the better part of valor /  by mrm

I should have known better because I did. Long before I met you, I said to myself: Indiscreet use of charm is a dangerous thing. 

I think about how careless you are with yours, to leave it lying around like so many suddenly unnecessary and summarily discarded sweaters. And when we, happy for an excuse, called you to return them, with hope in our throats you said oh, don’t bother, I’ve got another one. And even your rejection was charming, your ways charm us still, but we are crushed like so much ice, like a small and poorly planned uprising, like crocuses in a late snow.

We try to find out whether we can breathe underwater and look! We can. It is difficult, very difficult, and if you asked us we’d probably admit that we don’t actually like it, and yet we don’t admit it, we don’t think about that, we are instead proud of our ability, we are practically crowing, we are sure now that we can follow you to the bottom of the sea and we try to, we follow you down to where it’s very dark and we try to see but we can’t. By now we are very strong swimmers so we say, just wait a second, please, and we swim back up to the surface, strap flashlights to our heads, and plunge back into the darkness again, breathing as always with extreme difficulty. But it is dark, and you did not wait, and you are gone, and even though we look for a long time, we cannot find you.

Oh, I would reach for the moon and drown in a pool, I know. That’s the only way I’ve ever known how to be.

the meaning of life /  by mrm

"Have you ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern the beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you will see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the wine-cup of Omar, but presently you will see more. You were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look at those Persian carpets, and one of these days the answer will come to you."
"You are cryptic," said Phillip.
"I am drunk," answered Cronshaw.
                   – W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

wild and wilder /  by mrm

"The girl who came into the bedroom that night...was languid and mysterious, her hair graying at the age of twenty, and he soon detected the marks of the virtue he valued most in a woman: untamed intelligence."
                 – Gabriel Garcia Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth 

yes sir, that's my baby* /  by mrm

From when Vincent (pictured here) and I and some truly lovely people all went bike touring to Marin a few weekends ago. Just a couple of stylish city gals gettin' out in the country. Oh yes we can go camping just as readily and well-appareled as to an art opening.


(*if you don't know this song already, you really should)

some thoughts on happiness /  by mrm

That I am a happy person is something I have learned. I have learned it through repetition. It did not occur to me. I did not say, nor do I now say, to myself: I am happy. Rather, people ask me often, always, Why are you so happy? It has never ceased to startle me. Rarely when I am asked this am I conscious of feeling particularly happy, a feeling which I associate with being somehow different/more/better than my daily feeling – that, at least, is the definition I feel I have learned. You are at a zero, a neutral, and happiness is something above zero. Let's say five. With seven being ecstasy.  

Why are you so happy, I am asked. Am I, I wonder, and also, are you not? And if I am, why? And if you are not, why not? The confusion of others confuses me. They want something from me, I can sense it. An answer, an explanation, an excuse – I drank a lot of coffee. I passed the bar. I just got engaged. I'm having a good day. I used to say, I don't know. Or, What do you mean? Then for a while I said, I'm just like this. Now, when possible, when I think the questioner is listening, is genuinely wanting to know, I say, I think there's something wrong with my brain. I think there's a chemical imbalance in my brain. It's like clinical depression, but the opposite. I think I have that. And it's true, that's what I think. And I sense the jealousy in it, I'm not as happy as you. What does that mean? That happiness is somehow comparative. Or competitive?

And I think about the way we talk about happiness. We say: That makes me happy, She makes me happy, I think I could make you happy. The very language is transformative/descriptive: I am tall, I am old, I am happy. A characteristic? We describe other temporary things the same way: I am tired, I am bored. But make? To make is to force, also to create. You could make me dinner. You could make me a ceramic pot. You could make me happy. Or could you. We want to cling to things that are unclingable (happiness is not a scarf, not a rope, not the edge of a cliff, either). We want the agency to come from outside ourselves. When do we say, I made myself happy?

I think: Happiness is not a seashell. You won't just be walking along one day and suddenly find it and then pick it up and get to carry it around with you for as long as you want. I think: Happiness is not a present. Other people can't give it to you.

I also think that people have weird ideas about happiness. If I could just be happy, they think. Or, things are fine, but I could be happier. Sure. You could. And what then? What do you think happiness will do for you? What will it give you? I really think it won't give you what you want. Worrying about happiness is funny (if you can get yourself there).

yosemite /  by mrm

Until this past Memorial Day weekend, I hadn't been to Yosemite since I was in sixth grade. I remember that trip well: I bested my sixth grade enemy (as I would have described him then) in a snowball fight, and the valley flooded and everyone had to evacuate. 

