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Doing laundry - which makes it difficult to make dinner or take a shower until it is done. (It's in the basement and I'm on the third floor - and requires an elevator - and it's a shared laundry room with 77 other apartments in the building. Although at the moment it is just me and one other guy. And for the most part it's well maintained. Actually, it's the best laundry room/situation I've had since moving to NYC in 1996. I've now been without my own laundry machines far longer than I had them. There's pros and cons either way, as you all know.)
Anyhow just have 19 minutes and forty-eight seconds to go.
The laundry is now done and safely put away. Even though I had to navigate around a woman (who looked much like a kid herself), a baby carriage, and two toddlers to do it. She was speaking on the phone via her earphones and not in English. Dinner made and eaten. Hair washed and dried. Mother called. Soap watched. Lunch made.
Tired.
Been a long and busy week, looking forward to having a shorter week next week. I'm annoyed that the inauguration is on Martin Luther King Day, although I fully intend to ignore it (the inauguration not the holiday - which I thankfully have off) ( Read more... )
In college, I had a creative writing professor who told me once that I was an interesting writer because I was interested in exploring the uncomfortable emotions and thoughts that most people veer away from. He'd picked up a pattern in my short stories. The one that won Second Place in a Literary Competition was a short story in the point of view of a business man on a plane. The man was annoyed by this chatty older woman sitting next to him - who reminded him of his mother. And his guilt at not knowing how to take care of her or what to do, and kind of wishing she was gone. But at the same time not wanting her gone. The woman dies of a heart attack as the plane lands, and he struggling with the aftermath of that, and the troubling mix of emotions. I called it Just a Bunch of Clouds. My father read it - and struggled with it - it hit too close to home. He felt he couldn't share it with his family. So, I veered away from writing anything like it again. Yet, I still find myself doing so - here, and well, in my other writing. I also find myself seeking out stories that explore those monstrous emotions. Because I think all humans have them, and understanding them - looking at them, helps not so much to combat them as to not to be drowned by them or overtaken, and in the end just to let them drift off like a bunch of clouds?
What I found compelling about the New York/Vulture article on Neil Gaiman, was not the women's allegations (which I pretty much already knew from the Tortoise Media coverage and other places and are just horrific to the point of making me cringe inwardly, not to mention unsanitary) - but rather the struggle he and Palmer had engaged in combating his urge to do it.( Read more... )Also why people are attracted to people who have these compulsions. Why were women throwing themselves at him? Why did people put tattoos of him on their bodies? Why the worship of a human? Why is it that people with monstrous compulsions or have chosen to hurt others - have families, children, success, etc - while others who actively chose not to hurt others, and to help people - do not? What is it about charming toxicity that is so attractive? And how did people evolve to this point.
So many songs and stories state - a good person is defined by the people around them, the number of friends, family members, people who love them and those who come to their funeral? If this is true? Then how does it describe folks like Hitler, Trump, Whedon or Gaiman - who have all of that?
I don't know. I can't figure it out.
It's late. And I find myself with more questions this week than answers.
The other bit that I found compelling about the article - was it how it was written - and how much it reminded me of another article written in 2022 about another popular cult writer, in the same magazine. ( Read more... )
David Lynch died at 78 today. And he was the king of showing how reality can bend and twist in on itself. How our perceptions can lie. And often there is a nightmare lying beneath the pristine sunny surface. Fascinated with the dark underbelly of the human condition - he often explored it through surrealistic films. A friend of mine - loves the film Mullohand Drive - and has seen it multiple times. While my favorite film may be Blue Velvet - which shows darkness beneath the American Suburban landscape.
I'm thinking of him now, in the back of my mind as I write this. Because Lynch like myself was fascinated by the duality of the human condition, the dark and light warring for dominance, yin and yang. Seeing clearly the good and bad in humans, and how they can turn on a dime - falling into the abyss, with a single act.
Twin Peaks may well have been his masterpiece in that respect until it slid a bit too far down that dark slope, sliding into incoherence.
