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

on what’s fair game in an unfair game

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Today I am thinking about public vs. private personality. In
particular, I am thinking about the difference between having a
voluntary or involuntary public persona, especially as it relates to
politics. How much we expect the families of politicians to step up and
work for them, campaign for them, smile endlessly and never even
scratch their noses. I think it’s unfair. I think it’s wrong. It is the
way it’s done, though, and I wish we could agree on some rules. I wish
for rules to protect the innocent, and I also wish for rules that will
make it possible for me to mock the ridiculous.

Though it seems unfair to me, I’ll concede that in order to
win, it is now necessary to haul your family along for the ride. You
can’t be a drug addict and your spouse can’t be either; also ideally
your kids will be reasonably respectable. Somewhere along the line we
started thinking the choices you made as a family member were the
choices you would make as the leader of a country, and while I think
that’s not accurate I understand it’s part of the mythos and okay: You
wanna be president, your family will have to be at your side. And they
will be judged for their behavior at your side. If you don’t like that,
you don’t get to be the boss of the country.

So: You’re a family member of a politician. You’re going to
be judged. I don’t think it’s fair to judge anybody for their personal
appearance unless they’re trading on that appearance or have altered
that appearance. Plastic surgery is always fair game. The big nose you
inherited from your grandfather is not. Tattoos can be mocked. Acne
cannot. Bad makeup, bad perm, bad haircolor, ill-fitting clothes, and
the inability to walk in high heels for any person who is both old
enough to know better and financially capable of rectifying errors? I
have made those mistakes and so half the time I’m laughing with, but
make no mistake: I’m laughing. But it is not fair to mock without
sympathy the cluelessly young, honestly poor, or hopelessly
ill-advised, and it is never okay to assume that appearance (the one
you’re born with, at least) is any reflection of character.

But you can judge people for their behavior, for sure. Any
family member over the age of let’s say 16 should show up, unless they
have the flu or homework. They should look happy to be there. This is
not because they have to actually be happy but because if a family
member is in politics, I expect that member to have good enough manners
to handle a peace summit and I expect the rest of the family to be able
to muster the manners to smile through a a political convention. It is
not harder than telling Aunt Agatha you love that handmade sweater, and
if you don’t have the stamina for that, your family will not survive in
politics.

I
also think if they volunteer to go beyond standing at your side and
smiling and waving, if they, say, want to start their own blog in which
their description of themselves includes their astrological sign…
well, that’s like shooting Playmates in a barrel, isn’t it? And people
who fall asleep in church while trying to make their spouse look
attentive to an issue deserve at the very least to be openly laughed
at, even if they didn’t actually drool or anything.
I’ve yet to find anything funny in dog torture or glocks on a plane,
but I’m sure it will come to me. And it’s fair game, don’t you think?

Line of Beauty

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I finished The Line of Beauty finally. Around the middle, I
started thinking: Are we ever going somewhere with this? and sort of
sped through the second half of the book. I decided that we were not,
in fact, really ever going anywhere, Alan and I, but that I would give
his sentences the attention they deserved, so I went back to the middle
and started again and finished.

It was… good. I guess. I was reminded of the Penn Jillette
rule of clapping for the title of a movie when it appears in the movie,
and clapped dutifully every time Hollinghurst name-checked his own
novel, and ovated whenever he wanted to explain the title. It happened a lot. It’s true that it may have seemed worse to me for having Evelyn Wood-ed
and then seriously re-read the second half, but I think this really was
laid on thick and recurrent. Including, of course The Amazing Parallels
(or perhaps, the Amazing Serpentine Curves, bwaha) between the title of
the book, the plot, and the presentation of the plot. It was a little
anvillicious for me, as was the whole "Wow, and so the character named
Nick Guest turns out to be a permanent guest! Who knew?!" Uhm… the
guy who wrote the book? I know, I should have been prepared after Edward Manners, but… really?

I don’t know, y’all,
maybe I can’t read grown-up fiction anymore. I’m a little too aware of
the author wanting me to go someplace and I feel the pull of the puppet
strings too much and then I’m irritated. I’ve read precious little
contemporary fiction in the last decade where it felt like I was
reading something that was both True and true*, and I think that I now
value the latter, the feeling of the latter, as much as the former. If
you’re going to give me a story set in a world I’ve experienced or
believe is true (Thatcher’s England or whatever, as opposed to, say,
Prydain) I need to have it that things don’t always line up, the murder
isn’t always solved, the object of affection is not always attained;
and the misalignment and unsolved murder and unrequited love don’t make
everything worse–any more than coincidence leads to enlightenment or
solving the murder makes it less gruesome or falling in love means your
troubles are over. I like a revelation on the human condition as much
as the next person, but if it’s too contrived it feels like less a
moment of clarity and more like smoke and mirrors.

*off the top of my head: The Crow Road, Remains of the Day, Cat’s
Eye, and Middlesex all did a great job of making me feel like I was in
a real place and that the people were real without overdoing the
reality and while simultaneously getting to a point.

So Hollinghurst: dude, I don’t know. The sentences were nice,
sometimes even activating that little tingly part of my brain, which is
certainly a thrill. And the way he wrote dialogue, which at first made
me nutty, eventually sort of got entertaining, which may have been the
point in the beginning and I was too slow to catch it. He’s all "Really?" said Nick, meaning to convey his confusion at the
statement and also a sense of disbelief in Rachel’s apparent
unawareness, if she was, in fact, unaware. "Hmm," answered Rachel, and
Nick understood that she was keeping herself unaware, willfully holding
herself in check against the onslaught of inevitable, horrible reality.

So, I liked the sentences. I thought the backthought was
clever. I liked the snooty arty stuff, assuming he meant it to be both
informed, informative, and a bit pedantic. But the insights were…
Hey, did you know that coming of age was tricksy? Did you know that
when you move outside of the social circle you were born in, there can
be misunderstandings? Did you know that no matter how comfortable you
are with your identity, other people may not be? Put against a backdrop
of "hey, conservative politics were bad for lots of people; also, AIDS
sucks" and the message I get is that Hollinghurst thinks his readers
are a bit on the dumb side, and then the pedantic charm becomes a bit
less charming.  Maybe I should have just seen the movie.

NOTE TO G: I did like reading it, for clarity. I think I just miss our book group.

It’s a Key Party QUIZ!

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YOUR KEYS (check all that apply):
are on a keyring
face the same direction on your keychain (all teeth to one side)
line up in the order you normally use them (outside door, inside door, or whatever)
are stored on separate rings according to function (house keys, work keys)
are all on one master ring
have those little color tabs on them so you can find them quickly
are accompanied by an item that is not a key (laser pointer, army knife, rubber toy, etc.)
follow the rules of the James Spader character in "Sex Lies and Videotape"

TRUE/FALSE:
I didn’t know the jagged part was called "teeth".
I already knew the jagged part was called "teeth" but did not know that the part between the head and the shaft was called the "nape".
I knew teeth and nape.
I remember that the character’s name was Graham and am insulted that you spelled it out.
I understand all of these questions.
Yes, even the subtext, pfft.

ESSAY:
Describe your key system.

hands unreasonable never to touch

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I’m stuck in a moderately nasty memory loop. It’s that I remember so
much stuff and so much of it is awful that I think I made it up; and
then I try to remember something bracingly good, and presently I’m
counting dust motes and I’m no fun to be around at all. I can remember.
Just sometimes Billy Pilgrim drinks me under the table and there’s no
Montana Wildhack to comfort me.

So okay, we’ll do updates, shall we. Oh let’s! We meaning I took down
the decorations, the tree and the lights and everything today. I am
madly efficient and did it with only one cigarette break. It is very
funny how once the tree is gone that part of the room looks so empty.
When you put the tree up, you’re like, "Now how on earth shall I get to
my back issues of Scientific American for the next two weeks?" and then
two weeks later you’re both "Whoo, there’s that article on the temporal
lobe that I was looking for!" and also "Hey, should we buy some more
furniture or something?"

But we should not buy more furniture because in fact we’re meaning I’m
having the living room painted next week. I had to tell Friar about it,
because he has to clear off his desk. I was sort of tempted for a
minute to go ahead and have the room painted and see if he noticed but
the burden of clearing the desk frightened me into reason. So he
cleaned his desk while I undecorated. I believe he required quite a few
more breaks and he’s not done. Some people are not fixated on
completion.

The cat has been put on a diet because she is a fatty fattness. She doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. Yowr.

Oh, and I shaved my head. Partly because I watched Violently Happy and
it seemed like a good idea. Also because, as they say, I could. And
also, of course, because it was there.

New Year’s was magically delicious. We went to the beer garden for the
first fireworks, which were at 11 for reasons rather too Brno-esque to
detail. Then we went downtown and saw the midnight fireworks. The whole
thing was lovely and crazy and nearly precisely what I love about
living here, and I had it all encapsulated in my mind but then I didn’t
write it down immediately and now it seems so much my standard Making A
Big Insight From A Small Event, whoo, that I can’t quite bring myself
to do it.

Sometimes I feel like U2 on tour or something, ratcheting up the
emotion every night just to make a point when what I really want to do
is crash back with a bottle of whiskey and a pretty groupie or
something.

But my face is my own, as the poet said. What to say when you see me.

Bigger

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Possibly because it is right in front of you is why you didn’t see it.
Possibly it has been staring you in the face for so long that you got
used to overlooking its gaze. Possibly you didn’t want to see it but
that isn’t like you. And then also: Possibly it isn’t there at all and
you didn’t conjure it OUT of existence so much as you are conjuring it
INTO existence now.

So many things are possible.

And maybe it doesn’t come down to this one thing at all; maybe it’s a
bunch of little things adding into this tower of toppling horror. In
which case instead of standing there all bravely confronting what you
see, your time would be better spent taking apart the pieces, sorting
them into piles like you used to do with Legos. Not everybody has to be
a builder and especially you don’t have to build this up into a giant
scary thing. Sometimes it’s time to put the toys away; sometimes it’s
okay to say it’s this one little thing and that one little thing and
this thing and that thing and they don’t have to turn into something
bigger than you can solve.

There is not really a box big enough for all these things.

It is not good that this is happening but it is important to remember
that it is not happening to you just because you’re there for it. You
can realize it’s not about you. You can realize it’s not about anything
in fact. You can realize that flipping out was never your strong suit.
What are you good at? What are you good for? You can spend some time
reflecting on those strengths. What’s not up for debate is that you’ll
need them.

Christmas

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Christmas and I’m five, I think; this is a story I only know secondhand. My parents throw a party where they serve Scarlett O’Haras in tiny glasses because they don’t want people to underestimate the punch this punch packs, and apparently some people drink doubles in protest of my parents’ perceived cheapness, and I am doubtless wearing a cute velvet dress of some sort and carrying a tray of cocktails around to the grown-ups who give the cute little girl a sip of their presumably watered cranberry juice and southern comfort, except that my dad would never water a drink and later I am passed out on the coats with my cousin, who despite it being the 70s and the South knows he can’t drive home, so you can imagine how my brain spins in the coats, the fur scratching my cheeks.

And then it’s Christmas and I’m what, ten or eleven and my parents have made this weird modern arty kind of tree that you can buy in the store by 2002 but this is 1978 or so and such things are not in abundance; it’s homemade and a bit rickety. I am mildly sick as I always am on Christmas and am trying to hang the prettiest glass ornaments on our alt.tree, and one slips from my hand and falls and shatters. Shatter is an important word. My mother comes to scold me and realizes I’m running a fever and Christmas stress goes up three knots.

Or I’m seventeen and I’ve been out dancing and come home in something provocative and interesting, throw on a robe and run down the hall to shower off the smell of danger; it’s probably four or five in the morning and my grandfather is already awake, smoking in the living room, blowing the smoke up the chimney. "You shouldn’t smoke," I say automatically, pulling my robe closely over my dress and hoping he doesn’t see the glitter on my face, the cuts on my arms. "Why not?" he asks, and his eyebrows Spock at me, because he quit smoking years before only to be diagnosed with colon cancer. We get through Christmas without his saying anything to anyone or to me either. When he leaves he whispers in my ear to be careful if I can’t be good; this is the last time we talk before he dies.

Twenty-one and living in Japan and my mother comes bustling over the ocean with Christmas gifts and cheer, but to no avail; I am more desperately lonely than I have ever been in my life and all my edges are so blurred there is no core. We listen to the bell ring three times three times nine times and I am as empty as I can be and still be full of sadness.

And then twenty-five, or maybe only twenty-four? The Christmas when I sat in a living room full of nutcrackers apologizing to the woman who would never be my mother-in-law for breaking the heart of her boy who had never loved me, then later filling his truck with my things and moving to a new life that was, in the end, even worse than the awful one I was leaving.

There have been good Christmases, for sure. But it is altogether not my favorite holiday. Imagine me, yesterday, engaged in a shouting match with Squire over the importance of vacuuming pine needles before the cat chokes on them, and he says, "Why are we jumping on each other’s ay-ess-ess-es? I’m happy to be home with you and I know you’re happy to be home with me," and I burst into laughter colored tears because I am again reminded that it is not all about the past, but about the present, which we write as we go along.

And so now Friar is making something tasty with fish and we are listening to Cechomor’s Christmas CD and the tree is lit and you know, I’m trying as hard as I can to be the person I want to be. Now and for next year. And I wish for anyone this contentment and this hope.

pareidolia

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All landscapes look like a woman.
The wood has faces and faces in it;
the faces make you behave, try not to steal
remember to wash your hands.
And the woman is reclining,
waiting in the snow for you
or the warm desert sands will blow away
and she’ll be there
waiting, she’s not impatient
but don’t for a minute think she’s not there.
Or that the faces aren’t watching.
See that one? Looking right at you.

