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« September 2006 | | November 2006 »
CarrollBlog 20.31
I don't know what it says about my memory, but I don't remember any of the costumes I wore on Halloween as a boy. What I do remember distinctly were the different kinds of candy we collected going out trick or treating that night. There were the favorite houses where you knew from past years that the people who lived there gave great stuff-- regular sized candybars and sometimes even two if they were especially nice. We all had our number one sweets and knew where we would be given them on our rounds. The worst of course were the health villains who gave you things like apples or nuts and inevitably from one eccentric family, small bags of roasted sunflower seeds. Even though we were very young we'd look at offerings like that and, pausing, wonder adultly what were they thinking? Do they really believe kids want sunflower seeds? Especially on Halloween, the national holiday of candy? Hands down the best part of the night was when you got home afterwards and, cheeks still cold from the almost November air, spilled your trick or treat bag out on the bed or living room floor. If you were in the mood, you would immediately separate the wheat from the chaff-- the good candy from the bad, the really great candy that you wanted to eat immediately from the stuff that could wait. The great, the good, the eat it only when there's nothing else to eat, and the sunflower seeds which most of the time didn't make it all the way home. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQG_UOuqlM0
CarrollBlog 10.30
As the seasons change, there is almost always one day of really dramatic weather which, when it is over, marks the arrival of the next. Yesterday it was bright and summery here but in the late afternoon clouds moved in. They preceded a huge whopping thunderstorm the likes of which I haven't seen since living in Missouri a long time ago. The storm blew through town fast. But when it was over and the skies cleared, the temperature had dropped ten degrees and you just knew this was it-- Fall had officially arrived. Walking out into this morning it was clear that it had-- cold, crisp weather, you needed a real coat-- November in every respect. She is as dull as the magazines in a doctor's waiting room. I was listening to a radio interview the other day with a famous writer who just published a new novel. A major literary event, as the interviewer kept repeating. However the author was a surprisingly dull subject, especially because he's won most of the major book prizes in America and is held in the highest esteem there. But the thing I really couldn't get over was the sound of his voice-- high, whiney, and just generally annoying. I thought he may be famous but I would hate to have to live in the same house with that voice.
CarrollBlog 10.29
Whenever I see one I think "Sunday family." Usually young, father is pushing a baby carriage. Perhaps another child a few years older but still a toddler is holding Mom's hand. All of them are dressed up. Dad looks both bored and irritated to be here. You can almost imagine the scene earlier in the day at their apartment: his wife reminding him that during the past week he promised to take the family on an outing somewhere this Sunday. Perhaps to the aquarium, the zoo, or for a stroll downtown. Now that it's Sunday he forgot that promise. All he wants to do is watch a game on television or drink a few beers with his pals. But Mom has prevailed so here he is, pushing the baby and clearly resenting the fact he is not somewhere else. His wife wears an interesting expression-- satisfied and anxious at the same time. She keeps checking her husband's face to see how he's doing. Then she checks the baby in the carriage, and last she looks down at the child holding her hand to see that it's not lagging or misbehaving. Her eyes never stop dancing from husband to child to child. Rarely do any of them look happy to be there but by God, they're doing something together. Week after week, season after season I see couples like this everywhere I go on Sunday. http://web.ftc-i.net/~nightshadow/Dancin%20Skeleton/Italian%20Lover.htm
CarrollBlog 10.28
Misgivings 'Perhaps you will tire of me,' muses but I know what she fears: plans warp, for good reasons. 'Hi, honey' chirps Dread in-advance charisma. Listen,
CarrollBlog 10.27
Face it--intense emotions like worry and fear make a person feel really alive. Popping like popcorn. You are absolutely awake then. No more screen saver, low volume, or cruise control, which is what a mind is running on most of the time. Being content puts anyone to sleep after a while. Life's nasty little secret is contentment is boring. A broken heart or scary results from that blood test get the adrenalin and delicious self pity pumping. That is when you are really alive! Admit it: What is better than livling 100% in the moment? Only when you fall in love or you fall down on the sidewalk do you feel fully alive. from the new book
CarrollBlog 10.26
Body piercing appears to be much more popular with women than men. I wonder why that is? "Nineteenth-century English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote a series of sensual sonnets inspired by his relationship with his wife Elizabeth. Before he could publish them, Elizabeth died. He was so distraught he placed the only copy of his manuscript in the grave with her. Years later, though, he decided the love poems were too good to consign forever to the oblivion of the dirt. He had the coffin disinterred and recovered his work."
