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| Hmmm....I just read this.... | 2006-07-31 09:59:18 ET |
"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
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I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn.
Baby, drink milk.
Baby, play ball.
And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.
Amy Hempel
From “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried”
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| Dead Girls | 2006-07-23 16:11:50 ET |
I don't really have anything to say today. I'm having a hard time writing anything of my own. So I've decided to post a Kim Addonizio poem instead. I came across it months ago in Syracuse University's Literary Journal, "Salt Hill". I think it's pretty. It's entitled, "Dead Girls". I hope at least some of you like it as well.
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Dead Girls
show up often in the movies, facedown
in the weeds beside the highway.
Kids find them by the river, or in the woods,
under leaves, one pink-nailed hand thrust up.
Detectives stand over them in studio apartments
and lift their photos off pianos
in the houses they almost grew up in.
A dead girl can kick a movie into gear
better than a saloon brawl, better
than a factory explosion, just
by lying there. Anyone can play her,
any child off the street
can be hog-tied and dumped from a van
or strangled blue in a kitchen, a bathroom,
an alley, a school. That’s the beauty
of a dead girl. Even a plain one
who feels worthless
as a clod of dirt, broken
by the sorrow of gazing all day
at a fashion magazine,
can be made whole, redeemed
by what she finally can’t help being,
the center of attention, the special,
desirable, dead, dead girl.
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| Bunker | 2006-07-21 19:27:54 ET |
Am I a moron for not going out tonight?
I feel sad. I don't think I would be much fun. I should be writing anyway. I'm so far behind, and my new play will probably benefit from real-life tears...at least until the revision process begins.
Still, I miss getting dressed for the night, and all the anticipation that comes at the beginning of a club night.
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