Archive for July, 2014

July 7, 2014

“To Develop” Sounds Like Too Much Work

by lisa st john

de·vel·op : verb\di-ˈvel-əp, dē-\

: to cause (something) to grow or become bigger or more advanced
: to create (something) over a period of time
: to work out the possibilities of <
develop an idea>

My frustration with the writing process mounts. I need a little brain stretch break.

Me: “How does my character develop? What is her journey? What will happen to her?”

Gertrude Stein: “There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.”

 

I just realized what I want to be when I grow up (I know I am already a teacher, and I know I love my job, but let’s just say I had another life to fill up). Then I want to be Gertrude Stein. I want to be alone all day and write (except for the occasional cafe lunch) and then just have people over almost every night. We will drink and talk and smoke cigars and play Cards Against Humanity. We will ask metaphysical questions and come up with drunken ideas half-formed by moonlight.

 

We will bow to the power of repetition and we will argue until the moonlight is gone. Wait. Does this mean I need an Alice? Will I have to write her autobiography?

 

I prefer Stein’s portraits. I used to try and write them back in the day, but it just wasn’t my style. Her poem, “If I Told Him,” about Picasso tickles my brain nicely. And a tickle develops into a tangent who introduces her to an idiom. Then she starts running around with some nasty verb, and before I know it a damn plot is born.

 

Develop. Sigh. I guess it IS a verb after all.

 

I want to gently submerge the blank page into a tray of Dektol. I will make sure the red light is on. I will rock the page in the tray until the page is covered evenly. I will watch the page and reduce its ephemeral salty thoughts until only the metallic words are left. Just like magic. But magic takes work. Clarke’s Third Law says so. So. I will stop whining and wishing and keep working and see what happens. I just wish Hemingway would stop by.

Here is to having the eggs to “caress and address” our muse.

When I said. A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.”
–Stein, “Poetry and Grammar,” Lectures in America

 

 

 

July 1, 2014

No Time for Advertisements

by lisa st john

daisy

 

Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It’s abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?”

Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot

 

Dear Reader (Wait. Weird how Jane Austen that sounded.):

I promise to never put floating hypertext ads on my blog. If you click on one of my links it’s because, like me, you are interested in tangents and are willing to play in the world of hypertext reading theory.

Delany and Landow define hypertext as, “the use of the computer to transcend the linear, bounded and fixed qualities of the traditional written text.” Wow. I like the hyperbole of “transcending” anything linear. Anyway…

 

Time. How to act for the next few weeks when my world is not measured by the clock? I look at the LED and 8:30 seems a reasonable time to get up. I switch the coffee maker from Auto-On to Brew. She’ll stay that way for awhile. I’ll check the weather. Humid. Yeah, well, it is June in upstate New York. Sun and clouds. Really? They are both going to be up there today. Okay. In Arizona, I rarely checked the weather. How many synonyms are there for hot, really hot, and treacherously hot?

 

So. I will check my email. Yawn. I could pay some bills. Yuck. The computer tells me it is 8:56, but the numbers have lost their meaning.

 

I gave the kids a ten minute warning.”

But…”

It’s okay. They have no idea how long ten minutes is. It could be five minutes or half an hour.”

 

Ten minutes waiting for a bus in the rain is a long ten minutes. Ten minutes before the betting windows close is a just-enough ten minutes. Ten minutes of lounging in the sand watching the waves is far too short.

 

But if Einstein is right, why can’t I play with time dilation; why can’t I choose to see the future rather than the past?

 

Kindergarteners learn to “tell” time (much too early in my humble opinion). The only way to explain time to my son when he was five was to tell him that time wasn’t real. Then he got it. “Philosophers like McTaggart who claim that time is unreal are aware of the seemingly paradoxical nature of their claim. They generally take the line that all appearances suggesting that there is a temporal order to things are somehow illusory.” What’s wrong with a little paradox?

 

Composer Jonathan Berger claims that music can, “hijack our perception of time.” Schubert knew, before science did, that time is based on perception. The logical conclusion here is that artists like Schubert can manipulate time. So what time is it?

 

Wait. There’s a cat, a hammock, and a book. That’s three. The time is three today.

 

Always in motion is the future.”

Yoda, Star Wars Episode V:The Empire Strikes Back

 

 

 

 

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