pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE (No. 216 � 12:45 AM � Tuesday) Just talked to Pottergrrl and then my best pal Filmgrrl, so have basically been on the phone for over three hours straight. Filmgrrl said that horses graze in fields behind their Montana ranch and she looks out the window at them and thinks "Well THIS never happens in New York City." She also made the interesting observation that horses have old mouths. Their teeth and nostrils look modern, but their mouths look very old, like they belong in some other era. I told her about my new short story draft about the firefighter who tries to extrapolate a life from the various items he finds in someone�s burning room. She likes the concept and told me about a Russian artist who builds rooms that capture a person in his or her particular time or era, which sounds similar to what I�m doing on the page. So I thought about what items would encapsulate me as a kid and then incorporated those items into my novel. ... What makes the elements work or not work, though, is really an audience with either similar enough experiences to relate or the imagination to do so. When I read my pal Zulu�s short stories, I often experience a sudden flash of recognition when I recognize that she has captured some piece of truth or experience that I didn�t even know I remembered until I read it there. She�s the first person who pointed out to me that the Southern phrase �Bless Your Heart� is really a way to be mean to someone, but passive aggressively. Another example: in a personal ad I read recently, a woman described herself as �casual unstructured,� the kind of person whose favorite seafood is served in red plastic baskets. And that gives me a pretty decent sense of her. And in my novel? Iceburg lettuce with bright orange French dressing; heaping spoonfuls of powdery �Russian tea� stirred into cups of boiling water; Family Circle and Guideposts and Reader�s Digest�s �Drama in Real Life!� section; Highlights magazine; Jell-O molds; See-Dick-Run weekly readers; those hokey cover-your-necks-in-the-event-of-nuclear-disaster black-and-white Super-8 films where the big spool always ran out and kept turning and made the film click click click against the projector with each rotation; white utility trucks spraying DDT in your neighborhood and you know damn well that your parents told you to stay away from it, but you and all the kids follow the truck instead on your bikes, sucking in the cool foggy poison and thinking well isn�t this cool?And of course who can forget those Kool-Aid popsicles made in Tupperware forms that turn your mouth bright red as Crosby, Still, Nash and Young sing "Teach Your Children Well" in the background? � So right now, I�m trying to figure out what in the world to get my little brother and his fianc� for their wedding gift. I haven�t a clue, but have discerned from catalogs that red and brown seem to be the color combination of choice this year. I�d like to find a piece of art that I think they�ll both like�a piece that suits their new house�and give them that. I like giving art better than glasses or knives or sheets or pots (well, except for cast-iron frying pans) or stupid what-nots anyway�better than giving most anything else, actually, unless it's a poem. � So my pal Musicgrrl likes to play this game called Two Truths and a Lie, especially when she doesn�t know someone very well. So here are some questions I made up a while back, at Buzzcut's request:: ROUND 1 > Wild Days
READING: Southern Poverty Law Center report LISTENING TO: My stomach growling, which is odd since I picked 7 ripe tomatoes this evening, then made a very large and very delicious tossed salad for dinner BEST OF SPAM SUBJECT LINES: buckboard cruel � savant corrugate � hedge cucumber 9:16 a.m. - 2005-08-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||