Raronauer'ed

Take That German

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:40:00 -0600

Petrichor (/ˈpɛtrɨkər/) is the scent of rain on dry earth. The word is constructed from Greek, petra, meaning stone + ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.

Denver Summer

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:33:40 -0600

Before the summer, there is the spring, which can sometimes feel like dating a jerk. Even if the weather or the jerk doesn’t realize it, they’re playing games, getting your hopes up with warm days and flirtatious text messages. But wearing skimpy clothes will not make it warmer or guarantee a call the next day.

During an unseasonably warm week in early March, when every day after work I rode my bike past people drinking outside in sunglasses, I thought spring was ready to commit to summer. That Sunday, I went to Cheesman Park with plans to idle, but spent most of the day waiting for the sun to break through the clouds. It was the first day of Daylight Savings, and my heart was broken. What was the use of long days if the nights were still cold?

Then in April, spring bought me some perfume: Water Drying on Cement. I wish there were more adjectives for smells, but Water Drying on Cement has some of the earthiness of a dog’s paw, but none of the musk. The evaporating water adds a lightness to the smell, like the beach without the salty overtones.

I’ve been through enough springs that I won’t believe its promise of summer until the first time I can wear a t-shirt at night. There’s something about the feeling of dark air against bare arms that makes me feel like everything will be ok. Or at least that I won’t have to worry about layers for a long time. But in Denver, to paraphrase P. Reyner Banham, the heat has a kinship to the light. The air here is so dry that the temperature drops about 15 degrees when the sun goes down. I was afraid that the feeling of walking through warm nights on lit streets would never come. But then the other evening, I went to Wal-Greens in a t-shirt. There may be some disagreements—colder days and rain—but I believe in Denver summer now. And I’m excited.

Me on Cheever; Cheever on Me?

Mon, 07 May 2012 06:38:00 -0600

I go back and forth on whether I’m of the disposition to get a quote from American literature tattooed on my flesh, but if I were, the line would be from this passage of “Clementina” by John Cheever:

The room where she read these letters was warm. The lights were pink. She had a silver ashtray like a signora, and, if she had wanted, in her private bathroom she could have drawn a hot bath up to her neck. Did the Holy Virgin mean for her to live in a wilderness and die of starvation? Was it wrong to take the comforts that were held out to her? The faces of her people appeared to her again, and how dark were their skin, their hair, and their eyes, she thought, as if through living with fair people she had taken on the dispositions and the prejudices of the fair. The faces seemed to regard her with reproach, with earthen patience, with a sweet, dignified, and despairing regard, but why should she be compelled to return and drink sour wine in the darkness of the hills? In this new world they had found the secret of youth, and would the saints in heaven have refused a life of youthfulness if it had been God’s will? She remembered how in Nascosta even the most beautiful fell quickly under the darkness of time, like flowers without care; how even the most beautiful became bent and toothless, their dark clothes smelling, as the mamma’s did, of smoke and manure. But in this country she could have forever white teeth and color in her hair. Until the day she died would have shoes with heels and rings on her fingers, and the attention of men, for in this new world one lived ten lifetimes and never felt the pinch of age; no, never. She would marry Joe. She would stay here and live ten lives, with a skin like marble and always the teeth with which to bite the meat.

The block quote is worth reading, especially if you think Cheever just wrote about trains leaving Manhattan, plus that one magical realism story about swimming in the suburbs.

You could say this is a story about a woman marrying well. But it’s also about a woman, who once had no choices, making one. Like any decision, this one comes with compromises, namely being married to an old guy. But it’s a compromise that allows her to live a fuller life and to never lose the passion to enjoy pleasure. The part of me that wants “and always the teeth with which to bite the meat” on my left ribcage woke up from a nap with the Sunday Times littered around my couch and needed a reminder to make the most of my day. But the part of me that will never get this tattoo knows its absurd to have a line from an obscure John Cheever story forever on my side when it’s already in my heart.

