CarrollBlog 5.1

I Wish I Were in Love Again
by Lorenz Hart

CarrollBlog 4.30

I was reading a biography of a famous contemporary writer. Turns out that in real life the guy was a jerk-- pompous,selfish, cruel and other ugly things as well. We are always disappointed to learn that our heroes have feet of clay. But then it struck me that most heroes, particularly artistic ones, are jerks in one way or another. They're self-absorbed or stingy, mean-spirited or they're terrible parents... Why? Because they're obsessed. Obsession unbalances anyone. If most of your energy goes into your rug collection, your career, or your lover, then you are "tilting" who you are to one side or the other. You are choosing to be unbalanced. You are saying this is more important to me than that. As a result, "that" always suffers. No one wrote more beautifully about family life than Tolstoy, but apparently he was a dreadful husband and father. Why? Simply because he was so busy writing about perfect love that he had no interest in trying to live it in real life. The actress Rita Hayworth said she never had any luck with men because they all expected her to be Gilda-- her most famous film role. But she was never able to live up to that fictional character. In other words, she put all of her best sexy into her work and apparently didn't have enough left over for real life.
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an interesting one from ON:
http://www.blogotheque.net/takeawayshows/

CarrollBlog 4.29

"The past is always carried into the present by small things."

CarrollBlog 4.28

Even when things end badly, there are radiant moments or experiences with failed loves that are permanently written into one's history. Strawberries. When they came into full season in spring, she always remembered the day he brought her the strawberries. They were meeting at two and then driving out into the country. She'd had a harried morning in town. Her head was full of irrelevant stuff and tizzy when his car pulled to the curb in front of her. Reaching forward, she opened the door without thinking. She just wanted to be sitting still for the first time in hours, moving towards the country and silence, away from this. She needed a few seconds to grasp what was on the passenger's seat. Beige and bright bursting red, it was a rectangular wooden box filled with three pounds of the fattest, ripest strawberries she had ever seen. They were so big, so red and sensuous, particularly against the pale brown of the wood, that she was mesmerized. It took moments to return to the world around her. Only then did she look at him. He was grinning, thrilled that his surprise had been such a hit with her. "I saw them at a roadside stand and couldn't resist. We'll eat them on the way out to the country." And they did.

CarrollBlog 4.27

Midday. Lunchtime is over and the restaurants have emptied out. The only ones lingering there are the lovers and the solitary drinkers. The waiters are half-heartedly putting things back in order. At some places you see them sitting at corner tables with a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. There's time now before the evening rush. Relax a while, take a breather in the screen-saver world of mid afternoon. Although the weather is warm and sunny, the old people out for their afternoon stroll are bundled up and frequently wearing large sunglasses against the sun's glare. Passing the outdoor cafes, they stare with real interest at whoever is sitting there, taking it all in. I never understand why you don't see more old people at cafes. They love to sit and watch the world go by, but usually only in parks or public places where one doesn't have to order anything to sit. Dog walkers zigzag down the sidewalks, following their pets which are thrilled to be here and able to sniff everything they can get their noses against. Kids out from school travel in large packs together, loud, pushing and hitting each other, laughing both happily and meanly, making themselves heard above all others. They are like those clusters of small insects that buzz through the summer air. Dense, flying close together, they annoy you a moment when they fly in your face but then are gone. People dawdle or window shop without any real interest. More than one of them yawn that special kind of three-in-the-afternoon yawn. Half the day is past, the charged half. Everything from here on is quieter, in another key altogether.

CarrollBlog 4.26

Every day I pass a store that has large advertisements in the window for the various magazines they sell. These ads are almost always of the latest front covers, invariably featuring news and gossip about famous movie and media stars. Today it struck me when I saw and thought about the magazines that no matter what these people do, it's fabulous. If they break up with a long time love, "I feel so great being free again." If they make a movie that flops, "It was a wonderful learning experience." If they lose weight to the point of anorexia, "It was a battle, but she won it." Or gain weight "I don't care what people think how I look. This is the real me and I'm finally being honest with myself." A messy divorce, drug rehab, or an abrupt career change? No problem. "Singing had become empty for me. I finally admitted to myself that what I really wanted to do was sell cactus." There's always a way to spin situations so that these golden people appear to have triumphed once again over the kinds of experiences that frequently cuts the rest of us lowly mortals off at the knees.

