in the novel 'the book of flying' by keith miller, there is the legend of a book that, once read, will give the reader wings. literal wings, for the purpose of flying. (half the population in the town from which the protagonist, a questing poet, hails was born with wings. pico was not. hence, his quest.)
anyway, the point is, there is this book. a book in which the reading experience is life (and anatomy) -changing. a book that contains within it a story more true and satisfying than any other book that's been written. a book to end all books.
this sort of legend is a ubiquitous one and has always caught my imagination in its grip. so much so that the feeling of stepping into a library or bookstore contains within it the belief in the possibility of finding said book. or, that the combination of all the volumes under one roof can simulate it--or metaphorically create it. if you could dump all the words from all the stories in this room out onto the floor and stir them up to let all of the story lines intersect and all of the characters meet, maybe the jumbled structure the would result from pushing them into a one big pile would be the story that we all want desperately to read. that everyone dreams about at night. that feeds every desire we have to be fed when we pick up a new book ready to be incorporated into its world.
maybe the idea that there is one book that can satiate all of us is the part that is fabulous--the stuff of fable, of lore and legend. but the possibility that there is one book that will do that for each of us and maybe no two people need the exact same story, that might not be so outlandish. of course, this explains the existence of writers and their purpose in life. tho, not publishers. cuz what is each person spending their life writing but the book they themselves most need to read? are readers who don't write just lazy questers? are publishers just mountebanks passing off one person's life-blood as some else's elixir of life? or do some stories, ones that authors craft truly and well that actually are full to the brim of that which sustains their own life, (cuz there are plenty of authors who don't come close to their one true book, either thru lack of skill or lack of courage) do those most true stories for one person actually sustain others on some level? can they keep us going for a time, inspiring us to move closer to our own stories, showing it is possible, giving us hope to carry on trying? cuz it's a lifetime's worth of work to find the story within each of us and accumulate the courage and skill to tell it well.
the books that i love most in the world are the ones that have the largest portions of that one true book (or my personal version of it) within them. which means that through them, i'm compiling a map of what my book looks like. at the moment there are still gaps in the puzzle leaving entire roads on this journey dark in the realm of conjecture, surrounded by the aura of fairytale. one of the reasons i love writing is that it means plunging into one of those uncharted forests and seeing what i can find. armed only with the compass of my knowledge of lore and the flashlight of my pen, i am happy to explore the wilds of the imagination with just the illumination of my feet as i go. what keeps out the fear that i'm headed off into the complete unknown is the cartographic proof that the surrounding landscape is favorable to questing and the fact that resourcefulness is my middle name. besides, who's ever heard of a quest that utterly failed?
so, folks. i'm off. headed out to find that book. the one that i unconsciously search bookshelves for, knowing somehow that i won't find it till i see my name on its spine. i already see a couple paths to follow, and my plan for the next 12 months is to do less physical traveling through the u.s. and more journeying through the imaginative landscape that spans many pages and dreams and hours staring at the pictures in the mind's eye. wish me luck.
better yet, send me off with the title of a book that contains within it the biggest piece of your version of that one book. cuz the only things i'm packing for this trip are the stories that will get me where i need to go.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Sunday, July 3, 2011
for becky, with love and savor.
strawberries are summer sun solidified. picking one off the plant still warm from the morning rays and biting into it is the best way i know to rejoice in the miracle of food from photosynthesis. if i had to name a taste for summer, that would be it, much more so than watermelon or hot dogs or even tomatoes.
growing up, june meant strawberries. even though i lived on the edge of a major metropolis and knew nothing of country life, every june my family would drive out to the boonies (i.e. wisconsin) and pick at least six gallons of strawberries. it would take us all morning, and then we would stop off at a restaurant (the same one every time--the brat stop) for lunch and head back home to sort and process our bounty.
we would turn the picnic table in our backyard into the sorting station, with bowls for over-ripe, 'now' ripe, not-quite-ripe, and 'wait a bit' ripe berries. the the over-ripe ones we ate right there or threw out if need be--sometimes the most perfect looking berries on the plant don't last the car ride home, what with the back of the van turning into a green house in the brat stop parking lot, and making the whole car smell like summer baked in a pie. the 'now' berries we cut into fourths and stirred a 1/4-1/2cup sugar into, then let them sit in the fridge to macerate. those mom would pour over freshly baked shortcakes (from the recipe on the back of the bisquick box) topped with a dollop of home-made whipped cream. there were usually so many 'now' berries (short for 'you gotta eat them now cuz they will be too ripe tomorrow') that we were eating strawberry shortcake for a week after picking. it was my favorite week of the year. (the only other times that got close were the weeks around dad's birthday when farmer's market peaches meant peach pie was in season and the month in the fall after we went apple picking and apple pie, crumble, and -sauce were on the menu nonstop.) the not-quite-ripe berries were the ones we cut up, sugared, and froze for a bit of summer sun in the wintertime. see, the name is misleading--these were really more like 'by the end of the week these will be close to over-ripe' berries. that said, the 'wait a bit' ones were just that. they could wait till we dealt with all the other more ripe berries before we ate or froze them. there really wasn't an unripe or even under-ripe strawberry to be seen in our harvest.
i just remember that every year, what felt like tons of fresh strawberries needed to be consumed over a very short period of time. cuz it's really hard to keep them for more than a week or so. and i know i felt (and still do) that they were never as good baked as they were fresh. apples and stone fruit are better for baking. so eating and freezing were the only options we felt we had. this was partially because once you have eaten a strawberry as perfect and ripe as you get right off the plant, (and not picked early, sprayed with crazy chemicals and shipped across the country) you will never want to go back. that early experience has ruined me for store-bought strawberries forever. and i can't tell you how grateful i am.
nowadays there are things like strawberry, pecan, bleu cheese, and spinach salad, or strawberry lemonade slushies, or strawberry rhubarb pie (my friend kayt's specialty) or mixed berry coulis spooned over vanilla ice cream, or simply a fresh fruit salad.
i've even known friends to make strawberry jam and/or preserves. one of those doesn't take much (or any) pectin...or is that freezer jam...? i'm not as well versed in preserving as i want to, or will be, once i have a kitchen again. but when i was young there was only one thing god put strawberries on earth for. well, two. one, was to be eaten right of the plant (as described above) and two, was strawberry shortcake. in my mind there was no need for anything else. i guess i still believe that.
