapters of Little, Big as a reward.

writerly stuff, part 2

The second part of the writing assignment was to choose a classmate's description of their writing space and come up with a fictional character to inhabit it.

My classmate, Elizabeth, has graciously agreed to let me post her description:

I can only imagine what my writing place looks like because I am not there. I usually write on my bed, with my back to the wall, staring at my overflowing closet. It is overflowing with my shoes because I put my laundry basket in the bottom of my teeny space. I would rather look at the shoes than the dirty laundry, I guess. The door to the closet is close to hitting one of my book shelves. There is another one exactly like it in the opposite corner of the room. However many book shelves I have though, it is never enough. In another corner there is a big blue Rubbermaid container with even more books. It is on the other side of my dresser that has a mirror on the wall right above it next to the pictures of my family. I never sit on my bed unless it isn’t made because I have a down comforter, and my mother trained me never to sit on them because they will eventually lose their shape. There is a window in my room, but I can’t see anything out of it when I write. I write simply staring at the screen, occasionally looking up at the otherwise neat closet, except for the shoes spilling out all over the floor, and I try to imagine how I can possibly put them somewhere else so that I won’t constantly stare at them while I imagine the next scene, the next character, the next sentence, and finally, the next word.

Sometimes when I write I can hear my roommate downstairs practicing her guitar. She says herself that she doesn’t know why she practices because she never expects to play for anyone other than herself. It makes her happy, and maybe that is why I write as well. At other times I hear our neighbors on the other side of our wall. They are older than me, I think, but seem to have degenerated in what they find entertaining. The other night they were singing along with the “Ducktails” theme song, which I found rather frightening.

And here's my fictional character in her space:

This is the writing space of a woman recently divorced, who is starting a new life. She quit her job as a business analyst for a boss who was hardly ever in the office and gave her no direction or encouragement. She left a marriage to a man who reminded her too much of her boss. She let the ex keep everything but the money in her checking account – she never liked the way he decorated the house anyway – and she quickly moved into an apartment with an old friend from college, and is still unpacking boxes. Her parents have offered moral support, and a steady supply of bookshelves (she really must ask for a few more soon). She reminded herself that she had a degree in journalism, for crying out loud, so why not make use of it? She’s now working for a local newspaper, writing feature articles on people in the community, and she works freelance as well. She’s sure she can get one of her articles published in a magazine soon. Maybe about shoes…

I've been meaning to put this up...

If you haven't seen Randy Pausch's Last Lecture yet, I suggest you do so. It's about an hour, but it's time well spent.

Here's the video:



You can also read the transcript.

And it's being published as a book.

Just thought you should know.

C

writerly stuff

Office drama continues, but my mood is better today in spite of it, thanks to sunshine, healthy eating, an unusually nice cup of tea this morning, phone calls from my mom and my sister, and a little tax refund.

One of my new co-workers not only is friendly and hilarious and tall, but she's also published a book of short stories (she's a business analyst by day). When I told her I was working on my MFA, she promised to keep "checking on me" to see how it was coming along. She's also agreed to read my thesis later this year. Always good to have someone in the know giving you advice.

Joe-the-office-roomie is doing some freelance editing for Gateway Press in Baltimore. They're sending him a draft of a romance novel that is "racy but not porn." He's looking forward to reading it.

My first assignment in the writing workshop was to describe my writing space. The professor said of my piece: "there's no such thing as an unladylike word for a writer - use them all!" And so I give you:

I built my desk, grumbling a lot of unladylike swear words at it in the process. It’s dark wood with a drawer, a cupboard, and a hutch. I also built the matching lateral file drawer and bookcase. I swore at them, too. The cupboard is full of spiral notebooks and frilly blank journals with fancy paper – I bought the spiral notebooks; other people have given me the journals. We won’t look into the drawer – it’s a mess of paperclips, Post-It note pads, USB drives, rubberbands, stamps, batteries, and whatnot.

I’ve downsized from a PC to a laptop, but I kept the flatscreen monitor and got a docking station to connect the laptop to the monitor and to my favorite ergonomic keyboard. This makes more room for books. I’ve got the usual classics: Webster’s Dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, The Elements of Style, On Writing Well, and A Room of One’s Own. I’ve also got some “character” books: names, careers, traits, places.

