Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
Author: tuckova
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
5ive, 2
How many V-neck or scoop-necked black T-shirts does Anne need?
a. One; it's a staple
b. One of each?
c. MORE! I NEED MORE!
– From the cycle, "Conversations with myself while shopping to replace one lost thing and instead expanding my uniform"
How I can so enjoy the sensation of free-fall, carnival rides, that moment on the swingset hovering before swooping forward or back, and hate it in life. What it would take to embrace it and again feel the excitement of climbing the stairs, anticipation, and then falling, landing, getting up with a laugh and running around to do it again.
Until I was, I think, in my late 20s I thought Joan Miro was a woman. I invented a sort of story about her hanging out with the surrealists and the Cubists, the way you fill in the details of a dream after you wake until it makes sense to you, I mean this was completely invented, her long cigarette holder, her paint-stained shirt, being treated as a peer while happily painting her clearly more feminine stars and swirls. Yeah.
I am now at about 30% gray, meaning still 70% dishwater red. How do I feel about this? Is it time to stop dyeing (… and get busy living? shut up Andy) or do I hold out for 50% like I said I would. Curiosity vs sticking to intentions. Relatedly, a woman told me I looked really good for my age and I forgot to ask how old she thought I was, and this bothers me a great deal a week later. Good for fifty? or good for forty?
This sentence:
[Matisse was not callous.] It's just that he had only one answer to everything, which was to persist in art that could be justified solely by joy.
– from the New Yorker review of the Matisse Cut-Out show
[Matisse was not callous.] It's just that he had only one answer to everything, which was to persist in art that could be justified solely by joy.
– from the New Yorker review of the Matisse Cut-Out show
baggage
I'm not letting go, because I'm sad about it and I think I will still feel spots of regret for a while yet. Things I haven't even realized I'm missing yet, that sudden pang of desire, the realization that one thing is gone, and the whole loss comes back in. It's not an ocean of sorrow; it's a pond, but for the moment I'm wallowing in it. The loss of art, of the language of love, of small treats I didn't need but wouldn't give myself. Tokens, mementos, silk and sand.
I will eventually remember and then give up in turn on everything that I lost — replace some with similar things; find new interesting distractions to fill the holes that are gaping with irretrievable losses. The first step is realizing you really have lost it; the second step is deciding what you need and getting it elsewhere; the third step is figuring out how to compensate for what cannot be replaced, and the fourth step so on and on. I will take step after step, because that is how you move on, and my life will smooth over and I will be able to remember everything I had without feeling particularly wrecked about the fact that I don't have any of it any more.
And I have said and will say again that in the scheme of things this loss is nothing much; trivial. My sadness is indulgent. The art of longing is performed against a backdrop rich with having; otherwise it is need, which this is not. I'm not stupid. I'm just a little sad; permit me this: a little sad, for one week longer. And then the gates close anyway, even on the hope I no longer hold.
But while I swear I will get over the loss, I equally promise that I won't forget the experience. I don't let go of that and I don't move on, because if I can't learn from it then it was for nothing. And the next time somebody says "let me hold that for you; trust me!" I will hesitate, hold what is precious to me to my chest for one minute longer before I think about releasing it, think a little harder about what the loss might mean. I'm not saying I won't trust them; I'm saying if I don't realize that it's a risk, I'm a fool. That's what I've learned. No matter how sweetly spoken, a promise to protect what I value doesn't mean what I thought it meant; it doesn't mean I can't lose it anyway. Because I have certainly lost this.
The Active Reader (Bob Hicok)
Reading a used book on evolution I wonder
about fingerprints, how long they live.
Were the fingers licked before the pages
were turned, did the owner
of the book, of the fingerprints
read in the bathroom, will there be a hair
on page 231, on a train, did he take the C
uptown, did she eat lunch with the pigeons
and hold the book open with her foot
as she sat cross-legged on the lawn
of the Municipal Building, a short hair,
curly and black or blond and straight
and long as my finger? Was she reading
instead of getting her license on the day
she'd promised to, after five months
of dreading the DMV, instead
of looking into the bill for lab tests,
one hundred and seventy seven dollars
to peek into her blood, her urine,
instead of calling the furnace guy
and dealing with his boots on the carpet,
with his mouth moving in front of hers,
with the expectation of small talk,
did the book keep her from visiting
her mother and asking about the MS,
did he hold the book between his face
and his wife, is it how he asked
for a divorce, by not speaking, by saying
the name Leaky over and over to himself,
by letting the pages stand in for his face?
