Some flash fiction

Here's a flash fiction story I wrote for a contest a few months ago. Or maybe it was a month ago. I can't remember. I didn't win. The prompt was: Write a story, no more than 600 words, in the form of voicemail message. I like it but only because it makes me laugh. And if you can't make yourself laugh, then you are probably really boring to talk to and you should work on that.

Tiny Rebellions

Hey, Jack! Just calling to check in. I know you have probably been super busy this week, but I wanted to call and let you know again how much fun I had with you the other night. Oh and also,  I was just in that consignment shop we passed by and I was killing time, sifting through their stuff and I found Frank O’Hara at the bottom of this endless bin of random crap all the way at the back of the store! I mean really, what are the chances? It seems like fate to find him there when we were JUST talking about him. I have to say that this particular Frank has seen better days.  He’s earmarked all over, his binding is broken, he smells a bit old and forgotten. I skimmed the table of contents to find that one I told you about last week, the one I said reminded me of you. Remember? “My eyes are vague blue like the sky..” Well it was not only in there but that page was earmarked!I wish I could know who had him before. They were probably from last century, but we still searched for the same things. Anyway, I'm home tonight and enjoying a glass of white wine on a Tuesday and it feels, I don’t know, rebellious. In a tiny way, maybe but still... You know it’s kind of silly but I sort of feel the same way when I park outside the lines in an empty parking lot or when I hit the snooze button in the morning. I remember you saying how much you liked rebellious girls with tattoos so maybe it’s actually destiny that we met, ha ha! I mean I don’t have any tattoos yet but someday. You with your vague blue eyes and me with my tiny rebellions. What a couple! I mean, not a couple couple just, you know what I mean, right? Anyway, I’m starting to ramble which is something I do when I’m nervous. You probably noticed that the other night, right? I have to admit I was a little nervous.You know, even though I haven’t heard from you in a few days, I still feel this really strong connection to you. Maybe it was that gorgeous vintage watch you kept looking at or that skinny tie you kept fiddling with but I just keep remembering how talking to you made me feel nostalgic for a place I’ve never been to before, if that makes any sense. Longing for something that never happened to me, some unreachable memory that eludes me but comforts me at the same time. Or something. So I keep describing you to my friends as “vintage.” Anyway, I’d love to give you the Frank O’Hara, especially since I remember you saying you don’t really “get” poetry. Maybe when we meet up again? So call me back whenever you can! Ok, bye. Oh, um, this is Jess, by the way.

A Lot of Sorrow

Yesterday I traveled to Long Island City to meet up with Lauren and go to MOMA PS 1 for the sole purpose of hearing The National play one song ("Sorrow") over and over again as part of an art installation by artist Ragnar Kjartansson called A Lot of Sorrow. According to the program description, the purpose of this installation:

For the original work Kjartansson sought out US rock band, The National, to perform their song, Sorrow, repeatedly in a six-hour live loop. By stretching a single pop song into a day-long tour de force the artist continues his explorations into the potential of repetitive performance to produce sculptural presence within sound.

I predicted we would make it to listening four times, at which point we'd get tired of the song and make our way to someplace nearby to eat and to day drink a bit. We did all of the above and had a really great time.

When I first read about this show last week, I shared it on my Facebook wall and, true to her form, Lauren said "I'm getting tickets." So often in my life I need someone to DO as opposed to TALK ABOUT and Lauren is often that person. When we arrived, the band had already started to play and, as with most things in NYC, we had to wait in line. This was no hardship since the day was spring perfection and you could hear the music from the sidewalk. As we stood in line it dawned on me that should one ever (for whatever bizarre reason) seek out a place with as little diversity as possible, one could simply attend anything having to do with indie rock. This isn't something I'm surprised at or bothered by, just an observation. I was there to spend time with my friend and some time with the National so this is just a classic digression. And by "classic digression" I really mean, ridiculous tangent. Moving on.

Upon entering the museum, there was a white dome tent set up in a courtyard between two sides of the museum building, which was a public school it its former life. We had to stand in a 2nd line to use the bathroom and then in a third line to enter the dome. I am still going to count all the times we heard the song while waiting in that line, despite the fact that we chatted to pass the time. (I'd put the final tally at around 14 times, since I'm including even background times.)

A strange thing happened in line when someone, at some point decided to move forward in a curvy snake formation and every single person in line followed suit. There were no barriers or ropes positioned that way but people just started to move that way anyway. We joked about how that would be a good psychological experiment for some white coated graduate students somewhere.

