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CarrollBlog 5.31
Whenever I'm in another country, I look carefully at their vending machines to see what's being offered. It's interesting how the contents can give a good indication of the place. For example when I was in Milan yesterday, a bunch of us were waiting around to do an event. They had us stashed in a dumpy back room that happened to have a couple of vending machines in the corner. One of them sold coffee. In Vienna, coffee machines in public places offer only three or four choices-- black, with milk, hot chocolate, and maybe some kind of simple soup. In contrast, the Milan machine offered eight--EIGHT!-- varieties of coffee. Macchiato, Cappuccino, Latte macchiato, and so on. I started smiling like an idiot because only in Italy would someone take such care with a vending machine. Unfortunately however I mentioned this to my Italian translator. She glanced at the machine and flicked her hand at it in total dismissal. "Yes they offer you a choice, but every single one of them tastes the same."
CarrollBlog 5.30
I did an interview yesterday with an Italian journalist because I'm going to Milan on Tuesday for their "La Biblioteca in Giardino" literary festival. When we met, the journalist said, "I am very surprised. I thought you would be short and weird." I've heard this comment before when I meet people for the first time who have read my books. I asked this woman why she thought that. "Well, because your books are so odd, so different... But you look like a tall soldier, not someone who writes the kind of stories you do." I don't know if that was a compliment or an insult and I didn't ask. I do know though that it is really chancy meeting people we have only experienced on a page or coming out of the radio or up on a screen. Like the characters in their book, we create a detailed image of what an author(singer,actor) will look like. But even if we have seen pictures of them, how they look in person is almost always disconcerting. I remember very vividly once while working in Los Angeles, I went to Mani's bakery late at night to buy cookies. Walking out of the store as I was going in was a sort of small, visibly nervous woman who gave off almost physical waves of the jitters. Pretty but not special. Probably neurotic too. It was only after she had passed that I realized it was Michelle Pfeiffer.
CarrollBlog 5.29
One of those days where the weather changes dramatically every half hour or so. Whenever you leave the house you don't know whether to take an umbrella or a picnic. The kind of day you sort of like because it changes so much so frequently, but like being around a person who goes through constant mood swings, they're interesting for a while but you wouldn't want to live with them. A man told me about a love affair he'd had with a woman like this. She went through many contrasting moods almost every day. He said it was like watching television with someone who surfs through the channels so fast that you grow annoyed. You want them to stop anywhere and watch ANYTHING for a little while. A roundabout way of saying drama is good but in small doses.
CarrollBlog 5.28
Rain is good for romance. Walk through any city on a rainy day and you're bound to see this: couples close and happy under a shared umbrella, one's hand wrapped around the other's on the handle. Or getting gloriously drenched together, usually grinning and soaking wet, the hell with an umbrella. Or head to head at small tables under outdoor cafe awnings. Pretending they stopped here to keep out of the rain, but really using the excuse to sit close together and touch a lot. Others enter a store laughing, laughing at their wetness, delighted about everything. They don't want to buy anything; they're just using this dry place as an intermission. A happy older couple across the restaurant helping each other dry off. They're chatting animatedly for the first time in days, comparing notes about walking hand in hand through the storm to get here. They're both famished now. Something about walking in the rain. They'll eat like champions. Days like these stay with you. A long time later you'll ask-- remember the crazy time we got caught in that storm? And their eyes will light up. Of course they remember. Guaranteed. James Sallis
CarrollBlog 5.27
A mini epiphany came to me today while watching a man take a long drink from one of those plastic mineral water bottles that everyone seems to be carrying like a fashion accessory these days. A few minutes earlier, I'd watched a woman put a baby bottle into the mouth of her infant. The image returned when I looked at this guy. Suddenly I realized a great many of the designer waters come packaged in what looks like baby bottles. Is that on purpose? There's a brand of mineral water in Austria that is one of the most popular. A few years ago the company came out with a newly designed bottle that almost everyone fell in love with instantly and noticeably helped boost sales. I happened to meet one of the people who was on the design team and complimented him on it. Smiling, he asked why I thought it was so successful. I said I had no idea but it's sure a great looking object. He asked if I wanted to know the secret? It's a condom. We made that bottle to look exactly like a filled condom; that's why people like it so much. Subliminal seduction. And of course the next time I saw one again I recognized immediately that it *did* look like a condom. So what does it mean when so many of the other water companies make theirs look like baby bottles?