Is it wrong to ask these questions? To ponder these things? To look into the dark nether regions of the human psyche, from the safety of my arm chair? I do not know. And I often wonder if I repel you by doing so.
Anyhow just have 19 minutes and forty-eight seconds to go.
The laundry is now done and safely put away. Even though I had to navigate around a woman (who looked much like a kid herself), a baby carriage, and two toddlers to do it. She was speaking on the phone via her earphones and not in English. Dinner made and eaten. Hair washed and dried. Mother called. Soap watched. Lunch made.
Tired.
Been a long and busy week, looking forward to having a shorter week next week. I'm annoyed that the inauguration is on Martin Luther King Day, although I fully intend to ignore it (the inauguration not the holiday - which I thankfully have off) ( Read more... )
In college, I had a creative writing professor who told me once that I was an interesting writer because I was interested in exploring the uncomfortable emotions and thoughts that most people veer away from. He'd picked up a pattern in my short stories. The one that won Second Place in a Literary Competition was a short story in the point of view of a business man on a plane. The man was annoyed by this chatty older woman sitting next to him - who reminded him of his mother. And his guilt at not knowing how to take care of her or what to do, and kind of wishing she was gone. But at the same time not wanting her gone. The woman dies of a heart attack as the plane lands, and he struggling with the aftermath of that, and the troubling mix of emotions. I called it Just a Bunch of Clouds. My father read it - and struggled with it - it hit too close to home. He felt he couldn't share it with his family. So, I veered away from writing anything like it again. Yet, I still find myself doing so - here, and well, in my other writing. I also find myself seeking out stories that explore those monstrous emotions. Because I think all humans have them, and understanding them - looking at them, helps not so much to combat them as to not to be drowned by them or overtaken, and in the end just to let them drift off like a bunch of clouds?
What I found compelling about the New York/Vulture article on Neil Gaiman, was not the women's allegations (which I pretty much already knew from the Tortoise Media coverage and other places and are just horrific to the point of making me cringe inwardly, not to mention unsanitary) - but rather the struggle he and Palmer had engaged in combating his urge to do it.( Read more... )Also why people are attracted to people who have these compulsions. Why were women throwing themselves at him? Why did people put tattoos of him on their bodies? Why the worship of a human? Why is it that people with monstrous compulsions or have chosen to hurt others - have families, children, success, etc - while others who actively chose not to hurt others, and to help people - do not? What is it about charming toxicity that is so attractive? And how did people evolve to this point.
So many songs and stories state - a good person is defined by the people around them, the number of friends, family members, people who love them and those who come to their funeral? If this is true? Then how does it describe folks like Hitler, Trump, Whedon or Gaiman - who have all of that?
I don't know. I can't figure it out.
It's late. And I find myself with more questions this week than answers.
The other bit that I found compelling about the article - was it how it was written - and how much it reminded me of another article written in 2022 about another popular cult writer, in the same magazine. ( Read more... )
David Lynch died at 78 today. And he was the king of showing how reality can bend and twist in on itself. How our perceptions can lie. And often there is a nightmare lying beneath the pristine sunny surface. Fascinated with the dark underbelly of the human condition - he often explored it through surrealistic films. A friend of mine - loves the film Mullohand Drive - and has seen it multiple times. While my favorite film may be Blue Velvet - which shows darkness beneath the American Suburban landscape.
I'm thinking of him now, in the back of my mind as I write this. Because Lynch like myself was fascinated by the duality of the human condition, the dark and light warring for dominance, yin and yang. Seeing clearly the good and bad in humans, and how they can turn on a dime - falling into the abyss, with a single act.
Twin Peaks may well have been his masterpiece in that respect until it slid a bit too far down that dark slope, sliding into incoherence.
Is it wrong to ask these questions? To ponder these things? To look into the dark nether regions of the human psyche, from the safety of my arm chair? I do not know. And I often wonder if I repel you by doing so.