CarrollBlog 4.24

She was complaining about the fact that there are no good single men around. Having heard this before from a number of women, I asked has any man, any stranger, ever come up to you and said something so interesting, funny or intriguing that you thought "I *have* to know who this guy is?" And then accepted his invitation for coffee or a drink? She smiled as if I was out of my mind and said of course not. I've asked women that question for years and only one said yes, she had a drink with a stranger after he approached her in a bar and said a compelling opening line. The irony is she didn't remember what he said. But whatever it was, she liked it and they began talking. I've also spoken with men about this and they said the same thing-- there really is no way to make "cold contact" with a woman you see on the street who makes you go "wow." I'm not talking about sleazy lines, dreary cliches, stupid openers, or the "how could anyone even *think* of saying that?" verbal stumbles. I'm talking about nice guy sees nice girl and wants to make contact. Maybe she even wants him to make contact. He walks up to her (which takes a lot of courage, ladies) and says X. The way things are these days, even if he has the greatest opening line of the century, it ain't going to happen. IMHO.
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This in from A on the subject:

CarrollBlog 4.23

While walking up the street I hear someone shouting, laughing, talking incoherently. People nearby have that alarmed look on their faces that says they hear it too and it's disturbing. The closer I get to a certain doorway the louder the noise becomes. Finally I'm there and see where it is coming from: a homeless one- legged woman is sitting in the doorway screaming at the world. There's no one else with her, only her black crutches propped up against a wall keeping her company. I walk a little faster to get away. About fifteen minutes later I'm sitting in a fast food restaurant on the other side of the street. Who walks into the place but the shouter. With a mouthful of food I think-- uh oh. But I'm close enough to the door so that if she freaks out I can leave easily. There are quite a few people at the counter waiting for food. She slowly makes her way to the back of one line and waits. The line moves slowly but she makes no fuss. Finally her turn comes and although I'm too far away to hear the exchange, I watch the server to see if they grow a wary or strange look on their face as she orders. Nothing. Some time passes and her food arrives. Digging into her pocket, the woman pays and turns to leave. Walking slowly out of the restaurant, she has a small smile on her face. Peaceful. They're playing good music so I stay a while after finishing to listen. When I leave, I immediately hear the familiar sound of screaming and laughing somewhere. Squinting toward that familiar doorway, I see she is back there hollering.

CarrollBlog 4.22

Oranges in a Tree
by Alberto Rios

CarrollBlog 4.21

Waiting on line at the checkout counter, the woman in front of me is holding only a very large colorful box of dog biscuits. The man in front of her is buying many things. So it takes a while for the cashier to add up the cost of his purchases. In the meantime, the woman opens up the box of biscuits and starts to eat them. She doesn't take out one, nibble a corner to see what a dog biscuit tastes like, and then put the rest back into the box. No, she takes out a handful and eats them as if they were potato chips, one after the other. The biscuits are about mid size and she eats three very quickly. I smile at first but then stop smiling when she sticks her hand back in the box, takes out more, and eats these too. She moves forward in the line. Handing the open box to the cashier, she puts the last biscuit she's holding in her mouth and chews. From the bored look in her eye, the cashier seems unaware that this customer is eating the dog biscuits she's buying. For one second I think I've imagined the whole thing. Maybe I'm going nuts! Turning to the man behind me, I see him smiling. He raises his eyebrows and says quietly "Woof woof."
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Most romantic line heard in a long time:

CarrollBlog 4.20

I know two kinds of adults. One carries inside himself the dead child that he once was. The other is a very rare kind of adult, who carries inside himself a living child-- curious, thirsty for love, thirsty for knowledge...

CarrollBlog 4.19

On German television they were interviewing an FBI profiler about the killings in Virginia this week. He made two observations that were particularly eerie. One of the few things mass murderers of this sort apparently have in common (when interviewed after their crimes) is that all of them previously played a lot of video shooting games. According to the agent, constantly playing these games honed their abilities, making the killers both calm and proficient when the real thing happened. Like pilots who train on flight simulators, the shooters had practiced so much that when they acted, they were both adept and unemotional. Also they were used to games where you have to shoot your opponent numerous times to kill him. Otherwise he revives and keeps coming back. The FBI man said he has frequently interviewed young men who shot people in real life and then were genuinely surprised when their victims didn't get up again after they were shot the first time, as is always the case in video games.