CarrollBlog 5.26
Walking towards me is a very pretty young woman in a short summery dress with all sorts of colorful patterns on it: Paisley, flowers, stripes, circles. Only when she gets closer do I realize the dress is sleeveless and the busy multicolored patterns on her arms are tattoos running all the way from her wrists to the shoulders. I want to stop and stare but know that's bad form. So I tilt my eyes as far left as they will go when she passes and try to do one of those mind photographs I can retain and think about later. I'm always impressed by people who have the confidence or strength of conviction to tattoo large swaths of their bodies. How great it would be to feel so sure of something that you are absolutely convinced you will love it as much in forty years as you do now. In contrast, as I've grown older I am less and less sure of what I'll feel or want tomorrow, much less a year from now. I've always wondered if I were to get one, what would I have drawn onto my skin forever? Love tattoos as much as I do, I still cannot think of any image that I know for certain I will love in a decade as much as I love today. "I think of it this way: it may be that you look back at the first fiction you had published, and you wince at weaknesses in the writing that you could not perceive at the time. You may even wish you had never published that story. But in the grand scheme of things, you probably don't regret that you took the journey. Every piece of fiction you release is a snapshot in time of your development as a writer. In other words, I think there's a difference between what a particular tattoo means to the (tattooee? eek), and what being tattooed means. Sometimes a tattoo is more a record of where you've been -- a diary, or a map -- than a statement of where you are now."
CarrollBlog 5.25
The man who lives across the hall loves his shoes. He brushes them frequently and leaves them on the welcome mat in front of his door to dry overnight. As a result, the hall outside often has the nice smell of leather and shoe polish. He uses shoe trees in all of them, from what I can see. I like shoes too but have never bought or used a shoe tree in my life. It just goes to show, yet again, the different levels to which we can take our idiocyncrasies. I write everything by hand first and use only one brand of blue-black ink when I am using a fountain pen. And only one specific make of rollerball pen which just happens to have the perfect point for me. These rollerballs are very cheap-- about a buck apiece-- but they're difficult to find in Vienna. Whenever I discover some, I buy ten at a time. I think I have fifty now in an airtight box. But you know what? Fifty ain't enough for this paranoid. If I were to see more tomorrow, I'd buy ten of them too. And ten more the next day, probably. Because I feel physically uncomfortable if I have to use anything else to write. Don't even talk to me about ballpoint pens or--gulp-- pencils. So whenever I see the guy's perfectly polished shoes out in the hall I think about that invaluable rollerball pen in my pocket and nod hello to his shoe trees. Malcolm Gladwell http://interact10ways.com/usa/information_interactive.htm
CarrollBlog 5.24
I know a woman whose difficult mother died. After the funeral, the father told his children to come over to the house and choose whatever they wanted to keep of mother's belongings before he gave the rest away to charity. My friend looked through everything and decided she only wanted a pair of Mom's reading glasses. Her father was deeply hurt by this, but the truth of the matter was she is not a nostalgic woman and honestly wanted nothing of her mother's things other than the glasses. She took them to an optician and had the prescription changed to her own. The day they were ready, she picked the glasses up on her way to her boyfriend's apartment. In his presence she tried them on for the first time to hear what he thought. He looked a long time and finally shook his head no. "The truth? The truth is they're creepy. You didn't like your mother, but now you're going to wear her on your face every day?"
