Novel Eye

Is it just me or does everyone think that their house is not clean enough? I hate housekeeping. I really do. So I avoid it. So my house probably isn't clean enough, but even when I feel that I really clean, I sit down only to look over and see dust on some surface that I missed. Part of it is not maintaining. Part of it is living in an old house where there are uneven surfaces and cracks and crevices where dust can hide. I have white stairs--well, they were white when I moved in. Even getting down on my hands and knees with a bucket doesn't seem to make a difference. Part of it is having a dog and a cat and the slow detritus of hair and skin that makes up dust--but other people have children AND a dog and a cat and seem to keep up. Part of it is simply having too much stuff--too many books, too many figurines with tiny nooks and crannies . I can't dust them all every week, let alone take the books out and dust behind them, so the dust remains and contaminates my c...

Also watched “Fraility” a disturbing little film about faith and families—don’t know what else to say about it. And finished “The Family…” Is it paranoid? Conspiracy theorist? It seems well-researched and has certainly taken on great meaning in light of recent events to pundits of the left such as Rachel Maddow whom I respect (and—full disclosure--kind of lust after because I love smart nerds). According to the book, there is a quiet, not-quite hidden or secret, but shadowy nevertheless, organization, known now as the Family who works behind the scenes of Washington politics and from there the world. In it’s guise of innocent prayer groups it places “influential men in key places” thereby spreading JESUS throughout the world. But theirs is a Jesus unrecognizable to me or to most Christians whether they be holiday Christians or Evangelicals. Theirs is Jesus unfettered by scipture, focused on the 'global picture' and therefore unconcerned about the tiny players (read you and me, ...

Past weekend, watched “The French Lieutenant’s Woman.” I had read the novel ages ago, and the screenplay even further back. Must say that I was disappointed. I found it very flat with the exception of Jeremy Iron’s rformance . I love Irons ( Brideshead , of course, and in Reversal of Fortune) but have found him passionate only in this Elizabeth I. It was amusing to see British actors who went on to bigger and better or at least more amusing roles--Leo McKern , Richard Griffiths, and Penelope Wilton known to Doctor Who fans as Harriet Jones. But I was very disappointed in Meryl Streep . For all her fame in accents, I found hers uneven and unconvincing in this. Which brings up the question, why, when Hollywood is perfectly willing to cast British actors as Brits (and often as Americans) is it so reluctant to cast British actresses as Brits??? Particularly iconic British roles—like this one or Bridget Jones for example. Australians as Americans thrive in Hollywood, and it does not turn ar...

Do you casually put up anything that comes to mind on Facebook /Twitter, Twitter being designed for this, or do you put some thought into provocative, humorous or controversial statements, hoping for comments or re-Tweets? I prefer Facebook because a) more of my friends are on it, and b) because it invites lengthier and more diverse conversation, sometimes between friends who don’t otherwise know each other from different parts of one’s life, between high school friends, college friends and Boston friends for example. I prefer the conversation. And find myself irrationally unhappy when I don’t get it. Do you also worry about when to stop commenting? If you have the last word have you been selfish, or so dull that you are conversation ending? If you do not leave the last comment, then have you been rude and abrupt? If no one comments then are you unpopular, dull or simply lost in the rush. Which leads to my own low-self esteem general question, “Do my friends really like me?” I find it...

Do other people have a music hierarchy? When listening to the radio in the car and you are faced with the choices of two acceptable songs or even two songs in general, what determines which one you stop on? For instance, for me from this past week, Muse trumps Red Hot Chili Peppers but loses to Death Cab for Cutie, particularly if it’s from the new album of both, but Red Hot Chili Peppers would come before Oasis, for example. Alternative 80’s (Cure, Depeche , Duran (of course), Human League (except for Human—God, I hate that song), etc. wins out much of the time except for really new songs that I adore. Between “Sometime Around Midnight” by The Airborne Toxic Event and “Little Lion Man” by Mumford and Sons, both songs that just slay me, the later would probably win because it is newer and I haven’t heard it as much. There are artists who, if they are the only choice, lose to commercials or even to silence. Coldplay , for example, or James Taylor or (shudder) John Mayer. And this isn ’t...