CarrollBlog 4.18

The List of Good Names
by Robert Fanning

CarrollBlog 4.17

Old loves. They enter your thoughts unexpectedly, like a flash of summer lightning at night. They blast open a part of the sky pure phosphorescent white a moment, and then are gone. A memory is lit, or a few-- a meal together, an hour when nothing could be better than right now. The look in their eye that day you sat together by the river. Maybe if the memory is particularly strong, a shiver slides along your heart like an ice cube down your back. But then unless you are haunted or were ruined by this person, life goes back to a moment ago. You straighten up, take a long breath, and move forward. Maybe part of you looks once over your shoulder to see if, impossibly, they are there behind you again. But they never are.
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Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

CarrollBlog 4.16

One of the famous cosmetics companies is promoting a new line of mascara called "Inimitable." It reminded me of something I noticed a while ago--Sometimes it seems the only ones who consciously choose multi-syllable (and often obscure) words to promote their products are either cosmetics companies or Death Metal bands. On numerous occasions I've seen kids wearing t-shirts advertising in bloody letters metal groups named things like "Desuetude" and "Arsis." Who the hell thought those names up? Four grungy looking guys are sitting around thinking. One of them sticks his finger in the air and says joyfully, "I've got it! We'll call the band Desuetude!" and everyone there goes yeah yeah, Desuetude. Or a romantic couple are having dinner by candlelight and the man says, "Darling, you look lovely tonight. Is it because you're wearing Inimitable?"

CarrollBlog 4.15

Sometimes you get a crush on certain words and then use them until they lose their flavor, like a new piece of chewing gum. "Tiresome" is one I've rediscovered recently and like a lot. I was watching a DVD of a famous shock comedian do a routine about 9/11. His humor was supposed to be extreme and provocative ("I don't understand why everybody talks so much about 9/11. What happened on that day? I know that a lot of sports events were cancelled..."), but his monologue wasn't even worth a cringe. It was only tiresome, like a young child who discovers that the word "fuck" makes adults jump, so he uses it whenever he wants attention. The way to get the kid to stop is by not reacting when he says that radioactive word. If you spend any time watching comedy clips on TV or YouTube these days, it's plain that way too many comedians have degenerated into trying only to be outrageous rather than genuinely funny. If I have the balls to do a comic routine about 9/11, that Ground Zero of human suffering, then the taboo subject alone is enough to make my audience gasp. But in truth it doesn't really-- it's just an adult version of the little kid saying his four letter word. Tiresome.
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"Let it Be" Russian style:

CarrollBlog 4.14

Dear Mr. Carroll,
I read your recent blog (4/11) with real interest about writing imaginary letters to people we know. For years I have done what I guess could be called the opposite-- what would I write (or say) in response to letters I received from them? When an important boyfriend and I broke up, for a long time afterwards I thought about what would I say if he asked if we could try again. Or what would I say if he wrote and blamed me for everything. Or what I would say if... You see what I mean. Over the years I have frequently written "phantom letters" in my head in answer to mail I either hoped or feared would arrive one day. Those letters (or phonecalls, emails, etcetera) rarely arrived, but somehow it was therapeutic to imagine how I would respond to them-- either way.

CarrollBlog 4.13

Breakfast Song

CarrollBlog 4.12

I just read an article that says the two most searched subjects on the Internet these days are Britney Spears and Knut the baby polar bear. I'm still trying to figure out what that says about the online community....
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No woman looks good chewing gum. No man looks good wearing gold chains.
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Upon hearing of the death of someone she detested, the novelist Isabel Allende shrugged and said, "Death does not make you a nicer person."

CarrollBlog 4.11

In Saul Bellow's novel HERZOG, the troubled main character writes letters he knows he'll never send to people-- living and dead, famous and not-- as a way of getting things off his chest. Someone told me that after reading HERZOG, they adopted the same practice.Only this man writes letters he never sends just to people in his life. To an ex- girlfriend describing how much he still misses her. To a clueless work colleague suggesting how they could improve their performance in the job, etcetera. I thought it was an interesting idea but asked if he didn't feel frustrated knowing the recipients would never get them and know how he felt. He said no not really. He spent a great deal of time writing and phrasing his phantom letters. By devoting so much care to them, he learned to pinpoint exactly how he felt about these matters and that alone was reason enough to continue doing it. It reminded me of the novelist who said something like, "I write to discover what I truly believe."