CarrollBlog 5.23
I read an article about the process of dying and learned something new: According to the experts, the last senses to go are hearing and touch. So those who are with a dying person in their last hours are encouraged to continue talking and touching them right up till the end. Although they are walking out the door forever, they are still listening and can feel our hands on their fading skin. Sound and skin-- life's last alliteration. Leonard Cohen A neighbor girl went with me near the creek, The shy way I contrived it, my right hand Afraid of what might happen, or just afraid, I couldn't tell you where that new house stood. By then I had been married and divorced. the creek had cut new banks, left silt in bars
CarrollBlog 5.22
I have never understood the couple(s) in a restaurant who never say a word to each other. I see at least one of them every time I go out and it doesn't matter what kind of place it is either-- dump or the ritz, it's the same. Dating or married, young or old, they come in all ages. They're the couple at a restaurant who remain silent until the waiter brings the menu. Looking it over, perhaps they exchange a sentence or two about what they are going to have. But once they give their order, silence returns until the food comes. Very little if anything is said during the meal, or afterwards when they're having coffee. They pay the check and they're off. Was that enjoyable? I can't imagine it was. Yes, of course there are exceptions. Some people love sharing both a meal and silence together. But really, how many couples are there like that? Why go out when you know silence will surround you for the next hour and it is a silence created by both of you? Because there is either nothing to say or else you're afraid to say it? Wouldn't it be better to stay at home where familiar surroundings, habit and comfort take the sharp edges off that silence and keep it somehow caged?
CarrollBlog 5.21
That remarkable, numb moment or two when you've accidentally just cut yourself badly with a very sharp knife, a sliver of broken glass, or whatever else so razor-sharp that you don't feel anything there for seconds. Your eyes grasp it first-- the cut or the blood rushing out of the wound. And your mind, usually so quick and aware, is left far behind while the eyes lead the way to the realization. No matter how old you are or how many times it has happened to you before, this slow motion process is always the same: cut--see--realize what you have done to yourself. Finally the pain comes, like thunder a few long seconds after the lightning. As a kid you learned to count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. That way you could tell how far away the storm really was. It's much like that-- the cut, the see, the blood, the oh, and only then the ow! check it out:
CarrollBlog 5.20
A doctor I know described a certain type of patient behavior so common that it is known by a variety of names in the medical profession. He calls it "the hand on the doorknob." Very often a patient will come in with a specific complaint. After they're finished and about to leave, when their hand is literally on the doorknob to go, they casually say, "Oh yes, there's just one more thing. I have this lump in my armpit..." The doctor says that is invariably the real reason why the person made the appointment in the first place. But they are too nervous or afraid to admit it up front. Not till their hand is on the doorknob and it's their last chance do they confess to what is really worrying them.
CarrollBlog 5.19
"Whenever he went to see her, he always stopped along the way at a certain candy store in his neighborhood to buy one white and red tin of Altoids, those 'curiously strong' British peppermints. They were her favorite candy and hard to find in the city. She popped them into her mouth two at a time, despite their being strong enough to burn the bristles off a warthog. She was so sophisticated and poised in most ways, yet when it came to these sweets she inhaled them at once, zoom, and her relish was evident with every bite. Later when they kissed, her mouth was all peppermint. He never knew whether he enjoyed that or not because he loved the natural smell of her breath. After she had eaten many of them, kissing her was sort of like kissing a child, which was unsettling if he thought about it. A long time after they had broken up, he remembered how she would sit with today's Altoids box in front of her on the table between them. While they chatted, she would open the tin top, take two out, put them on the tip of her tongue and crunch down. Then she'd carefully close the box until she wanted two more. Which was usually only a few minutes later. Every time she ate them she did it this same way: take two, close the box. Take two, close the box. He liked that tidy gesture. He also liked her impatience with the mints-- she never sucked them; instead always just bit right down and chewed as soon as they were in her mouth. Almost every time he saw a box of Altoids long after they had stopped seeing each other, he thought of her and how she had eaten them. In effect, the candy and she were synonymous to him. Sometimes remembering made him happy, sometimes not." Joel Achenbach in The Washington Post
CarrollBlog 5.18
Strawberries There were never strawberries Brown Penny William Butler Yeats
CarrollBlog 5.17
An indication that I am about halfway finished writing a new book is when I unconsciously stop reading any fiction other than thrillers. The best thriller writers, and luckily there are a number of them, know how to pace a story like no one else. It is a difficult art not easily learned. I have found though that by steeping myself in their work via reading one good thriller after another, that I usually re-learn certain elements of pacing from these pros that can be applied to what I am trying to do in my own work. In a way, it is like the person who once learned how to tango but then stopped dancing for a long time. When he decides to try it again, he returns by first hanging around master dancers and closely watching their every move out on the floor. Just seeing these greats do their stuff is not only inspirational, but invaluable lessons can be learned if you give them your full attention.