growing up, june meant strawberries. even though i lived on the edge of a major metropolis and knew nothing of country life, every june my family would drive out to the boonies (i.e. wisconsin) and pick at least six gallons of strawberries. it would take us all morning, and then we would stop off at a restaurant (the same one every time--the brat stop) for lunch and head back home to sort and process our bounty.
we would turn the picnic table in our backyard into the sorting station, with bowls for over-ripe, 'now' ripe, not-quite-ripe, and 'wait a bit' ripe berries. the the over-ripe ones we ate right there or threw out if need be--sometimes the most perfect looking berries on the plant don't last the car ride home, what with the back of the van turning into a green house in the brat stop parking lot, and making the whole car smell like summer baked in a pie. the 'now' berries we cut into fourths and stirred a 1/4-1/2cup sugar into, then let them sit in the fridge to macerate. those mom would pour over freshly baked shortcakes (from the recipe on the back of the bisquick box) topped with a dollop of home-made whipped cream. there were usually so many 'now' berries (short for 'you gotta eat them now cuz they will be too ripe tomorrow') that we were eating strawberry shortcake for a week after picking. it was my favorite week of the year. (the only other times that got close were the weeks around dad's birthday when farmer's market peaches meant peach pie was in season and the month in the fall after we went apple picking and apple pie, crumble, and -sauce were on the menu nonstop.) the not-quite-ripe berries were the ones we cut up, sugared, and froze for a bit of summer sun in the wintertime. see, the name is misleading--these were really more like 'by the end of the week these will be close to over-ripe' berries. that said, the 'wait a bit' ones were just that. they could wait till we dealt with all the other more ripe berries before we ate or froze them. there really wasn't an unripe or even under-ripe strawberry to be seen in our harvest.
i just remember that every year, what felt like tons of fresh strawberries needed to be consumed over a very short period of time. cuz it's really hard to keep them for more than a week or so. and i know i felt (and still do) that they were never as good baked as they were fresh. apples and stone fruit are better for baking. so eating and freezing were the only options we felt we had. this was partially because once you have eaten a strawberry as perfect and ripe as you get right off the plant, (and not picked early, sprayed with crazy chemicals and shipped across the country) you will never want to go back. that early experience has ruined me for store-bought strawberries forever. and i can't tell you how grateful i am.
nowadays there are things like strawberry, pecan, bleu cheese, and spinach salad, or strawberry lemonade slushies, or strawberry rhubarb pie (my friend kayt's specialty) or mixed berry coulis spooned over vanilla ice cream, or simply a fresh fruit salad.
i've even known friends to make strawberry jam and/or preserves. one of those doesn't take much (or any) pectin...or is that freezer jam...? i'm not as well versed in preserving as i want to, or will be, once i have a kitchen again. but when i was young there was only one thing god put strawberries on earth for. well, two. one, was to be eaten right of the plant (as described above) and two, was strawberry shortcake. in my mind there was no need for anything else. i guess i still believe that.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
re:stacks and longing fatigue
this song is one of the most beautiful and haunting songs ever recorded. it's the kind of song that makes you ache with longing from the first pure, spare chords all the way thru to the last, almost purely silent, 7 seconds. every time i hear it, the music flows in my ears and hollows out the cavity inside my chest, making its echoing notes rebound on my ribs, pushing all the air out of my lungs, causing my throat to feel the keening chorus, as if i had breath to voice it along with his. embedded deep in its music and lyrics is the sound of a man who has been crying and/or drinking so long he has no tears and almost no voice left to express his sorrow. it reproduces with razor-sharp accuracy, the sound of your heart ripping open and dripping your life-blood onto your already tear-soaked shoes. or mine. let's stick with mine, cuz i dunno what your heart sounds like.
needless to say, it's a killer, and for at least a month one winter, i listened to it nonstop. that winter was hard. it was dark and wet and cold in seattle, i was ignoring my need to write (which is usually a huge solace in winter), i was drinking too much and neglecting my housemates and cat, and i was desperately in love with someone who didn't care very much for me, wasn't particularly good to me, but was too nice to break up with me. therefore, a surfeit of longing as my musical diet made perfect sense. but after about a month, it became unbearable. not my way of life (tho it should have), but the music tapping into the emotions my life was causing in me. this song was creating 'longing fatigue' in me. it was exhausting my capacity to feel a yearning for anything anymore. it made me drink more, continue to ignore the good things in my life, and seek solace with a person who could not give me any. and this 'longing fatigue' made me burn out on the song. i stopped listening to it. i forgot it existed. i then packed up or threw/gave away everything i owned, fostered out my kitty and left town to travel.
which was great for a long time. at the beginning i was learning to not want anything. then, when i finally stopped wanting someone i couldn't have, i found i needed connection with everyone else. so i set out to spend all of my time with all of the people i missed all around the country. which was amazing, cuz connection is the opposite of longing. at least for me. and that worked for quite a while. i could create community wherever i was with whoever i was visiting, i could play house in so many different places, trying to make each one feel a little more like home (hopefully for my hosts as well as myself), i could even foster connections between friends that spanned across the country. i had amazing conversations the stretched around the nation with different folks contributing to each stage of my understanding. there were times i was able to write, and many many things to write about.
but there were times i couldn't write. times i riffed on the same subject over and over, even with the same friends. times when there was nothing i wouldn't give to not be a guest somewhere (it's a difficult job, and i wasn't always good at it). i'd drunk my fill of community. i didn't think it could happen to me. the extroverted middle child who was socialized by two (three, including my grandma) of the most hospitable, sociable, community fostering and other-person-oriented people i've known.
so then, at some point, i finally realized that for some time i had been longing for stillness, solitude, and space of my own to sit and listen to what i had to say to myself. cuz tho it's true that identity is partially based on other people, i have a tendency to spend to little time and energy on checking in with myself. i spend it all on talking to other people about themselves and every once in a while about myself. it's like when you and your partner have something you need to talk about in private, but you never make the time to do it, and then one of you brings it up as a joke in front of other people and soon you are in the middle of something that has no business happening in someone else's living room. i do that to myself. and i do it to my writing, almost nonstop. and talking about writing is the death of getting anything actually down on paper, at least for me.
but so now it's been 6+ months of feeling like i want a place of my own to spend some time with my self and my art and i still don't see it happening till august. i keep thinking i need to re-read 'a room of one's own' and then realizing that i don't. i know the feeling all to well and would prolly throw the book across the room were i to try to let ms. woolf tell it to me.