CarrollBlog 10.25
In a NY Times article, it said studies show that people who have lots of plastic surgery done to improve their looks are twice as apt to commit suicide as those who don't. I have often wondered what happens later in life to the people who were stunningly, breathtakingly good looking when they were young and at some point chose to age naturally instead of letting someone take a scalpel to their face. Now and then you'll see one of them at 50 or 60 in a hotel lobby reading the newspaper or having drinks at a bar with friends. One look tells you that face once froze time, but these days it's just a great face, carved mortal by 20,000 days. The novelist James Salter described one of these people as being like the remains of a beautiful meal left out overnight. Now that they're like the rest of us, are they bitter, peaceful, or simply resigned to the fact that the world barely glances at them rather than stares hungrily as it once did? While walking down the street I see a small film crew doing an interview. Suddenly someone in a cheesy looking lifesize kangaroo costume comes hopping out of a doorway and proceeds to beat up the guy who is being interviewed. It's obviously staged and very corny, but funny and certainly unexpected. The best part is almost all of the passersby who see it look either angry or irritated. Not a single one of them is amused. As if this weirdness is like discovering a big pile of dog poop right in front of you on the sidewalk.
CarrollBlog 10.24
"As I was walking out the building one day on my lunch break, two-thirds of a block away this spectacularly beautiful young woman in a very short miniskirt was walking toward me. She was in her early twenties. I was 16 and looked all of 12. You could feel it in the air, her coming at you. Her presence was destabilizing the street for a one-block radius. Guys were gawking, cars were slowing. This woman was a menace. She was walking in a confident way, with a swing to her hips. I was geeky and shy, too shy to make eye contact. I wouldn't even have known what to DO with eye contact. My discomfort must have been obvious because, as she passes me, she leans over, her breath is warm, and she softly . . . growls in my ear." from a profile of the political cartoonist Gary Trudeau in THE WASHINGTON POST
CarrollBlog 10.23
Signs that Fall has arrived in Vienna: pumpkin soup is on the menu of most restaurants in town
CarrollBlog 10.22
"Your mistake was you were in love with the person she could be but isn't." Dan Savage ------------------------------ "The world is a hungry place and whatever kind of thing you is, there's something out there that likes to eat it." Pete Dexter, TRAIN -------------------------------- "People will remember you better if you always wear the same outfit." David Byrne --------------------------------- "You're very fragile now. You could die of a phone call." William McIlvanney
CarrollBlog 10.21
I don't know about you, but invariably every year there are times when for no reason at all I suddenly and with great intensity miss someone who is no longer a part of my life. These people vary-- sometimes it is someone dead, usually someone alive. Sometimes it is family, sometimes an old love, sometimes a friend I haven't had contact with for years. But out of nowhere comes a raging desire to see this person again. Or if that's not possible, at least to know in detail what has happened to them. It is like the rush of heat over your face when you open the oven door to check to see if the bread is baked. Where are they now? What are they doing? Are they happy? What would happen if we were to see each other again? I'd give anything to know the answers to these questions. But only for the time the longing lasts, which can be quite a while or only minutes. Once it passes, they slide back into the formless shadows of memory and nostalgia.
CarrollBlog 10.20
Samurai Song When I had no roof I made When I had no eyes I listened. When I had no father I made When I had no friend I made When I had no temple I made When I have no means fortune Need is my tactic, detachment
CarrollBlog 10.19
What You Realize When Cancer Comes You will not live forever. No You are not as brave You feel the bite of pain, Following the telling to friends Your children are stronger The beauty of animals You want no more confusion You watch television less, Songs can move you now, so that Your own hands look good to you. You read your lovers skin All touch is precious now. There are echoes in the words thrown When they take your picture now Talk of your lost parents You are in a river A river is flowing
CarrollBlog 10.18
At two in the morning in front of the obscenely expensive and exclusive restaurant, a truck is making a delivery: toilet paper. But you have to see it to believe it-- there is more toilet paper here than I think I have ever seen. I am six foot four inches tall but this toilet paper mountain towers over me. And the truck driver is wheeling out yet another load to add to the white mountain. I cannot resist asking him if all of this is meant for the fancy restaurant. Smiling slyly, he looks both ways and then nods yes. Our eyes meet and my grin matches his. I wonder if the restaurant specifically orders that things like this be delivered only late into the midnight hour, while the rest of the world sleeps.