CarrollBlog 5.16
A strange, electric moment: At the supermarket checkout line, there's a severely handicapped man in a motorized wheelchair in front of me. In front of him is a woman with a little boy who is crying loudly. The woman is preoccupied with getting the groceries out of her cart and onto the conveyor belt. The child cries louder and louder. The woman ignores him. Suddenly for the first time, the boy turns and sees the man in the wheelchair. His eyes widen but he grows silent. The man says gently and sweetly, "That's okay. You'll be home soon." And keeps talking to the boy, obviously attempting to calm him. The child begins to take in and grasp the enormity of the man's freakish body-- the tiny legs, the one regular arm, the other very short, his twisted torso. And as the man continues to say quiet soothing things, the kid suddenly freaks out and starts to scream. As if he's seen the first ogre in his life. And in a heartbreaking way, he has.
CarrollBlog 5.15
Yesterday I posted here a link to a blog about "The saddest thing I own." I was thinking about the saddest thing I owned. Dear Boss, He lived on the back step of my store, in the alley. He'd put cardboard down every night and had a broken wicker kitchen type chair he would sit on. Sometimes when I would stay late he would be out there and I would nearly hit him when I opened the door. He would say..."i'msorryi'msorryi'msorry," a million times. I would say "no, I am sorry, I nearly hit you". He would always say "thank you, take care boss, have a good evening"..."you too, honey". He never asked me for a penny, I never knew his name. He liked that I called him honey and would smile. I haven't seen him for a year at least. I took his chair in after a few months, it's still inside waiting for him. I wonder if he is still alive. The note was the last I heard from him. I saved it because it broke my heart everytime I read it and made me realize how lucky I am, I was dealt a good hand, and how good people can be dealt such terrible cards. He was grateful for a step to sleep on.
CarrollBlog 5.14
I know a man who is smart, kind, generous, and overall the sort of person you would call first if you got into any kind of trouble. Unfortunately, he is also the worst story/joke/anecdote teller I have ever met. Worse, for some mysterious reason he delights in telling stories that have no point, jokes that aren't funny, and tedious anecdotes that meander forever and then just end. Like a highway in the middle of nowhere that abruptly stops because the builders ran out of money. Like many people, this man enjoys holding the floor at parties and gatherings. Inevitably when he sees his chance, he jumps right into the fray with a "I heard a great joke--" or "The strangest thing happened to me this morning--" But as a rule his joke is never great and what happened to him that morning turns out to be a long and winding road to verbal nowhere. This man's wife died recently and only now did I realize he lost, among other things, his greatest audience. One of the endearing things about love is how it blinds us to certain obvious faults in our partners, despite the fact everyone else sees them. I remember once at a large party this man was telling a story. His wife was listening with a big smile and her full attention beaming right at him. If you scanned the rest of the room you saw a lot of glazed eyes and looks of impatience. But not her. To her eyes, her husband had *grandezza*, that great Italian word that connotes not only greatness, but larger-than-lifeness. When he spoke, no one listened like she did, no matter what he was saying. And that might have been her greatest gift of all to him. Check it out: http://turbulence.org/Works/saddest/index.php
CarrollBlog 5.13
from a friend's e-mail: "My house faces a very large pond. There are always lots of birds and turtles nearby. This morning about 6:30, I heard a terrible sound but did not know what it was. It went on and on for a long time. It turned out there was a dead Sandhill Crane near the pond and its mate was walking around and around it, wailing very loudly. Do you know what a Sandhill Crane is? If not, do a Google search and look at one. They are big and beautiful and very graceful. Like most birds, they mate for life. This time of year, their eggs are hatching and you see them often in groups of three, two parents and the baby. It is now after 9:00 and that poor bird is still walking around his dead mate crying and making awful noises. P. wants to go get the dead crane and take it away, but I do not think he should. I think the one that is alive needs to grieve a while in its own way with its lost partner near." ______________________________________ "I'll always deny that I kissed her. Stephen Dunn
CarrollBlog 5.12
"The old woman was coming out of her apartment when she saw the first cat down the hall. She did not like cats. from the new book
CarrollBlog 5.11