Will I become everyone who read this book,
did their eyes change the letters,
is reading a sexual act, is there congress
between the text and my gaze,
is there no mirror left me but words,
why am I afraid of people, why do I talk
behind them to the edge of their shadows,
why did the continents drift, why didn't
the thumb stay put, is fear what it means
to be human, am I what it means to be human,
why did the brain ransom the heart
to the mouth, why did we ever come down
from the trees?
travel and other meanderings
Dear airports (and airlines), you dole out basic amenities like the Czechs used to dole out toilet paper. Small servings of a thing that I think you could easily include in your overhead costs and are making us pay for as a means of reminding us who is in control. A Czech acquaintance of mine wrote her thesis on gay lifestyle as recorded by one of the toilet guards, as public toilets were one of the places for gays to meet under Communism. Picture some middle-aged woman, tearing off individual squares and recording the various antics she saw in public bathrooms in the eighties; I expect she got more out of it than whatever is being collected while we sit in suspended animation buying four dollar water, ten dollar wine, trading our grandmother's maiden names for five minutes of connection to people we already like in an attempt to avoid conversation with people we won't.
Overheard, while waiting for the plane to Madrid:
Young man: So… are you going to Madrid, too?
Young woman: Yes.
Young woman: Yes.
YM: For vacation or…?
YW: I'm going to study there for a semester.
YM: Wow! So… you speak Italian?
Once while I was disembarking from a plane with young Squire a business suit came to me and said that he had never seen a finer job of parenting than me on a plane. It probably made my year, totally taking credit for what was in fact an incredibly easy kid to travel with. I regret that I was unable to say the exact same thing to the woman seated a row ahead of us yesterday. I was saving it for when we got off the plane, but when I turned she was gone. She was amazing. Not that the kid didn't cry, though he cried very little, but that the parent seemed to so completely enjoy him while not presuming that the rest of the plane shared her feelings and used her enjoyment of him as a means of entertaining him. Anyway, dear lady in 10C, thank you for making my flight better in more ways than one.
Band names that didn't make the "stuff on our table" list of bands: The Plastic Knives. The Gravy Boats. The Sporks.
Acknowledgement of but failure to actually go into the article about band names and which ones use definite articles and what that conveys, because I'm too jet-lagged to look into it.
You guys, I am so tired. But happy to be home. Didja miss me?
it escalated quickly
Wake at 3 and roll around with jet lag and unspeakable regrets until 5. Put on sweater and warm socks, a beach towel like a scarf jaunty, a cup of cold coffee from yesterday's breakfast and a bread roll only slightly stale from last night's dinner. Perched on the retaining wall feet dangling into space but well above the waterline, the tide going out anyway so that when the sun rises the broken concrete and rebar from the collapsed hotel wiill be exposed, but now it is dark and peaceful by starlight. The sky turns bluer, then pink, nicotine orange and there is a woman on the beach shivering slightly in a bikini, doing sun salutes in the direction of the upcoming sun, which is both completely appropriate and annoyingly pretentious. You have a three-day guacamole belly already, sitting sweetly in your lap. The cloudline makes an extra horizon for the sun to get past and people are emerging onto balconies in various states of undress, eyes shielded, coffee cups steaming. The air is already warmer. The birds fly across the water basically illustrating the word majestic. Finally it is a ball of fire you can't look at anymore and it's time to go inside.
Pride and Sensibility
Anne Tuckington had been single for so long that she had despaired of ever finding a match that would be her equal in overthinking and brooding, and had resigned herself to merely hope that perhaps some day she could find a place to put her cold feet at night, for it is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of cold extremities must be in need of a partner.
And thus she did merrily go far and around the region, visiting L– for the baths and K– for the cheeses and V– for the condescending attitude and confusion that only the birthplace of psychotherapy could have.
