Category Archives: a propos of nothing

a propos of nothing, gradschool

and in the creepy,

Hopkins just put a new face on the website. Alternating different photos. Cool. The pictures show a lot of the school’s diversity both of people and programs. I think it’s a really nice front page. But – when I clicked on it the first time – I got an image of a man with – I don’t know, electrodes? – all over his head.

Really made me want to be like, “This is how we study poetry at JHU! With BRAIN MAPPING!”

I can’t link to it, but if you go to the site and click through the pictures, you will find the man with the electrode-head – fourth from the left, gazing out at you with a friendly face, and lots and lots and lots of electrodes. Honestly, it’s as weird as some kind of Poe story, the stuff folks do at this school. Science. Magic.

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a propos of nothing, writing

the internet is for TMI

The Computer informs me that someone has recently searched for and found this blog by searching for “The Adventures of Sander Lamori And His Wonder Dog, Bentham,” the very briefly-lived serial story I wrote for the Stanford Daily. Uh..who was this? I am very curious, but happy to know someone besides me still thinks about the thing. It’ll come back one day. I swear. Just not right now. I have to figure out how to write imagery.

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a propos of nothing

saint street

My new address is, fingers crossed, going to be on Saint Paul Street. Writing this on an envelope for the first time, “St Paul St,” I realize it might as well be “Street Paul Saint,” or any variation thereof, and if I were a voice-recognition computer, I wouldn’t know.

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a propos of nothing, wordage

No, you are not required to do anything.

That’s a line from a recent online chat with a Bank of America representative, assuring me that all the appropriate steps have been taken to get me a new ATM card. I saw it as I was glancing at the transcript and it popped out at me. No, you are not required to do anything. I think it’s an important thing for me to remember. We have a choice in everything we do. I have a choice in everything I do.

I am not required to do anything. So I must be here, in Wroclaw, for a reason. I must have chosen it.

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a propos of nothing

Shenandoah

you hear me crying?
A-way
you rolling river…
Oh, Shenandoah –
I’ll not deceive you –
Come away,
Oh, come away,
Cross the wide
Missouri.

Been stuck in my mind’s ear for awhile. Schankman twins and their brother. I don’t remember its name. Probably “Shenandoah.”

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a propos of nothing

instead

of spending Seattle in Memorial Day (reverse the nouns), with my brother and my cousins, I am spending it here on my Chicago-based couch, watching television and taking antibiotics, in the second installment of Ear Infection 2009. I am watching Eileen’s copy of the BBC Pride and Prejudice, and maudlinly identifying with Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s punchline heiress-daughter, whose “sickly constitution” prevents her from being presented at court.

Earlier, I watched Beyonce videos. You certainly don’t see her sitting around feeling sorry for herself cause she has an ear infection.

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a propos of nothing, F&F, writing

and if I say to you tomorrow

Take my hand, child, come with me.
It’s to a castle I will take you,
Where what’s to be, they say will be.

– WHAT IS AND WHAT SHOULD NEVER BE

My parents recently saw THE SEAFARER @ the Geffen, a play-variation of playing a game with the Devil for your life and soul. I have been thinking of how we know when it is we are going to die, for this and other reasons.

I went out for dinner with a friend two weeks ago, in a Michigan Avenue eighth-floor eyrie hastened from the halls of Harry Potter – a private club overlooking the lake, the lights, and the park. We spent most of the dinner discussing the nature of happiness, which he feels is there for the taking.

I wanted to say, “Friend, some days, my head is a garden for the cultivation of the flower, Despair,” but I didn’t. I think that being a writer, or thinking of yourself as Being a Writer, gives some license to mope around like a Fraggle, license which I have overused. I needed to hear this.

He further told me, Zenlite, that we only know two things:

– you will die
– the hour of your death is uncertain.

I am so in love with the way that last statement is written. This is a formulation similar to but wildly distinct from the Greeks’ “The best thing for mortal man is to never have been born. The next best is to die, and quickly.” It doesn’t hope for death, it only forecasts it. Forecast: Life, with a chance of Death. What does that chance make you chance? What chances would you take if you knew – or what will you not take, knowing you can’t?

If I don’t blog again for awhile, or if I only blog intermitttently from the catch-as-can computers of friends’ couches, I want to at least have left the site standing with some philosophy.

I find, too, that difficult as it may be to remember at moments when, I don’t know, your laptop has perished, that repeating “Happiness is there for the taking” has the inane effect of making you happier. For whatever it’s worth.

The NYT says our friends make us live longer. I don’t know that, but I know mine make me live better.

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a propos of nothing, chicago, writing

why is a raven like a writing-desk?

Last night, Beth and I ate at Mana on Division and planned out the Seder we’re having next week, and then I rode the Ashland bus to Pilsen for another meeting of the Jacques Lacan book club – which isn’t only about Jacques Lacan – but in my mind, he will always be the person who dragged me back into critical theory.

This morning is the first meeting of another playwriting class. It’s six sessions, and each one includes one hour of a writing exercise and two of hearing actors read the scenes you bring in.

So I’m beginning with what I think are the two crucial scenes from the 80 pages of the two-character play that I want to put within a larger framing structure, and seeing what happens. This week, one of my Chicago friends is one of the two guest actors, so that’ll be fun. She’s seen some of this material before.

I’m so happy to be back in a Saturday morning theater environment, like the acting class I used to audit in Los Angeles. This class is a long-running thing that I expect to have some regulars and some new folks. It’s a community that I’m very excited to meet. It won’t be the same as being in rehearsals, but it is a step closer to returning to rehearsals on the terms I want.

Tonight, a whole acronym full of friends are coming over for dinner. Outside, you can see sky between the clouds.

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