Novel Attempts

In the hopes of saving this blog from complete self-absorption and thirteen year old girl-style journalizing, I’ve decided it’s in desperate need of a theme. Unfortunately, there’s not very much I know enough about to effectively blog about.

I listen to music—but rarely anything new, and as Elvis Costello said, writing about music is like dancing about architecture. I read, but never enough. I’ve started watching movies on Netflix (you can now watch them instantly online! this is ruining my gpa), but I have no taste. Case in point: my “recently watched” list includes both Hal Ashby’s brilliantly satiric “Being There” and “Loverboy”, a 1989 Patrick Dempsey movie about a pizza boy who becomes a gigolo on the side. The kid’s gotta pay for college somehow…

Criticism, then, is out. I know nothing about pop culture. And I don’t have enough of a consistent interest in politics to go that route.

My original intent was to document my attempts at writing while being a pre-med student. It didn’t work out so well, on either front. I’ve been riding two boats for too long and now both of them seem to be sailing away before I’ve properly situated myself on either. So I’m left with a C in Organic Chemistry and a short story that has no plot, with characters that I find more annoying than compelling.

So here, I think, are my options:

- Start reading science articles and writing about them? This comes from my recent flirtation with geology and also my original intent for the now practically defunct Blue Notebooks blog.

- Have a conversation with someone new, every day. This could have possibility, but smacks of a Miranda July-esque project. I’m not all that interested in meeting someone new, every day.

- All Things Forgotten. I’m not entirely sure what this would consist of, but I’d imagine something along the lines of reviews of albums no one listens to anymore, ditto books and movies. This saves me from keeping up with the times. And potentially allows me to review I Capture the Castle, a very funny, very endearing novel by Dodie Smith of 101 Dalmations fame. Nobody’s read it, except J.K. Rowling, who graciously provided a blurb for the cover. It’s a really good book. Especially when you are a 17 year old girl. Or twenty-one.

- Write a song every day? Or weekly?

- Teach myself Hindi. Document. Would this be interesting? Would it happen? At the very least I’d post a lot of Youtube videos from old Bollywood movies.

- Re-reading books I loved as a child. But I do this practically every summer. The results are pretty much standard: Narnia stands the test of time, Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series does not. Except for The Grey King. That book is still awesome. Still, Susan Cooper’s best works are not in the Dark is Rising series. The first is The Boggart, the story of a boy genius who plays computer games all day and his sister, who together discover that they’ve inadvertently brought back a boggart, an ancient spirit, from Scotland to their home in Canada. The second, and my personal favorite, is The King of Shadows. It’s the best Shakespeare-derived young adult book I’ve read.

- Some kind of daily educational endeavor; i.e.: today I will learn how to crochet. This sounds boring right now, but hopefully I’ll come up with better lessons than crochet.

- Six degrees of Wikipedia.

- Stuff White People Don’t Like.

- Admit defeat, shut-down blog.

Suggestions are welcome. Does this blog allow me to post polls? I don’t know the ways of computers. I’m going to investigate.

EDIT: New possibility: an unending list of blog themes. This is like meta-blogging. Or really just me copying McSweeney’s.

Pardon the Russian, but it was all I could find on Youtube.

On Saturday, I was lucky enough to bicycle my way around Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands. The cliffs haven’t changed much. But now there are cars and tourists.

I was telling my friends how when I was younger, living in England, I found the country beautiful, but sad. The Aran Islands had that same bleak beauty. All this limestone shaped by the sea, smooth and desolate.

We walked up to what used to be a fort. I couldn’t really tell the walls apart from the outcroppings of stone. Reaching the highest cliff, we stretched out on the grass to look over the edge. There were some flat ledges sticking out, like open balconies. One had these round, shallow pools cut into the limestone, green with moss and algae.

The wind was strong. I threw a banana peel over the edge of the cliff. I hadn’t believed it would work, but it did just what we thought—like a helicopter, it began to spin, propelling itself upwards.

As we rode back to the ferry, the sun emerged and the wildflowers along the road became brighter. We saw some seals out in the water, with just their noses up.

When I was younger, I couldn’t imagine not being surrounded by trees and grass—the damp earthiness of moss and the scent of decaying flowers. From my window now, I can just make out the Hudson River, a tiny bit of blue framed by brown and grey apartment buildings.

* * *

In other news, I’m still working on that story. I had a dream about it, on the bus I took at 3:30 a.m. Ireland time. Turns out the high school girl’s really good at math.

a geologist!

I was just looking up courses to take next year and the descriptions of the Earth Science classes are bringing out the six-year old kid in me.

“Plate tectonics: origin and development of continents, landslides, volcanoes, diamonds, oil. Land-use planning for resource development and conservation.”

“Origin and development of the atmosphere and oceans, formation of winds, storms and ocean currents, reasons for changes through geologic time. Recent influence of human activity: the ozone hole, global warming, water pollution.”

I could take a lecture entitled simply “DINOSAURS.”

Or learn seismogram analysis!

When I was graduating, my ninth grade Earth Science teacher told me, “Now, I know your dad probably wants you to do medicine, but if you go into the sciences, you should really consider geology.”

I have vague dreams of wearing coveralls and using walkie talkies to discuss seismic activity.

Recorded at 6 am, post 5 hours of hosting two segments for WKCR’s Annual Country Festival.

Three hours on the duets of June Carter & Johnny Cash and two hours on Country-Rock will do this to anybody.

I started a short story yesterday. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything that felt like it was going somewhere. Problem-sets and television will do that to you. No, that’s not really true. It’s a choice.

I had all of last summer—the daily commute was well-suited to writing. But I spent those three hours of every day just staring out of the window. And when I got home, I found my familiar spot on the couch and watched Degrassi re-runs. What a waste.

Excerpts from what I’ve written so far:

Three days before Christmas wasn’t the best day to move, but they did it anyway. They’d been planning it for almost a year.

Nate suggested it first, towards the end of the spring semester. Anna was surprised. He was sitting at the table in the combined living-dining room; Anna was in the little kitchenette checking on the asparagus.

“What made you think of that?” she called out, sliding the tray back into the oven.
“Tonight, I guess,” he replied. “We’ve been getting—domestic.”

He emphasized the word, but not with the derision Anna would have expected. There was almost a wonder to it, this kind of pleased surprise. Domestic. Like an undiscovered land.

To celebrate the first night, they ordered pizza and opened a bottle of red wine. Sitting cross-legged on the carpet, facing each other, they giggled at the silence and cheered with their Styrofoam cups.
“To domesticity,” Anna said.

Afterwards, they had sex, surrounded by the unopened moving boxes. They were tired and a little drunk, their bodies moving languorously into familiar positions. The fluorescent light in the kitchen was still on, and he could see the purplish tinge from the wine on her teeth as she kissed him, working her way up and down his chest, his navel. He felt overly conscious of having noticed. She kept kissing him, varying the pressure of her teeth against his skin. He grabbed hold of her hair. It was too short, there wasn’t enough to get lost in. Her hands—he held one against his chest and brought the other to his mouth. Her nails were perfect. Coral pink ovals, a sensible length. He loved her hands. Their femininity always surprised him. She brought her face up to him, making it impossible not to look at her. Quietly, she said, “Tell me what you want me to do.” Her purple teeth suddenly seemed beautiful and he kissed her, closing his eyes and murmuring “Just this, nothing, just this.”

When the girl rang up the bill on the register, he realized he’d forgotten his wallet. In exaggerated disbelief, Nate emptied his pockets, checking his coat.
“Shit, I am so sorry. I left my wallet at home. I wasn’t driving and—”
“Oh,” she said, finally looking up at him. For a long moment she was quiet, caught off-guard. He had disrupted the steady rhythm of her morning, of every Saturday morning for the past two years. Even without cash, usually there was a debit card. Something. But this sleepy-eyed man was empty-handed.
“Oh,” she said again, softer.

Anyway, I’m thinking that he’ll have an affair (if you can call it that) with the high-school girl. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve never really written about young people in relationships. Mostly middle-aged husbands and wives, increasingly bored with themselves.

The story isn’t very good right now—the deli scene needs work (”a long moment”?)—but I’m trying to not care so much about that. It feels more important to just write it.