“Her Uterus Was Lined With Daggers” and Another Baby I’m Killing

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:09:59 -0600

Here’s a character who just lost her purpose in the story I’m writing:

At the office, Allison Buckley, Joanne’s youngest sister, greeted her. For most of her life, Meredith knew Allison as another blond head in the Buckley Volvo on the way to tennis. But suddenly, Allison was a teenager, and then just as quickly, off to college. A moment later, she was graduating and interested in event planning, just when Meredith could use an assistant. How perfect was that?

Except it wasn’t perfect at all. Allison came to meetings on time, never early, and she drank too much at the weddings. Today, her hands, always chapped along the knuckles, had a vulgar red nail polish on them, which was already chipping. Meredith herself needed her nails to be just right, otherwise she would pick at the bits of skin that came up along the edges of her fingers until her cuticles were raw. She didn’t know how Allison could stand it.

Blame it on the Altitude

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:23:30 -0600

One thing I love about Denver, and people in Denver love about Denver, and people talking about Denver love about Denver is its altitude: 5280 feet. I’ve never lived anywhere else at elevation, but the evenness of the number—5280 feet is one mile—makes the fact that we’re living above sea level a constant source of fascination. The number serves as decoration at many coffee shops, lends its name to the Denver lifestyle magazine, and is tattooed on more than a few wrists.

But the number is not just a gimmick: it’s a real part of living here. Boiling water and cooking in general take longer for reasons I once understood for a 9th grade chemistry test. Alcohol is also more potent, and the sun is brighter. There’s less pressure in the air, and less oxygen, too. After months at elevation, I’ll still get out of breath walking up a hill and talking on the phone.

Oxygenation and air pressure are big, if hidden parts of the way we exist. Like God or Mercury in Retrograde, their effects are both far-reaching and not completely understood. So whenever something is off in Denver, the altitude could be the cause. For example, I’m about two minutes late to everything in this city. Must be the air pressure in my bike tires.

If Only There Were a Book Club For Every Literary Experience I Have, Less Than Zero Edition.

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:32:00 -0600

I’m almost done with Less Than Zero, or as twitter would call it <0. That, incidentally, is the emoticon for doing a lot of coke and generally being displeased with the riches of modern life.

I decided to buy <0 after reading the Bret Easton Ellis interview in the Paris Review. I had half-heartedly read American Psycho two years ago, while I got all the stuff about the emptiness of Manhattan life in the 80s, the gore did not appeal to me, and I did not take it seriously. But I decided to give <0 a serious try, because in his interview, Bret Easton Ellis comes off as a serious writer:

Regardless of how my books have turned out, or how some people might have read them, I clearly don’t think I write trendy knockoffs. My books have all been very deeply felt. You don’t spend eight years of your life working on a trendy knockoff. In that sense I’ve been serious. But I don’t do lots of things that other serious writers do. I don’t write book reviews. I don’t sit on panels about the state of the novel. I don’t go to writer conferences. I don’t teach writing seminars. I don’t hang out at Yaddo or MacDowell. I’m not concerned with my reputation as a writer or where I stand relative to other writers. I’m not competitive or professionally ambitious. I don’t think about my work and my career in an overarching and systematic way. I don’t think about myself, as I think most other writers do, as professing toward some ideal of greatness. There’s no grand plan. All I know is that I write the books I want to write. All that other stuff is meaningless to me.

I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately, and I’ve been reading bits of <0 in the middle of what should be a REM cycle. It may be the ideal time to read the book. When I go back to sleep and then wake up, I remember what has happened to the characters, but I have no recollection of my own reading experience, which is perhaps the literary version of doing too much coke at Spago.

 Ellis is right about being a serious writer. Amid all the nihilistic hedonism in the book, there’s a defined aesthetic and a defined moral position. He articulates an idea about the Way We Live Now or The Way They Lived in the 80s. This puts puts Bret Easton Ellis into a category a lot of writers aren’t even trying to get to. For instance, Lorrie Moore, who I love, who Bret Easton Ellis loves, and whose very funny short story is in the same issue of the Paris Review, doesn’t seem to be trying to say something larger about the human condition, Older Single Woman Living In The Midwest edition. That’s ok. She and Bret Easton Ellis are up to different things.