What I learned on my trip this time: In Italy, natives never order "espresso." They order "cafe" and that is the recognized term for the drink there. Only foreigners and rubes ask for "espresso" when they want to drink an espresso in Italy. A perfectly bilingual Roman told me he always forgets that language blip when he is out of the country and unthinkingly orders "cafe." Anywhere else, that means coffee with milk. So if you're in Italy and order cafe, you get espresso. But if you're anywhere else and order cafe, you get coffee with milk. Now blow this tiny lesson up to important people discussing nuclear disarmament or world peace or something else huge and scary via simultaneous translators who are supposedly the best in the business. How good and precise can they be when even the word for a kind of coffee in one language means something entirely different in another? Apparently Farsi, which is spoken in Iran, has multiple words for love. In English there's one. And that's just love. What happens when the language distinctions are microscopic and knowing the correct ones instantaneously means everything? photographer Ferdinando Scianna
CarrollBlog 5.10
There's a great scene in the wonderful film GRAND CANYON that says a lot about fate and how we end up where we do. Kevin Kline is crossing a busy street one day but not checking for traffic. Right before he is struck by a city bus, a hand grabs him from behind and yanks him back at the very last moment. Horrified and stunned, Kline turns to thank whoever just saved his life. It's a small woman in a baseball cap who simply smiles at him and goes on her way. Today the same thing happened to me: I was standing at a busy corner, waiting for a light to change. A woman hurried past me and started to walk right into the path of an oncoming tram. I grabbed her arm and pulled her back to safety. As the tram flew by she started yelling at me, screaming how dare I touch her and who did I think I was? She was going to call the police and have me arrested... etcetera. An old man standing nearby who had seen the whole thing began yelling at her, calling her an idiot because I had just saved her life. She immediately turned her outrage on him and said it's none of *your* business so stay out of this, etcetera. At that point I walked away, leaving them to their debate. Tony Kushner, BRUNDIBAR
CarrollBlog 5.9
The Vienna marathon was held last weekend. One of the local sports magazines has an issue out that says "YOU'RE IN THIS ISSUE IF YOU RAN THE MARATHON!" Apparently that means you and twelve thousand other runners are somewhere in one of several huge crowd photos and your number is listed in the magazine as well. Small immortality. Seeing that reminded me of one of my roommates in college who went to Woodstock. Some time after the festival, LOOK Magazine published an issue devoted entirely to the weekend of love. In the centerfold of that issue was a picture of the crowd, photographed from the main stage. It showed this huge ocean of people-- tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of faces going back forever. When he heard about it, my roommate rushed out and bought a copy of the magazine. For the next few days he literally pored over that one photograph with a magnifying glass in hand, looking for himself in the crowd. Late one night he came running out of his room shouting "I found me! I found me!" We all gathered to look. He had circled this pinhead, a blackhead, a smear, a smudge 3/4 of the way back in the enormous crowd. Absolutely impossible to distinguish his face much less any of the faces that distant, we gently asked how he knew for sure it was him. He gave us a withering look and returned to his room as if the question didn't deserve the dignity of an answer.
CarrollBlog 5.8
The hotel in Turin where I'm staying was once part of the main Fiat automobile factory. It is both a great and bizarre place. The hotel itself is enormous, as are the rooms. Just the halls alone go on so far down the way that they remind you of the infinity drawings of MC Escher. The ceilings must be at least fifteen feet high. The huge panoramic windows in my room look out on the Turin railroad yards nearby. Their proximity makes sense because in the old days, all of the raw materials the factory needed to make automobiles were brought in on those rails. The vast, cavernous room is filled with very hip, very cool furniture like Artemide lamps, teak wood paneling, and slinky black leather chairs. But no matter how cool and understated the furnishings now, you are haunted by the knowledge that not very long ago, this room was likely part of an assembly line running the whole length of the now-partitioned building. Or that's what the man at the hotel desk told me when I asked about it. Where the stark white on dark wood bed now stands, tired workers once stood all day putting together carburetors as quickly as their hands could manage, or screwing in headlights, fitting doors... The noise in there huge, metal parts and sweaty bodies moving everywhere.