Ashraya

I think there’s something about constraint which lends itself to creativity. As if by defining our limitations we are better able to discover how to exceed them, break through them.

There are not words enough, or chords enough.

I write about the body, about food, trees. I like writing with the senses because I don’t have to explain as much. It is all suggestion.

I expected studying sciences to help me with this, in some way. But generally, I just solve problems, or copy the answers. I keep missing the moment of comprehension. It’s as if I’m using a language without actually knowing its meaning. Or rules.

And without those limitations—how will I know when I’ve exceeded them, broken through them?

or type it quietly in the library.

I have a paper to write, but I very much intend to write a full-length piece of fiction sometime in the near future (Spring Break, I’m looking at you!)

1. It was hard, sometimes, to look at her daughter.
2. Dilute seawater has the same mineral content as human plasma; perhaps it was this that drew her to the ocean, even in winter.
3. She had once believed in consequences.
4. Looking back, even her mistakes had proceeded with a kind of inexorable logic to this present moment.
5. Her father once told her, “Even an amoeba has a will to survive.”
6. It was too late; she had missed the sunset.
7. Even an amoeba has a will to survive.
8. She probably should have driven, but there was a pleasure in the winter air, the ocean waves.
9. It was time to return home.
10. Her life would be a heartwarming story, given the right audience.
11. The beach was empty; it was far too late in the year to be standing by the water in only a pullover fleece.
12. The day she bought fresh tomatoes, not canned—was that the moment of transition from wayward youth to settled adulthood?
13. More than a sentence:

No more dreams deferred. Only songs and stories half-started, and schoolwork never finished.

Ashraya

The post-India glow resulted in a sum total of three hours spent almost learning the Devanagari script. In addition to that, there’s the stack of comics on my bookshelf, as yet untouched.

Other Ways in Which I Have Failed with the Follow-Through:

• A post-it above my laptop reads “St. Luke’s! FEB 5th” [extracurriculars and work experience are an integral part of your application]
• My laundry bag is overflowing and torn, and dangerously situated next to the radiator [perhaps tomorrow, clean clothes and/or fire]
• Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas and Other Papers is comfortably sitting on top of a copy of The Death and Life of Great American Cities towards the back of my desk [some major confusion]

I’ve been not doing many things, mostly because I’ve been busy not not doing other things. But the worst of it is writing. I haven’t written a story since last year. No poems. Barely a scribble in a notebook. This much I ought to change.

With only good intentions,

Ashraya

Last Friday, we arrived at J.F.K. International Airport almost three hours late. Our plane circled around in the sky, waiting for the bad weather to clear. A few years back, I wrote a short story that began with something like that.

This is what I learned in India:

• My grandfather began his career by teaching philosophy for perhaps a month, quitting when faced with the idea of teaching according to a curriculum, and instead undertaking the job of managing the college hostel.
• While the rest of the country won its independence from Britain in 1947, Goa, India’s smallest state, continued as a Portuguese colony until 1961. To respectfully call a waiter, one still says “patrão,” Portuguese for boss or proprietor.
• There are two saints by the name of Francis: St. Francis of Assisi, whose birthplace I saw in Italy, and St. Francis Xavier, whose preserved body I saw in Goa. He is missing a toe, supposedly bitten off by a Catholic set on making sure the body was real.
• The Sanskrit word for a letter of the alphabet is “akshara,” meaning endless, or perhaps more precisely, timeless. Something that endures. While the language may change, its symbols are lasting.

Perhaps all of these lessons together, or perhaps simply the fact that I have always held this intention, have made me decide to finally learn how to read and speak Hindi. I’ve spent too long half-comprehending.

So this will be my experiment—an immersion in an India which hardly exists anymore. In our basement, I found all these old comics and books for children. I’ll read them. I’ll watch old Hindi movies. I’ll listen to the film songs that still resonant somewhere in my memory. I’ll surely wind up being some sort of anachronism, but if that’s what it takes to have one conversation with my grandfather, it will be worth it.

My Portuguese-bred aunt
picked up a clay Shivalingam
one day and said:
Is this an ashtray?
No, said the salesman,
This is our god.

Eunice de Souza, “Conversation Piece”

Tags: Goa, Hindi, India, Language, poetry, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Travel