new moon

no illumination

I was so excited to be out of school for ten days, allowing me to read books of my choosing rather than something from a list, that I instantly picked up Life's Greatest Trip, by Arthur Blessit. Like,

Well no, instead I read several bitchfests by gay blade Gore Vidal, who talked about things like how fat and nasty Anthony Burgess' wife was, and how Burgess' eyes looked like "infected buttonholes." I flipped the mental rolodex until I found the Cavett/Burgess interview from the early 70s. He is definitely right. Vidal is a genius at snarkery so subtle that most people wouldn't notice to take offense. This must have been an evolved survival tactic, because he routinely says such horrible things to and about people that anything less than ultra-subtlety would have resulted in many an altercation, I am sure.

Worth watching is the Mailer/Vidal battle on Dick's show. Mailer loses, but I think I read somewhere that he was drunk at the time and therefore not as prepared for the quiet savagery of being attacked by GV.

Dick's memory of this night is recounted here: In This Corner, Norman Mailer

OH finally something good has happened in this dreadful-ass week:

chad ziemendorf / the chronicle

chad ziemendorf / the chronicle

michael macor / the chronicle

Fuck you, Prop 8.

Funny days when I read blurbs by the Terminator as well as Laura Bush and nod in agreement, but I suppose that goes to show how black and white the rights and the wrongs in this situation actually are.

Remember No Gays for a Day? Greatest op-ed of '08. So glad to see a close for such sentiments (in California), though, at least for now.

"No Gays for a Day will demonstrate what it would be like if -- as so much of the non-coastal U.S. seems to desire -- gays just disappeared. You may not even know who all your daily gays are, so there's no predicting the impact. "

a very brief monsoon this year.

cold rain turns to steam on the burning streets.

OH HELL NO

garbo

garbo was never a favorite of mine growing up because she was always on the periphery; I didn't see much of her, and her cold eyes and husky voice didn't really do it for me until I grew up to prefer that kind of thing. then suddenly it all made sense. she was choosy with her roles and therefore wasn't prolific, and the films just aren't in the public consciousness anymore...that is, unless you're dick cavett, who is probably talking or writing in his diary about her right this minute. what a stage name, too. garbo? i hate the sort of genericising that happened to surnames in the past. let her be gustafsson. garbo is a name fit for the lost marx brother.

i think most of my early exposure to her had been in jest, too. watching camille brought to mind all of the old cartoon caricatures of her. remember?

she is fascinating. i do envy people who don't - or can't - pretend. i guess won't is the word for her. the rejection of all of the superfluous bullshit of her profession and the world. by exterior accounts, she had everything every two-dimensional simpleton could ever want: beauty, career, and acclaim. unable to tolerate the glitzy cellophane life of the hollywood starlet, particularly the parts about being pawed, photographed, and speculated upon at all moments, she abandoned her career early in life. this came at a time when she was in control of her contract (rare) and in good credit with her public. the empty world of stranger-compliments and being celebrated for the least (spiritually, intellectually) valuable trait of all evidently did nothing for her, another rarity. her remark about having no interest in being the temptress is like a single, thoughtful island in a sea of misplaced, naive vanity. she said, in sum, why would she ever want to feel that her primary purpose and primary pleasure should be to dangle herself before men? what an unfulfilling, cheapening thing to do. the same thing that most women do every day of their lives without knowing why and perhaps without actually cognizing an end result.

"Life would be so wonderful if only we knew what to do with it." -GG

you said it, sister.

i find it very heartening when i see others appraise the lives that we are supposed to want, and then reject them. societal standards seem so real and confining the more we hear about them, but that's not correct. that's just herd mentality and oh lordy of all the herds i don't want to be running with, it's this one.

I enjoy that she was/is so prized for her beauty because I find her to be a bit awkward. i think people were attracted to much more than the symmetry of her face. she has that sort of mantis-stance that tall, thin women often do, which was exacerbated x1000 by those 1930s gowns. shoulders a little too far forward and the trunk of the body in a concave curve. this looks highly glamorous, however, when encased in gray or cream satin and garnished with a cigarette. best combined with those icy blonde features.

she and carole lombard are like opposite-sisters. carole inhabiting the warm and sunny sphere while greta stands arms-crossed in a cold, rainy, gray landscape. los angeles vs. stockholm.

birthday shopping list

the little mermaid was a big deal when i was young, you know. a whole new world. white fluffy clouds vintage. lots of good there. taffeta isn't happening in the desert, though.

need this. i like the subtlety of a sterling "jewel". items of high witchery over at bloodmilk, or, as she says, supernatural jewels for surrealist darlings. yay

ok, no more shopping. i forgot; i'm amish now. i'm going to sew my own clothes (look like shit for a while), churn my own dairy-free butter or whatever, and move off the grid.

actually

i wish i could "intern" with an amish family for a semester or two. i'd learn how to sew for real-for real, how to wear my hair the way a 27 year old spinster should (up), and work myself to exhaustion every day, falling into a black, thousand-pound dreamless sleep each night. going to bed with the dark, waking with the dawn. looking after animals. burning candles that don't smell like baked goods.

