paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- writing in cars and histrionics I am typing in the dark. The light bulb just burned out two minutes ago and it seems like too large of a production to hope that there is a spare one in the basement. Because Quinn and I last got paid December 24, we are at the bottoms of our bank accounts. This happens during the long six-week stretch that also involves holidays and vacation. The cold, broke month of January. It is probably horrible for my eyes. Oh well. This evening, while walking the pipsqueak, I noticed that Citizen Gerta no longer had a green house and a blue car. She has told me on several occasions that she will always have a green house and a blue car. Being 88, this is one of the things about which she is certain. Tonight, as I passed her house and saw a sand-colored car in her driveway, I felt a panic. Maybe it is a rental car. Perhaps a visitor? No. Citizen Gerta went in for a change and purchased a sporty Toyota Camray (considering her last car was a giant navy blue Buik from 1982 with no rust). I just had to find out because it is more evidence that the world is constantly shifting and changing, that there are no certainties. Every year Citizen Gerta is sure she won�t have another and here she is purchasing a new car! She is just the hardy, adamant soul who will live much longer than most. Like women in Nova Scotia, I tell myself. On other news. The faculty director has embarked on a road trip so she can finish the copy editing process on her latest book. Her husband drives and she writes. It is a rather odd arrangement, certainly the last thing I would think of when needing to get some writing done. Remote motel rooms by highways, yes. But whirling down the highway at 70 miles per hour in the winter, eyes downward, pencil flying across the page� She gave me some notes she made on the e-booklet I am writing for work. I looked at them and they were in actual shorthand. I had to set her up at a computer to translate them. I long to be that focused at work. But I never will because it is not my passion. That is not to say that my work ethic suffers. I have been exceedingly workerly these past few weeks. Exceedingly. I really enjoyed Stephen Dunn�s book of poems, Different Hours . I like the way he structures his poems � in some ways they are simple: free verse, no intricate rhyme schemes or contrived stanzas. His lines seem to end at just the right place. He uses enjambment, but sparingly and brilliantly. And he has these observations about life that are so earned in his poems. This way of moving from the specific detail to some large observation and back to the detail without causing dizziness in his readers. I�m reading a few Roland Barthes books this week. And half of a book called Saint Foucault . My classes are going well. It is shaping up to be just the sort of semester I hoped it would be, of course I am working really hard but I can get lost in this sort of work. Because it is a passion. When I was a child, I used to hear adults use the word histrionics all the time, it seemed. Perhaps I come from a dramatic family. This evening, for some reason, I was flipping through my old psychology text book � it caught my eye on the bookshelf next to the futon in the TV room during the State of the Union address. And I noticed the word and remembered that as a child I told myself to remember to say to others �I�m tired of your histrionics.� That was, I was convinced, the essence of the end of marriages. And the sort of thing a sophisticated woman would say. When I was 10, I thought the most sophisticated woman was Anouk Aim�e. I had the sound track to �Un Homme et Une Femme� and used to play it while, in the distance, I could hear my mother grow tired of someone�s histrionics. 11:09 p.m. - 2003-01-28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||