The strangeness continued when we finally got inside the white tent. The band was on a stage lit with an eerie white light and smoke which made them appear suspended in a kind of spatial limbo, floating through this fog of nowhere to nowhere, in sharp contrast to the bright sun we had just left. The band members were dressed in dark suits, funereal figures standing about, playing instruments. They were red faced, sweating and they looked tired already, just about one hour into a six hour set. It must have felt so bizarre to them, to be playing in front of an unmoving, mostly silent audience. At that point they had to have been playing by rote, going through the motions. It was, after all, the exact same song.

Floating to nowhere.

I noticed the trombone player last which seemed a little bit of an anomaly since I couldn't remember a trombone on the recorded version. It turns out, it was an unbelievably beautiful addition to the song. 

Standing there, I felt so odd. Like a voyeur, spying on these group of men, pouring their hearts out over and over again and just kind of part of this cold audience just observing and photographing.It seemed to me like they were almost trapped inside this dark nowhere trying to communicate something profound and meaningful through the song to a dark, cold room while people would come, gawk and go. It was a completely appropriate song for this living sculpture. There was also a touch of the absurd. Six hours of the same song? Also from the show's website:

the idea behind A Lot of Sorrow is devoid of irony, yet full of humor and emotion. It is another quest to find the comic in the tragic and vice versa.

I would have to say that this was definitely successful. The performance was all of those things. I admit to skepticism at first but I was moved and taken with this and I am very glad to have gone. In addition it reminded me of much I adore the National and I am going to try to get tickets to their upcoming concert in Brooklyn.
 

Going mobile

This is the first post I'm writing via the iPhone app. I have generally avoided using it due to how completely unnatural the keyboard feels in typing anything longer than "Lolz" or "omfg" which are things I rarely admit to ever write  but I currently find myself on a train which is truly excellent for wandering thoughts. And really this blog is nothing if not for my wandering, rambling thoughts.

I know it has been said often that death is the great equalizer but I truly think a convincing case can be made for Long Island Railroad. Each time I am on a train I find a little microcosm of the world at large and if I'm going to judge the zeitgeist by this current train car, the world is full of drunk, miserable, stinky people. In a strong argument in favor of that last point, I just had to transfer trains en masse with some weekend tourists and someone farted in the center of the crowd, setting off a ripple effect of disgusted groans. See? Black, white, male, female, rich,poor....we all succumbed together. The great equalizer.

THEN, some small child started singing in an extraordinarily nasally voice the refrain to that old church ditty "Hosana in the Highest." Growing up going to mass every week, my favorite part was always the singing. I even enjoyed how most people couldn't carry a tune but tried out loud anyway. It seemed like everyone was on equal footing there too. For all its faults, going to mass gave me a sense of community and togetherness. I felt that again this afternoon when I realized that everyone around me in that train car equally wanted to strangle that child by her fifth repetition of the song.

That is all.

Quessys

Here are two questions, one of which I woke up to*, for literally no other reason that I need to blog today. Provided you have a free day during which to contemplate them, please feel free to do so, however, I expressly forbid you to Google any of the answers. It is one of the great exercises for your brain, no matter how out of fashion it has become: thinking. 

Would a lion eat a house cat? In other words, if a lion was in a room with a zebra and a house cat, are both animals doomed? Would it be considered cannibalism if they did?

Did Jane Austen ever marry? Did she ever want to get married? Is it wrong to feel a twang of cynicism when reading her stories? I don't know if it was because of the actors that have played her in films but Emma Woodhouse has always seemed distasteful to me. A bitch...if you will.


Other than that, during last night's yoga class, my yoga teacher played a most excellent playlist and towards the end this song came on and it reminded me of how much I love it and have been listening to it all afternoon. Here is an especially beautiful live version of it and I hope you enjoy it as well.

*It was the cat one.