Spoiler alert: here’s how the Bret Easton Ellis interview ends:

So this is where I’ve ended up—in a BMW in West Hollywood, doing my Paris Review interview while talking about a Duran Duran biopic pitch … This is where I landed, and that’s fine.

Whatever you think of Duran Duran, West Hollywood, BMWs or Bret Easton Ellis, he believes in his creative pursuits with autonomy and has made a life that works for him. It’s a hell of a lot more than zero.

"Workshops are where you first start hearing people say really dumb things about your writing and..."

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:10:00 -0600

“Workshops are where you first start hearing people say really dumb things about your writing and wher you first start developing an ability to deflect those comments, or at least not let them change what you initially wanted to do with a particular story. You need that kind of armor to survive as a writer.”

- the Bret Easton Ellis interview (by Jon-Jon Goulian) in the new Paris Review is PERFECT IN EVERY WAY (via emilygould)

—

BEE comes off as serious, sincere, and hardworking in this interview, as someone who cares about reading and writing way more than he’s given credit for. (I especially love the shout-outs to Lorrie Moore, both for her op-ed hating on American Psycho and as the best short story writer of her generation.)

Gail Collins must love this cover. newyorker: In This Week’s...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 09:23:33 -0700

Gail Collins must love this cover.

newyorker:

In This Week’s Issue

David Remnick on Israel and democracy; Ryan Lizza on whether the G.O.P. can save itself; Dhalia Lithwick on the story of Lawrence v. Texas; Anthony Lane reviews “Friends with Kids” and “Attenberg”; and more.

For the story behind this week’s cover - “From State to State” by Bob Staake: http://nyr.kr/xZFkOf

The New York Times is so cool. They even have a tumblr!* *Not...

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 06:14:52 -0700

The New York Times is so cool. They even have a tumblr!*

*Not being sarcastic.

livelymorgue:

Oct. 16, 1970: The Times chronicled the sale of used display stock at a warehouse on Long Island, an event that the reporter said “would have made a swarm of locusts look like a bunch of lazy butterflies.” The complete dummies cost $10 and $20, “but the parts were a bargain,” the caption said. “You could get a hand for five cents or buy an arm for a dime.” Photo: Gene Maggio/The New York Times

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:30:23 -0700

It is true that when you wake up in the middle of the night for maybe an hour or so, you don’t remember that time at all, even if you spent part of it reading the New Yorker article on face transplants, which references the Nicholas Cage/ John Travolta movie Face/Off, which is odd because that movie wasn’t any good, even though you also thought about it when you started the article. But when the alarm rings, your body remembers it wasn’t sleeping that whole time, and even if you can wake up enough to make coffee, you still come back into bed, now with the computer, and once you start on the internet, you’re not so sure that the coffee, an accidentally purchased light roast, is worth getting out of bed for, but then you have to, because why did you wake up at 6 am, to watch old episodes of The Hills?

But the days are getting longer, and that starts in the morning, and the blues you once associated with a certain of morning productivity, happen before you get a chance. So you better get out of bed and go.

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert is the MTV Unplugged for the...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:36:00 -0700

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert is the MTV Unplugged for the internet age.

nprmusic:

After a long hiatus, The Cranberries is about to return with a new album called Roses. But if this performance at the NPR Music offices is any indication, the group isn’t afraid to dip into its arsenal of early hits.

“Get a Life.” “I Have a Life.” “Yeah, I Know All About It.”

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:23:00 -0700

It wasn’t too long ago, when bored and inebriated, I decided to buy Beverly Hills, 90210, the complete season 4. Say what you will about Amazon, but they do enable purchases of this sort.

