Monthly Archives: January 2008

camera flash.

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Someone once told me that the most important thing a writer could possess was a good imagination.

I suggested that coffee might be a more crucial ingredient in my success, but I couldn’t disagree with the premise.

Whatever lens you might see the world through, the ability to create and extrapolate and envision and engage beyond what’s right in front of your eyes is integral for any scribe.

But it’s not just writers that need that skill… no way. Children do. And parents, too. And artists. And scientists. And architects.

And marketing departments.

I have a good imagination.

I can close my eyes and picture things in my head that may or may not be anything I’ve actually experienced. I can create whole scenes complete with sounds and smells. It doesn’t have to be anything fantastical, either. Just something beyond the moment I’m in.

Funny thing, though… I can’t write fiction at all.

Or maybe I could if I worked harder on it, but right now? No way. Either the words get so wonky the moment they leave my fingers that I want to delete them immediately, or any type of scene I imagine never gets past the point of being, well… a scene.

Not a plot. Not a flow of events. Just a picture.

A pretty good picture, mind you, but not the stuff of a novel or screenplay or even a short story.

More of a camera flash.

But I love these scenes that take root in my mind and my chest.

Standing in the middle of a busy square of people overarched by umbrellas and pigeons, complete with the soundtrack of a thousand clicking heels… well, it gives me energy.

Standing by the salt-smelling ocean with the expanse of blue sky and jagged white-tipped waves ready to dive in… well, it makes me calm.

Standing in a snowy field with frozen steam puffing from my lips like pipe smoke, the world pale and crisp on every side… well, it makes me feel like hope is possible.

I can draw up these moments whenever I need a little good in my life.

So I guess it comes in handy.

In fact, lately, I’ve felt like my imagination and the ability to fade into those flashes has become my best defense against the less-pretty reality of the rest of my life.

When things are weighing on me hard or moving too quickly or moving too slowly or just plain hurting, I can close my eyes and step into a mental postcard for a moment.

Only a moment.

But enough of a moment to make all the other million moments bearable.

Escape without abandonment.

Perspective without too great a pause.

I can’t go so far as to write a new story for myself yet — because I’m not good at fiction, remember? — but I can disappear for a second into something that has nothing to do with health or sleep or work or pain or worry or loss.

And wait until the non-fiction of my life is just as pretty.

seven awkward things i have done in the last 24 hours.

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1. Was attacked by a bus door that grabbed my coat sleeve and held me hostage for two stops.
2. Tossed my phone at a man in an elevator because I pulled it from my purse with such gusto.
3. Bumped my own arm while using burny lip gloss, thus creating a burny stripe across my cheek.
4. Dropped half a bottle of Advil into my coffee (no, I didn’t drink it.)
5. Put a Slinky on my arm as a bracelet, but neglected to remove it before running to the store for something.
6. Was listening to WHAM! on my iPod Touch when an attractive man leaned over to check it out.
7. Existed.

it’s like tasting it again for the very first time.

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Round Two begins tomorrow. I’m a finalist for Best Personal Blog and Best Blog Post, which is reprinted below:

LOOK AT MY BOOBS! I AM VERY SMART!

A month or so ago, Catherine and I were driving along in her car when a song came on the radio that gave us both pause. Not because it was extraordinarily awesome, and not because it was extraordinarily bad, but because it was just so… typical.

So typical that it stood out.

See, I’ve long been of the opinion that girls today are being screwed over by popular music just like the girls in my generation were… except MUCH, MUCH MORE SO.

The lyrics aren’t getting any worse per se, and the women aren’t any more tarty than they once were (though you could argue that, at which point I’d offer you the full Samantha Fox discography, plus a reel of Tawny Kitaen rolling across the hood of a car in a Whitesnake video) but now the messages are being couched in self-empowerment.

We’ve been Madonna-ized.

But.

The song in question:

There’s more to me than meets the eye
so come and look inside
Go deep…
‘Cause beauty’s more than skin deep

Okay, try and ignore for a second there that they rhymed “deep” with “deep”, and that there are two full cliches in the space of four lines.

When you read those lines, you think, “Well, that’s good! There is more to me than meets the eye! And beauty is more than skin deep! Yeah! Boys! Check me out — I have substance, even if I don’t own a thesaurus!”

Then you get a little more understanding of the kind of girl we’re talking here:

Don’t need to know the kind of guy
who’s quick to drop the fly
Wham bam!
That ain’t who I am…

Ah! So you’re not planning to date within the NBA? Good for you.

Then it kinda falls apart.

Don’t a-let my booty beauty
be the only reason you wanna ride
Don’t a-let my hottie body
jack the fact that I got a lot more in mind

It sounds good — I mean, you want people to look past your hotness to your internal awesomeness, right?

But was anyone really paying attention after you said “booty beauty”?

This is the dilemma of late teens/early twenties/(oh, who am I kidding) early thirties women today.

We’ve turned into nudists screaming at people not to stare at our bits.

“I am proud of my body! I love my body! Look at my sexual empowerment! Do you see my ass? It rocks! HEY! STOP LOOKING AT MY ASS! BEAUTY IS MORE THAN SKIN DEEP! BUT I DON’T BLAME YOU, THESE JEANS MAKE MY ASS LOOK AWESOME!”

It’s a little confusing.

Then we get to the chorus:

If it’s just the physical
It would be sensational
But if you really got into me
You know you’d be insatiable

I get the whole point: I’m pretty freakin’ hot and you’d be lucky to have me but DID YOU KNOW I ALSO CAN DISCUSS CAMUS AND HAVE A CERTIFICATE IN THAI COOKERY?

Why do we always need to make such a point of our sexual identity in the first place, though? Why do we have to be so bluntly, obviously, blatantly hot as hell and THEN, once we are SUPER SEXY WHOA, be something else, too?

You’d never hear the song in reverse:

If we were intellectual
It would be sensational
But if I took off my grandpa sweater
Then you’d be insatiable!

I suppose it comes down to this:

The culture we’ve developed for young women has made blunt-force sexuality synonymous with empowerment, and THEN asked those same girls with the visible thong and two-foot cleavage to make sure that men notice their hearts, too.

How about we don’t dress them up like Paris Hilton, and then ask them to tuck a copy of the Iliad in their hobo bag?

How about we keep Joe Francis away from institutions of higher education?

How about we tell them to ignore any man who needs reminding that they have a brain?

Don’t get me wrong — I LOVE a good wallop of chemistry to get things going, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying that chemistry for a while before you go anywhere else. Girls can like that physical spark as much (or more) than guys. And perhaps I own one or two shirts that don’t come all the way to, say, my chin (ONLY THE ONE, DAD.)

But I’m tired of watching young girls try and be everything at once, and only succeeding at communicating one aspect of who they are because we’ve taught them nothing about subtlety or true self-respect (or how to put on clothing that covers their drafty parts).

Maybe I’m just getting old.

Or distracted by my own hotness.

It’s hard to say.

LOOK AT MY NAVEL! I KNOW DEAD LANGUAGES!

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Voting links up tomorrow!