Students at Dekalb County's Emory University Heave a Collective but Temporary Sigh...
...as Ms. Michelle is sequestered from society at least until Friday! The quads outside the business school at Emory are once again full; the lounge and locker room full of their former bustling activity. What next week holds, when the batcrazy gal from Vidalia returns to the campus, no one can predict. "Does she have the swine flu?" one student was caught in the halls whispering to another. "Perhaps it's dementia," a clever boy suggested aloud to his statistics class. The professor's reported response: "It seems to be simple influenza, but, well, I mean, she went to UGA...let's just hope she's not mixed up with that TB asshole." The faculty and administration at Emory have confirmed that there will be a trauma counselor available at the business school on Tuesday - after the Labor Day weekend - for any student who feels unsettled, or worse, by the return of Ms. Michelle to the MBA program. That's a good start, but what about after Tuesday? Who will assuage the impact of her presence then?
Students in the Emory University MBA program, alumni of the University of Georgia School of Law and Vidalia Senior High School, and members of the Delta Delta Delta sorority contributed to this article.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Art
From the PostSecret July 5 09:
The trick isn't to make something others can relate to; but to allow others to witness what is in fact, a highly private moment.
The trick isn't to make something others can relate to; but to allow others to witness what is in fact, a highly private moment.
Friday, June 12, 2009
did they even have stormwear on blackacre?
In an attempto live more blackacreishly, just fyi, I have stopped checking the weather. I never did until college and living around people who did. No more weather checking for me, which means no more raincoats, no more umbrellas, unless it is actually raining, or imminently clear that it's about to rain, when I leave the house or office. Where, of course, I've stored the several raincoats and umbrellas I've accumulated in my years of haphazardly forgetting to check the weather and found myself in need of a sidewalk salesman, GAP corner store, Norwegian market, what have you. It's nice out right now, but it seems like it might rain. Not enough that I've brought a raincoat or an umbrella, even given the downpours of late here in our nation's fine (cocaine laced, HIV plagued) capital. TGIF and Happy Pride. Breathe.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
ambiguous elliot perlman
91. Why did you confine me to solitary confinement, Anna? If my thoughts,my feelings, never get any fresh air, if they stay locked up in that dull, plodding, thick head that I have to lug around everywhere, how is it any different from solitary confinement? How did you do it, Anna? How did you manage to co-opt Angelique?
130. Some nights I can't bear to be so alone. This was one of them. You get to a certain age and you realize that you have been spending your working years on life support being transfused against loneliness and only pretending to be alive. And already too drunk to drive, you drive to a bar where no one knows you, so that you can listen in on the other people who don't have to be there alone. All this can happen in your hometown. It can happen to anyone.
160. No one ever told me that deep sadness feels so much like fear.
170. For William, being depressed was egocentric, self-indulgent, weak, and most important, it was spiteful.
177. You learn early from experience that a boyfriend will often want sex when you don't. And it doesn't even take a boyfriend. It can be someone you met in a bar or at a party, the territory of the one-night stand. You want to meet new people, to be admired. You feel relaxed after a few drinks. Then you suddenly find yourself somewhere thinking, I don't really want to go through with this, no anymore, but it's easier to go through with it than to back out. So you go through the motions. You pay lip service to the act. You don't need to be a prostitute for this to happen. The only difference is that we take money for it up front. If everyone knew how easy it really is, after the first couple of times anyway, we'd earn less than waitresses.
192. "You've got to watch those cliches because when the chips are down and the devil's in the detail, the grass is always greener on the other side."
193. There are an infinite number of ways to bring about the damage to a child that is connoted by the term broken home. A full house with two parents can rob you of comfort, stability, and self-esteem as fast and as surely as a crowd can rob you of company.
197. There are lines we cross, all of them pregnant with consequences.
201. Just like a verbal expression, a relationship between two people is ambiguous if it is open to different interpretations, but unlike most words, most relationships are seriously ambiguous. If two people have different views, not simply about the state of their relationship, but about its very nature, then that can affect the entire course of their lives.
202. Our capacity to come up with great ideas is exceeded only by our capacity to run them, to destroy what is good in them, to poison them, by taking them to extremes.
275.
357. How many people around the world who have not yet fallen off of Alex's graph are eating dinner night after night on their own? There are the divorced. They are the widows and widowers, of course. We think of them as old. They are not all old, but even those who are - are they in some way meant to eat dinner each night on their own? Do they deserve it? Have they earned it? How many nights must you spend alone for every night you were not on your own?
