after a year and a half of these crack-of-dawn journeys i can affirm that no one is on the subway at this hour for a good reason. it's not like buses in san francisco, where the 7 AM'ers were like actively casting spells to pry open the gates of hell and accelerate the end of the world, but the collective ugh up in here is palpable. i do these abortion clinic escort shifts once a month and was considering going again next weekend so i'd feel okay about skipping april, when my schedule is tricksier than usual because we'll be in iceland for two weeks, but back-to-back daybreak shenanigans would be too much for me. i do appreciate the community i feel on mornings like this one, as we wait to hear what that trump appointee out in amarillo will rule about mailing mifepristone, and everyone is grateful to have like-minded, action-oriented company, but my seasoning as a human shield wears thin with overuse, and the catharsis of confrontation just gets corrosive in big doses.
on horse pills, we saw our, i don't know, sixth play of the year on thursday. it was love, set in a temporary housing center in england, and it was wonderful. in another month or so it will probably start feeling like too much to have two or three artsy nights out per week, but for now it's excellent. all of the new york city, right in the kisser, go ahead! tonight we're headed up to the philharmonic, and i will disco nap hard enough this afternoon that i definitely won't fall asleep in the middle of the program. it helps that i crammed in a tár viewing right before the oscars last week; cate blanchett is MSG for me when i don't have a taste for something on my own, though even her formidable work in i'm not there couldn't make me care about bob dylan. in a year in which michelle yeoh didn't win everything, CB would have won another oscar; instead she just floated around in a cocoon of louis vuitton ecosilk like the gracious technolympian she is. i doubt she was bothered.
both the editor and the freelancer who fact checked my draft have written to say how much they love my robot cat essay, which has been a real relief; i didn't want to make a big deal about how much it means to me, but as i've said, i'm trying to break their hearts. that feedback is nipping at me to plot out another weird passion project, but i'm not very good at premeditating those–certain kinds of writing are like throwing up. afterward you're usually able to piece together what happened to get you to that point and you're grateful to be on the other side, but it's generally an unhealthy thing to get into on purpose.
on intimate fluids, i gave blood for the first time in ages yesterday, and my iron levels were totally unremarkable. at last, i am iron woman! is it sobriety-related? did the random daily multivitamins some PR person mailed me work better than all the others i've tried? did the blood bank get so desperate that they relaxed their guidelines for this along with everything else (the cooling-off period for donations after tattoos is now just three months–or no months, if you get tattooed in new jersey)? i won't look a gift needle in the mouth, but i will start donating platelets as often as i can. getting to read for two hours while watching my blood cycle through a machine, then drinking cranberry juice and feeling smugly helpful without actually having to interact with anyone? delectable. if they brought back those little bags of cheez-its for the are-you-going-to-faint-or-what tables it would be perfect.
Showing posts with label blood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blood. Show all posts
12.18.16
the dirty dozen {twelve movies i saw this year, and haiku discussion}
01 hell or high water. heist pics leave me cold, / but this one's nearly flawless. / is jeff bridges zeus?
02 moonlight. brilliant ensemble, / sensitive storytelling, / perfect denouement.
03 la la land. not all musicals / are terrible, i'll admit. / that one sure is, though.
04 american honey. shia labeouf sells / magazines, has tragic hair, / catches a turtle.
05 the birth of a nation. scandal aside, well, / its female characters were / just plot devices.
06 fantastic beasts and where to find them. how i love creatures! / beautifully imagined, / clumsily scripted.
07 miss peregrine's home for peculiar children. mistress of limbo, / i question you. carnival / battle was BOSS, though.
08 manchester by the sea. casey affleck: eh. / kyle chandler, editing: A. / michelle williams: QUEEN.
09 the handmaiden. really long, REALLY / odd, and more lemonade than / lemonade was, bey.
10 the lobster. my favorite thing / about loving it: i have / it all to myself.
11 the witch. moms, don't see this one. / goats, choose your dates carefully. / bearded dudes, you're good.
12 the neon demon. keanu! wild beasts! / inappropriate snacking! / god, i love horror.
01 hell or high water. heist pics leave me cold, / but this one's nearly flawless. / is jeff bridges zeus?
02 moonlight. brilliant ensemble, / sensitive storytelling, / perfect denouement.
03 la la land. not all musicals / are terrible, i'll admit. / that one sure is, though.
04 american honey. shia labeouf sells / magazines, has tragic hair, / catches a turtle.
05 the birth of a nation. scandal aside, well, / its female characters were / just plot devices.
06 fantastic beasts and where to find them. how i love creatures! / beautifully imagined, / clumsily scripted.
07 miss peregrine's home for peculiar children. mistress of limbo, / i question you. carnival / battle was BOSS, though.
08 manchester by the sea. casey affleck: eh. / kyle chandler, editing: A. / michelle williams: QUEEN.
09 the handmaiden. really long, REALLY / odd, and more lemonade than / lemonade was, bey.
10 the lobster. my favorite thing / about loving it: i have / it all to myself.
11 the witch. moms, don't see this one. / goats, choose your dates carefully. / bearded dudes, you're good.
12 the neon demon. keanu! wild beasts! / inappropriate snacking! / god, i love horror.
