05.18.05

every few years i return to the opinion that, though i don't really care for the great gatsby, fitzgerald is one of my favorite american writers. this time the tide of warm fuzzies is due to a copy of afternoon of an author that fell into my lap last weekend. "how to live on $36,000 a year" (cough) and "how to live on practically nothing a year" remind me of the new yorker's better "shouts and murmurs," and the basil duke lee stories - particularly the last few lines of "basil and cleopatra" - are the sort of pitch-perfect stuff on adolescence i'd give my left eye to write:
The wind blew through them, trumpeting that high white note for which he always listened, and the thin-blown clouds, stripped for battle, passed in review. The scene was of an unparalleled brightness and magnificence, and only the practiced eye of the commander saw that one star was no longer there.
i was thinking about that on the way to work this morning - the body parts, that is, i'd be willing to swap in exchange for a kick-ass book of poems. if, say, satan popped up and wanted to make a deal. about six toes would be okay, or six inches of overall height. an ear could be negotiable, or something on the right hand. i get the feeling i've been watching too many prime time medical dramas, or that i'm approaching writer's block in the wrong way.

post script: stewart reports that he would give satan just about anything that wouldn't kill him in exchange for the solution to global warming, which is how we know that he's a better man than i am.

5 comments:

sara said...

ah, writer's block! that mythical beast of huge proportions. my condolences. it won't last forever, i will give you tools to overcome (sort of...check the link). i'm a bit backlogged on doing my freewriting, but it's a wonderful excercise. do try!

DK said...

You're going to regret putting those comments up. :)

I too need to thwart the writer's block. No word yet how. Six inches of height is totally fine with me though.

sara said...

why would i regret it? if you are commenting on freewriting exercises written in blog form, i'm certainly not pretending that those ramblings are pictures in brilliance. i am merely demonstrating the exercise. i do have a regular blog with more sensible musings (linked on this comment).
...or, are you implying that i will now be cursed by writer's block?
do tell!

lauren said...

i think the implication was that i would regret adding comments to the site. but i've never been especially good at interpreting e-nuances; tea leaves, on the other hand.

furiousmuse said...

ah, yes, that would make sense. note to self: not everything is about you.

sometimes i wish haloscan's comments could have threads. that would keep me out of trouble!