but i can't quite get myself to care right now. i wanna buy a house but am frustrated with credit issues and timing and the market, i need to find an apartment but can't imagine dealing with even one more new person to live with, i contemplate moving to a shack in montana and then a house in iowa and then a farm in east tennessee, feeling like they are all the same, i plan extended visits to friends and then wonder if i can stand being in someone else's house for even another couple weeks.
i started a short story on my new typewriter yesterday, and on the first page i realized it was hearkening back to a roald dahl short story i love. so i got up from the table and went to search for it in my boxes of books in the basement. i went thru all 4 of them without finding it, and in the process realized my 'golden compass' is missing as well. i almost threw a tantrum right there. i admit it. i'm lost. and i can't live this way. i've been stuffing my writer into boxes and bags and free moments on the train and coffee shop afternoons and nights on someone else's couch and it's becoming a problem. i've been longing for, and keeping from myself, the possibility of ever actually giving myself the time and space to write the stories swirling around in me. and i'm at the place where i'm tempted to just assume i never will and go ahead burn all my books and papers, stuff some clothes in my pack, hop a freight train and sleep rough in a field somewhere west of here, hoping to find work on a farm to keep my body busy and my mind empty.
but it wouldn't work. and i have to learn from the last time i was a victim of 'longing fatigue'. either coincidentally or because he is the most wonderful sweetheart in the world, my friend jack posted 're: stacks' on my facebook page yesterday. and today it hit me what i have to do. i have to listen to this song only once a day, but every day, to keep it's edge sharp on my throat, and i need to sink my teeth into the vision of a room with bookshelves and a desk by a window where my typewriter and netbook can sit--clench my jaw and hold on tight--and put this one need in front of anyone else's, so i can finally stop pretending that i'm wanting something i can't have. i've been running away from being a writer for years. i'm so good at making up excuses, the list and the reasons behind each could fill my first book. that black crow dangling my keys needs to fly away leave me alone to get shit done.
i'm done with this wanting. it's time to start making it happen.
"this is not the sound of a new man, or a crispy realization, it's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away, your love will be safe with me."
needless to say, it's a killer, and for at least a month one winter, i listened to it nonstop. that winter was hard. it was dark and wet and cold in seattle, i was ignoring my need to write (which is usually a huge solace in winter), i was drinking too much and neglecting my housemates and cat, and i was desperately in love with someone who didn't care very much for me, wasn't particularly good to me, but was too nice to break up with me. therefore, a surfeit of longing as my musical diet made perfect sense. but after about a month, it became unbearable. not my way of life (tho it should have), but the music tapping into the emotions my life was causing in me. this song was creating 'longing fatigue' in me. it was exhausting my capacity to feel a yearning for anything anymore. it made me drink more, continue to ignore the good things in my life, and seek solace with a person who could not give me any. and this 'longing fatigue' made me burn out on the song. i stopped listening to it. i forgot it existed. i then packed up or threw/gave away everything i owned, fostered out my kitty and left town to travel.
which was great for a long time. at the beginning i was learning to not want anything. then, when i finally stopped wanting someone i couldn't have, i found i needed connection with everyone else. so i set out to spend all of my time with all of the people i missed all around the country. which was amazing, cuz connection is the opposite of longing. at least for me. and that worked for quite a while. i could create community wherever i was with whoever i was visiting, i could play house in so many different places, trying to make each one feel a little more like home (hopefully for my hosts as well as myself), i could even foster connections between friends that spanned across the country. i had amazing conversations the stretched around the nation with different folks contributing to each stage of my understanding. there were times i was able to write, and many many things to write about.
but there were times i couldn't write. times i riffed on the same subject over and over, even with the same friends. times when there was nothing i wouldn't give to not be a guest somewhere (it's a difficult job, and i wasn't always good at it). i'd drunk my fill of community. i didn't think it could happen to me. the extroverted middle child who was socialized by two (three, including my grandma) of the most hospitable, sociable, community fostering and other-person-oriented people i've known.
so then, at some point, i finally realized that for some time i had been longing for stillness, solitude, and space of my own to sit and listen to what i had to say to myself. cuz tho it's true that identity is partially based on other people, i have a tendency to spend to little time and energy on checking in with myself. i spend it all on talking to other people about themselves and every once in a while about myself. it's like when you and your partner have something you need to talk about in private, but you never make the time to do it, and then one of you brings it up as a joke in front of other people and soon you are in the middle of something that has no business happening in someone else's living room. i do that to myself. and i do it to my writing, almost nonstop. and talking about writing is the death of getting anything actually down on paper, at least for me.
but so now it's been 6+ months of feeling like i want a place of my own to spend some time with my self and my art and i still don't see it happening till august. i keep thinking i need to re-read 'a room of one's own' and then realizing that i don't. i know the feeling all to well and would prolly throw the book across the room were i to try to let ms. woolf tell it to me.
but i can't quite get myself to care right now. i wanna buy a house but am frustrated with credit issues and timing and the market, i need to find an apartment but can't imagine dealing with even one more new person to live with, i contemplate moving to a shack in montana and then a house in iowa and then a farm in east tennessee, feeling like they are all the same, i plan extended visits to friends and then wonder if i can stand being in someone else's house for even another couple weeks.
i started a short story on my new typewriter yesterday, and on the first page i realized it was hearkening back to a roald dahl short story i love. so i got up from the table and went to search for it in my boxes of books in the basement. i went thru all 4 of them without finding it, and in the process realized my 'golden compass' is missing as well. i almost threw a tantrum right there. i admit it. i'm lost. and i can't live this way. i've been stuffing my writer into boxes and bags and free moments on the train and coffee shop afternoons and nights on someone else's couch and it's becoming a problem. i've been longing for, and keeping from myself, the possibility of ever actually giving myself the time and space to write the stories swirling around in me. and i'm at the place where i'm tempted to just assume i never will and go ahead burn all my books and papers, stuff some clothes in my pack, hop a freight train and sleep rough in a field somewhere west of here, hoping to find work on a farm to keep my body busy and my mind empty.
but it wouldn't work. and i have to learn from the last time i was a victim of 'longing fatigue'. either coincidentally or because he is the most wonderful sweetheart in the world, my friend jack posted 're: stacks' on my facebook page yesterday. and today it hit me what i have to do. i have to listen to this song only once a day, but every day, to keep it's edge sharp on my throat, and i need to sink my teeth into the vision of a room with bookshelves and a desk by a window where my typewriter and netbook can sit--clench my jaw and hold on tight--and put this one need in front of anyone else's, so i can finally stop pretending that i'm wanting something i can't have. i've been running away from being a writer for years. i'm so good at making up excuses, the list and the reasons behind each could fill my first book. that black crow dangling my keys needs to fly away leave me alone to get shit done.
i'm done with this wanting. it's time to start making it happen.