358. You will find yourself drinking alcohol dangerously, without any pretext. Some people drink to celebrate, others to unwind after work, others to lubricate social intercourse. This is not anymore why you drink or why you drink so much more than at any other time in your life. At first, you drink because it's one of the last things that they, the others, the still-functioning, socially participating others do that you can do. Maybe you drink for the taste. Then you drink as a dare. You dare yourself to have another one when it isn't really appropriate, to see whether anyone will notice. But there isn't ever anyone to notice, and you drink upon realization of this. Then you drink to see if you can get from 2:17 p.m. to 3:55 p.m. without noticing the time, without feeling it. The idea of slicing a tomato when you've reached this stage is completely out of the question.
362. You don't need to be seeing someone to be in love with her. You can have lost touch with her, she can have hurt you, even inexplicably. If you ever felt that you really knew her and that it was once what you knew that you loved, and if you still remember what it was you once knew, why is it so crazy to retain that love still?
432. "When people say, 'We were students then,' I'm never sure whether they're attempting to excuse the way they were then or the way they are now. "
455. Ultimately, for all the expert criticism in the world, the test of something as subjective as music or literature or even a relationship is, as E.M. Forster put it, our affection for it. That is why you are apt to get upset when somebody you care about does not share your taste in music or movies or literature.
465. I can understand that now: momentarily losing one's mind. I am even learning to sympathize with it. How hypocritical is it for someone to claim to be perplexed by someone else's momentary loss of himself, when you, yourself, might be said to have lost you mind not for a moment, but for years, not so much lost your mind as lost something else, the name of which is not immediately apparent - call it your "character."
584. I say my friend. I'd like to think that we were friends but who ever knows what people are to each other, right?
586.
604. Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
From Yehuda Amichai:
130. Some nights I can't bear to be so alone. This was one of them. You get to a certain age and you realize that you have been spending your working years on life support being transfused against loneliness and only pretending to be alive. And already too drunk to drive, you drive to a bar where no one knows you, so that you can listen in on the other people who don't have to be there alone. All this can happen in your hometown. It can happen to anyone.
160. No one ever told me that deep sadness feels so much like fear.
170. For William, being depressed was egocentric, self-indulgent, weak, and most important, it was spiteful.
177. You learn early from experience that a boyfriend will often want sex when you don't. And it doesn't even take a boyfriend. It can be someone you met in a bar or at a party, the territory of the one-night stand. You want to meet new people, to be admired. You feel relaxed after a few drinks. Then you suddenly find yourself somewhere thinking, I don't really want to go through with this, no anymore, but it's easier to go through with it than to back out. So you go through the motions. You pay lip service to the act. You don't need to be a prostitute for this to happen. The only difference is that we take money for it up front. If everyone knew how easy it really is, after the first couple of times anyway, we'd earn less than waitresses.
192. "You've got to watch those cliches because when the chips are down and the devil's in the detail, the grass is always greener on the other side."
193. There are an infinite number of ways to bring about the damage to a child that is connoted by the term broken home. A full house with two parents can rob you of comfort, stability, and self-esteem as fast and as surely as a crowd can rob you of company.
197. There are lines we cross, all of them pregnant with consequences.
201. Just like a verbal expression, a relationship between two people is ambiguous if it is open to different interpretations, but unlike most words, most relationships are seriously ambiguous. If two people have different views, not simply about the state of their relationship, but about its very nature, then that can affect the entire course of their lives.
202. Our capacity to come up with great ideas is exceeded only by our capacity to run them, to destroy what is good in them, to poison them, by taking them to extremes.
275.
"So why do you hate them?"
"I don't hate them. I hated him. I know that you'll say hate is a stupid word."
"Do you think it's a stupid word, or do you think I'm going to tell you it's a stupid word?"
"I think questions like that are stupid. I don't know how any remotely intelligent person can think questions like that can be beneficial to somebody's mental health, and I fucking hate it when you ask them. You charge for this. It's unbelievable."
357. How many people around the world who have not yet fallen off of Alex's graph are eating dinner night after night on their own? There are the divorced. They are the widows and widowers, of course. We think of them as old. They are not all old, but even those who are - are they in some way meant to eat dinner each night on their own? Do they deserve it? Have they earned it? How many nights must you spend alone for every night you were not on your own?