Friday's Five Utterly Random Things

Friday Five

1) I stopped at the supermarket on my way into work today to buy my usual utter randomness (if you must know I needed to buy a bag of the cheapest coffee I could find for an office party, two oranges, a box of brownies and, for good measure and as a testament to the power of an end cap display, a box of Little Debbie Zebra Cakes on sale...these are all for an office "breakfast"). Actually now that I look back on the list, it isn't quite as random as I thought since it was all food items. The woman in front of me was buying pudding mix, cat litter and shampoo so she wins the morning. The brand name of the brownies I bought was  "Jimmy's" and as the cashier rung me up she said "I got these for my husband because his name is Jimmy." I know she was just trying to make conversation but I hadn't had any coffee yet and I literally did not know how to respond to that. So I just let out a croak that was supposed to be a laugh but it sounded too awkward to be construed as a laugh so in embarrassment I just said "Wow, that's so interesting." When that is your response to something as banal as what she said, you automatically sound insincere. So she stopped talking to me and started jabbing at the keys on the register. I have to assume she thought I was a bitch. I kinda am. I guess the point of number one is that I should stop going to the supermarket early in the morning.

2) I have decided to train my hair to not need shampoo so much anymore. This really only involves not washing your hair more than once a week in order to "train" your hair follicles to be self sufficient and not rely on products so much. The process is "painful" in that while your hair is unwashed, you run the risk of looking like a dirty, dirty homeless person or a greased up rat. I'm somewhere in the middle of the two. The good thing about it all is that as my hair gets greasier and greasier, it holds its position more. Who knew that washing your hair everyday was bad for it? Who was the genius who told us otherwise? Why do we always do everything so ass backwards in this world?

3) I saw something on television the other day about 3-D printers. Apparently it is possible to print out human tissue through a process called bioprinting. Just let that marinate in your brain for a moment. We have the technology and capability to print out human tissue. The printer will layer living cells into a mold and apparently the cells will bond and begin to grow when left in an incubator. They have printed out ears and blood vessels. They can use this tissue to test out new drugs for effects and side effects. They have tried printed out ear implants in animals apparently and are awaiting results in order to begin human trials. People are always bitching about not having flying cars, as we were promised in the Jetsons. I think scientists are well within their rights to say something along the lines of "Oh, geez. We're so sorry we haven't been able to invent flying cars yet because we were too busy FIGURING OUT HOW TO PRINT HUMAN TISSUE."

4) I recently fell victim to the old trap "Judging a book by its cover." Whilst scrolling through the facebook page of one of my favorite local restaurants, I saw a photo of a band that is scheduled to play there in August. I quite literally thought "I really like the lead singer's haircut. I wonder what they sound like." Aribtrary and ridiculous? Yes. A happy accident? Definitely.

5) I made a brilliant decision today. I decided to eat bagels and bread for sustenance in the morning and afternoon just in time for trying on bathing suits. Go me!

Minor acts of forgetfulness

In recent years it has become apparent that Alzheimer's Disease runs in my family, most recently and prominently it has appeared in my maternal grandmother. This particular disease, like all degenerative diseases is a cruelty visited upon over five million people in this country alone and it was always one of those diseases I heard about in the abstract. The kind of disease that hovers around everyone you know but in a "Oh that's terrible, tsk tsk" sort of way instead of a "I see this person everyday and I see how they are disappearing everyday" sort of way. Well, I don't live in the abstract about it anymore.

Among other things, knowing this fact, living so close to it now, has made me paranoid. I keep reading all these things about ways to prevent getting it: mental exercises to do, foods to eat or avoid, statistics. Apparently it calms me to pretend I'm doing something when in actuality, all I'm doing is reading and eating right, which, considering I do this anyway, I am doing nothing.

And despite the fact that my entire life I have forgotten certain things, I'm lately seeing in everything a sign that I'm likely to inherit the disease or something like it. For example, I have never once been able to drive to the local multiplex from my house without getting lost. Wait, maybe once I did it but I'm reasonably certain that was a fluke. And everytime I'm leaving the mall, I have to think for a solid five minutes about the way to get home. I wish I was exaggerating. But sometimes there are places that simply do not stick in my brain. I've been to Albany a bunch of times and have yet to drive there without the journey being intricately mapped out ahead of time.

I routinely forget where I put my keys. This happens minutes after I put them down. I have lost roughly 200 pairs of earrings out of sheer forgetfulness. On the flip side of that, I will also routinely find a pair of earrings or a necklace that I "lost" three years ago in a pocket or an unused purse. One time one of my earrings was somehow stuck to my cat's back while she was sleeping. Lord knows how it got there.
Each morning it is a crap shoot when it comes to whether or not I'll remember to bring my coffee mug with me or my prepared lunch.