"this is not the sound of a new man, or a crispy realization, it's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away, your love will be safe with me."
Thursday, April 7, 2011
let me know when you get it.
been writing blog posts the whole south/southwest/west tour, just not posting them...
it's time to bring them from my notebook to the screen:
[2-25(ish)-2011]
letters are an intriguing phenomenon that modern culture has lost the delight in (and fear of) sending. because there is both. a letter is a very specific form of communication that has little relation to the email, especially if it is handwritten. emails, by their very nature, expect a very quick response. typing an email out while sitting at a computer is, in most cases, a quick process, and it arrives in the recipient's inbox immediately after it's been sent. this implies a conversation can happen, back and forth quick enough to get questions answered. the old school counterpart was the telegram. quick, to the point, reply asap.
but a letter is a much longer, slower process on all fronts. to write someone a letter takes sitting down with pen and paper (preferably away from a computer screen) and putting all your ideas and feelings down for the other to read in a way that can't really expect an immediate response or any sort of timely give and take that a conversation (verbal or internet-able) can have. i feel that, as a letter writer, you must start with the premise that the recipient wants to read what you have to say because they care about you and they understand that whatever is in the letter is important enough for you to have found the time to sit down to write it to them. i also feel that it is the letter writer's duty to then write something worth reading. this requires the psychic space and purpose as well as the fullness and openness of heart to give something very real (and therefore precious) of yourself to another person, without any indication of how they are going to react to this part of you that you have chosen to share. of course that is the hardest part, but then there is the challenge of putting that little piece of your mind and heart down onto the page in a way that is conducive to the very distinct, personal, and time-consuming process that defines this form of communication. a letter is something that is written with intention, made by hand for traveling a distance to another person who is intended to peruse it at their leisure, digest its contents, come back to it, and at some point (hopefully) feel moved enough to write the sender a letter back. note the parenthetical above because there is something in the function of a letter that invites a response, but doesn't necessarily require it, like an email does. and that is the somewhat heart-wrenching part. because after you have put part of yourself onto a page for another person, you have to then let it go so it can physically travel thru time and space and (hopefully) arrive in their hands--a huge act of faith and logistics--before they can even lay eyes upon it. this physical entity that they receive has been touched by you, even wrought with your own hands, in fact, written in your own character, (such a great word to evoke the idea of someone's soul coming thru in their handwriting) it (if the sentiment in it is at all true) has pieces of your self inside it. it's almost absurd to believe anyone trusts the u.s. postal service with their personal letters. yet, time and space cannot be overcome in this case. cuz there is a significant amount of time passing while this letter, this piece of you, travels to its destination, its person, and while they take in however much of your heart you laid bare for them, and while they figure out if, and then how, they will respond to it.
and this is the part that makes writing letters a venture unsuited to the faint of heart. because life must go on during all of this time. and you have no guarantee that any stage in the above journey will be completed. the moment you send a letter in the mail you have no control over it anymore. you have no control as to whether or not the person even receives it, let alone opens it, reads it, and finds within it something that creates the desire it in them to respond to you. and all along, time is passing and life is going on and you must continue to live with all of these unknowns floating about. it's enough to kill a man.
so, in order to combat these woes, i believe it's important to treat the act of sending a letter as a release of control, of responsibility, of care, or at least the kind of care that can keep a person up at night. i think, for the writer of a letter to have succeeded in truly sending it off, they must not hold tight to the idea of a reply. and i feel, at least in my experience, that this understanding colors the kind of letter writing that is possible. letters (as i see them) tend to want to give something to the reader without asking for much in return. they can't function very well (and nor can the sender) if they are set up in the reverse. however, even if one succeeds in writing this way, and sending with true detachment, there is still no way to avoid the heartache over not hearing from someone to whom you have sent a letter. because of this i think the art of letter writing could be said to have evolved into figuring out how to write, no matter what is actually said, in a way that inspires the reader to respond, however briefly and in whatever format. now i find, as a writer and sender of both letters and postcards, that my preoccupation is not with whether i will get (read: have succeeded in eliciting) a reply, as much as it is whether the intended person actually received said missive. no one believes they are obligated, nor are they ever really inspired, to reply to a postcard, that is the nature of the beast. but sending one out, no matter what i do, creates in me the desire to hear of its receipt. this desire gets larger with a letter, and is in direct proportion to how much of my heart i have put into it. even ones that are sent with detachment, with release of control, and with no desire for a reply, even those, i want desperately to know if they at least arrived where i had intended. i like to know that a piece of my heart isn't just floating somewhere on the pacific ocean, or buried in the snow-capped rockies. i'm very free with scattering pieces of my heart all over, but i like to at least keep tabs on where they land--that they are safe in the hands of the people i have deemed worthy. maybe sometime in the future i will reach the level of zen in letter writing that it won't matter to me whether the person i write to ever receives the letter for the sending of it to have been a successful venture. i hope i can someday. but not today.
it's time to bring them from my notebook to the screen:
[2-25(ish)-2011]
letters are an intriguing phenomenon that modern culture has lost the delight in (and fear of) sending. because there is both. a letter is a very specific form of communication that has little relation to the email, especially if it is handwritten. emails, by their very nature, expect a very quick response. typing an email out while sitting at a computer is, in most cases, a quick process, and it arrives in the recipient's inbox immediately after it's been sent. this implies a conversation can happen, back and forth quick enough to get questions answered. the old school counterpart was the telegram. quick, to the point, reply asap.