This time, I thought I would do a lot of writing. I didn't. But I did a lot of other things that were equally necessary, such as stare at trees, and climb rocks, and cook with friends, and get a little raucous in the wee hours, and gasp ever so slightly.

And if I had to pick a song for this trip, it would be "This Will Be Our Year." And if I had to pick a color for this trip, it would be lime. And if I had to pick a food for this trip, it would be eggs. And if I had to pick a poem for this trip, it would be "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota".* And if I had to pick a sound for this trip, it would be laughter half-heard while sleeping.

*"Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"
by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

in the end, is it all in the timing? /  by mrm

I was given a card on Tuesday that I didn't have a chance to read until today. An excerpt:
"Flannery O'Connor wrote that 'the way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience,' which just about sums up everything NOT you!"
This is, in so many ways, every kind of reminder I need right now. (Bonus: The card-giver didn't even know how much I love Flannery O'Connor! Serendipity, I thank you. Don't desert me now.)

lost time /  by mrm

"Remember this, Lenny; develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important."

– Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart

how we read and how we are /  by mrm

"You used to read dictionaries like other people read novels. Each entry is a character, you'd say, that might be encountered under another rubric . . . A dictionary resembles the world more than a novel does, because the world is not a coherent sequence of actions but a constellation of things perceived. It is looked at, unrelated things congregate, and geographic proximity gives them meaning. If events follow one another, they are believed to be a story. But in a dictionary, time doesn't exist: ABC is neither more nor less chronological than BCA."

– Suicide, by Eduoard Levé, translated from the French by Jan Steyn, excerpted in Harper's, April 2011

stuff and nonsense /  by mrm

If I were in love with Me (and I would, how could I not be?), I would send Me cute funny text messages all the time. I would send Me distracting funny YouTube videos at work that are so short it will only take a minute! I would have really nice flowers delivered to Me, too, but probably only once because I is not rich. Not roses because roses are boring or orchids which are too serious or daisies which are too silly. Maybe wildflowers because that is very romantic or maybe ornamental kale because that is funny! I would pay a lot of attention to Me because Me is so funny and interesting and smart and I would laugh at all of Me’s jokes and I would make jokes and Me would laugh too, ha ha. I and Me would get bored with traditional romance very quickly though of course because we are too interesting and different and strange and Me would suggest we move to Central America and live in the trees and eat bananas like monkeys and I would agree. I would say, "Me and I should fling our poop at people’s heads and shriek loudly" and Me would laugh and laugh in a shrieking monkey voice.

I would not have wasted time asking Me on a date. Well, I imagine that once I had met Me, I would be excited and a little confused (because Me can be confusing!) but because I am persistent I would have started trying to get close to Me, to talk to Me frequently, and to persuade I's friends to say subtle but flattering things about I to Me so that Me would want to talk to I, too. As Me would. I am a catch. So is Me. We will catch each other! This is a new game. I will score 100 points and so will Me and we will both win. Yippee! Me would make eyes at I and I would be so blushing, oh my! Flip flop and hip hop and skip the heart through the jump rope, please. Me would chat up I so coy and sly I would not know which way was up and would say so only to have Me reply, “Don’t be so normative, please.” Oh Me, oh my.

I would call Me regularly and we would talk and pretty soon I would be calling Me everyday or Me would be calling I because hello Me is not passive but one day Me might say “Me am very busy. Me cannot talk to I everyday. Me have to work!” and this is when we would leave to go live with the monkeys. After that we would go live with the fishes in the Caribbean and sometimes we would be fishes and sometimes we would be beautiful mermaids who lived in an underwater sandcastle and we would be so pretty and I would say to all the fishes “Look at Me! Look at Me!” and Me would smile and hold up a mirror to I's face and I and Me would laugh and laugh.

And Me and I are very happy and have lots of sex but no babies because we are the same gender! And this is why sex with the same gender is the safest sex: Babies are very dangerous! But we decide we want to be dangerous, we are wild and wacky, and so we both get artificially inseminated and have two little babies, Myself and Me Too, and we sing songs all day, hooray! We sing in four-part harmony, I, Me, Myself, and Me Too, we are in love and we are so happy we cry and our tears make rainbows in the sky and then we bake cupcakes and don’t even burn them because we are so good at baking cupcakes and we put lots of frosting on top. I would spoil Me rotten, and Myself, and Me Too. All of our teeth would fall out and we could only eat mush but then our friends the oysters would make us new teeth out of pearls and we would blow them bubble kisses and they would wink back so flirty and say, ooh, your pearly whites! And we would take very good care of our new teeth and eat our vegetables and maybe even live above ground again for a while and send Myself and Me Too to preschool where they could learn important things like counting and coloring inside the lines and then when they got home we would tell them they are only allowed to count backwards and to color outside the lines.

