noonecaresaboutyournovel

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

Parting words for 2016

From Jim Harrison, at the beginning of 2016, back when he was alive, from his last book Dead Man’s Float

My work piles up, I falter with disease. Time rushes toward me—it has no brakes. Still, the radishes are good this year. Run them through butter, add a little salt.

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

Use your medium to its fullest.

Create startling images.

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

Write about taking a walk

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

I wrote a book! It took many years! It’s available for pre-order! Happy November!

Pre-order this pretty baby here: http://www.curbsidesplendor.com/books/infinite-things-all-at-once

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

I’ve been feeling nostalgic

which is sappy as fuck, but also painful and not really pleasant.

I put on some Enya tonight to soothe my toddler to sleep because I am sick as hell of Raffi and even Enya is better than that shit, and then, after the little angel went snoozies, I came back downstairs and heard this riff from The Fugees on THE SCORE, which has become a permanent part of my DNA based on my history with this album. And I was like what in the serious FUCK? They sampled Enya!? Amazing.

So then, of course, I had to listen to The Score with all the lights off as the sun was going down, and drink white wine, and remember 1996 and freshmen year of college, one of the worst years ever, and how this album was a soundtrack for that year, along with many other indelible albums, many of them not of my choosing (in fact, of my hating) but which now I love. So here’s a list, because: nostalgia. I think I’m starting my midlife crisis.

Albums

The Score, Fugees Ill Na Na, Foxy Brown Under The Table & Dreaming, Dave Matthews Band every fucking Madonna & Prince album

Songs

Blister In The Sun, Violent Femmes Nobody, Keith Sweat stuff by Nas, En Vogue, Bone Thugs & Harmony (so bad!). Fall 1996 I went to this concert in Baltimore called the “Back To School Jam” and it was AMAZING. Keith Sweat was beyond good. His last song involved him taking a woman from the audience up to a circular, rotating bed surrounded by smoke and the two of them descending into the floor, on the bed, as he dry humped her.

I also remember Wu Tang being hot in the fall of 1996, and TuPac, because he got killed, and just...Dave Matthews. Always. Playing. Preppy white kids in flip flops and J. Crew shorts and polo shirts playing Dave fucking Matthews and me growing rageful in my 9th floor dorm room, thinking about how my 2 roommates would automatically be granted straight As if I threw myself out the window, which we joked only I could fit myself out of since it was supposed to be suicide-proof but I was super skinny and could squeeze myself through despite its precautionary measures. This was, like, the second week of school. I hated it.

If you are still reading this, I have no idea why.

When I was a freshman, I thought I was going to be a doctor and rich and live on the East Coast. But really I knew I wouldn’t be a doctor. Some part of me knew. I thought I would marry a rich guy and live on the East Coast, New York probably, and would transcend my upbringing. But instead I live in Iowa and have backyard chickens and today I bought 2 vintage gingham dresses, so fuck. Sorry 17-year old Rachel. Shit wound up sort of the way it was always destined to wind up.

Thus: midlife crisis.

Thanks for your time. I’m going to see the sun down behind the trees and drink some white wine and tend to those chickens now.

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

This mini, BIG PUSSY, by Gina Wynbrandt is everything I've ever wanted to read: weed, living with mom, adult pigtails, trying to be tough, sketchy cat mentors, etcetera. Highly recommend. Available here: http://2dcloud.com/big-pussy

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

Save Us From This Living Death

Here’s a prayer written by my dad, who also writes “I am not a good public pray-er.” Paul, Clara, and Henry are his siblings and a brother-in-law who all died last year.

Dad, thank you for teaching me how to grow old & how, one day, to die. I love you.

Lord of Death and Lord of life, we live as if we will not die and, so living, live deadly lives. Save us from this living death by implanting us into your kingdom of life. Infuse our lives with the joy of your spirit.  As people of the kingdom of life, we name now those recent dead to your care - Paul, Clara, Henry. We look forward to the fellowship of the saints and pray for those dear friends to sustain us for the facing down of the kingdom of death.  Amen.

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

"It didn’t occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret. That’s how one has to write anyway - in secret." ― Louise Erdrich

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17% of cardiac surgeons are women, 17% of tenured professors are women. It just goes on and on. And isn’t that strange that that’s also the percentage of women in crowd scenes in movies? What if we’re actually training people to see that ratio as normal so that when you’re an adult, you don’t notice? …We just heard a fascinating and disturbing study where they looked at the ratio of men and women in groups. And they found that if there’s 17% women, the men in the group think it’s 50-50. And if there’s 33% women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.

Source: NPR: Hollywood Needs More Women

Seriously, go listen to this.

(via josette-arnauld)

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

I too am obsessed with Sophie Calle, and for good reason. Check out her work. It's intriguing and thought provoking and original and brilliant.

