oh internet...how life ends without you... i apparently helped my computer contract a virus and we've just this weekend lost everything on our hard drive - like a sock in the eye. i won't go into my other pains of today which could all be summed up as ONE BIG CRUEL JOKE, because, i'm in love...

with a woman.

her name is dorothy parker and she was a poet/screenwriter/member of the intellectual elite of the algonquin roundtable in New York in the 1920's mainly, and she is my soulmate. i love her. i saw this movie the other day called Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle - about her and her roundtable friends and jennifer jason leigh played her and i thought i'd hate that because i hate the way she talked at first, and then it grew on me, but matthew broderick was charlie MacArthur, her "in april" lost love that broke her in two and campbell scott (george c. scott's son) was robert benchley, her closest friend who never quite became her love, though they wanted to, and it was heartbreaking.. anyway. i love her poetry. she's so witty and yet such a sad romantic sentimentalist. i'm going to give you some samples, do with them what you will.

Theory

Into love and out again,
Thus I went, and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen -
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Some one dropped me on my head?

Observation

If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I obstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.

The Lady's Reward

Lady, lady, never start
Conversations toward you heart,
Keep your pretty words serene;
Never murmur what you mean.
Show yourself, by word and look,
Swift and shallow as a brook.
Be as cool and quick to go
As a drop of April snow;
Be as delicate and gay
As a cherry flower in May.
Lady, lady, never speak
Of the tears that burn your cheek -
She will never win him, whose
Words had shown she feared to lose.
Be you wise and never sad,
You will get your lovely lad.
Never serious be, nor true,
And your wish will come to you -
And if that makes you happy, kid,
You'll be the first it ever did.

News Item

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

Reuben's Children

Accursed from their birth they be
Who seek to find monogamy,
Pursuing it from bed to bed -
I think they would be better dead.

Interior

Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.

A Well-Worn Story

In April, in April,
My one love came along,
And I ran the slope of my high hill
To follow a thread of song.

His eyes were hard as porphyry
With looking on cruel lands;
His voice went slipping over me
Like terrible silver hands.

Together we trod the secret lane
And walked the muttering town.
I wore my heart like a wet, red stain
On the breast of a velvet gown.

In April, in April,
My love went whistling by,
And I stumbled here to my high hill
Along the way of a lie.

Now what should I do in this place
But sit and count the chimes,
And splash cold water on my face
And spoil a page with rhymes?

Two-Volume Novel

The sun's gone dim, and
The moon's turned black;
For I loved him, and
He didn't love back.

Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.


She was always so unlucky in love so she was really quite depressed, though always still witty (i guess the most witty are) - she tried to kill herself several times but ultimately never succeeded. She wanted so much to die on a rainy day, she loved the rain. In the end, she died when she was 74, in 1967, on a bright, sunny day. big cruel jokes. the algonquin roundtable was this big round table they put in the restaurant of the algonquin hotel in new york because this group of friends would always meet and there would be 15 of them around a little tiny table and it became ridiculous.. among them were george s. kaufman and the folks that started The New Yorker.. they sat around and drank when it was illegal and wrote and went to the theatre and exchanged witticisms.. they called each other mr. and mrs. whomever. it looked like a lot of fun.

yknow i always feel like such a fake that i discover these well-known people because hollywood made a movie about them and not through a literature class or something.. but dammit, what am i to do? if you want someone well-known to be better-known, guess what? make a movie about them.

hello again.

hello blog! oh i'm getting these gushy rushes of emotion for things i haven't appreciated in a while, sloppy drunk style - i gave my brother a big long hug the other day just for scuz. (home for the holidays, go rent it)

seriously, go download "beware of the boys" by Panjabi MC feat. Jay Z - indescribably cool.

speaking of indescribably cool.. the deftones still rock my world.. chino is still like warm water running over the top of my head (i think that may be the most fantastic physical sensation on second and third thoughts). the new album is wonderful. it feels very grown up, very much a natural progression. it reminds me a lot of adrenaline somehow - but i can completely see their albums as the developing stages of a human being - adolescence, 20s-30s, midlife crisis, zen 50s.. i dig. they're a comforting constant in my world. i love hexagram, it's a wonderful opener, so was feiticeira - they both have this great aliveness to them. the cd-rom footage of chino is a delight - i've so seldom seen him speaking and being a regular person.. it was a great addition to everything. this album has made me really want to revisit white pony, which has made me want to just listen to everything all over again. i'm so glad they're here. i missed them on loveline the other night.. and here's what i don't understand - you know how if you just don't know about something it won't bother you? it would be fine if i never knew, and adam and drew so rarely talk about their guests of the night before, but last night, of all nights, i was just listening for a few minutes when i was taking a shower and they start talking about "the deftones last night"! how dare them! oh well, little bits of sadness with big bits of happiness.