but a letter is a much longer, slower process on all fronts. to write someone a letter takes sitting down with pen and paper (preferably away from a computer screen) and putting all your ideas and feelings down for the other to read in a way that can't really expect an immediate response or any sort of timely give and take that a conversation (verbal or internet-able) can have. i feel that, as a letter writer, you must start with the premise that the recipient wants to read what you have to say because they care about you and they understand that whatever is in the letter is important enough for you to have found the time to sit down to write it to them. i also feel that it is the letter writer's duty to then write something worth reading. this requires the psychic space and purpose as well as the fullness and openness of heart to give something very real (and therefore precious) of yourself to another person, without any indication of how they are going to react to this part of you that you have chosen to share. of course that is the hardest part, but then there is the challenge of putting that little piece of your mind and heart down onto the page in a way that is conducive to the very distinct, personal, and time-consuming process that defines this form of communication. a letter is something that is written with intention, made by hand for traveling a distance to another person who is intended to peruse it at their leisure, digest its contents, come back to it, and at some point (hopefully) feel moved enough to write the sender a letter back. note the parenthetical above because there is something in the function of a letter that invites a response, but doesn't necessarily require it, like an email does. and that is the somewhat heart-wrenching part. because after you have put part of yourself onto a page for another person, you have to then let it go so it can physically travel thru time and space and (hopefully) arrive in their hands--a huge act of faith and logistics--before they can even lay eyes upon it. this physical entity that they receive has been touched by you, even wrought with your own hands, in fact, written in your own character, (such a great word to evoke the idea of someone's soul coming thru in their handwriting) it (if the sentiment in it is at all true) has pieces of your self inside it. it's almost absurd to believe anyone trusts the u.s. postal service with their personal letters. yet, time and space cannot be overcome in this case. cuz there is a significant amount of time passing while this letter, this piece of you, travels to its destination, its person, and while they take in however much of your heart you laid bare for them, and while they figure out if, and then how, they will respond to it.
and this is the part that makes writing letters a venture unsuited to the faint of heart. because life must go on during all of this time. and you have no guarantee that any stage in the above journey will be completed. the moment you send a letter in the mail you have no control over it anymore. you have no control as to whether or not the person even receives it, let alone opens it, reads it, and finds within it something that creates the desire it in them to respond to you. and all along, time is passing and life is going on and you must continue to live with all of these unknowns floating about. it's enough to kill a man.
so, in order to combat these woes, i believe it's important to treat the act of sending a letter as a release of control, of responsibility, of care, or at least the kind of care that can keep a person up at night. i think, for the writer of a letter to have succeeded in truly sending it off, they must not hold tight to the idea of a reply. and i feel, at least in my experience, that this understanding colors the kind of letter writing that is possible. letters (as i see them) tend to want to give something to the reader without asking for much in return. they can't function very well (and nor can the sender) if they are set up in the reverse. however, even if one succeeds in writing this way, and sending with true detachment, there is still no way to avoid the heartache over not hearing from someone to whom you have sent a letter. because of this i think the art of letter writing could be said to have evolved into figuring out how to write, no matter what is actually said, in a way that inspires the reader to respond, however briefly and in whatever format. now i find, as a writer and sender of both letters and postcards, that my preoccupation is not with whether i will get (read: have succeeded in eliciting) a reply, as much as it is whether the intended person actually received said missive. no one believes they are obligated, nor are they ever really inspired, to reply to a postcard, that is the nature of the beast. but sending one out, no matter what i do, creates in me the desire to hear of its receipt. this desire gets larger with a letter, and is in direct proportion to how much of my heart i have put into it. even ones that are sent with detachment, with release of control, and with no desire for a reply, even those, i want desperately to know if they at least arrived where i had intended. i like to know that a piece of my heart isn't just floating somewhere on the pacific ocean, or buried in the snow-capped rockies. i'm very free with scattering pieces of my heart all over, but i like to at least keep tabs on where they land--that they are safe in the hands of the people i have deemed worthy. maybe sometime in the future i will reach the level of zen in letter writing that it won't matter to me whether the person i write to ever receives the letter for the sending of it to have been a successful venture. i hope i can someday. but not today.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
it's been a while...
hi, blog. i haven't forgotten about you, i've just been working on this one story that has taken me over. but a couple days ago i was explaining to a friend that i pay attention to things, try them out, in order to be able to write about them better. she laughed when i said i was attempting to be a smoker, mostly so i could write about a smoker. and then yesterday i wrote this. just to see if i could:
I was sitting in the library writing in my journal, but really avoiding human contact, when I caught myself spacing out thru the window. As I regained focus and actually looked at the place my eyes fell, I noticed a girl sitting on the low wall just outside, smoking a cigarette. I looked closer and recognized Sally, all alone, seemingly unnoticed, enjoying her solitude and her solitary act. I meant to look away to maintain the privacy she believed was hers, but I found I couldn't. Why, you ask? Because she herself was so focused on smoking, it couldn't but draw my attention. I was entranced, as if I was watching an absorbing film. Because hers was not the focus of someone who was unsure of what they were doing, nor of an addict single-mindedly feeding their fix, but of a connoisseur reveling in a distinct pleasure. I had the feeling she only smoked in private. stolen moments with a lover couldn't be more enjoyable.
Let me illustrate: between drags she seemed to meditate on the trail of smoke that drifted lazily from the tip, seeing signs in the curls it made of its own accord on the windless day. She would then bring the filter to her lips with intention, slowly drawing breath, her cheeks sucked in, till she was full. Replete. She'd then pull the cigarette away from her mouth, allowing a little puff of smoke to escape, but only for a second. As she inhaled it back, her lips pantomimed a kiss [muah]. She'd hold her breath for a few seconds before relenting, her tongue flitting to her lips during the pause. then the long slow exhale, in which her shoulders settled, her chin tilted up, and her mouth formed a tiny 'o' allowing the narrowest stream of smoke to flow in a straight line toward the middle distance where her eyes had been trained throughout. This same ritual, over and over, never once lost its appeal for her. or me. I marveled at her fingers as they trembled slightly, holding the cigarette at an angle to keep the elongating ash in place. My eyes were held captive by the way the smoke would curl around her lips in a tight billow, wanting to stretch further, just as it got sucked back in and reformed with a purpose, then expelled to be traced into dissipated oblivion.
At that moment, watching her there, I fell. For the length of time it took her to smoke that cigarette, she had me, utterly and completely. I was her creature. More accurately, I was her cigarette. Or at least I was burning to be treated as dearly, in her possession, under her gaze. But then she crushed it out, tenderly, and threw it away. I stared after it, feeling its pain, wracking my brain for ways of avoiding such rejection, vowing to last longer in her affection, unsure if I would be regarded as fondly, willing to strive to give as much pleasure.
She walked away without a backward glance and as she passed out of my sight I shook my head, squinting, getting the smoke out of my eyes. I looked down at what I'd been writing five minutes before with incomprehension, disdain, a troubled frown marking my features. I flipped the page, and started writing. this flowed out.