358. You will find yourself drinking alcohol dangerously, without any pretext. Some people drink to celebrate, others to unwind after work, others to lubricate social intercourse. This is not anymore why you drink or why you drink so much more than at any other time in your life. At first, you drink because it's one of the last things that they, the others, the still-functioning, socially participating others do that you can do. Maybe you drink for the taste. Then you drink as a dare. You dare yourself to have another one when it isn't really appropriate, to see whether anyone will notice. But there isn't ever anyone to notice, and you drink upon realization of this. Then you drink to see if you can get from 2:17 p.m. to 3:55 p.m. without noticing the time, without feeling it. The idea of slicing a tomato when you've reached this stage is completely out of the question.
362. You don't need to be seeing someone to be in love with her. You can have lost touch with her, she can have hurt you, even inexplicably. If you ever felt that you really knew her and that it was once what you knew that you loved, and if you still remember what it was you once knew, why is it so crazy to retain that love still?
432. "When people say, 'We were students then,' I'm never sure whether they're attempting to excuse the way they were then or the way they are now. "
455. Ultimately, for all the expert criticism in the world, the test of something as subjective as music or literature or even a relationship is, as E.M. Forster put it, our affection for it. That is why you are apt to get upset when somebody you care about does not share your taste in music or movies or literature.
465. I can understand that now: momentarily losing one's mind. I am even learning to sympathize with it. How hypocritical is it for someone to claim to be perplexed by someone else's momentary loss of himself, when you, yourself, might be said to have lost you mind not for a moment, but for years, not so much lost your mind as lost something else, the name of which is not immediately apparent - call it your "character."
584. I say my friend. I'd like to think that we were friends but who ever knows what people are to each other, right?
586.
"No, no. He knew that I knew...or suspected."
"Suspected that you knew?"
"Knew that I suspected."
604. Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
From Yehuda Amichai:
God has pity on kindergarten children.
He has less pity on school children.
And on grownups he has no pity at all,
he leaves them alone
and sometimes they must crawl on all fours...
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Bona Drag Cat's Out the Bag
Thanks, as always, to Morrissey for the following:
Such a little thing
Such a little thing
But the difference it made was grave
There you go
Wielding a bicycle chain
Oh, why won't you change ?
Change and be nicer ?
Such a little thing
A gentle tone of kindness
Or written words on paper - can you write ?
How I love all of
The very simple things of life
(God's good air)
How I love all of
The very simple things of life
Such a little thing
A fumbling politeness
The difference saved me
Wielding a bicycle chain
Why won't you change ?
"I WILL NOT CHANGE AND I WILL NOT BE NICE"
Most peole keep their brains
Between their legs (Don't you find ?)
Leave me alone - I was only singing
Leave me alone because
I was only singing
Leave me alone - I was only singing
Leave me alone
You have just proved (again)
Most people keep their brains between their legs
Such a little thing
Such a little thing
But the difference it made was grave
There you go
Wielding a bicycle chain
Oh, why won't you change ?
Change and be nicer ?
Such a little thing
A gentle tone of kindness
Or written words on paper - can you write ?
How I love all of
The very simple things of life
(God's good air)
How I love all of
The very simple things of life
Such a little thing
A fumbling politeness
The difference saved me
Wielding a bicycle chain
Why won't you change ?
"I WILL NOT CHANGE AND I WILL NOT BE NICE"
Most peole keep their brains
Between their legs (Don't you find ?)
Leave me alone - I was only singing
Leave me alone because
I was only singing
Leave me alone - I was only singing
Leave me alone
You have just proved (again)
Most people keep their brains between their legs
Monday, May 4, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Poetry 101
If you asked me, "hey, do you like poetry?," I would probably say "no, not really," and go on to bore you by explaining how I prefer reading Actual Books to silly little haikus and how it was So annoying of them to make us English majors take all those poetry classes at UNC. But. Like most everyone else, I am a sucker for rock and roll, and, more to the point, rock and roll Lyrics, hell even country Lyrics. Like certain types of good poetry, good song lyrics simultaneously tell their own story and allow the listener to feel as if its his story being told. Maybe it's that I don't find the plain written word as moving without musical accompaniment....I don't think I'd find Oh Holy Night nearly as powerful if it was just written verse. Anyway. Since you asked and all.
The lyrics below weren't even written by Elton John, but he sure as hell sings them like they were. Which somehow seems to precisely illustrate the above. This is a sad song, kind of....I guess it depends on whose perspective you look at it from. I can feel it as the boy and and as the vodka soused wretch he leaves. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, indeed.............
(Oh, and a bizarre reference to the horny back toad never hurts.)
When are you gonna come down
When are you going to land
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man
You know you can't hold me forever
I didn't sign up with you
I'm not a present for your friends to open
This boy's too young to be singing the blues
So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough
Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road
What do you think you'll do then
I bet that'll shoot down your plane
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again
Maybe you'll get a replacement
There's plenty like me to be found
Mongrels who ain't got a penny
Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground
The lyrics below weren't even written by Elton John, but he sure as hell sings them like they were. Which somehow seems to precisely illustrate the above. This is a sad song, kind of....I guess it depends on whose perspective you look at it from. I can feel it as the boy and and as the vodka soused wretch he leaves. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, indeed.............
(Oh, and a bizarre reference to the horny back toad never hurts.)
When are you gonna come down
When are you going to land
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man
You know you can't hold me forever
I didn't sign up with you
I'm not a present for your friends to open
This boy's too young to be singing the blues
So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough
Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road
What do you think you'll do then
I bet that'll shoot down your plane
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again
Maybe you'll get a replacement
There's plenty like me to be found
Mongrels who ain't got a penny
Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
The Lilac Linen smell from the catalogue spray has pretty much worn out of the comforters and blankets and sheets and things. Her nice face soap has eroded and all but floated down the drain. My friends and I packed up everything she (intentionally?) left and mailed it to her dad. I've got one last package of mail and dry cleaning that I guess I'll mail down next week. Everything else that's popped up - except for the happy things I am going to keep - from broccoli soup to makeup, I've thrown it all away. I am watering the plants. They qualify as among the few happy things resulting from this fiasco towards which I am aiming to afford positive energy. Plants bring joy and life to a place, ya know?
The cat is finally, finally (hopefully) back to normal. She has started meowing a lot, which is kind of weird, unless you consider the suggestion that she might have some things to get off her chest. She is just a cat....but she has some pretty legitimate grievances to air, I suppose. We went through some shit. Lucy infiltrated our previously calm world.......with a sky whose hue would shift as her constantly warring emotional poles insisted.....with poor Mr. Baby and the clueless fawning men....with the endless parade of jewelry, Jimmy Choo shoes, Jaeger shots, en vino veritas, la cocaina, and so on and so on and so on to the tune of the ceaseless goddamn hubabaloo.
Lucy's fantastical dreams and maniacal demands sadly (or happily in her mind?) simultaneously interrupt and define her life. She is at once beautiful and terrifying, kind and cruel, inspiring and demoralizing. It was 3 weeks ago yesterday that I forced her, physically and emotionally, to leave my home. It was one of the most, if not the most, difficult things I've ever done. It was the right thing to do. I miss her so fucking much I can't swallow without choking.
The cat is finally, finally (hopefully) back to normal. She has started meowing a lot, which is kind of weird, unless you consider the suggestion that she might have some things to get off her chest. She is just a cat....but she has some pretty legitimate grievances to air, I suppose. We went through some shit. Lucy infiltrated our previously calm world.......with a sky whose hue would shift as her constantly warring emotional poles insisted.....with poor Mr. Baby and the clueless fawning men....with the endless parade of jewelry, Jimmy Choo shoes, Jaeger shots, en vino veritas, la cocaina, and so on and so on and so on to the tune of the ceaseless goddamn hubabaloo.
Lucy's fantastical dreams and maniacal demands sadly (or happily in her mind?) simultaneously interrupt and define her life. She is at once beautiful and terrifying, kind and cruel, inspiring and demoralizing. It was 3 weeks ago yesterday that I forced her, physically and emotionally, to leave my home. It was one of the most, if not the most, difficult things I've ever done. It was the right thing to do. I miss her so fucking much I can't swallow without choking.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Notebooks
I think (I know) it's good for me to write this way. I used to when I was younger, always did....I guess I stopped with the chaos of college and thereafter. I kept it all, of course, have several boxes full of scrawled journals scattered throughout the apartment. Some entries are more legible than others, some more meaningful, some more scary. So, in addition to simply wanting to see how it worked, I think I started playing with this blog as a writing effort, an on the side, perhaps healthy distraction from writing minutes and whatever else it is I do all day. Maybe one day I really can move to San Francisco and take Cary Tennis's and Dave Eggers's workshops, and maybe maybe even go to Oaksterdam University. It certainly can't hurt to have dreams. I don't think....
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Donna gave me a stepping stone...
...and Dr. Cooper says I'm not dying. Not dying yet, anyway, or any faster than anyone else, at the moment. So that's all good, I suppose, despite the trauma suffered in order to obtain said good news from Dr. Cooper as well as Dr. Marzo's stepping stone.
