tuckova

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Interests: Alfons Mucha, Archibald Leach, big words, Bob Hicok, Brian Eno, Cat Power, Charles Bukowski, Charlotte Masaryk, cheese, clarity, dark chocolate, David Byrne, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Parker, Douglas Adams, Edna St. Vincent Millay, E.E. Cummings, Frank O’Hara, Fred Rogers, garlic, Gaudi, Gertrude Stein, ginger, Gustav Klimt, Iva Pekarkova, Jane Austen, Jaromir Nohavica, Jeanette Winterson, Josef Skvorecky, Joseph Campbell, Joss Whedon, Just a Minute, Kate Bush, Kurt Vonnegut, laughing until it hurts, Laurie Anderson, Leonard Cohen, little kids singing, Lloyd Alexander, mandarin oranges, making lists, Margaret Atwood, Miss Manners, New Yorker, Paul Simon, performance, P.G. Wodehouse, poetry, Rebecca Solnit, Rob Brezsny, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Creeley, salt, Salvador Dali, secrets, silence, Star Trek, Stephen Dunn, Talking Heads, Terry Gilliam, things that stain, This American Life, Tom Waits, T.S. Eliot, vegetable juice, veiled cultural references, vinegar, water, wine, W.H. Auden

something my former hands had longed for

I had a Heart Episode at the dentist's yesterday. I really want it to
Mean Something, or to at least have had a life-passed-before-my-eyes
etc, but mainly what I'm taking away is that I am pissed at myself for
compounding it by panicking. Also grateful that I got to call Friar and
be all WHOA about it and he didn't even tell me I totally didn't have a
heart attack until we were both safely home. My resting heart
temperature is like 60 now; that's amazing and good right. I mean I'm
not worried about my heart. I am a drama queen and I am bringing the
drama, here it is: drama. I didn't tell Squire about how the main thing
that scared me was thinking that I wouldn't see him again, and how
determination to get over that fear was important in terms of focused
getting home action. My drama has changed since the days when I thought
that 27 was a good time to die, so there's that.

I think not liking the oversell of bacon is the new bacon.

I think that it is awesome how ugly Edward James Olmos is. Yes I am
late to the Battlestar Gallactica show, but at least I'm here now. It
is nothing new to observe that in pretty much any given film the women
are going to be prettier and younger, but I still had to rack my
brains to think of any woman who is even close to Olmos's league. The
only woman I can think of that comes close is Linda Hunt, and I think
she can act circles around Olmos, and he is really good. So maybe I could
now make a blanket statement about how all ugly people who go into
acting are probably really amazing, and how great would it be to have a
movie with all ugly people. Except I thought Michelle Pfeiffer did a
great job in Frankie and Johnny so I just blew my own idea out of the
water.

I think it is funny how parents raise the kids they can stand to have
and then think that all that personality is just on the kids. Certainly
I think people are born with a certain amount of stuff in place, but if
your kid can't fall asleep without noise-canceling headphones, I think
that's on you. I'm talking only about other parents: Squire is totes
his own person.

I think that it is interesting how I process maybe one thought every
year. This year so far the thought seems to be "You're kidding, right?"
which is when people express a level of stupid so incomprehensible to
me that I think the only possible explanation is that they're joking.
So far there seems to be no way to verify it with most people that I
don't know, or even people I know without being really insulting, so
this is a mostly internal process.

The amount of my thinking that is occupied by the past is not to be underestimated.

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3 responses to “something my former hands had longed for”

  1. Madeleine Avatar
    Madeleine

    But are you OK now?
    For the past couple of years the thought I’m processing and not speaking is “Why do you think I give a flying f*** ?” But that’s mostly in my low moments.

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  2. tuckova Avatar
    tuckova

    Madeline – What are they telling you that makes you wonder that? I tend to care a great deal about minutiae, and am sometimes surprised that the people I’m talking to don’t share my fascination… but I am capable of attending and modifying for the audience, I think. Is it the same people boring you, or an overturning flow?

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  3. Madeleine Avatar
    Madeleine

    No, no, not information sharing. I love that. It’s the “this chore needs doing” from my family that most often provokes that reaction. And I should be clear that this has become one of my internal markers for depression — when I start reacting like that, I know I’m feeling down.
    Sorry to provoke self-doubt.
    A woman sitting next to me on a train once told me about why sewage treatment plants are round (because they need constant stirring and the easiest way is a long arm mounted in the middle, same reason as crop circles, really). And she thought she was boring me, but clearly not, as I remember it many many years later.

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