I was sitting in the library writing in my journal, but really avoiding human contact, when I caught myself spacing out thru the window. As I regained focus and actually looked at the place my eyes fell, I noticed a girl sitting on the low wall just outside, smoking a cigarette. I looked closer and recognized Sally, all alone, seemingly unnoticed, enjoying her solitude and her solitary act. I meant to look away to maintain the privacy she believed was hers, but I found I couldn't. Why, you ask? Because she herself was so focused on smoking, it couldn't but draw my attention. I was entranced, as if I was watching an absorbing film. Because hers was not the focus of someone who was unsure of what they were doing, nor of an addict single-mindedly feeding their fix, but of a connoisseur reveling in a distinct pleasure. I had the feeling she only smoked in private. stolen moments with a lover couldn't be more enjoyable.
Let me illustrate: between drags she seemed to meditate on the trail of smoke that drifted lazily from the tip, seeing signs in the curls it made of its own accord on the windless day. She would then bring the filter to her lips with intention, slowly drawing breath, her cheeks sucked in, till she was full. Replete. She'd then pull the cigarette away from her mouth, allowing a little puff of smoke to escape, but only for a second. As she inhaled it back, her lips pantomimed a kiss [muah]. She'd hold her breath for a few seconds before relenting, her tongue flitting to her lips during the pause. then the long slow exhale, in which her shoulders settled, her chin tilted up, and her mouth formed a tiny 'o' allowing the narrowest stream of smoke to flow in a straight line toward the middle distance where her eyes had been trained throughout. This same ritual, over and over, never once lost its appeal for her. or me. I marveled at her fingers as they trembled slightly, holding the cigarette at an angle to keep the elongating ash in place. My eyes were held captive by the way the smoke would curl around her lips in a tight billow, wanting to stretch further, just as it got sucked back in and reformed with a purpose, then expelled to be traced into dissipated oblivion.
At that moment, watching her there, I fell. For the length of time it took her to smoke that cigarette, she had me, utterly and completely. I was her creature. More accurately, I was her cigarette. Or at least I was burning to be treated as dearly, in her possession, under her gaze. But then she crushed it out, tenderly, and threw it away. I stared after it, feeling its pain, wracking my brain for ways of avoiding such rejection, vowing to last longer in her affection, unsure if I would be regarded as fondly, willing to strive to give as much pleasure.
She walked away without a backward glance and as she passed out of my sight I shook my head, squinting, getting the smoke out of my eyes. I looked down at what I'd been writing five minutes before with incomprehension, disdain, a troubled frown marking my features. I flipped the page, and started writing. this flowed out.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
dear johnny depp
[draft of a letter to johnny depp]
dear johnny depp,
given what follows, i feel it is almost unnecessary to say, but i will nonetheless begin this letter with my supreme respect for your talent as an actor and your choices in roles and projects throughout your career. i have seen many, (but not all) of your films and have been more than a little impressed with your performance in every one, whether or not i ultimately like the film as a whole. to me, your choice of roles and projects shows a personal courage in your art that i very much appreciate in a hollywood actor (few of them have it, and those that do tend to have come from either theatrical or non-american backgrounds).
enough with the preamble. i've read in interviews that you have contemplated acting on the stage, and in that musing, the title Hamlet has come up. i'm writing to ask you to give it a try, now, and in the way i propose. i have a concept for a production of hamlet that i think would greatly benefit from your portrayal of the title character. i want to lay the concept our for you and illustrate why i believe you could do my hamlet justice. if my interpretation of the character doesn't sound intriguing to you, of feels outside of your comfort zone or interest, i totally understand. but please take my offering you the role as a compliment to your skill and your acting choices to date, nothing more or less. here is the main gist of my request:
i want you to play a queer hamlet. and i want you to play him with all the depth and sincerity and honesty with which you play everything else. this is not a camp version, this is a queer reading of a character with great emotional depth. i use the word 'queer' deliberately, and not in the old sense of the word, but in the more recent adoption of it by the younger generation of lgbtq's--in the sense of being broader than strictly gay or lesbian or bi, of encompassing the possibility of alternate gender identity as well as sexuality. (or at least seeing both of these as on a spectrum.) to my knowledge you have never played an overtly gay character, though i've read of you joking that all of your characters are secretly gay. i appreciate that thought because i feel it hits on something very important in your acting, namely, that you queer all of your characters (in using 'queer' as a verb here i imply not purely dealing with sexuality, but more as a way of fucking with dichotomies and dominant thought around a specific idea, in this case, manhood or masculinity). i feel as though your portrayals of male characters in many of your movies are somewhat subversive to the dominant society's idea of a man, and certainly of a hollywood-star/leading-man. this feels so important for so many reasons, most notably for folks of the younger generation (well, all generations, really) to see examples of men who, not only do they not fall into the intensely masculine/macho part of the spectrum (ie, brad pitt in fight club), but are also able to integrate aspects of the feminine into them as well (ie, you as e. scissorhands, i. crane, w. wonka, and cap'n j. sparrow).
i want my hamlet to play with both sexuality and gender throughout the play, to flirt with men and women alike, to have sexual (or at least romantic) history with both ophelia and horatio, to be dealing with how to emulate the role models of his father and his mother, to perform multiple genders (even dressing in drag at one point). i feel you would be incredibly good at the chameleon nature of this request. i also feel that the central problem for hamlet in the production i propose is one that you often deal with in your projects (particularly with tim burton). i think hamlet's journey is one of discovering how to grow up. i think there is a definite tendency early in the play for him to treat everything as a game, as not quite real, or more precisely, not quite serious enough to rise to the challenge--to mature enough to truly deal with. he is good at trying on mourning, trying on madness, making as if to revenge his father, performing the role of prince, of lover, of friend, of son. but it takes for the stakes to continually get higher and higher, for others to take him more seriously than he takes himself, for people to start dying around him or trying to kill him, for him to take real action by making sure as to his heart's choice (horatio) to speak plainly to his betrayers (r&g) to let his mother in on his plans, to frankly apologize to his rival (laertes) and to finally follow through with his rashly made promise to his dead father's ghost. throughout the play i see a struggle for hamlet between his ability to maintain control of every conversation he engages in (which he can do with ease and a surplus of double entendre which keeps everyone he speaks with wrongfooted) and having no control of his life (his location, his direction, his domain, his family, his company, his ability to carry out his plans, anything). he is lost in his homeland, he is a cynical innocent, he is the prince cum court jester, tilting at conversational (and soliloqual) windmills of his own contriving because any more realistic target is to much for him to handle. slowly he learns how to come into himself, to acknowledge and communicate his desires, to hold himself and others responsible. this process could very easily entail a coming out of sorts within it, or it could not. i propose an overt portrayal of hamlet's and horatio's attraction and relationship and also hints of attraction in multiple other relationships (r&g, laertes, a sailor, etc) but i don't want his love affair with ophelia to be undermined in its sincerity and weight by his attraction to men. there is a true and complex romance/attraction goin on there, but hamlet is too immature to sufficiently deal (in a non-performative way) with it even at her grave. she is not the first, nor is the the only casualty of his folly (i would like the possibility of he and laertes having a history to be real) but her death i believe is a major catalyst for his finally taking things seriously and rising to the challenges laid in front of him. hers is the death of innocence, and it ramifications shake him to his core.