She gave it to me from her own collection, which made me cry even harder than I already had been. It's a smooth and nicely worn stone that fits quite calmly, safely, patiently in the palm of my hand. Which is where I want to keep it, but I'm afraid I'll lose it. Plus, Donna said I should put it on my desk to remind me. So that's where I've set it, here in between the Smurf from my brother and the soccer stress ball from Maureen....I've set it here on my desk to remind me. I appreciate this stone more than any gift anyone has given me in a long time. And while they were arguably more important, in an immediate physical sense, Dr. Cooper's X-rays stayed at his office.
After tossing and turning all night last night, I woke up with Natalie Merchant in my head. She and the 10,000 Maniacs say that with love with patience and with faith we'll make our way. I might need a stepping stone too, but I think they're right.
She gave it to me from her own collection, which made me cry even harder than I already had been. It's a smooth and nicely worn stone that fits quite calmly, safely, patiently in the palm of my hand. Which is where I want to keep it, but I'm afraid I'll lose it. Plus, Donna said I should put it on my desk to remind me. So that's where I've set it, here in between the Smurf from my brother and the soccer stress ball from Maureen....I've set it here on my desk to remind me. I appreciate this stone more than any gift anyone has given me in a long time. And while they were arguably more important, in an immediate physical sense, Dr. Cooper's X-rays stayed at his office.
After tossing and turning all night last night, I woke up with Natalie Merchant in my head. She and the 10,000 Maniacs say that with love with patience and with faith we'll make our way. I might need a stepping stone too, but I think they're right.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Byron S. Cooper, MD FCCP
In about half an hour, against my firm better judgment, but as persuasively urged by both back quack and shrinker, I am going for a visit with Dr. Cooper at Capital Pulmonary Internists, P.C. Dr. Cooper is a pulmonary specialist. A pulmonary specialist! A pulmonary specialist?!? Even the damn business card is terrifying, what with the drawings of happy healthy lungs breathing all over the place. Cannot imagine what it's going to be like in his office over in the West End. X-rays. We are taking lung X-rays. And I'm sure there will be visibly sick people there who will make me feel sick (I probably am sick) .....I bet on top of the X-rays there are breathing tests and similar unfathomably scary shit. Ugh. But I said I would do it, I committed to it, I am trying to think positively. They insist it's the strong and responsible thing. A big step in the right direction. For Me. I know they're right, but I really don't want to do it. Here goes nothing.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Sunday Morning
I usually wake up on Sunday mornings thinking I should be going to church. And on pleasant Sunday mornings like this one here in our nation's capital, when the windows and doors can be let open to hear the church bells ring across town, I sometimes I feel like I have! My stepmother says that doesn't count, and if I'm being honest I'll admit she's right. On Sundays growing up in the shady heat of central Florida, my mother and father would take us to Sunday school, then to the evangelical Southern Baptist sermon, and to a Christian social luncheon afterwards. We went to Sunday church across the Southeast.....in Alabama where my cousins lived and at our creaky church summer camp near my grandparents' house in Appalachian North Carolina......at least once we went to church in a strip mall in Ft. Lauderdale where my aunt and uncle were spreading the word to recent immigrants from El Salvador. But, essentially, all Southern Baptist Sundays seemed the same....it was a day for the Lord, a day that Lord had made, a day to rejoice and be glad in. TV wasn't allowed, if memory serves.....this was some serious shit! And I usually got in trouble at some point. But even later when, even after Laura died and we'd stopped going to church entirely and Sally'd gently taken us back to a different, yet highly appealing, Episcopal style where the norm was a Chardonnay laced lunch at the club after a solemn service of uplifting philosophy and song.....even then Sunday was taken as a day to step aside from the routine and focus on God and the blessings he had given us. My family still treats it that way now.
I certainly am not what you'd call a regular churchgoer today. But I think that's OK. Everyone has their own Sunday morning routine. Kris Kristofferson likes to complain about how he wishes he was stoned. Lionel Richie seems to think he's easy like Sunday morning, whatever that means. I like to sit and read the paper and the new postsecret and look forward to a day spent not at the office and perhaps with friends. And today, sitting on the porch in the sun, with brunch almost ready inside, I'm finding a lot to rejoice and be glad at indeed.
I certainly am not what you'd call a regular churchgoer today. But I think that's OK. Everyone has their own Sunday morning routine. Kris Kristofferson likes to complain about how he wishes he was stoned. Lionel Richie seems to think he's easy like Sunday morning, whatever that means. I like to sit and read the paper and the new postsecret and look forward to a day spent not at the office and perhaps with friends. And today, sitting on the porch in the sun, with brunch almost ready inside, I'm finding a lot to rejoice and be glad at indeed.
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