Women’s History Month is an opportunity to step back and reflect on the patient fortitude of women whose once-relegated role as ‘observers’ has bred generations of brilliant storytellers. Over at Signature, Nathan Gelgud illustrates the influence of twelve indomitable female authors, their books, and the literary links between them.

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

I’ve only ever read two stories that have made me cry, and they have both been from this book, The Unreal and The Real (Vol 2) by Ursula le Guin. 

Here’s a passage from “Solitude,” which made me have a weird cry, but a cry nonetheless. le Guin is a holy mother, mage, deity as far as I’m concerned. She is required reading for all women, all girls. I wish I had known these stories when I was 14. They might have saved me so much trouble. Anyway, the passage:

“By solitude the soul escapes from doing or suffering magic; it escapes from dullness, from boredom, by being aware. Nothing is boring if you are aware of it. It may be irritating, but it is not boring. If it is pleasant the pleasure will not fail so long as you are aware of it.Being aware is the hardest work a soul can do, I think.”

And now it’s nearly midnight and I’m going to be a wreck of a mother-person tomorrow (sorry, Cohen), but it was worth it to stay up and read this story. It’s been a long time since I’ve read and not noticed the passage of time.

The other story in this book during which I wept was “The Shobies’ Story.” It’s about the power of stories, and storytelling, and community, and reality. It’s fucking brilliant and I cried because it reminded me of why I first loved reading and writing, and because it was such a truly genius story, so unpretentious and true and good in a way that is as refreshing as spring rain.

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein

I finished this one last week, and it returned to mind last night. “That must have been fun as hell to write,” I thought. I imagined Elena Ferrante (whoever she may be), making an outline for this book (or perhaps holding the whole thing in her head at once), and then filling it out, chapter by chapter, and just nailing it. And nailing it. And nailing it. This book is a triumph.

It’s a good dream. A good world to live in.

A while ago on facebook, someone who works at a small press was reacting to Lauren Groff getting so much publicity for her latest book, Fates and Furies. It was doing quite well and even the President lavished it with praise. But this guy struck out. He said he needed more from literature than just conventional novels like Groff and Ferrante make. Then he listed the people he thought were real and true and edgy and pushing the envelope or whatever the fuck he wanted. They were conveniently all men. One had won the Nobel Prize in Literature (he was really digging out some under-praised writers there).

But he forgot that reading a novel is itself unconventional. It is itself edgy. It is itself against whatever the television, the school system, the police, the corporations, and the government are selling. The meditative daydream of a novel is a powerful antidote (unless of course it has been simplified for children and stamped with the Texas schoolboard seal approving it as safe for faithful households.) It is even moreso true when it comes to a novel, by which I mean a world, that was created by a woman. So give me one Ferrante for a thousand Franzens. And one Groff and one Le Guin for a million Vonneguts. (But please, Lord Jesus, send a million Ferrantes.)

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

Just thinkin’ about being a mom and stuff. xoxo

And hey--if my part in Creation had been dismissed, I’d be eatin’ the world’s dick with my yoni, too.

“Kali Ma, called the ‘Dark Mother,’ is the Hindu goddess of creation, preservation, and destruction. She is especially known in her Destroyer aspect, squatting over her dead consort, Shiva, devouring his entrails while her yoni sexually devours his lingam, penis.”

“Current psychologists face this image with an uneasy acknowledgement of its power.”

“The full importance of the profound meaning of the functions of Kali as the live-giver, preserver, and destroyer have been dismissed or destroyed over the centuries, as have been the aspects of other manifestations of the goddess. Many western interpretations of Kali in art and literature just depict the destructive aspect of this goddess, which tend to portray her as fearsome and evil. In the London Museum is an image of her which is labeled "Kali-Destroying Demon." The Encyclopedia Britannica devotes five columns to the Christian interpretation of the Logos and dismisses Kali's part in the creation of the world.”

originally found here

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

What's Been Going On: An Essay

Yesterday I didn't wear a bra for the entire day. Today I remembered I can wash my hair without taking a full shower. GAME CHANGER. My toenail fell off & I took a video of it. The cat has smelled like poop all week. That's all.

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

INTO IT.

our FEBRUARY #SPDHANDPICKED is all about DIFFICULTY this month, which though maybe not the most cheerful, can certainly be an important catalyst for chance, opportunity, even beauty - getting through it, living with it, what happens when we let it in.

Above: How’s Everything Going? Not Good. / Jon-Michael Frank (Ohio Edit)

20% off all month with code HANDPICKED. 

[noonecaresaboutyournovel]

I just want to write four books before I die. For real. And yes: I worry all the time about never writing again. Most of my writer peers write like it’s a daily they’re producing. I write like it’s an organ I’m pulling out of myself. I wish I could do what they do. But you can only be yourself. And for me that means being a dedicated writer who can only write a book a decade if I’m lucky.

Junot Díaz, from his conversation with Edwidge Danticat in BOMB 101. (via bombmagazine)

Thanks for saying writing is hard, Junot.