i could probably arrange an exchange situation in which some family's 18 year old gets to experience their year in modernity in my apartment while i go and live in their parents' house. i would probably have to get an entire coven of white witches and a xerox box full of sage in this place to clean it out afterwards, kind of like the time my grandmother's tenant (a stripper) moved out of her rental and we had to wash tangerine-colored smearings from the walls... :( my grandma all: "well what could possibly cause that?" and my mother and i, "GO WATCH LAWRENCE WELK PLEASE"

there does, beyond desert, befall the first of themes etcetera, etcetera

melora creager is so up my little alley, it's not even funny. or i'm up hers. everything she does is exactly what i want to talk about all the time. i would like to inhabit the creepy, dingy, fascinating snowglobe she has erected around herself out of our fledgling past.

in which she explains herself.

lying around contemplating late 19thcentch homecrafts could take up a lot of my time.

this era is so flouncy and ridiculous at times, and too dreary at others. i don't like bustles or the soot-encrusted industrial boom. the angel in the house makes me want to kill myself and others. but, i love how 100% unabashedly morbid these people were. they didn't pump the brakes on this, ever. hair-weaving for wall art or jewelry. mourning jewelry everywhere. memorial photographs and art. bodies lying in state for a week in the front room. all of it. i love it! i think the first time i saw some memorial hair art was on tour of the governor's house in prescott. my skin crawled and i wanted to get away from it, but afterwards i couldn't stop thinking about it. that + gone with the wind + other period dramas + the rosson house + a house full of civil war memorabilia buried it deep.

vlah.

i worked in picture framing for years when i was younger. came to find that people are still morbid as all hell. shadowboxing the belongings and hair of dead people - you bet. put that over the dining room table. but the happiest days were when someone brought in something "ancient" and wanted it preserved. one guy brought in the letter and handkerchief of one of his ancestors. the letter was composed on her deathbed somewhere in late victoria. i could not resist and took it home that night to transcribe. the text is on one of my old livejournals and i will look for it later. it was absurd! such an incredible specimen! the long-suffering, aged beyond her years mother addresses each of her trillion children and steadfastly faces her death. oh! i found it.

in fact i will paste the whole post as a full-scale historic document. me at 20. ha; depeche mode.

---

[31 Dec 2002|12:33am]

[music|depeche mode / blasphemous rumours]

I am still dying from tonsilitis and mulling over something I brought home from work today.

It took me 15 minutes to open this letter. Some moron had stuck the thing all together with (non-archival!) adhesive and nearly ruined it forever. It's from a shadowbox that I was pissed to have to work on until I found a few things of interest. Turns out the thing is a deathbed note, always interesting. Dated 1907:

"To my dear family;

As I can't rest, and now unless a change takes place soon, can't live, I will write you a few of my thoughts and wishes. Life is only momentary with me now, I am resigned. The lord's will be done, I know I am a child of god. I have no fear of death for if it is his wish to take me away, it is for some good purpose.

Don't go to any more expense than necessary to put me away. Save all for the living. I would like to have an Adventist preach my funeral. I don't care where you bury me, the lord will find me.

I commend you all to god, who is able to save. He will bless and lead you all in the right if you put your trust in him.

Mabel, Mack, Lloyd and Floyd, you are all young and I think you need a mother's care, but if it is the lord's will to take me away, he will provide a way for you. Give your hearts to Jesus while you are young, don't wait, for soon he is coming to gather up his jewels. Do watch and be ready. I want you all to meet me in the earth made new to part no more. My work is almost done, but there is a crown of righteousness laid up for me. Praise the lord for his goodness. My prayer is that you all will be good children.

Do the best you can, the older try to teach the younger, search the scripture and find what precious promises there are to the overcomer. Do not fret and worry about Mother but sing "Praise to the Lord" when I am gone.

Bidding you all fare-well 'til we meet to part no more. This is very near and dear to me.

God bless you all,

Your Mother.

Read tim 4 - 6:8 and eph 3 - 16:21"

Her handwriting is creepy and spidery and perfect.

---

oh my god so incredible. what a great writer she was. so homespun, yet the words are well-chosen and artful. i am hard-pressed to find my favorite passage in this. i wish i had taken some photos of it. mabel, mack, lloyd and floyd!!

it was the height of ~romance~ when my boyfriend around this time bought me some mourning necklaces made of jet, all worn and weak and some amateurly repaired with crumbling thread. i don't dare wear them, still. not only do i not need the ghost of eugenia eustacia maybelle merriwether haunting me, but i'm also unwilling to repair them to a wearable state. you know what they say on antiques roadshow.

that's the best one.

100%

thunder moon

dismissing old & negative influences.

no; all influences.

JANE!

I'm sorry to use internet slang on you, but...fail.

jane looking defiant

I tried to watch Bright Star yesterday. It's about that time John Keats fell in love with Fanny Brawne and then died. It is, so awful. I had to turn it off. It's the kind of movie I'd make if my goal was to cultivate interest in the English Romantics among the 16 year old hipster crowd. While that is probably a noble cause, I am far too old and...old to suffer such bullshit.

Fanny: John, I decided that poetry is like pretty rad! Especially yours!

John: OMG you're probably like the first hot girl to read Endymion LOLOL

Only Kate Beaton is capable of summarizing the absurdity of this movie. I wish she would. I would email her about it, but a blog post and an email is just too much.

The only reason I feel so shocked is because I like Jane Campion an awful lot, and The Piano, you know. One of my favorites.