10.12.15
in the closest brush with the methods of marie "life-changing magic of tidying up" kondo i'll likely ever have,* i've been reading and divesting myself of books i brought home from the office and shelved years ago. one, a jack nicholson biography, gets rolling with some bleak notes about his love life:
speaking of head colds, i ran a half marathon with one yesterday! that was alright when we were scrambling to get up, out of the house, and down to the staten island ferry before the sun came up; as when i worked in an office and had to train in the morning before heading there, i was so sleepy and groggy that i barely registered the inelegance of the hour. coughing my way across staten island was less of a treat, but i can blame my unimpressive time on illness instead of the late nights i spent writing and concertgoing last week, and that's something. either way, i have a medal and the reptilian contentment that accompanies it. i don't think less is more, as warhol said; more is better.****
*unless you count when my thoughtful friend lesley konmari'ed the living daylights out of her place in brooklyn and i inherited a bunch of her clothes, which was indeed magical.
**(the year in which nicholson learned that the woman he'd believed to be his sister was actually his mother, and that his "mother" was in fact his grandmother)
***as in as good as it gets, for which he won one of his three oscars.
****..."big paintings cost more than little paintings, and magazines pay by the word."
After 1974,** with one or two exceptions,*** [Nicholson] never played a purely romantic lead. And in real life, while women continued to be a source of both pleasure and pain for him, true love was something he could never fully accept, believe, or trust from them. His seventeen-year relationship with Anjelica Huston, the woman able to get closest to him, was a series of hellos and good-byes, angers, frustrations, and, on both their parts, infidelities strewn throughout their time together. It is significant that in the end they both wound up alone.i just finished anjelica huston's second memoir, is the thing; she was widowed in 2008 when her husband of 16 years (the sculptor robert graham) died of a horrible blood disease. in the absence of this weird month-spanning head cold i'd yell about bad biographers here for awhile; instead i will but say that it's a shame i can't leave books unfinished, and that i'll try to spark joy in you by following up with additional sins as i read them.
speaking of head colds, i ran a half marathon with one yesterday! that was alright when we were scrambling to get up, out of the house, and down to the staten island ferry before the sun came up; as when i worked in an office and had to train in the morning before heading there, i was so sleepy and groggy that i barely registered the inelegance of the hour. coughing my way across staten island was less of a treat, but i can blame my unimpressive time on illness instead of the late nights i spent writing and concertgoing last week, and that's something. either way, i have a medal and the reptilian contentment that accompanies it. i don't think less is more, as warhol said; more is better.****
*unless you count when my thoughtful friend lesley konmari'ed the living daylights out of her place in brooklyn and i inherited a bunch of her clothes, which was indeed magical.
**(the year in which nicholson learned that the woman he'd believed to be his sister was actually his mother, and that his "mother" was in fact his grandmother)
***as in as good as it gets, for which he won one of his three oscars.
****..."big paintings cost more than little paintings, and magazines pay by the word."
08.31.15
a few days before that last road trip update, joe and i took a saturday-night ghost tour of charleston. our guide, a local historian, took us to the meeting street parking garage, which was built over a quaker cemetery dating back to the seventeenth century. you know parking-garage magnates: they say they've relocated the human remains their backhoes turned over back in C6 with due ceremony, but we all know what's under those rental cars. the guide motioned us over to a semi-walled area beside the garage where a wrought-iron gate opened to a little patch of grass. he himself hadn't felt anything standing in that particular spot, but other tour participants had: a coldness, for some of them, and for others something that made them walk back through the gate and out of the tour without a word. so who wanted to spend some time there? the twenty-five people who didn't gave the five of us who did the stinkeye. i hopped back through the gate a moment before joe did and apologized for not mentioning the spider that had slipped past his ear to his shoulder while we were on the grass. "i didn't mention the one i saw on you, either," he said.
on our last night in town, we took a lightless street back to our hotel after dinner. i didn't see the root that split the sidewalk and tripped joe, his fall, or where the better part of his front teeth ended up, but i will never forget the look on his blood-covered face, and i will give way to quakers henceforth.
on our last night in town, we took a lightless street back to our hotel after dinner. i didn't see the root that split the sidewalk and tripped joe, his fall, or where the better part of his front teeth ended up, but i will never forget the look on his blood-covered face, and i will give way to quakers henceforth.
08.21.09
101 in 1001 {II}: 066 take a photo every day for a year [underway as of 08.06.09]
it's on, and it's challenging: i'm often tempted to get the day's photo out of the way with a footportrait or a glamour shot of my lunch. should you find yourself with an interest in the ways in which i avoid those, the ongoing set is here.
in other news, yesterday was our third wedding anniversary: i celebrated it by shaving off an important bit of my right knee, jostling the nick when i sat down to dinner, and bleeding gently into bobby flay's tablecloth for two hours. and they say monogamy is unexciting!
in other other news, i finished my last raymond chandler novel (playback), got tickets to tonight's shakespeare in the park (the bacchae), and scheduled a blood donation at a show down in chelsea in a few weeks. these are ensanguined times, internets.
101 in 1001 {II}: 066 take a photo every day for a year [underway as of 08.06.09]
it's on, and it's challenging: i'm often tempted to get the day's photo out of the way with a footportrait or a glamour shot of my lunch. should you find yourself with an interest in the ways in which i avoid those, the ongoing set is here.
in other news, yesterday was our third wedding anniversary: i celebrated it by shaving off an important bit of my right knee, jostling the nick when i sat down to dinner, and bleeding gently into bobby flay's tablecloth for two hours. and they say monogamy is unexciting!
in other other news, i finished my last raymond chandler novel (playback), got tickets to tonight's shakespeare in the park (the bacchae), and scheduled a blood donation at a show down in chelsea in a few weeks. these are ensanguined times, internets.
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