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What I Meant To Say

Sometimes I think I am a Don DeLillo novel, not just inside of one.

For the past two days I have redone two closets in order to make better use of space and better accommodation for clothes and storage. This is also an attempt at the stripping of fat in my apartment. For some reason this triggers something in me—something nameless and untraceable. I ask myself what this means and myself does not answer.

The Writer does
“It’s about dress, silly. Clothing talks about the masks we wear, the persona we put on for the day. If you want to change who you are you’ll have to dress differently. And sometimes you get ahead of yourself, as in buying the future of you before you’re ready to put it on. Hence the new clothes that sit in there, waiting to be worn. Waiting for you.”

Last night I was up until four o’clock in the morning working on the new (as yet untitled) novel. It may be that those things I wrote in some fit of passion won’t be usable at all. Well, the words might be usable in some smoothed out form, but not in the novel. This particular novel anyway. I also started a sketch of the face on the cover of The Beautiful and damned. (I posted the cover of the book with some words a few days back.) How I envy those who can sit down and just sketch whatever they see. And I love notebooks filled with lovely words and comments and observations with sketches interspersed along with a variety of colors. Vintage Books & Anchor Books
In moving things between closets to sort or move or toss, of course I made some discoveries. For one, I found the Yoga mat and underquilt (for padding). It’s sitting here right now, just in front of me. Waiting. But first I have to look up Will Power. I’m not done with that quite yet.

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Truth & Happiness

Vintage Books & Anchor Books

Vintage Books and Anchor Books

“I don’t care about truth. I want some happiness.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

This is not always about the beautiful and rich. Here is the same thought problem today, is it not? From the people who don’t care if their leader and savior lies or not. It doesn’t bother them. It does not bother them as long as they get their happiness. If they don’t have it yet they’re willing to wait because they see enough of the ugliness and anger being acted out to give them hope. It’s what they want. And they don’t care about the truth.

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The Human Form

To start out the week with Monday moans. Here’s the inspiration to diet with fresh resolve. Right?

Dance portraits by Alexander Yakovlev.

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shuffleSketch1

Photos & Story posted by Shuffle Sketch

There aren’t enough photos of the human form itself, male and female, but I thought these could do for now. The ballet form is the most expressive and what is presented here. I had published the photo of Rudolph Nureyev and some comments a while back. (That’s Rudy below). That was in December, 2017. Here’s what Rudy had to say about dance: “Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.” True that, about many things.

fmrudyNureyev

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Lessons of History

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From History Books

Mrs. Lintott: “Now. How do you define history, Mr. Rudge?”
Rudge: “Can I speak freely, Miss? Without being hit?”
Mrs. Lintott: “I will protect you.”
Rudge: “How do I define history? It’s just one fucking thing after another.”

~Alan Bennett, The History Boys (2006)

What a wonderful room to get lost in. Right now though, I’m lost in the writing of words for the novel I’m working on.  BTW, I don’t think we learn anything from history. It seems to me that the human race just keeps making the same mistakes and the same wars over and over again. We never learn our lessons.

And that’s the waaaaaay things are.

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Meanwhile, In Finland II

 has just published an article for Paris Review about the resurgence of Finland, in of all things, literature. Furthermore, by Branding. Calling attention to oneself is just not something the Nordic adventurers do. In most of those cultures there’s even a word for it. In Sweden it’s lagom, in Norwegian it’s janteloven. But then, witness the Swedish break with tradition that put itself on the world stage with IKEA, H&M, Spotify, Skype, Absolut Vodka, ABBA, Stieg Larsson, etc.

Not one to sneeze at success, and reestablishing itself as a literary being, yet more so as a feminist literary happening, we have FINNISH WRITERS JOHANNA SINISALO, SOFI OKSANEN, AND LAURA LINDSTEDT.

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I was going to write a bit more in this post, mostly about the authors but such a distraction were the book titles! If I’m ever to get this posted I’ll need to stop. Just note that I’ve got a few of the books in my cart. More on this later.

Picking up the post, or part two, the next day:

For one, Oksanen is cool. She has been described by the Finnish press as a feminist goth. But it doesn’t stop there. She writes well. That’s the best you can say about an author. She has been cut from a different cloth however. She doesn’t just write, write well, and often, she promotes. Her self marketing has paid off: she was one of the first Finnish authors to sign with an international literary agent. in France alone, Purge sold more than one hundred seventy thousand copies.

Apparently the most intriguing thing about the Finnish uprising is the uniqueness of the writing. For example, Johanna Sinisalo’s The Core of the Sun presents a new human subspecies of submissive women for sex and procreation while undertaking the capture and sterilization of those women unwanted for reproduction: the intelligent, the independent, the outliers. The government does not want the type of citizen they might produce.

Book covers have been copied from Amazon pages

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I’m in the process of deciding which books/authors I’ll start out with. And I haven’t even gotten to LAURA LINDSTEDT yet.

 

By the way, my annotated copy of The Big Sleep is on the way. Oh what joy to be watching for the mailman, a child again in anticipation!