And yet it was in her own small town of B– that the most recent occurrence drove our heroine to put fingers to keys and type the story of a time when she found herself almost smitten with a man whose affections were frankly engaged elsewhere, and she found herself flirting outrageously largely on the basis of his upper body strength, which was prodigious. Imagine him lifting heavy things, she sighed to herself, her breath heavy with longing.
One evening, they perambulated the small hall to which they had retreated, having gone there to escape the bitter outdoor chill, not quite arm in (strong!) arm but very close, and he touched her cheek with the back of his warm hand, and she nearly swooned, whereupon he suggested that they might perhaps seat themselves in the smoking room for a time, as he had something he needed to say.
It bears mentioning at this point that our young heroine, while constantly desirous of declarations of affection, has received them so rarely in her life that she has been known to fall in love upon hearing of someone's love for her, and she is wiser now but still she felt her cheeks flush with anticipation. Perhaps his affections were not as engaged elsewhere as she had thought; perhaps there was yet hope. A confession of ardent admiration, maybe, if not love. With shaking fingers she lit a cigarette for something to do, averting her eyes from his steady gaze, trying to figure out how to inhale the smoke and hold her breath at the same time, waiting.
Finally it spilled forth, this story he needed to convey to her. What was the story? I sense that you, too, gentle reader, are on the edge of your seat. I shall therefore proceed apace: dear reader, it was quite possibly the most boring story ever told. It had nothing to do with an unburdening of the heart, no nothing to do with feelings at all, not even feelings of a baser, animal nature. Once before on a tram our lady Anne had overheard a man tell of an encounter in a restaurant, the tale took longer than the encounter, and she thought that that, surely, was the most boring story ever, but this story surpassed it in all aspects except that at least the teller was better looking.
But there she sat, no words of passion were his, nor even of mild interest, and as he spoke she realized that with every word she found him less desirable, until finally at the end of 20 minutes she no longer desired him at all. Well maybe still his arms a little. But otherwise, the small but persistent flame she had cupped in her heart was fully extinguished, blown out not by the winds of reality but the undeniable puff of boredom. And how did this feel? Was it sad? Not at all: it was the kindest, most incredibly wonderful thing that could have happened. So ended her affection; now she was free again. The cold feet are still a problem, but dying of cold feet is a fate much, much less awful than dying of boredom.
Alternate Endings by Richard Jackson
There are times when they gather at the edge of your life,
Shadows slipping over the far hills, daffodils
blooming too early, the dark matter of the universe
that threads its way through the few thousand blackbirds
that have invaded the trees out back. Every ending
sloughs off our dreams like snakeskin. This is the kind of
black ice the mind skids across. The candlelight burning down
into the sand. The night leaving its ashes in our eyes.
There are times when your voice turns over in my sleep.
It is no longer blind. The sky is no longer deaf.
There are times when it seems the stars practice
all night just to become fireflies, when it seems there is
no end to what our hearts scribble on corridor walls.
Only when we look at each other do we cease to be ourselves.
Only at a certain height does the smoke blend into air.
There are times when your words seem welded to that sky.
There are times when love is so complicated it circles
like chimney swifts unable to decide where to land.
There are endings so sad their shadows scuff the dirt.
Their sky is as inconsolable as the two year old, Zahra,
torn from her mother and beaten to death in the Sudan.
There are endings so sad I want the morning light
to scourge the fields. Endings that are only what the river
dreams when it dries up. Endings that are constant echoes.
There are times when I think we are satellites collecting
dust from one of the earlier births of the universe Don't give up.
Each ending is an hourglass filled with doors. There are times
when I feel you might be searching for me, when I can read
what is written on the far sides of stars. I'm nearly out of time.
My heart is a dragonfly. I'll have to settle for this, standing under
a waterfall of words you never said. There are times like this
when no ending appears, times when I am so inconsolably happy.
my spousal ambitions
Well, since Benedict Cumberbatch is marrying someone else and Emily Nussbaum doesn't want to leave New York (I STILL LOVE YOU EMILY but I concede that it must remain love from afar) I think it's only reasonable that I join every feminist over 25 and set my cap for Mallory Ortberg. Mallory Mallory Mallory. Every time I see her name in print I fall a little more in love. So sweet and so fucking smart. I know she's too young for me, but she's so clever and insightful that she seems older so it's not creepy. And I don't actually know if she's single but since all my imaginary love is entirely pure it doesn't matter.