CarrollBlog 4.10

Bad love affairs, bad timing, bad mood, bad breath, bad dog... We live our days moving through varieties of bad. But it is mostly a minor thing, mundane 'shit on the bottom of your shoe' stuff. A bad taste, a bad kisser, the bad view which permits us to see just enough to annoy us that we can't see more. They are all minor irritants, dust in the eye sort of annoyances. Because the word itself carries little psychic weight anymore. 'Bad' is today's verbal shrug. In contrast, in the old days if you said someone was a "bad" woman, that one word in certain contexts could ruin a person. Now if you say she is a bad woman, you're asked to be more specific. We rarely raise an eyebrow or a fuss when bad barges into our lives again. We don't jump back or stagger when faced with bad smells, bad breaks, bad advice. Maybe we blink or pause, but then we continue. Bad in any form is rarely powerful enough to knock us out or stop us cold. At heart it has become a wannabe, a pretender to the throne, the player who sits on the bench the whole season because he's simply not good enough to be in the starting lineup.

CarrollBlog 4.9

Found this hair raiser at Daron Larson's always interesting website(daronlarson.blogspot.com):

CarrollBlog 4.8

Today is Easter, so let's talk resurrection. But my question is this-- What part of yourself would you most like to bring back to life if it were possible? Perhaps that courage, energy, belief, trust, or hope you once had, but over the years has leaked out of your soul? Or the intensity you once felt about various things? What *do* you feel intensely about today? Many of us must think hard and if it happens to be a really dark time in our lives, we don't come up with enough or much at all. Secondly, is it even possible to resurrect such things in ourselves? I don't know, but it's something on my mind today.
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A good one from KM:

CarrollBlog 4/7

Years ago at the Viennese flea market I bought an old full length leather coat for a few dollars. It looked like one of those coats Nazi officers wore in WW2. It was a beautiful thing, well made but so heavy and stiff that I wore it only in the coldest weather and always with the collar turned up. One Christmas I went to New York and took the coat along. A novelist friend and I arranged to have lunch together. He had just turned in the manuscript of a new work to his publisher. The editor there read it but said a lot of changes had to be made before the book was ready for publication. My friend disagreed and there was a tense standoff going on between the two men. The day we met was very cold and I wore the coat to lunch. He couldn't stop admiring it and saying how ominous it looked, especially because I had just had my hair cut very short and together with the coat, the whole look was very Max Van Sydow- sinister. Halfway through our meal, he asked if I would do him a favor: After lunch, would I accompany him to his editor's office? And after we were introduced, would I say to this editor in a heavy German accent, "His new book is very good. Why do you want him to change it?" I thought he was joking but he wasn't. So after lunch we walked over to the publisher's office and I did my thing. The editor was a man whose square black glasses framed his face like 2 TV screens. I was introduced as Till, a German "friend." After a pause I said my lines and then just stood there staring intently at him in my scary coat and cut. The editor looked quickly from my friend to me, and then back at my friend. Neither of us said a word. Was this a joke? Was it serious? Who was this guy Till? My friend let the tension go on a few more seconds then mysteriously smiling and nodding his head, said goodbye to the editor and we walked out.
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ON checks in with this one:

CarrollBlog 4.6

Surfing around personal photo websites like www.flickr.com, it's interesting to see how saturated all of them are with self-portraits. It appears that a very large number of photographers who go public with their work are obsessed with taking pictures either of themselves or parts of themselves-- hands, feet, shoes, etcetera. In writing, there is a large Maginot Line between writing only for yourself and writing with an audience in mind. Simply put, the difference between keeping a private diary and keeping a blog. At one time or other for any number of reasons, we all take pictures of ourselves. It's fun, it's vain, it's a nice lick to the ego if the pictures turn out well. Especially now with digital photography which is so satisfyingly instant. But to think seven or seventy-seven photos of yourself are going to be interesting to the world at large is a whole other way of thinking.

CarrollBlog 4.5

I haven't been writing anything here the last few days because I've been dutifully reading through all the past blog entries (over 700, if you can believe that) to choose the best ones for inclusion in the English edition of EYE OF THE DAY-- the blog book. Mobius New Media will be publishing it in a limited edition and selling it only here on the website. We'll keep you posted on its progress. As of now, there will be about 360 entries, or one for each day of a year that has in reality stretched from July of 2004 until today. A lot of people have written in over the years saying they would much rather read this journal as a book held in their hands than online, and we're happy to oblige. Stay tuned for further developments and once again, thank you for keeping me company here. The pleasure has been all mine.
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CarrollBlog 4.4

The Changed Man
by Robert Philips

CarrollBlog 4.3

Unwise Purchases
by George Bilgere

CarrollBlog 4.2

Part of a response to a writer who asked if the rewriting part always has to be so painful: