Author Archives: Naptimewriting

IJ quote of the day 26

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“The most hated Incandenza film, a variable-length one called The Joke, had only a very brief theatrical release, and then only at the widely scattered last remains of the pre-InterLace public art-film theaters in art places like Cambridge MA and Berkeley CA” (397).

Having lived in both, I can tell you that audiences in each city would still “shell out for little paper theater tickets” even after they’d heard from friends what the film was.

Sweater vest or no, go read Infinite Jest with us at Infinite Summer.

IJ quote of the day 25

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A third political party finally achieved viability “the two established mainstream parties split open along tired philosophical lines in a dark time when all landfills got full and all grapes were raisins and sometimes in some places the falling rain clunked instead of splatted, and also, recall, a post-Soviet and -Jihad era when—somehow even worse—there was no real Foreign Menace of any real unified potency to hate and fear, and the U.S. sort of turned on itself and its own philosophical fatigue and hideous redolent wastes with a spasm of panicked rage that in retrospect seems possible only in a time of geopolitical supremacy and consequent silence, the loss of any external Menace to hate and fear” (382).

Oh, well, we need not fear that future for a while, eh fear-based politics?

*sigh*. Go read Infinite Jest. With us at infinite summer.

My new philosophy

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In order to connect with my inner child and to empathize with my son, I will behave like a three year old for the next month or so.

From now on, when frustrated, I’m going to scream at the top of my lungs and throw things. The volume and number of items thrown will be inversely proportional to the adult-perceived importance of the incident. If my shoes won’t work I’ll shriek and fling them. If my toys won’t work I’ll scream and throw everything within my grasp, hoping to break something. If the car won’t work when I’m late for something important, I’ll whine a bit but get over it quickly.

This month, if I see something really disgusting in the gutter, I’ll pick it up. And if it seems particularly dirty, I’ll try to put it in my mouth.

From here on out, if someone looks at me sideways, I will hit them.

Food will be used primarily for wiping on my shirt and on my parents.

For as long as I can, I will whine for other people to do everything for me. If someone won’t blow my nose within 0.2 seconds of my asking, I will scream until the snot comes out through my ears.

As much as possible, I will wait until something important is happening, either in a conversation, at a gathering, or at home, and will shriek “Listen to me!!” even if people already are.

I will choose 6am as the time for ringing my scooter bell incessantly.

If someone suggests I bathe, wash my hands, or brush my teeth, I will throw myself, writhing, to the floor. If they try to help me, I will scream until their eardrums rupture. If they don’t help me when I can’t do it, I will scream until their eardrums rupture. If they suggest that basic hygiene is necessary for inclusion in American society, I will kick them.

If anyone threatens my desire to have brownies for every meal, I will kick them, too.

Whenever someone else looks away, I will make a beeline for the last thing they forbade me to do, and I will touch it. A lot. And probably lick it. Because I can.

For the length of this social experiment, if anyone states that I may not wear my jammies every day until the end of time, I will writhe and flail about impotently as I whine that I don’t want to wear clothes. Ever.

If anyone dares use the telephone or computer while I am awake, I will break either their technology, their favorite knickknack, or their eardrums.

I will wear a jacket and rain boots when it is 90 degrees. If things cool off to, say, 50 degrees, I will don shorts and flip flops.

All of these behaviors are subject to change if anyone, and I mean anyone, figures them out. At that point, I reserve the right to do whatever obstructionist, violent, vocal, or illogical behavior necessary to get people out of my way. Unless I need them. Then I will use whatever technique necessary to get them to do my bidding.

Ladies Night Out

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Saturday started out slowly…went to the wrong birthday party and wound up missing a friend’s son’s big day. Rescheduled a date with a sweet boy who was terrorized by a grouchy Peanut on our last outing. Ate dinner way too late and faced a major meltdown.

Then went out for a night of adult conversation after bedtime with a couple of new friends, and it was glorious. A pan of still-warm brownies, a game of cut-throat cards, and just general talking about topics big and small.

Then I got home, really late on a cold night, to a couple of soft lights, my flannel jammies laid out on the bed, a glass of water at the bedside, and a pre-warmed side of the bed. (Spouse slept on my side until he heard me come home, then he rolled over and let me bake in his 3,000 degrees.)

Lovely night, and even better than I don’t have to choose between friends and Spouse. Three cheers for a great Saturday!

Monologues about Gates and Obama

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A smart piece by Joan Walsh of Salon about Obama with his foot in his mouth.
And a very interesting piece by an Ivy League professor about Gates getting his perspective morphed by the Ivy League lens.

I don’t know about urging care and thoughtfulness when it comes to racial outrage. I’m not sure we should censure the open discourse about disparities and racial profiling and ignorance in our society. But I do know it’s feeding into the gaping, frothing Right Wing maw right now, and those who have no concept of the reality of life in our country, either racially or economically, have their own pseudo-journalism to hype this any way they want to. It may not be fair, but maybe thinking twice before we speak is a reasonable request in this era of “nobody’s listening except to their own polarized view”.

IJ quote of the day 23

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Fifteen pages after children running around catching snowflakes as they pretend to annihilate the planet:

“…finally it’s impossible to get high enough to freeze what you feel like, being this way; and now you hate the Substance, hate it, but you still find yourself unable to stop doing it, the Substance, you find you finally want to stop more than anything on earth and it’s no fun doing it anymore and you can’t believe you ever liked doing it and but you still can’t stop, it’s like you’re totally fucking bats, it’s like there’s two yous; and when you’d sell your own dear Mum to stop and still, you find, can’t stop, then the last layer of jolly friendly mask comes off your old friend the Substance, it’s midnight now and all masks come off, and you all of a sudden see the Substance as it really is, for the first time you see the Disease as it really is, really has been all this time, you look in the mirror at midnight and see what owns you, what’s become what you are—” (346-7).

Score!

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My kid just yelled at the TV, despite his 104 degree fever, because the song informed him that “You and me; solve a mystery…”

He bellowed, “No! ‘You and I’!”

That’s my boy! You tell ’em, Peanut. In fact, let’s grab some Magic Markers and go to town on your books. There’s a lot of passive voice in “Pete’s a Pizza.”

Mortgage/real estate fiasco

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Seriously, people, can we stop putting off foreclosures? I don’t mean banks renegotiating. Keep people in their homes if you can, but don’t just leave them languishing for nine months and then foreclose. Governments mandating that banks wait to foreclose are just dragging this thing out. Most of the inventory out there is troubled, and if you just keep feeding it in trickles, this fiasco is going to last for a decade. Come on. Let the crash happen and then let’s move on.
Another interesting sh*tstorm a-brewing…

IJ quote of the day 20something

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I’m so behind on quotes, y’all. But here are the selections for the three days I’ve missed.

re: Eschaton’s rulebook
it “is about as long and interesting a J. Bunyan’s stupefying Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, and a pretty tough nut to compress into anything lively (although every year a dozen more E.T.A. kids memorize the thing at such a fanatical depth that they sometimes report reciting mumbled passages under light dental or cosmetic anesthesia, years later). But if Hal had a Luger pointed at him and were under compulsion to try, he’d probably start by explaining that each of the 400 dead tennis balls in the game’s global arsenal represents a 5-megaton thermonuclear warhead” (322).
[Bonus points for knocking Pilgrim’s Progress, for the dental anesthesia, and for the narrative framing trope of ‘if the character had a gun to his head’. Silliness. Part of the beauty of this text is that it bounces from gut-wrenchingly depressed to silly in a couple of pages.

To wit: in the middle of the roll-playing thermonuclear war that is geek-athlete Interdependence Day frivolity, “a couple ostensible world leaders run here and there in a rather unstatesmanlike fashion with their open mouths directed at the sky, trying to catch bits of the fall’s first snow” (332).

Jinx!