CarrollBlog 10.17
I love these hands, designed by God to end my wrists. They are also the privileged ones that caress and play you. I stretch them before my eyes. I lift my little finger, a stem for the moon, a stalk completed by a calcium armor, I lift another finger, the middle, and with both in movement, on a wall suddenly inhabited I draw animals of vivid shadow for my childen. They are amazed that black donkeys exist, capable of running over vertical plains, over the scored wall where only flies reigned until today. They are happy to see hands holding as many beasts as Noah's Ark. With these hands I split the sweetest fig; I catch fish in the curve of their flashing arc. Sometimes my hands succeed in knitting themselves so tight that the corpse of a prayer scarcely fits between. Sometimes I throw them into space with such anger or joy that I cannot understand why they remain cloistered in the gesture; I really can't understand why they don't fly. Marco Antonio Montes De Oca
CarrollBlog 10.16
The man walks into the cafe almost as soon as it opens on Sunday morning. He is formally dressed in a black suit, white shirt and tie. Carrying a briefcase, he carefully places it on the chair in front of him. He hangs up his coat and brushes out the wrinkles. The waitress takes his order. Until she returns he sits perfectly still with hands folded in front of him on the table; he might just as well be a statue. When his coffee and roll are served he again arranges everything just so. Once he has it to his liking, sugar in the coffee, first bite out of the roll, he retrieves the briefcase. Inside is a large school notebook and the TV guide for the week. That's all-- nothing more. Removing both, he arranges them in front of him. Out of his breast pocket he takes two different colored highlighter pens and proceeds to go to work. With an occasional stop for coffee or a bite out of the roll, he reviews the week's TV offerings. Periodically leaning over, he highlights the shows he wants to watch with the 2 markers. Then he writes those shows and their times into the notebook. When I leave and pass his table, a quick glance at it reveals the pages are filled with long lists of television shows, dates, and times. Out on the street I cannot stop thinking about him. The apartment he lives in, how it might be filled with row after row of these notebooks, all the pages filled with television shows he once watched.
CarrollBlog 10.15
The park is absolutely empty at seven o'clock on Sunday morning except for two people: a man and his very young daughter who is no more than six or seven. The man is teaching her a Greek dance. Side by side, arms held high in the air, slowly and carefully they do the formal steps together: leg crossing leg, slapping the knees, jumping in the air and shouting "hopah!" at the end of the cycle. The girl is very bad at it, very clumsy. She keeps stumbling but her father catches her every time just before she falls. Righting herself, she squirms out of his hands and shouts "Again! Again!" Both of them immediately start dancing again, big smiles on their faces.
CarrollBlog 10.14
An interesting exercise to do when you're bored: Who is the happiest person you know? Why do you think they're so happy? Etcetera.
CarrollBlog 10.13
Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it's not liable to ever happen. More often than not work is salvation.
CarrollBlog10.12
Many old people walk in the short, fast waddle step of a penguin or Charlie Chaplin
CarrollBlog 10.11
"In life there are only a small number of people who we choose to keep in our hearts. Over the years a lot come in and go out-- lovers, friends, family... Some of them hang around for a while, and some want to stay even after we order them to leave. But only a handful, no more than two handfuls if you are very lucky, are welcome forever." from the new book
CarrollBlog 10.10
At the veterinarian's office this morning I remembered an episode that happened years ago: I took the dog to a vet because it needed shots. On opening the office door I groaned because the waiting room was packed full of people with their pets. Resigned, dog and I took our seats and prepared for a long wait. A few minutes later, the front door blew open and a man came running in with a huge German Shepherd hanging limply in his arms. He didn't look around but ran straight for the door to the doctor's office, pushed it open and ran in. The door slammed shut behind him. The scene was so unexpected and dramatic that everyone in the waiting room just looked at each other with a "Did you see THAT?" expression. No one complained that this guy had jumped to the front of the line. I guess we all just assumed that it was a big emergency. No more than five or six minutes later, the office door opened again. The man came out with a giant shiny black garbage bag in his arms, obviously filled with the dead body of his dog. The man was openly weeping. He stood at the door to the street, patiently waiting for someone to open it for him because his arms were full and now he had all the time in the world.