Part of my curiosity about language stems from a book that I’m reading called “The Story of English” from the 80’s BBC series of the same name. In it, it is postulated that English is uniquely capable of expressing such nuances because it is such a polyglot language—sometimes welcomingly and sometimes hesitantly or even actively resisted—developed from multiple sources and languages and is therefore so vocabulary rich that it is (arguably) unrivaled in its ability to say the same thing in multiple ways and as in my previous post, to say something different with the same words. According to the book, the OED lists 500,000 words and there are almost a million technical and scientific specific words uncatalogued , with new words being developed every day. And this book dates from the 80’s. As science continues to expand the number is probably higher now. In contrast, the estimates for German are 185,000 words, and for French, 100,000 including borrowings from English. The French have, of...

This previous post is one of my favorite David Sylvian songs and I was thinking about it's meaning. There are such subtle shadings in English, for example: His world is suffering Her world is suffering Our world is suffering They can all mean that THE world is suffering, mother earth physically suffering, but it can also mean that all he or she knows is suffering, that all of the world means suffering. Likewise, in The Cure song, "The End of the World" Robert Smith sings: ‘I couldn't ever love you more’ Meaning I could not love you more than I do. It is impossible for me to love you more. Later, he sings: ‘It’s not my fault, you couldn ’t love me more’ Meaning isn ’t it sad that you couldn ’t love me more. You were incapable of loving me more, or as much as was needed. Of course, it is possible that she couldn ’t love him more because it was impossible for her to love him more. Also, in The Barenaked Ladies song, “Tonight is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel” Ste...

World Citizen World Citizen (Words by David Sylvian) There goes one baby's life It's such a small amount She's un-American I guess it doesn't count Six thousand children's lives Were simply thrown away Lost without medicine Inside of thirty days In the New York harbour Where the stock's withheld It was the price we paid For a safer world World is suffering World is suffering World is suffering World citizen In Madhya Pradesh Where they're building dams They're displacing native people From their homes and lands So they hunger strike Cos they believe they count To lose a single life Is such a small amount In the name of progress And democracy The concepts represented in name only His world is suffering Her world is suffering Their world is suffering World citizen World citizen And the buildings fall In a cloud of dust And we ask ourselves How could they hate us? Well, when we live in ignorance and luxury While our super powers practice Puppet mastery We r...

Robert Graves' King Jesus is a dense, sometimes difficult, thought-provoking and ultimately frustrating novel. Written as a history by one Agabus some 50 years after Jesus' death, it posits several controversial ideas about the life and death of Jesus. First he discards the virgin birth (let alone the Catholic addition of the Immaculate Conception), suggesting instead that Jesus was the product of a secret marriage between Mary, a temple Ward, (whose own parentage owed more to ancient pagan sexual rites, than to Jewish custom) and a son of Herod, and therefore had the earthly right to be called the King of the Jews. But the historian also makes the argument that Jesus was the Messiah based on many writings of the Jewish prophets. Interestingly, while he dismisses the virgin birth as too mystical, comparing it to Greek and Roman mythology--making Jesus no more than Perseus, fathered by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold (I don't think there's a 21st century meaning th...

Facebook is a conversation. Twitter is an exciting but crowded cocktail party of which you catch the pieces of conversations.

It has been a good two days. Although it's still crisp/cold for me, the sun is shining and it's still light when I drive home (even better with Daylight Savings coming). I was productive at home and feel energetic about projects for the first time in ages. But here's the dilemma--I have been here (that sense of a real space again) before. Where I clean and begin projects and feel good and optimistic and the real problems I have seem smaller and beyond my control so I worry less. And it always ends. Am I mildly bi-polar? Is it possible to be mildly bi-polar? Bi-polar seems so much the diagnosis of the moment that I am wary of using it. And each time I think, how can I cling to this and make it last and is that even under my control.

Watched Before Night Falls, always wanted to see it, partially because it garnered so much praise, and partially because I had heard about Johnny Depp's daring performance in it, and I wanted to see that. But it is Javier Bardem's movie--every second, from the young student with high hopes for Castro's revolution who is quickly disillusioned by the brutal crack downs (just as in Persepolis) for both his writing and his homosexuality. Are all revolutions doomed to betray themselves? It is a harrowing and beautiful film with Bardem reading Arenas own words in the original language. I cannot now remember how much of the film was in Spanish and how much in English, it flowed so beautifully together. It made me want to read the writer--what more can a film do for a writer?