enough of my analysis for now, please let me know if the idea of this project excites you in any way. i would be happy to hear your suggestions of other actors with whom you would like to work (helena bonham carter is more than welcome to take on ophelia once again, if she is interested. i think she might like my take on her character as well...)
i eagerly await your reply.
my most sincere regards,
ray van fox (x)
[you may well laugh at the pretension of my letter, i do myself, but i say to you that there is no other actor working in hollywood right now that i would trust with this character like i would mr. j. depp. (not that i was looking for a hollywood actor for this project but i read an interview where he mentioned wanting to do a stage production of hamlet before he gets too old, so you know, my mind went there...) i have however spoken before about his genderqueerness (see johnny depp's eyeliner) and i think he's the one that could pull this off with flying colors. i'll take suggestions of anyone better, but i don't believe they exist.]
dear johnny depp,
given what follows, i feel it is almost unnecessary to say, but i will nonetheless begin this letter with my supreme respect for your talent as an actor and your choices in roles and projects throughout your career. i have seen many, (but not all) of your films and have been more than a little impressed with your performance in every one, whether or not i ultimately like the film as a whole. to me, your choice of roles and projects shows a personal courage in your art that i very much appreciate in a hollywood actor (few of them have it, and those that do tend to have come from either theatrical or non-american backgrounds).
enough with the preamble. i've read in interviews that you have contemplated acting on the stage, and in that musing, the title Hamlet has come up. i'm writing to ask you to give it a try, now, and in the way i propose. i have a concept for a production of hamlet that i think would greatly benefit from your portrayal of the title character. i want to lay the concept our for you and illustrate why i believe you could do my hamlet justice. if my interpretation of the character doesn't sound intriguing to you, of feels outside of your comfort zone or interest, i totally understand. but please take my offering you the role as a compliment to your skill and your acting choices to date, nothing more or less. here is the main gist of my request:
i want you to play a queer hamlet. and i want you to play him with all the depth and sincerity and honesty with which you play everything else. this is not a camp version, this is a queer reading of a character with great emotional depth. i use the word 'queer' deliberately, and not in the old sense of the word, but in the more recent adoption of it by the younger generation of lgbtq's--in the sense of being broader than strictly gay or lesbian or bi, of encompassing the possibility of alternate gender identity as well as sexuality. (or at least seeing both of these as on a spectrum.) to my knowledge you have never played an overtly gay character, though i've read of you joking that all of your characters are secretly gay. i appreciate that thought because i feel it hits on something very important in your acting, namely, that you queer all of your characters (in using 'queer' as a verb here i imply not purely dealing with sexuality, but more as a way of fucking with dichotomies and dominant thought around a specific idea, in this case, manhood or masculinity). i feel as though your portrayals of male characters in many of your movies are somewhat subversive to the dominant society's idea of a man, and certainly of a hollywood-star/leading-man. this feels so important for so many reasons, most notably for folks of the younger generation (well, all generations, really) to see examples of men who, not only do they not fall into the intensely masculine/macho part of the spectrum (ie, brad pitt in fight club), but are also able to integrate aspects of the feminine into them as well (ie, you as e. scissorhands, i. crane, w. wonka, and cap'n j. sparrow).
i want my hamlet to play with both sexuality and gender throughout the play, to flirt with men and women alike, to have sexual (or at least romantic) history with both ophelia and horatio, to be dealing with how to emulate the role models of his father and his mother, to perform multiple genders (even dressing in drag at one point). i feel you would be incredibly good at the chameleon nature of this request. i also feel that the central problem for hamlet in the production i propose is one that you often deal with in your projects (particularly with tim burton). i think hamlet's journey is one of discovering how to grow up. i think there is a definite tendency early in the play for him to treat everything as a game, as not quite real, or more precisely, not quite serious enough to rise to the challenge--to mature enough to truly deal with. he is good at trying on mourning, trying on madness, making as if to revenge his father, performing the role of prince, of lover, of friend, of son. but it takes for the stakes to continually get higher and higher, for others to take him more seriously than he takes himself, for people to start dying around him or trying to kill him, for him to take real action by making sure as to his heart's choice (horatio) to speak plainly to his betrayers (r&g) to let his mother in on his plans, to frankly apologize to his rival (laertes) and to finally follow through with his rashly made promise to his dead father's ghost. throughout the play i see a struggle for hamlet between his ability to maintain control of every conversation he engages in (which he can do with ease and a surplus of double entendre which keeps everyone he speaks with wrongfooted) and having no control of his life (his location, his direction, his domain, his family, his company, his ability to carry out his plans, anything). he is lost in his homeland, he is a cynical innocent, he is the prince cum court jester, tilting at conversational (and soliloqual) windmills of his own contriving because any more realistic target is to much for him to handle. slowly he learns how to come into himself, to acknowledge and communicate his desires, to hold himself and others responsible. this process could very easily entail a coming out of sorts within it, or it could not. i propose an overt portrayal of hamlet's and horatio's attraction and relationship and also hints of attraction in multiple other relationships (r&g, laertes, a sailor, etc) but i don't want his love affair with ophelia to be undermined in its sincerity and weight by his attraction to men. there is a true and complex romance/attraction goin on there, but hamlet is too immature to sufficiently deal (in a non-performative way) with it even at her grave. she is not the first, nor is the the only casualty of his folly (i would like the possibility of he and laertes having a history to be real) but her death i believe is a major catalyst for his finally taking things seriously and rising to the challenges laid in front of him. hers is the death of innocence, and it ramifications shake him to his core.
enough of my analysis for now, please let me know if the idea of this project excites you in any way. i would be happy to hear your suggestions of other actors with whom you would like to work (helena bonham carter is more than welcome to take on ophelia once again, if she is interested. i think she might like my take on her character as well...)
i eagerly await your reply.
my most sincere regards,
ray van fox (x)
[you may well laugh at the pretension of my letter, i do myself, but i say to you that there is no other actor working in hollywood right now that i would trust with this character like i would mr. j. depp. (not that i was looking for a hollywood actor for this project but i read an interview where he mentioned wanting to do a stage production of hamlet before he gets too old, so you know, my mind went there...) i have however spoken before about his genderqueerness (see johnny depp's eyeliner) and i think he's the one that could pull this off with flying colors. i'll take suggestions of anyone better, but i don't believe they exist.]