I was telling this story and someone said to I, “But wait! But wait! There’s no You.”
And I said, "That’s true."

recently at the breakfast table /  by mrm

the colors! I was delighted. I had to stop chopping things to documents them. (The observant reader will note that, in view of the position of the plunger on the French press, I hadn't even had my coffee yet. A true sign of my excitement level re: this breakfast's aesthetic appeal.)

to jump to fall to fail /  by mrm

To talk is always to jump. To jump off of something. Once in the air, the force is stronger than you. No matter what your feelings as you fall, you are falling now. The other thing about words: Until you speak them, they aren't there. And then irrevocable. We say, "I take it back" but of course there isn't this. There is only the contradiction, the change, the new decision. Once voiced, words speed away from you with your outreaching hands. They are gone and building walls and banging into people and changing everything. And you are left wondering at the new, the invisible architecture of the air, the structures you may not have meant to make.

and I love adverbs /  by mrm

"Since when did 'literally' start meaning 'not literally?' An adverb meant, quite obviously, to point out the literal nature of something being said, now is being thrown about merely to punctuate figures of speech which are not literal. Stop that. If what you're saying is literal, then you may say 'literally.' If what you mean was figurative, then you may not."
                - btq
Always appreciate more people joining my team.

in other words /  by mrm

"Michel Butor says that to travel is to write, because to travel is to read. This can be developed further: To write is to travel, to write is to read, to read is to write and to read is to travel. But George Steiner says that to translate is also to read, and to translate is to write, as to write is to translate and to read is to translate. So that we may say: To translate is to travel and to travel is to translate. To translate a travel writing, to read a writing, to write a writing, and to travel. But if because you are translating you read, and because writing translate, because traveling write, because traveling read, and because translating travel; that is if to read is to translate, and to translate is to write, to write to travel, to read to travel, to write to read, to read to write, and to travel to translate; then to write is also to write, and to read is also to read, and even more, because when you read you read, but also travel, and because traveling read, therefore read and read; and when reading also write, therefore read; and reading also translate, therefore read; therefore read, read, read, and read. The same argument may be made for translating, traveling, and writing."

  – Lydia Davis, "To Reiterate," Almost No Memory

the purpose of literature /  by mrm

"The answer to the use-pleasure conundrum is not neither, but both. What is more, they are the same thing. 'Use' does not mean instruction, as it did to Horace or the Victorians, the inculcation of virtue through the presentation of moral exempla. It means awareness. Literature is 'useful' because it wakes us up from the sleepwalk of self-involvement—of plans, anxieties, resentments, habits, the fog that clings to our eyes as we stumble through the day, stumble through our lives—and shows us the world, shows us ourselves, shows us life and experience and the reality of other people, and forces us to think about them all. The pleasure of serious literature is not escape or fantasy, it is this very shiver of consciousness, this troubling exhilaration. Reading is thinking and feeling, both at once and both together, simultaneous and identical. Pleasure is use, use pleasure."
   – William Deresiewicz, slaughtering Marjorie Garber's The Use and Abuse of Literature

Can I get a hell yes?

all the dolphins say /  by mrm

"He goes in the living room. He lies on the sofa. Not waving but drowning. No future. The future is now. Meaningless. Wave of the future. Everything is clichéd and melodramatic. He should eat. He used to think things like, This organic soymilk will make me healthy and that'll make my brain work better and that'll improve my writing. Also things like, The less I eat and the less money I spend on publicly owned companies the less pain and suffering will exist in the world. Now he thinks things like, It is impossible to be happy. Why would anyone think that? Things like, Godsford Park is the worst movie ever. Gosford? Godsford?
'Godsford,' Andrew says out loud. 'Gosford.' "
                   – Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

love is and love is not /  by mrm

"As we will show, LOVE is not a concept that has a clearly delineated structure; whatever structure it has it gets only via metaphors."
– Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

And, while we're on the topic of metaphors, allow me to offer the following:
1. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: well-mixed.
2. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: shaken, not stirred.
3. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: frequently.
4. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: gin-based.
5. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: nonsensical.
6. I like my cocktails like I like my metaphors: self-referential.
7. I like my cocktails like I like my metaphors: surprising to the point of alienating.
8. I like my cocktails like I like my metaphors: stronger than me.