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At the risk of having everything go downhill again, I have to say it is GLORIOUS to finally have a kid who sleeps through the night most of the time. He started having regular 10 hour nights at 27 months, but it was only 3 or 4 nights a week. Now, a year later, after having a taste but never getting into a rhythm, at 3.3, it’s 5 or 6 nights a week. He still talks and yells a lot in his sleep, but it doesn’t seem to wake him anymore. So I go back to sleep quickly. And I have to say, I’m much nicer, happier, and less stressed. My temper is more controlled and I have a lot more patience…this must be why other parents like their kids. And like parenting. And actually consider having another (let’s not go that far…)

That’s all. I’m coming out firmly in favor of sleep. I really like it. And I’m all universe-thankingly happy that there’s more of it in our house.

IJ quote of the day

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Quote nothing. The whole Poor Tony detox and DTs and seizure scene left me shaking. Physically shaking. I had to read on into relatively light ETA stuff just so I wouldn’t go to sleep with his terror in my mind.
As I read beyond Poor Tony, the page number started crawling across the page like a spider. And the hand holding the book all of a sudden looked like a wax cast of a hand, like something inhuman and dead.

That might be the best writing I’ve ever read. I’m exhausted from feeling that deeply.

Mmmmmm. Anger stew.

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Just found a couple of really good threads at mothering-dot-commmune about controlling anger and yelling. Not because I searched for those terms, of course. Not that I’m yelling at Peanut a lot or angry about 80% of every hour or anything. Of course not. Just happened upon them. Like, um, like stumbling onto four-leaf clovers. Sure. Not at all in a searching maniacally for clovers, or anything.

And the two points that came up repeatedly were pretty interesting and helpful. 1) Anger is usually about unmet needs. So if I figure out what to ask for help on, or what to address in my own life that I won’t react so angrily; and if I acknowledge that the little person in my house has needs, too, and his anger and frustration are his way, since he doesn’t have too many tools for getting his needs met, of getting me to do things.

So if I either meet my own needs or modify them, and try harder to help him meet his needs, rather than reacting as though his behavior is something to control, I may just eliminate a lot of the battles, yelling, and meltdowns.

It’s nice to remember, when I go months and months, spiraling into the “Oh my goodness I can’t handle this, how do other people do this, why am I nothing like the parent I want to be,” that there are resources for people who have the same issues. I wish I didn’t go so long between touchstone sessions. Because really, I could make this a lot easier on myself.

(Yeah. Right.)

So Peanut and I just need to practice asking for what we need.

Gotta go and tell him I need 12 hours a day of peace and quiet so I can read and write. He’ll tell me he needs 16 hours a day of sheer frenetic activity and sensory stimulation.

We’ll see how that conversation goes.

It takes 100 auditions…

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In my theater and film days, we talked about how you need 100 auditions to get one job. And the role isn’t the point: auditions are your chance to act and you should get joy from those opportunities because heaven knows that the right place right time thing isn’t in your control. The audition is the gift and getting a job is just a bonus.

So now I’m supposed to remember that writing is my job and that the chance to listen to the voices in my head is a gift. That I don’t write just to get published, and that I have to keep working while the Universe takes care of the right place right time stuff. I may sell novel number two before anyone wants the one I’m sending around right now.

Got five more rejections this week, which means I’m at 15. A mere drop in the Universal bucket, as folder-teeming-full-of-rejections measures go. Just 85 more before someone picks up the book, right? I appreciate the “no”s that come with notes, and the handwritten notes that say “I just have too much work right now but just keep trying because this will find a home.” I don’t appreciate the form letters as much, but I understand and don’t hold grudges. Spouse is enraged by the few who return my own letter with just a handwritten sentence on it, but I appreciate the paper savings. Yet I have to say, I really resent the one flyer I got, with my name penned onto a line that might as well have been designated “poor sucker”, that extolled the virtues of paying $700 for a conference so I could have an audition with all the agents getting paid to listen to me.

That’s why I wrote a killer query, agent people. Take me on or don’t, but don’t send me a flyer asking me to pay money for your time.

Makes me appreciate the two agents who are willingly reading my first 50 pages. Really appreciate them. Because they’re doing their job. May they find the right books for them, whether or not it’s mine. They deserve the best because they’re giving their best.

Me, too.