Some background: Season 4 was the last of the Brenda years, and the gang’s first year at California University, and where, among other things, Brandon joins the Task Force and has an affair with Lucinda Nicholson, Steve rushes KEG and is accused of date rape, Andrea loses her virginity and becomes pregnant, Kelly and Donna join the Alphas, David develops a problem with Uppers after doing the graveyard shift for KXCU, the campus radio station, and Dylan’s car is hijacked and he meets his long-lost sister. This leaves out Brenda, who in one year, transfers out of Minnesota University, becomes engaged to Stuart Carson after a three week courtship, is arrested for her new-found animal rights advocacy, and takes the lead in the campus production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roofed after rumors circulate of her affair with famed director Roy Randolph.

I love 90210 for a lot of reasons, not just the plot points. In some ways, it’s a window into the 90s, or some rich producer’s idea of the 90s. There are jean shorts, scrunchies and flowy dresses. It’s not just the aesthetics, it’s the politics: consensual sex, animal rights, and abortion politics. Out of all the things that strike me as unrealistic about the show, Andrea’s pregnancy is probably the most outrageous, even more absurd than David’s meth habit depending on fresh squeezed orange juice. Obviously, Gabrielle Cartes is about 33 when she’s supposed to be a freshman in college, and in every scene, this fact is impossible to ignore. And yes, she really was pregnant, so there wasn’t much chance of her getting an abortion. But still, the characters act as if her having a baby as a freshman in college is the only option and that Jesse threatening to break-up with her if she has the abortion is tantamount to a proposal.

Maybe since there was no internet and next day episode summaries, the writers aren’t too concerned with making the plot make sense. For instance, after rushing off to Vegas to elope with Brenda, Stuart Carson disappears for ten episodes. And what about that episode when Brenda discovers the diary of a young woman who lived in her bedroom decades before and casts the whole gang in her imagination as some version of this woman’s life in 1968? What of it? It’s hard to object any time Dylan McKay is in period clothing.

I’ve been watching 90210 s4 occasionally with a friend, and emailing plot points to another one in Bulgaria, whose career in Anthropology was in no doubt inspired by Lucinda Nicholson and her penchant for seducing younger men with a traditional feast from an aboriginal tribe in Guatemala. But like I did in the 90s, I’ve been watching this season mostly alone. There’s something oddly satisfying about watching something so unwatchable, and not even be able to confer with the internet about it afterward. It’s like the solitude of the mountains, but in my bed, on a laptop, on a lazy Sunday.

The best part of being from Westchester is when architecture...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:37:45 -0700

The best part of being from Westchester is when architecture critics hate on the new Penn Station.

To me, being a feminist is about being in favor of women, and...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:40:29 -0700

To me, being a feminist is about being in favor of women, and luckily, more women aren’t afraid of the term. We’re such a big minority group that we often don’t see ourselves as one large body, laughing alone with salad.

emilygould:

Obviously many men give a fuck what people think about them. But if they don’t, it doesn’t mean they’re insane. Whereas for a woman not to care – that’s actually pathological, self-destructive behavior, in the context of our culture. I love and valorize this kind of female craziness and the art it produces – I created a business to celebrate these women and their art. But I fear not giving a fuck, for myself. I wonder what it would be like to let go that much.

Calling Ben McGrath

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:05:51 -0700

This #Yale #football #Rhodesscholarship #rape story is amazing. It’s got all the things that make for good upper middle class journalism: higher education, sexual politics, the discretion of campus authorities and the discretion of the press, all over a college football rivalry.

It’s like the JoePa story for the effete class.

Diverging Stories of a Rhodes Candidacy

Some Things About Seeing Wilco on the First Night of Their New Tour

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:30:48 -0700

I could trace my entire adult life around Wilco albums. And seeing them on Thursday—my first big show in Denver, which I attended with my no longer new Denver friends—was like seeing an old pal.

(Sadly, it was like seeing an old pal for a quick coffee. There was some catching up on the new material, but not enough time to reminisce on all the old memories, that is, all of Wilco’s b-sides from 15 years ago.)

The show reminded me not just of the times when the lyrics of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” limned the emotional landscape of my sophomore year of college or when my friend and I memorized the phonetic alphabet in the album’s honor our junior year, but also of seeing Oscar Robertson play basketball in an old timers game. Like watching the Big O thirty or so years after his prime, Wilco did not have the speed of their younger days, but still had an undeniable grace.

In chapter 1 of “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” my perennial desk side reading, Haruki Murakami asks “Who’s going to laugh at Mick Jagger?” This is in response to a silly thing a younger Mick Jagger said about singing “Satisfaction” at 45. That is, he’d rather be dead than be doing it. Of course now, Mick Jagger is over 45, still playing “Satisfaction,” and is not dead. Murakami’s point is that we all turn 45 or die, and who’s to laugh at a younger man for thinking he’d prefer the latter fate.

And while I wouldn’t laugh at Mick Jagger, Wilco is not still playing “Jesus, Etc.” at 45. That song, probably their most famous, was missing from Thursday’s set. Instead, what got most people to their feet was “Dawned on Me,” a song not about trying to get laid, but about being reminded of how much you love someone, and making a call to let that someone know about it. The new Wilco album isn’t about love lost, love poorly treated or love hard to achieve. Instead, “The Whole Love” is a record about the slow drama of maintaining love over a lifetime. That is, the kind of music a dad could rock out to.

vneckandacardigan: Orange nails and a ridiculous looking first...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 07:59:38 -0700

vneckandacardigan:

Orange nails and a ridiculous looking first generation Kindle (Taken with instagram)

It’s not that I don’t appreciate technology. I’m typing on a beautiful white machine that’s not connected to any wires but is connected to the internet and is light enough to rest on my stomach. And I like reading about Alexis has recently eaten, which technology allows me to do. (And I like Alexis, who I even met once.)

It’s just that, how much technology do we need? Because at a certain point (maybe now?) they’re just inventing stuff so we’ll buy more stuff again. For the past 400 years, no one looked at a book, and thought, damn, that shit looks antiquated. But after four years, a first generation Kindle looks “ridiculous.”

My often wise dad once said, “We live better than Louis XIV.” Which is true when you think about indoor planning and access to tropical fruit. But it seems like all we’re striving for now is convenience and novelty. But something nice about inconvenient, old things: they’re not part of this absurd cycle of want that technology creates now.

Sometimes the New York Times is just so the New York Times.

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:04:00 -0700

Sometimes the New York Times is just so the New York Times.

What Happens Every Morning.

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:37:56 -0700

I wake up at 6:04, which is about 5:59, since my iTouch’s clock is fast. It’s still dark out, but I get out of bed and feel very proud of myself.

I check the internet for about ~~three~~ 15 minutes before reminding myself that the reason I’m up early is to write, so I set Freedom (without a doubt, the best $10 I spent in 2011) to 60 minutes.

And then I try to write. But I also stare out the window a lot and watch the colors change.

For a while, everything is just black, except for the diagonal streaks of light serving some sort of design purpose I can’t imagine/don’t agree with in the big apartment building on the corner of my street.

And then the sky starts turning navy, the kind of navy you want to believe is black if you made a mistake when purchasing stockings.

From there, everything gets bluer, though it’s still a dark blue, a blue that could pass for this season’s new black, and the naked branches of the trees become visible.

Then the sky is really blue, a blue that, if you were being gender normative, would do well in a baby boy’s room, a blue so light it would surprise you, considering how dark it still is.

And then, I’m not staring out into total darkness, but the house across from mine, though I can still make out my reflection in the window.

Each moment, the sky gets lighter and lighter, which feels like this betrayal of the night, which I suppose it is, as it’s turning into day.

And it’s just like that Hemingway line about going bankrupt, slowly, then all at once, and then it’s time to go to work.

How Visit From The Goon Squad Is This?

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:01:20 -0700

How Visit From The Goon Squad Is This? :

Sadly, a recurring feature.