Squire writes:

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Oh, my G-O-D!
I got no real I.D.
But I say that I got one
to pass through the agencies

But no one really knows
That I like CD’s
Like the rapping one’s
And the Hip-Hop one’s.

And then someone knows
that I got no RID
probably from the agencies
But it’s too late!
I passed those stupid agencies!
Into another country-ry-ry-ry…

And when I come home,
I see a little tree,
A little Christmas tree,
Standing all alone,
In my living room,
And then I know,
That my real place is
home-ome-ome.

clearly, it’s a poetic and somewhat metaphorical approach to the immigrant experience with an emphasis on the demands of paperwork, addressing the issues of identity and the definition of home in a culturally complex environment. right? or maybe he just wants to be sure we get a tree?

Dial-Up: Like Picking My Nose While Wearing Mittens

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Three weeks ago, the internet company decided to upgrade me without my permission; the upgrade frightened my poor little modem to death and I was suddenly without internet. As a person who works, shops, and even socializes from home, this is probably my equivalent of suddenly lacking a car in a town without public transportation.

At first I raged, but they said they’d have a new powerful amazing modem delivered in two days so I decided I’d be fine. Not all editing requires internet access, so I did what I could, and it turns out that I am internet-reliant but not internet-dependent, jobwise. The hardest part was giving up the parts of internet access that are not strictly job-related: reading the news, catching up with friends, and “finding stuff out”.

So I muddled through the week with a dictionary and an encyclopedia during the day, and it was okay. In the evenings, instead of reading up on mysterious rashes, adaptations of “My Fair Lady” into foreign languages, and the number of calories you burn brushing your teeth, I worked on home projects. I re-organized the books. I put together a new CD shelf. I waxed the living room floor. I patched things. I made myself useful.

But I didn’t feel useful, because there’s a difference between what you can do and what you’re good at doing. I’m good at about two things: watching television and looking stuff up. Because watching television tends to turn me into a bit of a nutter, I restrict that, but I am in the habit of giving my research urges unrestricted access. And not being able to look stuff up nearly did me in, because I could go to my friend’s house up the street to download projects and upload completed work, but you don’t feel the same about spending time on somebody else’s computer searching for pictures of Franklin Pierce (which is something I did the day after I got access back: quite a handsome fellow).

After a week (which is Novera-speak for "two days"), I was back on line. And reflecting on this experience was… not good.

I have thought of myself as being a knowledgeable person. There’s knowledge you have and knowledge you know how to get, and I didn’t mind being poor in the first type because I believed I was richer than many others in the second type. It isn’t necessary to know how to spell well as long as you know that you can’t and you’re reconciled to the fact of looking words up often. This applies to nearly anything: if you’re able to find the answer, you don’t have to carry it around in your head. However, it’s quite a blow when your second brain is suddenly missing.

And last Monday, the telephone company started playing with the line, and I’ve been on and offline again all week. Last night I was sleeplessly cataloging the things that I am good at and not good at, and I’ve realized that all this being good at looking stuff up has made it possible for me to forget that being good at one thing does not necessarily mean that one is good at many things, and it certainly doesn’t mean that one is good. I rationalize that I can’t wax the floor because I am “busy” looking for recordings of Algonquin poets reading aloud (?don’t remember why). Without that excuse, I am forced to discover that waxing a floor does not require any particular degree of awesome, and that waxing the floor doesn’t make me personally more aesthetically pleasing. Making crappy craft knock-offs of more creative projects doesn’t make me artistic. The ability to alphabetize my CDs, no matter how efficiently and thoroughly I do so, doesn’t make me organized. And none of these things, neither the alphabetizing or the art projects or the floor waxing, or even the live poetry, actually me a better person, or even a more interesting person, and the fact that being good at looking stuff up has distracted me from this lack is merely a testament to the horror of it.
What I am left with, when left alone, is the ability to realize how thoroughly hateful it is to be alone with me. It’s been rather a rough week.

a lot of thinking about YA fantasy fiction

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We watched Star Trek: Nemesis over the weekend. Squire told Friar that
it was about "how we define our humanity under different circumstances"
and I thought: well, yeah. And this is, I think, one of the appeals of
fantasy. It’s not just looking at a different world: it’s also that
it’s interesting to look at what’s true about ourselves against a
variety of backgrounds.