There are a few pictures taped on the hutch - Snoopy atop his red dog house with a typewriter, trying to get past “dark and stormy night,” a cartoon of two kids, each in a cardboard box, trying to figure out how to “think outside the box.” My favorite is a large picture, ripped out of last year’s kitchen calendar – a woman pointing happily to an empty chair with Anne Taintor’s modern tagline – “she liked imaginary men best of all.”

The non-cooperative printer sits on top of the hutch, along with my favorite blue and white vase filled with just-starting-to-wilt flowers from a friend's garden. Next to that is a small Buddha statue I brought back from Australia – the skinny Buddha, not the fat one. He’s holding up one hand, as if to say, “Chill, Cate. Just chill.” I keep moving the seated cellist sculpture from the bookcase to the hutch and back again. It’s my next challenge after earning the MFA – learning to play the cello.

Above the hutch is a frame photograph I took in the botanical gardens in Fort Worth. I had to get down on my stomach to get a good shot of the girl-with-water jug statue surrounded by flowers, and not get the parking lot in the background.

The bookcase on the wall opposite the desk is stocked with non-fiction: biographies, health, religion, gardening, physics, art, even Think Like a Cat. Two other bookcases hold all the fiction – the books I loved reading as a kid, the ones I’m into now, and the stack I haven’t read yet.

The cats like to hang out with me while I write. Tristan, the orange tabby likes sleeping on my lap, occasionally stretching out a paw to hit the space bar. Lyra, the tuxedo cat, likes to sit on the window sill next to the desk and observe the world. There is a tree just outside my window, and Lyra often talks to the squirrels and birds in it with her staccato "eh eh eh." One brave bird climbs the outside wall to stuff food underneath the roof overhang. Neither Lyra nor I ever see this bird retrieve the food, though. There must be quite a stash up there.

soup

It is April, isn't it? It is spring, isn't it? This gloom and cold is not wanted, thank you.

I came across a great soup recipe that works for this kind of weather - warming, but with light ingredients.

Brown Rice Soup with Asparagus

1 cup brown rice
2 teaspoons salt or to taste
1 bunch asparagus, chopped, tough ends taken off
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 celery stalks, chopped fine (about 2⁄3 cup)
1⁄2 onion, chopped fine (about 1⁄3 cup)
1 small carrot, chopped fine (about 1⁄3 cup)
1⁄2 teaspoon dried thyme
6 cups stock (chicken or vegetable)
2 tablespoons minced scallions or green onions
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
Optional: cubed tofu or chicken
Put all ingredients into large saucepan and simmer until vegetables are cooked through but still crunchy and all ingredients are warmed.


My lunch date went all right. Oddly, we kept running into his friends from TAI SOPHIA. Awkward is probably the best word for the afternoon. Lots of long, uncomfortable silences. It was tough sometimes to get him to talk. And I'm a quiet person to begin with, so that's saying something. I reverted to my journalism instincts and started asking him questions about himself. Once I got him going on a subject, it was better. He said reading and writing were "foreign" to him, and I didn't get the impression he was much interested in me. He's far more intelligent than I am, so that was also intimidating. Sigh. Oh well, chalk it up to experience.

My first writing assignment for the fiction workshop is to describe my writing space, such as it is.

And here's Christopher Eccleston enjoying a shower. If that's not enough for you, here he is again staring at you with some lovely music in the background. Don't worry, he'll smile at you in the end.

downgraded

I'm being kicked out of my office, apparently in an effort to "keep departments together." Oddly, they're not moving my boss, so our department is still a bit fractured. Joe-the-office-roomie and I are not pleased. We get along well. Now I have to face cube walls again. It doesn't inspire much confidence in one's abilities or the perception of one's contribution thus far to the company. Oh well, it appears that change is a-comin' in the company, so for all I know, this move is merely one step closer to being shoved out the door entirely again. I really can pick 'em, can't I? I seem to be a good judge of character but a bad judge of company.

My next class starts on Monday - advanced fiction workshop, part 1. Hopefully will be fun. Has anyone read Independence Day by Richard Ford? Will I like it? It's one of the required readings for this course.

I have a lunch date tomorrow, too. Karen-the-acupuncturist has set me up with an acupuncture student, who also has a background in biology, chemistry and physics, and tutors kids in the aforementioned subjects, plus math. He sounds interesting so far.

I leave you with a fun look at an inventors' convention in Geneva. Amazing the ideas people come up with.