(no subject)
I am about to go catch up on last Thursday's episode of "The Office" at nbc.com. Last night I dreamt I was part of an office that was about to be "retired" en masse because it was understood that we were all "replicants" (a la Bladerunner, which I just saw for the first time on Sunday evening at the AFI Theatre). The movie's imagery and mood, and that of my dream as well, are sticking with me. I awoke with a headache, but managed to drug it away within an hour.
I could say a lot more about Bladerunner. Not my fave movie, but so powerful in terms of its set, use of music, etc. I'm glad I saw it finally. Maybe I'll have more to say alter about its Asian schtick and the Sean Young character.
What else.... There is a new story by Annie Proulx that appeared in the New Yorker in the past 2 weeks that just blew me away. Here it is: Annie Proulx, Fiction, "Them Old Cowboy Songs," The New Yorker, May 5, 2008, p. 61 --Not online on the New Yorker web site yet. Some discussion, with spoilers here: http://www.davecullen.com/forum/index.php?topic=27034.msg1285762
More spoilers, plus this guy says maybe NYer isn't putting the story online because Proulx has a book about to come out: http://perpetualfolly.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-yorker-them-old-cowboy-songs-by.html#links
Watch this space for some of my fave Proulx quotes from the story (when I get time). My absolute fave had to do with the sounds of wolves and/or coyotes.
And there was a great poem about grief in that same issue. It is online: "Grief," by Matthew Dickman. http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2008/05/05/080505po_poem_dickman
Grief
by Matthew Dickman
When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what’s left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside,
and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again.
I am not afraid. She has been here before
and now I can recognize her gait
as she approaches the house.
Some nights, when I know she’s coming,
I unlock the door, lie down on my back,
and count her steps
from the street to the porch.
Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,
tells me to write down
everyone I have ever known,
and we separate them between the living and the dead
so she can pick each name at random.
I play her favorite Willie Nelson album
because she misses Texas
but I don’t ask why.
She hums a little,
the way my brother does when he gardens.
We sit for an hour
while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,
crying in the checkout line,
refusing to eat, refusing to shower,
all the smoking and all the drinking.
Eventually she puts one of her heavy
purple arms around me, leans
her head against mine,
and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.
So I tell her,
things are feeling romantic.
She pulls another name, this time
from the dead,
and turns to me in that way that parents do
so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.
Romantic? she says,
reading the name out loud, slowly,
so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel
wrapping around the bones like new muscle,
the sound of that person’s body
and how reckless it is,
how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.
I see someone else posted another poem by Dickman recently in the great poets community. That caught my eye because there was something similar about the presentation of imagery.
This January 2008 story by Louise Erdrich, "the Reptile Garden," blew me away too. About a Native American female college student in the plains in the 1970s.
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/01/28/080128fi_fiction_erdrich
I could say a lot more about Bladerunner. Not my fave movie, but so powerful in terms of its set, use of music, etc. I'm glad I saw it finally. Maybe I'll have more to say alter about its Asian schtick and the Sean Young character.
What else.... There is a new story by Annie Proulx that appeared in the New Yorker in the past 2 weeks that just blew me away. Here it is: Annie Proulx, Fiction, "Them Old Cowboy Songs," The New Yorker, May 5, 2008, p. 61 --Not online on the New Yorker web site yet. Some discussion, with spoilers here: http://www.davecullen.com/forum/index.php?topic=27034.msg1285762
More spoilers, plus this guy says maybe NYer isn't putting the story online because Proulx has a book about to come out: http://perpetualfolly.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-yorker-them-old-cowboy-songs-by.html#links
Watch this space for some of my fave Proulx quotes from the story (when I get time). My absolute fave had to do with the sounds of wolves and/or coyotes.
And there was a great poem about grief in that same issue. It is online: "Grief," by Matthew Dickman. http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2008/05/05/080505po_poem_dickman
Grief
by Matthew Dickman
When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what’s left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside,
and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again.
I am not afraid. She has been here before
and now I can recognize her gait
as she approaches the house.
Some nights, when I know she’s coming,
I unlock the door, lie down on my back,
and count her steps
from the street to the porch.
Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,
tells me to write down
everyone I have ever known,
and we separate them between the living and the dead
so she can pick each name at random.
I play her favorite Willie Nelson album
because she misses Texas
but I don’t ask why.
She hums a little,
the way my brother does when he gardens.
We sit for an hour
while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,
crying in the checkout line,
refusing to eat, refusing to shower,
all the smoking and all the drinking.
Eventually she puts one of her heavy
purple arms around me, leans
her head against mine,
and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.
So I tell her,
things are feeling romantic.
She pulls another name, this time
from the dead,
and turns to me in that way that parents do
so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.
Romantic? she says,
reading the name out loud, slowly,
so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel
wrapping around the bones like new muscle,
the sound of that person’s body
and how reckless it is,
how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.
I see someone else posted another poem by Dickman recently in the great poets community. That caught my eye because there was something similar about the presentation of imagery.
This January 2008 story by Louise Erdrich, "the Reptile Garden," blew me away too. About a Native American female college student in the plains in the 1970s.
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/01/28/080128fi_fiction_erdrich