CarrollBlog 10.9
"Interesting Letter of the Day" department: I received an email from a man today that read almost exactly like this: Hi, I don't know if you remember me, but we went to the same school forty years ago. We once got into a fight and I knocked you out. In the meantime, I've become a big fan of your books. Keep up the good work!
CarrollBlog 10.8
The small, mysterious smile on womens' faces when they're looking in a shoe store window.
CarrollBlog 10.7
(from O.B.) Die Slowly He or she who shuns passion, He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy, He who does not travel, He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem, He or she who abandon a project before starting it, Let's try and avoid death in small doses,
CarrollBlog 10.6
The question of the day recently seems to be "What's on your iPod/MP3 player?" I see it cropping up all over the place. That made me think about how important peoples' musical taste is to them. If you lend a favorite book to someone but they don't like it, you shrug and think oh well. Make someone a mixed tape or CD of music you really enjoy but they don't, your feelings are often genuinely hurt. Or at least more affected than with the bad book suggestion. One of the great scenes in Nick Hornby's novel HIGH FIDELITY (and the movie as well) is when guys who work in a record store discuss the minutiae of what should and should NOT be put on a compilation tape you're planning on giving to a new love interest. They argue back and forth about it until they're shouting. Every time I see that film I laugh at the scene because it's true-- compilation tapes are a way of saying not only is this my taste, but this particular music is a facet of me and I want to share it with you. If the person doesn't like it, in effect they're rejecting some ineffable yet important part of you.
CarrollBlog 10.6
PHOTOGRAPH FROM SEPTEMBER 11 They jumped from the burning floors-- The photograph halted them in life, Each is still complete, There's enough time They're still within the air's reach, I can do two things for them--
CarrollBlog 10.5
from AP: I heard the phrase *balcony people* last night and in talking to someone about it today, learned that there is a book by the same title. The premise, I guess, is that you have a choice in life : You can be a balcony person or a basement person. We all know both kinds. Balcony people sit in the balcony of your life. They are up high, watching and cheering for you. They also try with all their might to pull you up to where they are. Basement people are full of negativity and darkness. They suck all the joy out of you and make it their lifes mission to pull you down to the damp, moldy hole in which they always reside. http://www.bereavedparentsusa.org/images/Articles/Balcony_Basement_People.pdf#search=%22balcony%20people%22
CarrollBlog 10.4
Some enterprising entrepreneur has created a website where for a price, you can give a dying person a message to take with them to the other side to give to a dead person when they arrive there. When I saw the site (after my initial astonishment) I thought who would I send a message to over there if I could? My parents? That old university friend who died in a car crash freshman year? And what is there to say? I've watched television shows(and you have too-- admit it) where renowned psychics contact the dead and ask them questions. But the answers are always so banal and silly that it's either ridiculous or boring. Someone in the audience wants to know where Mom left the missing stock certificates. Dead Mom says look behind the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. Or someone else in the audience wants their Dad to know that despite their differences, kid still loves him a lot. Dead Dad says I know son, I know. As I was writing this a few hours ago, I looked out the window and saw a transparent gray plastic bag hanging in the wind just outside my window, a la the film AMERICAN BEAUTY. I live on the top floor of the building so it's pretty rare to see anything blowing around this high up. Yet this ectoplasmic bag just seemed to hang right outside my window for a long time, like a small ghost keeping an eye on me while I wrote about this sensitive subject.
CarrollBlog 10.3
An Italian magazine asked me to write an essay about what it's like being an American writer who has chosen to live outside the US for so long. When I read the request I made a "Gee, I don't know" face and asked the dog if he would please write this essay for me because I was stumped for anything interesting to say. As I've often said before, I think home is where you're most comfortable. For most of my adult life I've been comfortable in Vienna. People do look at me oddly when after they ask "How long have you lived in Austria?" I answer thirty years. A long time ago an American novelist who was living in Rome for a year said to me sooner or later you'll have to go home because everyone does. When he said home he meant America. But now I know that home is wherever you need to return to because it is where your soul is most at rest. The interesting thing about the man who said this to me is since returning to live in the US, he has moved at least four times and the last I heard, is planning on moving again.
CarrollBlog 10.2
For those of you who will be in Vienna and are interested, I'll be reading the first chapter of my new novel
CarrollBlog 10.1
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Pablo Neruda |
