impatience of the sky

i am reading julius caesar with my students and while it is not my favorite shakespeare play, there are some beautiful lines in it, including the phrase i used as the title of this blog. and which will become the title of a short story.

speaking of short stories - in my pathetic attempt at a segue - i had "rhinos" rejected by the New Yorker, no surprise there, and by Glimmertrain WITH a nice note of regret. will try other places. i have a story out to Zoetrope, and need to get back to sending others. i found/unearthed a whole passel of stories and three of them, with some revision, could be viable. another task. why can't stories just spring from my brain onto the page without the intermediate step of typing them? ah, then we could all be great!

regarding the world outside my own head: i am thrilled beyond measure that so many young people in Oxnard have honored the 15 year old boy shot for being gay, with memorials and flowers and in all kinds of ways. that's a huge outpouring of compassion. and the best part is, the kids are doing all this on their own, without adults creating the circumstances for them.

Man of La Mancha

the school's drama class did man of la mancha today and it was quite fabulous. i have never seen this musical and didn't realize what a great story it is. i like the frame story - Cervantes in prison telling the story to the prisoners. soooo, i need to work on my own novel that is a frame story - a music journalist writing about a rock group, but it's really the story of the group and not about the journalist....

i am rooting for obama, and i can make an easy connection between him and don quixote. not that he is tilting at windmills but that he sees the world for what it can be.

this is a weak post! perhaps because the superbowl is on and i'm half watching and not really writing. so i'll post this anyway and watch the superbowl and write something better another night. maybe i'll wait and see what happens on election night.

The Pixies

how could i have missed this band? what happened to me way back then that i didn't hear them? they are so cool. i only decided to listen to them because so many new bands cite them as an influence. somehow, i thought they were the same as that other jam band (not gateful dead, the more current one.....the one whose name i can't remember right now). but they aren't - i can see their influence on Weezer, Nirvana, Radiohead, Arcade Fire, and many more.

jeez... what else did i miss?

Death and the new year

(photo: cemetary in Kyoto, Japan. August 2007)

this is how to start the new year - thinking about death. i am working on a novel about six people, all of whom had a loved one die in some way that was distressing (more so than a normal death). what a fun time i have writing this! jeez. i keep Radiohead's song, Videotape, in mind. listen to it. a sweet, sorrowful love song about one's own death. in typical radiohead fashion, it is both depressing and redemptive at the same time.

on itunes right now: Juliet Turner - an Irish folksinger - singing the britney spears hit, Toxic.

huh?

and . . . this is not a door?

too much reading?

is there such a thing? no. however, i am reading a lot of books, one right after another, these days.

so i recommend Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje. it's a strangely plotted book that is beautifully, poetically written. the kind of book that i find myself marking passages in and coming back to later to re-read. then read them aloud to my husband. and then to my fellow english teachers. and then again to myself. there is a great line about Victor Hugo except i can't quote it because i have lent the book to a friend.

in a different vein, i am reading The Monsters, which is about Mary Shelley and Percy, and Lord Byron and Claire and Polidori who were all in Geneva together on a dark and stormy night which gave birth to Frankenstein. and lots of other stuff too. i have not read much (or anything) about the Romantics - a missed part of my education - so i am enthralled with these hedonists and free-thinkers and especially Byron as the first rock star/celebrity.

music recommendation: get on itunes and type in "even better than the real things." be sure to make "things" a plural. it turns out to be 3 albums that come out of an Irish radio station. they invite Irish folk-ish singers on the show to sing pop songs but in their own style. there is a britney spears song that is just an absolutely beautiful song when sung by Glen Hansard (currently become famous in the movie Once).

enough recommendations. back to reading!

two months later

it was in rainbows that did it to me! and teaching.....

did you listen to in rainbows? isn't it fabulous? the typical radiohead songs that sound good. then sound better. then sound great. they take a while to grow on you, but when they do, they are just stunning. i love Nude. i love Videotape. and Reckoner. and Faust Arp - oh i do love Faust Arp. and 15 step and Bodysnatchers. i'm leaving some out, wait.... oh yeah, i love Jigsaw and also All I Need. and House of Cards. and then Weird Fishes. i want to start a band and call it Weird Fishes.

so i will try to stop listening to music, and stop drowning in teacherly duties and come back here to rant some more....

(thanks, Tim, for the kick in the butt!)

japanese politeness

this photo? just a poor parking lot guy who has to sit in 100 degree heat and 100 percent humidity to make sure people park their cars in the appropriate place.

well, they are very polite. there is lots of bowing. the ladies in the department store bow as you walk past the different departments. the men who take tickets on the train bow everytime they leave the train car to go to the next one. at restaurants, everyone bows. the three of us had to refrain from bowing on our return to LA. that and saying, "Arrigato" and "Hi!" (not the hello kind of hi).

the police, i promised a story about police. we went to an art opening in a little gallery that was situated in a residential area (but all of Tokyo seems mixed together). about six of us were on the outside patio talking in regular voices. about 25 more people were inside the room talking in regular voices. the police showed up - three of them all on bikes. they chatted in very very quiet voices with the gallery owner. after they rode off (silently) the gallery owner asked us to come inside, and then she also closed the outer wooden doors over the glass doors, so that the noise inside would be contained. seems that a neighbor complained about the "noise." oh, and the important part of this story? this was at 7:30 in the evening. Not midnight, not 2 a.m. No, the opening was to run from 6 to 8, and we couldn't go that last half-hour without causing a disturbance.

okay, so that is a little TOO polite for a society i'd want to live in.

but really, we had a great time. more to come.

kyoto

Well, let me say that everyone told me how beautiful Kyoto is, and when i first got there, i thought what the hell are these people talking about? Kyoto's beauty actually takes some time to see because at first it just looks like a crowded city. However, once i got to Tokyo i REALLY realized why Kyoto is beautiful. It has trees!

But more than that. We saw the golden temple which is gold-leafed, three stories and sits in a small lake which reflects it beautifully. We saw several other temples, all beautiful in their own ways. But my fave part of Kyoto was this long narrow - very narrow - street that runs along the riverside. there is a tumultuous mix of restaurants piled one on top of the other, with narrow doorways and dark wood and curtains and signs with no english at all, and even narrower alleys leading off to other restaurants and every so often a woman in geisha-wear appears. the "street" is crowded with people. and from what i understand, some (many) of the restaurants don't want english-speakers to come in. they just want japanese speakers and so that's why there is no english in their signage.

from this street we crossed a bridge and trudged through a prostitute section (not sleazy, rather high class actually, but definitely prostitutes). we left that bright and gaudy area and went down a hushed, dark street that paralleled a canal. on the opposite side of the canal were three-story buildings and they were lit up, so we could see in every room. it was wonderful, like a multi-level play. in each room were two to six people sitting and eating and being waited on by geishas (in some of them, anyway). like watching a movie - very lovely.

we were sad to leave kyoto after five days there, but tokyo awaited. and it scared us - the big city loomed like an impenetrable miasma of haphazard buildings and streets.

new license plate