The Chronicles of Prydain are my favorite fantasy books. They
may be my favorite children’s books, hands down (although Bridge to
Terabithia now looks at me with its lovely painful face and I am not
sure, but…. ) Okay, definitely my favorite series. I’ve re-read them
every year since fifth grade, which is a lot of times to read the same
books. I learned about writing from those books; I learned about the
subtle beauty of "not without regret". And I learned about the
difficult choices, and about both sides of trust, and about saying what
you’re afraid to say because not saying it is worse.

The only thing I didn’t like about those books was the ending.
It seemed unbearably unfair to my childish hedonist heart that the
choice would come down to happy oblivion or emotionally wrenching
reality. Later I concluded that the happy oblivion was a metaphor for
death (see also: C.S. Lewis; Tolkein), and I was irritated that this
was presented as happiness. I mean: really irritated. Because in fact I
think the choice is: emotionally wrenching and rewarding reality or…
nothing. Do you want to go through life standing in the dank armpit of
the tram and watching the light catch the snowflakes as they fall and
listening to your child laughing or do you want… nothing?

And I felt like Alexander skipped the real choice, which is
interesting, in exchange for a fantasy set up: You get the kingdom of
happy ever after or you get the kingdom of right here right now. The
first one is unreal, is blissful oblivion, is heaven, is death. And the
second one is…hard. According to Alexander, a hero chooses the
second; death comes to a hero only incidentally, only later. I’m not
crazy about that, but at least I get it. Certainly I prefer it to the
choice of deciding whether you believe you
can go further up and further in whilst in a room too small to swing a
dwarf, because it seems like a fairer choice. Though I don’t like the
choice as it is presented, at least it is a choice, and the point is
clear: If we are heroes, we choose what is right, and what is right is
difficult. It’s like Fantasy Novels for a Young Poet or something.

Second favorite fantasy series: The Dark Is Rising. It’s a
child swept into a parallel world; it’s time travel; it’s Arthurian
legend; it’s beautiful You Are There writing (first time I saw the
Thames, I was like: yeah); it’s trust and honor and all the things I
want a book to do. It’s also Destiny, which I have problems with. You
should have seen me try to have a reasonable discussion of "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God" because it induced the same sputtery anger that hits me any
time I see destiny, no matter how pretty the packaging: That’s not
fair.

I don’t mean fair like "she gets more candy than I do"
because while that is not fair, it is certainly true. Some animals are
more equal than others: some people will get more advantages than they
deserve and they will get away with murder and they will be rewarded
rather than punished. This is true, and I don’t expect fantasy books,
no matter how fantastic, to present me with something truer than
reality can muster: I do not expect the fairness of equality. But the
unfairness that I cannot handle is the unfairness conveyed by Destiny,
by Fate.

So I was pretty excited to read Philip Pullman‘s books,
because I thought he would have no truck with Because God Said So,
whether we called it God or The Oracle or The Light or Dumbledore. I
thought: Yay! A new children’s series with free will! Characters doing
what they think is right without regard for messages from higher
beings. Characters stumbling in their steampunk darkness, so like our
own; characters making their own choices. And then on top of that,
Pullman can write his way around a sentence and through a book like nobody’s business. I even thought in my naivety that perhaps the characters would not get the kingdom of hard work vs. kingdom of happy oblivion choice at the end, and wouldn’t that be nice!

HAHAHA. I should have known already in the Golden Compass,
when the alethiometer gave me pause, but Lyra seemed so self-determined
and Will even more so: "I may be inclined to be this sort of person but
it doesn’t mean I have to choose it." And so we bopped on through three
books of me thinking my lofty thoughts about fairness and free will and real choices. Boy, was I pretty pissed when I finished Amber Spyglass. Philip Pullman
so didn’t "kill god". He pulled deux ex machina like a rabbit out of a
hat. Fate? We pretend it doesn’t exist only because it’s too depressing
to contend with. Destiny is reality, and the only reason the human
characters won’t be told their destinies is so that they continue
existing under the apparently illusory free will they hold so dear
(even though they don’t have it really have it, since Destiny trumps
Free Will). And so to be heroic is to acknowledge the existence and
even inevitability of your fate without even asking what it is. This
is… not free will. Oh, and yeah, and the final choice (which isn’t a choice)? You have to give up what you want
most because an angel said so. OH, ferfle.

We’re totally going to see the movie still, but I am disappointed. I’m getting my Alexander books encased in gold, I guess. And
I will continue living in the Star Trek world with Squire Tuck, unless
somebody can recommend some fantasy books where the world is fantasy
and the moral approaches something I can live with, something at least
as true as reality.

SORRY THAT WAS SO LONG.