have i talked about X2 yet? well i was flabbergasted.. i loved it immensely. i enjoyed it about 300 times more than the first one. a great comic book movie. very nearly as good as spiderman.. batman is still the best ever though, both 1 and 2 i think - Returns just because of that scene where michelle pfieffer and michael keaton are dancing and they simultaneously realize who each other are and there's the saddest, sweetest moment between them.. i LOVE that moment. and the matrix was lots of fun, but a bit of a bore in the downtime and a little hard to understand, a little pretentious, actually, a lot pretentious, but you can't beat Neo taking a pole to all the agent smiths. and "cursing in french, it's like wiping your ass with silk, i love it" - that's hilarious.

i get to find out who the american idol is tonight.. in about 2 1/2 hours. but we all know it's going to be rueben. is it wrong that i should root for all fat people? no but that's not it, he's just better. i wouldn't get tired of his voice everywhere. i love clay too, but he belongs on broadway - he's going to make a killing, it is true.

i want to be in europe right now.. i can't understand how we can be here and experiencing this and at the same time they can be over there experiencing that.. like how do those two experiences exist in the same dimension? one day, me too.

i'm really drawn to africa lately. i keep thinking seeing africa and experiencing those cultures, so different from ours, would change my life. not just any culture without cell phones, but africa in particular - it feels like the soul of the planet - it's been so scarred and raped, it still is, and we hear now that humans probably originated there, so it's like all of our homes. it's this big beating heart that will change us if we ever get to it. what an incredible place.

and i want to go to the Caribbean and feel that - i just read this book for my Caribbean Lit class about this mother and daughter from the Dominican Republic - it was fascinating. great book, called In the Name of Salome. the mother is the national poet of the Dominican Republic and she dies when her daughter is 3 and it goes back in forth thru time to both of their perspectives, from the mom's early days and the daughter's retirement and then older and older for the mom and younger and younger for the daughter until the time overlaps in the end. it was incredibly moving. and i had to read it in two days so it sort of took over my life for a while, in a nice way. a lot of it was about the daughter's life paralleling her mother's and her coping with not having her mother in her life but still living off of the memory, so that was interesting. i'm thinking maybe i can do that. lately i've been smiling at little happy memories i have of my mother. maybe the end resolution of everything is that i can learn from the bad, and then toss it away, and feel content in the memory of the good, and then there will only be watching singin in the rain when i was 5, or tulsa christmases, or dancing in the living room. k thats enough

alright let's bust this thing open


favorite song playing on the radio at the moment: Beware of the Boys by Panjabi MC featuring Jay Z

=> knightrider theme + indian music = highway to heaven

remember that show highway to heaven? it was about two cops, and i guess they were angels, it was on in the late 80s i think.. starred michael london, who died of cancer a few years later, he also was the dad in little house on the prairie, and i used to get him confused with david hasselhof, who starred in knightrider.. and that's the six degrees.

there are more six degrees:
first there was my close friend renee in 7th grade in oklahoma who is the fifth cousin to garth brooks
then there's my dad's sister's family in tulsa with daughter lesli (my favorite cousin) who was on a soccer league with the youngest hanson brother, they had him over to dinner and everything
then there's that girl in my world lit class from last semester who supposedly lived in the same building as justin timberlake, downtown by lake eola, i'm doubting that one now though
then there is a two-fold:
my dad's old childhood friend Jim Paden's ex-wife Linda's sister Janeane is now married to either Brooks or Dunn, and Janeane and her earlier husband, whose name escapes me, were close friends with Johnny Cash and his wife. Johnny Cash's wife died just recently i now hear, which is how i came to know all of this.
this is what happens when you know people who know people who know people in the mid-west.

i forgot what busy felt like, but now that i'm taking these three summer school classes, i remember. and it's busy. two papers due on same day busy. and the second i find a moment, i'm going to see the matrix with my brother. and down with love. and i'll go rent comedian and see that again.

i've been sick for weeks and now it's in my ears and throat and neck and every night my neck feels like there's an enormous knot and maybe a swollen gland or two and when the ears are bad, everything, even my voice, feels so far away, it's surreal. and i tend to start daydreaming about what italy must smell like.

dawson's creek has ended and i came close to touching on a huge life problem but it scampered away very quickly.. something about how my life is going nowhere, i don't know

my friends, er, my dramatic friends, have been mad at me.. and i don't know exactly what to say to that. i just hope i won't be walking on egg shells from now on. godammit.

hang on, my ear is saying something to me.. i can hear it breathing. really. it's asking me what i want to be doing right now. and i don't know.