The Pleasure of My Company
i finally finished steve martin's the pleasure of my company. i've been picking it up & putting it down for months now, & it seemed with the end of PCN & the weekend in LA/santa monica, it just had to be finished now.
it wasn't as good as shopgirl. it ended with quite the fix-it surprise, but it was sweet nonetheless. i remember writing "so melancholy, steve martin!" in one of my margin notes, because this story is no less bittersweet than shopgirl's may-december relationship. steve martin definitely has a thing for romance. the inside jacket perfectly describes him, "the mind of a comic. the heart of a romantic. the voice of a writer."
it was a charming little book & story though i wasn't able to fall into it as much as i did with shopgirl. there are dabblings of pre-novella martin in my company, though, that only readers of pure drivel would recognize. it makes me feel very hoity-toity to even make such a claim.
quotes:"I felt like a lover who knows there is someone out there for him, but it is someone he has not yet met." [but actually, daniel pecan cambridge has met her! oh, the irony!]
"I wondered if the reason I was crazy, the reason that I had no job, that I had no friends, was so that at this particular moment in my life I could leave town on a whim with a woman and her baby, saying good-bye to no one, speeding along with no attachments to earth or heaven."
& of course, the end: "...I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart." [sigh, is that why i'm me & me alone/on my own? do i have a quiet heart? goddamnit, you writers...]
even if you're crazy, you can fall in love. even if you're crazy & in love, that other person just might love you back.
i wonder if my strange connection to shopgirl hints to me being courted in a may-december romance. that would be weird. especially since i'm 22 & can't fathom dating anyone older than 26.compliments - recently a friend wrote about her awkwardness with compliments. as arrogant as i am, i admit that i'm the same way. i often don't know how to take compliments. they make me squirm a lot. my exact reactions are very situational, but overall, i just don't know how to handle compliments.
for instance, there are some things that people grow up hearing that lose meaning. little girls are constantly told that they are going to be beautiful. when they're in their tweens they are told that they are budding into beautiful young women. i can deal with this stuff, with the compliments that come before puberty & are usually safe messages sent by adult family members.
when it gets to the point of peers complimenting peers, however, i notice that i don't know what to do. when do girls start becoming "hot" & when do pretty girls start eliciting jealous stares [instead of favorable forms of flattery] from other women? [i think women are constantly in competition with each other.] i've never quite felt comfortable with people calling me hot. it's a term that's thrown on anything slightly sexually provocative or hormonally alluring. it's also a phrase that undeniably not-hot people throw onto their friends as if to build them up, as if the more you say it, the more true it will become.
well dammit, if you're just calling me hot so that you can be in good with a hot friend, then don't do it!
that's the sassy version of why i'm against the overuse of hot. at the heart of my discomfort is my own insecurities toward being portrayed as a sexual being when i am not aiming to be so. i'm not the type who's going to dress up for class every day & i'm not going to college, to safeway, to barnes & noble, to spread my sex appeal. how can you call a person hot when they are so obviously trying to not be recognized by the public? it makes me uncomfortable when people stop me to talk to me, to point me out, to say hi, when i am not in "public" mode.
i used to try to seriously stop people whenever they called me hot. i tried to "correct" them by telling them that i'm uncomfortable with that word. i don't know when i stopped paying attention to it, but that awkwardness is creeping up again.
this dissertation is going off on an unmanageable tangent. i will stop.
back to compliments - one of the things that i've heard throughout my life [my education, really] is that i am a good writer - "good" being communicated through various synonyms. like the whole "pretty" compliment - little girls grow up with it which yields women who have internalized it - i have become immune to the "good writer" compliment. [whether or not either of these compliment charges is true is not the primary focus of this post. "pretty" & "good" are in the eyes of the beholders. i am not going to bother to argue either way.]
lately i've been thinking that maybe it's true, though. maybe my writing actually is refreshing to some people. my screenwriting professor sent my screenplay to new york. christie, my scene editor & my picture of the quintessential english major, recently told people that i could have been an english major, that i saved her scene section & ensured that it would be filled with quality writing, & that she could imagine me as a travel writer.
then i started looking into past tangible nods toward my writing that hint at my [ever-]mastering of a skill being possible. in my bookshelf is a copy of the most well-regarded text regarding screenwriting. it was given to me by my video journalism teachers at the 2001 cambridge tradition class awards. maybe it's been sitting on my bookshelf as a real-life planted element foreshadowing my future in a world of writing.
i met helen zia, author of asian american dreams, years ago [1996ish] at a san francisco book signing. i was grudgingly dragged to the japantown bookstore by my mother & didn't want to be there. i really don't remember what zia said, i lost the copy she autographed for me, & i never got a chance to read it. but when i met her after her reading [because my mom made me go with her up to the front table], zia said, "if you ever want to write a book, let me know." i was totally off-guard & already in a cranky mood inevitably yielding disbelief, but that stuck with me. maybe it stuck with me for a reason. i never knew i'd do ethnic studies as a major or focus in any educational degree, but maybe my encounter with zia was just another precursor to my own journey into my american asian identity. plus writer.
fortunately for me, good writing apparently comes in many forms & styles, so maybe this is true.
there is a point to this, & that is that i'm going to try to write a book in my lifetime. plus two more screenplays.