CarrollBlog 5.5
A friend who endured a difficult personal crisis recently decided to quit their job and go wander the world for a while to see what else might be out there for them. When they told me their plan, I was torn right down the middle between wanting to pat them on the back and applaud their moxie, and on the other hand sound like a worrywart and ask gently, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" I've been thinking about it a lot but still don't know what to say (not that it matters what my opinion is). How cool to honestly admit I've backed myself into a corner in life that I don't like. It's time to get out, no idea where, but somewhere other than here. Butttt what if_______ (fill in the blank). Freddy Mercury was right when he sang "I want to break free..." But the other side of that is, break free to what/where? Is it really going to be better than this? There's a wonderful story by Evan S. Connell entitled "The Palace of the Moorish Kings." It's about a bunch of friends who go way back and know each other's histories well. One of them broke free of the group years ago and went abroad to live the kind of life we all dream of doing some time-- "Often we wondered why he chose to live as he did, floating here and there like a leaf on a pond." He flaneurs through Europe, they receive months old postcards from mysterious, romantic places like Bhutan or Mandalay. For years he wanders the mythic edges of the earth just looking and experiencing. The gang is naturally both resentful and envious that he has chosen this duty free path, in contrast to their own good citizen way. But as the story begins, he's finally coming back home for good and everyone is eager to see what kind of person he's turned into. I won't give the story away which has many clever twists and turns, but the gist is found in the last paragraph: "Now as we wait to greet him, we feel curiously disappointed. The end of his journey suggests we were right, therefore he must have been wrong, and it follows that we should feel gratified. The responsibilities we assumed were valid, the problems with which we occupy ourselves are not insignificant, and the values we nourish will flower one day-- if not tomorrow. His return implies this judgement. So the regret we feel, but try to hide, seems doubly strange. Perhaps without realizing it we trusted him to keep our youth." I'll be in Turin this weekend for their book festival. I'm scheduled to do a lot, so there might not be a blog for a few days.
CarrollBlog 5.4
"It is too little remarked how much pleasure in travel derives from the simple act of staring at others." In Naples they use a pasta called paccheri, which translated into English means "big slap." I'd A hard looking guy, and I mean HARD-- he looks like he could take a bite out of a tank-- is walking down the sidewalk carrying the largest, most beautiful bouquet of flowers I have seen in a long time. He sees me looking, my admiration for the assortment, and just the smallest grin appears on his face in acknowledgement. "Stories always begin on the day something is different." "More and more, it seems that identity is just a question of what works for the next fifteen minutes."
CarrollBlog 5.3
In my experience, long before a relationship/friendship ends, there's almost inevitably an instance in which the other person says or does something that makes you immediately and very strongly think, "I don't like that. I don't like them at all for doing that." Rarely is it something big or dramatic. Frequently it is a small comment or act, maybe a stupid meanness that was unnecessary and achieved nothing. After that first gut reaction, your social self-- your reasonable peacemaking self-- usually steps in and offers up all sorts of reasons and excuses for what they did. But the truth is you *don't* like what just happened and that dislike is instinctive, visceral, and deeply honest. Almost always it is a sure sign that this connection will end and most likely soon.
CarrollBlog 5.2
May 1 in Vienna, as in much of Europe, is a holiday. Sort of their equivalent to Labor Day in the US. When I first arrived here years ago, it was interesting to go downtown to watch the May 1 parade, which at the time was a really big serious affair. Large crowds of different unions, worker's parties, Communists... marched together for their rights and to protest their grievances. But as the years have passed, it appears the marchers got most of what they wanted because the parade has shrunk noticeably. This year it was almost embarrassingly small: a desultory bunch of old Communist Party members(and I mean old-- behind their large red marching banner there were perhaps fifteen people, none younger-looking than 70) holding up signs with angry, albeit dated slogans. WORKER'S RIGHTS! FORWARD INTO THE FUTURE! Students carrying boomboxes playing loud Trance music and cans of beer as well as a few sloppily drawn placards protesting what looked like everything. Happy looking families with their kids marched too, but I don't know what they were protesting because they all looked pretty content and well fed. I noticed that most of the "Solidarity" sort of posters of old had been replaced with lots of "Bush out of Iraq" stuff. The whole event reminded me of something I once read in a book by Eric Hoffer-- Revolutions don't happen in societies where the middle class is content. Judging by the sparse but generally jovial crowd that turned out for yesterday's parade, the Austrians must be pretty content. |