I recently watched Persepolis, The Reader, and Hotel Rwanda, each in their own way about living through war and the things we do to survive. How much would you do, what would you do, most importantly, what would you do to survive. Persepolis is the story of a girl/young woman, growing up in the aftermath of the fall of the Shah. At the beginning her liberal parents are full of hope for the new regime, but it is soon clear that the western freedoms enjoyed under the Shah are gone. They fear for their daughter's outspoken protest, and yet, it is at their knee that she has learned to speak up. Our heroine is packed off to Vienna where she gets into the kind of troubles that a young woman alone in a strange city might be prone to--fights with landlords, as she puts them, banal love affairs. Hers is an easy war, even when she returns, until one of her friends is killed running from a mixed ( illegal ) party. The war is a background to them until it collides with them and they live as i...

I am so used to coming into a warm house because of our timers, I had to get under the covers when I came home in the middle of the day. How I wish for spring/summer.

To succeed in Social Media be pithy. Often. It is not, as the reoccurring joke goes about writing about feeding the cat, it is finding something interesting to say, not unlike a social gathering, like a party, only you don't really have to face people. This is not particularly pithy, or original and will be swallowed by the great sound of other things. But at least I'm here again. Absent, not Dead.

Do the common people who throw their coins in the fountain, as it were, expect an answer, or is it enough for them to be part of the zeitgeist, with the occasional random chance that Neil Gaiman or Amanda Palmer or someone might respond. Do they want a response from other nobodies?

Back in 2007 I posted this: http://noveleye.blogspot.com/2007/08/mortality-part-2.html and she's still here. Turning 85 today. So she's already lived a more than a year beyond the diagnosis. But something's different. She seems ready to die now. And it's hardening/closing faster, leaving her short of breath. I had to go down and clean up her apt. so she could come home from rehab after a small heart attack and small stroke that have left her blind in one eye. There's so much I could write about it, but I'm still processing--what I feel, what I need. They are saying six months now. We finally had that sort of peace that I was looking for. And now I hate myself for all the wasted years, but I can't do that. They might have been exactly as I feared they would be--all anger and pain. But now I need more time, more time, and that is what we never get.

I'm cleaning out my mother's apartment. She's not dead yet, but they say it's just a matter of time. And it needs to be clean before she can come out of rehab. My mother is a hoarder. My mother is a hoarder's hoarder. We've carted 2 station wagons worth to the thrift store, and this is a three room apartment. We've barely begun. I found a box of Christmas ornaments from my childhood and sat down and cried. I'm finding it hard to function--both because it's a daunting task, and because it renders everything so futile. If we will all end up like this then why should we buy anything now. Much talk with my therapist about this. That we buy things to make us happy now--the future is the future and many people (not my mother) start to weed as they get older--finding less and less that objects are important. I am already less of a purchaser and I have never been the hoarder that my mother is. A collector, perhaps, but when things don't fit ...

I haven't been here in a while. Isn't it funny how we describe some of the sites as if they were rooms or places--physical space. June and July were...hard. It rained almost non-stop in June, and perhaps half the time in July. It's raining today. And I could not outrun my black dogs. I suffer from depression. I think I've made that pretty clear on here. Most of the time it's just a general sorrow--a little more effort to be happy or functioning. The past two months have been major darkness. An inability to see much good in anything--a hopelessness, a lack of dreams for the future. If you've never been there (another sense of a physical location) then you cannot understand. Oddly, just before it went dark I went to see one of my favorite bands, The Psychedelic Furs in concert. I'd only waited 25 years for the chance. They were old, of course, but sounded good and the setting was intimate. I had no expectations and thus enjoyed myself very much. T...

Amidst the craptastic cullinary choices, I watch an Asian gentleman consume an elaborate meal from what appears to be a thermos, but is really a beautifully packaged set of small containers complete with chopsticks. Like all terminuses (termini, locaii?) the range of humanity is broad but shallow. Behind me I hear, "Ich bin jahre. Alles klar." The elegantly dressed, the ethnic, the eccentric. A young woman goes by in an outfit I could have used for the Vietnam play-all tie-dye and patches.