& then we shall see.there are three "things" that i realized i am during my time at santa clara:
it wasn't as good as shopgirl. it ended with quite the fix-it surprise, but it was sweet nonetheless. i remember writing "so melancholy, steve martin!" in one of my margin notes, because this story is no less bittersweet than shopgirl's may-december relationship. steve martin definitely has a thing for romance. the inside jacket perfectly describes him, "the mind of a comic. the heart of a romantic. the voice of a writer."
it was a charming little book & story though i wasn't able to fall into it as much as i did with shopgirl. there are dabblings of pre-novella martin in my company, though, that only readers of pure drivel would recognize. it makes me feel very hoity-toity to even make such a claim.
quotes:"I felt like a lover who knows there is someone out there for him, but it is someone he has not yet met." [but actually, daniel pecan cambridge has met her! oh, the irony!]
"I wondered if the reason I was crazy, the reason that I had no job, that I had no friends, was so that at this particular moment in my life I could leave town on a whim with a woman and her baby, saying good-bye to no one, speeding along with no attachments to earth or heaven."
& of course, the end: "...I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart." [sigh, is that why i'm me & me alone/on my own? do i have a quiet heart? goddamnit, you writers...]
even if you're crazy, you can fall in love. even if you're crazy & in love, that other person just might love you back.
i wonder if my strange connection to shopgirl hints to me being courted in a may-december romance. that would be weird. especially since i'm 22 & can't fathom dating anyone older than 26.compliments - recently a friend wrote about her awkwardness with compliments. as arrogant as i am, i admit that i'm the same way. i often don't know how to take compliments. they make me squirm a lot. my exact reactions are very situational, but overall, i just don't know how to handle compliments.
for instance, there are some things that people grow up hearing that lose meaning. little girls are constantly told that they are going to be beautiful. when they're in their tweens they are told that they are budding into beautiful young women. i can deal with this stuff, with the compliments that come before puberty & are usually safe messages sent by adult family members.
when it gets to the point of peers complimenting peers, however, i notice that i don't know what to do. when do girls start becoming "hot" & when do pretty girls start eliciting jealous stares [instead of favorable forms of flattery] from other women? [i think women are constantly in competition with each other.] i've never quite felt comfortable with people calling me hot. it's a term that's thrown on anything slightly sexually provocative or hormonally alluring. it's also a phrase that undeniably not-hot people throw onto their friends as if to build them up, as if the more you say it, the more true it will become.
well dammit, if you're just calling me hot so that you can be in good with a hot friend, then don't do it!
that's the sassy version of why i'm against the overuse of hot. at the heart of my discomfort is my own insecurities toward being portrayed as a sexual being when i am not aiming to be so. i'm not the type who's going to dress up for class every day & i'm not going to college, to safeway, to barnes & noble, to spread my sex appeal. how can you call a person hot when they are so obviously trying to not be recognized by the public? it makes me uncomfortable when people stop me to talk to me, to point me out, to say hi, when i am not in "public" mode.
i used to try to seriously stop people whenever they called me hot. i tried to "correct" them by telling them that i'm uncomfortable with that word. i don't know when i stopped paying attention to it, but that awkwardness is creeping up again.
this dissertation is going off on an unmanageable tangent. i will stop.
back to compliments - one of the things that i've heard throughout my life [my education, really] is that i am a good writer - "good" being communicated through various synonyms. like the whole "pretty" compliment - little girls grow up with it which yields women who have internalized it - i have become immune to the "good writer" compliment. [whether or not either of these compliment charges is true is not the primary focus of this post. "pretty" & "good" are in the eyes of the beholders. i am not going to bother to argue either way.]
lately i've been thinking that maybe it's true, though. maybe my writing actually is refreshing to some people. my screenwriting professor sent my screenplay to new york. christie, my scene editor & my picture of the quintessential english major, recently told people that i could have been an english major, that i saved her scene section & ensured that it would be filled with quality writing, & that she could imagine me as a travel writer.
then i started looking into past tangible nods toward my writing that hint at my [ever-]mastering of a skill being possible. in my bookshelf is a copy of the most well-regarded text regarding screenwriting. it was given to me by my video journalism teachers at the 2001 cambridge tradition class awards. maybe it's been sitting on my bookshelf as a real-life planted element foreshadowing my future in a world of writing.
i met helen zia, author of asian american dreams, years ago [1996ish] at a san francisco book signing. i was grudgingly dragged to the japantown bookstore by my mother & didn't want to be there. i really don't remember what zia said, i lost the copy she autographed for me, & i never got a chance to read it. but when i met her after her reading [because my mom made me go with her up to the front table], zia said, "if you ever want to write a book, let me know." i was totally off-guard & already in a cranky mood inevitably yielding disbelief, but that stuck with me. maybe it stuck with me for a reason. i never knew i'd do ethnic studies as a major or focus in any educational degree, but maybe my encounter with zia was just another precursor to my own journey into my american asian identity. plus writer.
fortunately for me, good writing apparently comes in many forms & styles, so maybe this is true.
there is a point to this, & that is that i'm going to try to write a book in my lifetime. plus two more screenplays.
& then we shall see.there are three "things" that i realized i am during my time at santa clara:
- i am an american asian.
- i am a dancer.
- i am a writer.