30 Questions
In November I asked a question on facebook every day. The goal was to get to know some of my friends better, and that was a lot of fun. A few people asked for my answers; here they are.
What's the best thing about you?
My friends. They are diverse and funny and kind and awesome and I'm a better person for having them in my life.
What's something you know by heart?
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The lyrics to every 80s song.
What's the last song you sang along to?
Heroes, by David Bowie. I'm learning to play it, so I sang along with myself, but that counts, right?
What's the last really nice thing someone did for you?
My sister visited me and helped me clean out my closet. That's two nice things.
My sister visited me and helped me clean out my closet. That's two nice things.
When you were a teenager, who was one of your biggest idols? Bonus: How do you feel about that person now?
Annie Lennox. I wanted to be just like her, the voice and the clothes, the self-assurance, the gender blurring, the poetry. Now I admire her more for her activism than her fashion, and I'm sorry she doesn't seem to write her own songs any more, but I still think she's pretty cool.
What's your favorite book? (or the first book to spring to mind in response to the question)
It's a tie: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander.
What's something you haven't done that you'd like to try?
Editing fiction. REAL fiction, not delusional fantasies by the uncommitted insane and creative statistics by academics with deadlines.
What is something that made you laugh really hard recently?
Reading my 1994 diary. Talking about interspecies romance novels.
What's something that you're good at that not many people know you're good at?
Listening. I cleverly disguise it by talking most of the time.
If you could have a superpower, which one would you want?
Teleportation.
What do you like best about the work you do?
That I think it matters. That I get to learn stuff while I work. That I don't have to interact with people.
If you could live inside a book, which one would you want to live in?
Infinite Jest, maybe? Because I could live there for a really long time without getting bored.
What would you like to change about yourself?
I'd like to be more open and simultaneously less vulnerable.
What's your favorite cover version of a song? Why do you like it?
Cat Power's Satisfaction, because it gives a completely new interpretation to the song (one of hopelessness rather than frustration), and Alanis Morissette's My Humps for the same reason, though I don't know how many times I could listen to it.
What motivates you to read a book — a friend's recommendation, familiar author, prize winner, pretty cover….?
I have annual resolutions to read a particular kind of book, so that's a primary motivator, or a friend's recommendation.
What's a great movie you'd like every teenager to see?
Besides the Breakfast Club, which seems obvious, maybe Harold and Maude.
What's the last book that made you feel excited?
The Goldfinch, because I got my love of Donna Tartt back. I was also excited about the Bone Clocks, but that ended badly so I'd prefer not to think about it.
What is the story of your most interesting scar?
I put my hand through a glass door and got a smile on my wrist and lost some of the movement of my left hand.
Is your greater regret something you have done, or something you haven't done?
I regret not realizing my time was limited with some people and places, and not squeezing in more experiences in that limited time.
I regret tequila 95% of the time.
How do you make a difficult decision?
I make pros and cons lists, I pretend I've made a decision and see how it feels, and I trust my instincts.
What's a fun thing you do when you're alone? Is it more fun when you're alone or with others?
I play solitaire by myself to relax and would never do so with other people around. I like binge watching TV alone and with others if they watch it the same way I do, which is hard to find.
Do you have art in your house? How would you describe it (mostly posters of famous art, mostly fingerpaints by your children, something in between)? How do you feel about it?
I have a fair bit of art in the house, mostly graphic art. It's predominantly things made by people I know and love, and so when I look at it I feel delighted to know such people and also pleased by the beauty of the work itself.
What's your ideal climate?
Sunny and hot and a little humid, near a beach. This is not the ideal climate for my skin, unfortunately.
What do you do to make yourself feel better when you're having a rough day?
Forgive myself. Indulge in something.
What are you thankful for?
My friends. Technology and specifically what it enables me to do — work from home, and stay in touch with friends and family.
What do you love about winter holidays?
I don't love much about winter, period. Probably staying cozy indoors. I like watching Die Hard at Christmas with Squire because it's a tradition that is just ours.
What's your default meal (the reliable thing you cook when you're not inspired)?
Peanut butter on toast. Chicken and zucchini.
What would you like to ask me?
tuckova 