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
solar flares = worse than mercury retrograde
also, new orleans = technological dead zone.
so first, there was no way to get online at the guest house we stayed at the first couple days, then the coffee shop across that street had a sign that said "our internet is being a jerk today, and we are trying to fix it, getting the new modem up and running by tomorrow." but i still went there cuz the guys were really nice, one of which was really cute (i started calling him my boyfriend for the rest of our stay). then there were were no coffee shops to speak of in the french quarter, and the place we stayed for the rest of the weekend wasn't connected either.
but the real kicker was that the the solar flares caused my phone to go haywire for the two to three days after the 17th. and i mean like totally freaked the eff out. as in, it couldn't stop acting like all its buttons were being pushed at all times. it would scroll thru menus and try to make odd functions happen, it would continue doing this while i was trying to make it stop or trying to do something else and it kept trying to do weird shit to my contacts. it ended up deleting all my texts in the inbox, sent and draft folders (hopefully it didn't randomly call or delete anyone) it would continually type *741W over and over, even when i was trying to call or text someone. it seriously made no sense. i watched it scroll thru my contacts list almost 3 times really rapidly before i could get it to stop. it would run down my battery in a few hours but would still go crazy no matter how many times i turned it off and on again. it was driving me crazy. watching a phone go insane is really distracting and kinda stressful. i would try to make it stop freaking out to save the battery, given that my friends and i kept splitting up and wanting to get back together. super super annoying. and then i woke up on sunday morning and it had stopped. just like that. (and the weirdness of that also drove me a little crazy)
oh, and also, there was this period of time on saturday night during the parade (the very first parade of the mardi gras season, the most raunchy one of the lot--krewe de vieux) when no one in the french quarter could get their phones to work. i heard even the atms were not functioning correctly. now, presumably this was because there were so many people in the area that the cell towers just couldn't handle that much stress on the system. but that seems a little far fetched to me, i mean, it was only the beginning of mardi gras, there were so many less people there than there will be later this month. i think the much more plausible reason is that the solar flares were totally just messing with everyone's phones for fun. i mean, that's gotta be the answer, right?
cuz it wasn't just phones. janet bought a new memory card for her camera, and it kept creating errors in all the pictures she was trying to take all weekend. (until sunday morning, might i add) it really just said there were card reading errors and that the files were corrupted. made no freaking sense, just would mess up randomly. and not immediately after taking the picture, but later, after you had turned off the camera and turned it on again. then they were totally screwed up and you couldn't see them anymore. and it didn't have anything to do with the formatting of the card cuz kenny even tried that. i think he even tried taking out the batteries and putting them back in. it was just ridiculous.
my only explanation for why every bit of internet and phone and electronic mayhem occurred was because the sun had decided to belch magnetic/ionized/highly energetic particles at our magnetosphere. (see wikipedia article) this is the real truth. or at least its my truth.
so first, there was no way to get online at the guest house we stayed at the first couple days, then the coffee shop across that street had a sign that said "our internet is being a jerk today, and we are trying to fix it, getting the new modem up and running by tomorrow." but i still went there cuz the guys were really nice, one of which was really cute (i started calling him my boyfriend for the rest of our stay). then there were were no coffee shops to speak of in the french quarter, and the place we stayed for the rest of the weekend wasn't connected either.
but the real kicker was that the the solar flares caused my phone to go haywire for the two to three days after the 17th. and i mean like totally freaked the eff out. as in, it couldn't stop acting like all its buttons were being pushed at all times. it would scroll thru menus and try to make odd functions happen, it would continue doing this while i was trying to make it stop or trying to do something else and it kept trying to do weird shit to my contacts. it ended up deleting all my texts in the inbox, sent and draft folders (hopefully it didn't randomly call or delete anyone) it would continually type *741W over and over, even when i was trying to call or text someone. it seriously made no sense. i watched it scroll thru my contacts list almost 3 times really rapidly before i could get it to stop. it would run down my battery in a few hours but would still go crazy no matter how many times i turned it off and on again. it was driving me crazy. watching a phone go insane is really distracting and kinda stressful. i would try to make it stop freaking out to save the battery, given that my friends and i kept splitting up and wanting to get back together. super super annoying. and then i woke up on sunday morning and it had stopped. just like that. (and the weirdness of that also drove me a little crazy)
oh, and also, there was this period of time on saturday night during the parade (the very first parade of the mardi gras season, the most raunchy one of the lot--krewe de vieux) when no one in the french quarter could get their phones to work. i heard even the atms were not functioning correctly. now, presumably this was because there were so many people in the area that the cell towers just couldn't handle that much stress on the system. but that seems a little far fetched to me, i mean, it was only the beginning of mardi gras, there were so many less people there than there will be later this month. i think the much more plausible reason is that the solar flares were totally just messing with everyone's phones for fun. i mean, that's gotta be the answer, right?
cuz it wasn't just phones. janet bought a new memory card for her camera, and it kept creating errors in all the pictures she was trying to take all weekend. (until sunday morning, might i add) it really just said there were card reading errors and that the files were corrupted. made no freaking sense, just would mess up randomly. and not immediately after taking the picture, but later, after you had turned off the camera and turned it on again. then they were totally screwed up and you couldn't see them anymore. and it didn't have anything to do with the formatting of the card cuz kenny even tried that. i think he even tried taking out the batteries and putting them back in. it was just ridiculous.
my only explanation for why every bit of internet and phone and electronic mayhem occurred was because the sun had decided to belch magnetic/ionized/highly energetic particles at our magnetosphere. (see wikipedia article) this is the real truth. or at least its my truth.
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