These are minor acts of forgetfulness...I remember birthdays, I remember meetings, things I need from the drugstore or supermarket. I have a long term memory that rivals an elephant. I often remember things about people I knew years and years ago but haven't seen in subsequent years and years. My private jokes never die because I can't forget them. And when I have a memory like that, I'm often comforted that if my memory is good now, I'll be ok, I'll be immune to degeneration. And then I read an article that early signs of Alzheimer's include short term memory loss. Most patients start by forgetting recent memories or tasks that need to get done and then I'm thrown into my ridiculously self absorbed paranoia yet again.

And then I spend an afternoon with my grandmother. She'll recognize me as someone she knows or knew at one time. She hugs me and smiles at me every time we make eye contact. We chat about the weather. I tell her she looks good. She asks me where I live, where I'm going. Yesterday I walked up to her, sitting on the couch and she was crying. She told me she missed her mother. In the next breath she told me I looked nice and that my dress was well made. (She was a seamstress for years and years.) I sat with her and she fell into silence, staring out the window. I wondered what shape her thoughts take now. Is it all just a rush of confusing images and memories? Does her memory stop after a certain point? When she has those moments of clarity does she think about how to stay there? Is it like someone in a movie who is holding on to a ledge about to drop? Is she sad when she remembers anything at all? My grandfather put music on. He has a playlist on his iPod of Spanish music from the 1930s, the stuff he has told me many times that they used to love when they were first married. And my grandmother started to sing along. She remembered every word. She remembered the melody and was smiling as she sung along. I sat there and listened to her and was grateful that at least she had that. At least she could remember the melodies she loved. It might not be terrible to sit in a room with your favorite songs, singing along.

April Went, She Did

Happy May Day and all that crap.

I begin my attempt today to entertain myself through this blog for 31 consecutive days. In the past when I have attempted this, it was all to the end of getting a rhythm going, a schedule for writing. I work so many hours during the week that it is never a priority for me to write when in all actuality, I should spend most of my time doing it. So I'm going to attempt this yet again. I succeeded once and failed miserably once.

As with most beginnings in my life, I am going to charge forward by grasping what's past with white knuckles. In that spirit, here's a list of things I did last month. Firstly, the films I watched in April:

Red Headed Woman (1932)
Waterloo Bridge (1931)
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Violeta Went to Heaven (2011)
Hipsters (2011)
Butter (2012)
Baby Face (1933)
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Swimming to Cambodia (1987)
Chicken with Plums (2012)
Five Broken Cameras (2012)
Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)
Trashed (2012)
Company (2011)
Django Unchained (2012)
This is 40 (2012)
Natural Selection (2012)
Stardust Memories (1980)
His Girl Friday (1940)
Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Discerning readers might note that since January (also, since I've been keeping track of which films I watch via a google doc) I have watched 98 films. I tried to shove in two more to even out the number but I'll get there. I don't have a specific goal in mind but I already feel like I have learned so much from watching the films I've watched. For example, I find myself able to tell when a film tries too hard to be something it thinks it wants to be (Violeta Went to Heaven) or when a film is strangely stylized to within an inch of its life yet still manages to come off completely sincere (Hipsters). I'm starting to appreciate that it is entirely possible to be more captivated by an hour and change long monologue by a brilliant writer and speaker (Swimming to Cambodia) than it is to actually care about three hours' worth of magical creatures walking alongside mountains (The Hobbit...why is that shit 3 hours long??) In addition, it is actually possible for Judd Apatow to completely miss the mark (This Is 40) which was odd to realize since I generally really like most things he does. Oh well, as I've said a million times before, I'm not a film critic but I think if you watch enough films you start to formulate strong wheat from chaff separators. For whatever it's worth, the best one out of this particular list, for me, was Five Broken Cameras.

April wasn't terribly exciting for me. A cursory thumbing through my trusty Moleskine (big ups to my brother who works there) tells me that I did an assload of yoga this month. I also got day drunk on wine and champagne at Nancy and Jon's house which was so much fun that I keep angling to do it again.

I went out on a date which, if I"m going by my date's inaction following the (non)date, wasn't actually a date but rather a thing that has no name. I need to invent a name for events like this. Confusameets?

I had to buy a new windshield for my car and that happened to be on the same day the city of Boston shut down for a dramatic manhunt so I did spend quite a bit of time in front of the television.

Is this what it has already come to on the FIRST day of blog every day May? Me telling you I watched television? Lord help me. Lord help us all.

And that's about it. Oh wait, here's a song about April, just because: