Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 26

CarrollBlog 1.16

The great short story writer Alice Adams' had an interesting formula for writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending. You begin with action that is compelling enough to draw [the reader] in, make us want to know more. Background is where you...see and know who these people are, how they've come to be together, what was going on before the opening of the story. Then you develop these people, so that we learn what they care most about. The plot – the drama, the actions, the tension – will grow out of that. You move them along until everything comes together in the climax, after which things are different for the main characters, different in some real way. And then there is the ending: what is our sense of who these people are now, what are they left with, what happened, and what did it mean?"

CarrollBlog 1.11

Feminism has had the very unfortunate effect on romantic love of making us believe it should always be of secondary concern. We regard the thirst for love as a gluttonous lust, even as pathetic, as some symbol of dissatisfaction with the self; it is not a respectable ambition. When someone aspires to succeed in sports or academia or their career, we say they are dedicated, committed, passionate. Why don't we give the pursuit of love the same honor? We all know that love can make us happier than all else, so why not devote ourselves to finding it, developing our techniques and strategies, studying ourselves, seeking mastery over it? Instead we turn our attentions to our appearance, our possessions, our resumes, our bank accounts.

Cassie McLean

CarrollBlog 1.8

A tiny number of ideas can go a long way, as we've seen. And the Internet makes that more and more likely. What's happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We're being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard. My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers.

Mark Pagels

CarrollBlog 1.6

"I love your silence. It is so wise. It listens. It invites warmth. I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you. You have the loneliness that all true heroes have, a loneliness that is a deep sea, within which the fishes of mystery dwell. I love your quest. It is noble. It has greatness in it. Only one who is born under a blessed star would set sail across the billowing waves and the wild squalls, because of a dream. I love your dream. It is magical. Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do. People like you enrich the dreams of the world, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are the unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love."

Ben Okri, Astonishing the Gods

CarrollBlog 1.3

Ode to the Present

by

Pablo Neruda

This

present moment,

smooth

as a wooden slab,

this

immaculate hour,

this day

pure

as a new cup

from the past--

no spider web

exists--

with our fingers,

we caress

the present;

we cut it

according to our magnitude

we guide

the unfolding of its blossoms.

It is living,

alive--

it contains

nothing

from the unrepairable past,

from the lost past,

it is our

infant,

growing at

this very moment, adorned with

sand, eating from

our hands.

Grab it.

Don't let it slip away.

Don't lose it in dreams

or words.

Clutch it.

Tie it,

and order it

to obey you.

Make it a road,

a bell,

a machine,

a kiss, a book,

a caress.

Take a saw to its delicious

wooden

perfume.

And make a chair;

braid its

back;

test it.

Or then, build

a staircase!

Yes, a

staircase.

Climb

into

the present,

step

by step,

press your feet

onto the resinous wood

of this moment,

going up,

going up,

not very high,

just so

you repair

the leaky roof.

Don't go all the way to heaven.

Reach

for apples,

not the clouds.

Let them

fluff through the sky,

skimming passage,

into the past.

You

are

your present,

your own apple.

Pick it from

your tree.

Raise it

in your hand.

It's gleaming,

rich with stars.

Claim it.

Take a luxurious bite

out of the present,

and whistle along the road

of your destiny.

CarrollBlog 1.1

Downhearted

by Ada Limón

Six horses died in a tractor-trailer fire.

There. That's the hard part. I wanted

to tell you straight away so we could

grieve together. So many sad things,

that's just one on a long recent list

that loops and elongates in the chest,

in the diaphragm, in the alveoli. What

is it they say, heart-sick or downhearted?

I picture a heart lying down on the floor

of the torso, pulling up the blankets

over its head, thinking this pain will

go on forever (even though it won't).

The heart is watching Lifetime movies

and wishing, and missing all the good

parts of her that she has forgotten.

The heart is so tired of beating

herself up, she wants to stop it still,

but also she wants the blood to return,

wants to bring in the thrill and wind of the ride,

the fast pull of life driving underneath her.

What the heart wants? The heart wants

her horses back.

Carroll 12.30

THE SCARY THING ABOUT THOSE WHO JUMP

The scary thing about somebody

jumping from the top of a tall building

is not the fall or the jump itself

or the rush of air that chokes

into being that person's last breath.

It is not even the man, on his way to work,

who finds the seven body parts

spread across six paving stones.

It is not the sirens that are blue

with nothing to rush to,

nor the cold of the zipper on a black

and silver body bag

or the sound of the bristles

pushed forth and back, forth and back,

until nobody would know of the life

that once saw its last there.

The scary thing about somebody

jumping from the top of a tall building

is the dark they saw

when they stood on the ledge

and looked for the stars,

that maybe they took the stairs

two at a time, or the pile of rubbish

they saw swirling in circles too small

to catch the headlines of that days news.

It is the town that was deserted,

that nobody saw them walk

through the streets or stand at the foot

of the building and look up,

it is the look on their face as they chose

which coat to wear and the way

they closed their blue front door

knowing they had no need to take a key.

Emma McGordon

CarrollBlog 12.26

LOOKING BACK

by

Lucille Lang Day

What does it matter

if I wore my skirt short,

my hair stacked high,

my eyeliner black and thick,

if my long earrings jangled

when I ran

and I wore a padded bra

under my gold lamée blouse

or no bra at all

under a sheer one?

When I danced naked in my apartment

or stripped on a mountain

and made love amid ferns and conifers,

I was like all

the other animals.

And I say

the body is a golden chalice

filled with guts

and menstrual blood.

Every living cell is holy,

radiant as a stained-glass window

with sunlight streaming through.

So what does it matter

how many men wanted me?

What does it matter

if I had my way?

CarrollBlog 12.24

"Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice

the ring that's landed on your finger, a massive

insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end

of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt

in your voice under a blanket and said there's two kinds

of women—those you write poems about

and those you don't. It's true. I never brought you

a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.

My idea of courtship was tapping Jane's Addiction

lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M.,

whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked

within the confines of my character, cast

as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan

of your dark side. We don't have a past so much

as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power

never put to good use. What we had together

makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught

one another like colds, and desire was merely

a symptom that could be treated with soup

and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now,

I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,

as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune

to your waterfall scent, still haven't developed

antibodies for your smile. I don't know how long

regret existed before humans stuck a word on it.

I don't know how many paper towels it would take

to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light

of a candle being blown out travels faster

than the luminescence of one that's just been lit,

but I do know that all our huffing and puffing

into each other's ears—as if the brain was a trick

birthday candle—didn't make the silence

any easier to navigate. I'm sorry all the kisses

I scrawled on your neck were written

in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you

so hard one of your legs would pop out

of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you'd press

your face against the porthole of my submarine.

I'm sorry this poem has taken thirteen years

to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding

off the shoulder blade's precipice and joyriding

over flesh, we'd put our hands away like chocolate

to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy

of each other's eyelashes, translated a paragraph

from the volumes of what couldn't be said."

— Jeffrey McDaniel, "The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy"

CarrollBlog 12.20

I'm excited about this: the most complete collection of my stories ever published. Also Rebis in Poland will be releasing a shorter version with just the new stories in time for the Warsaw Book Fair in May, which I'll be attending.

http://tinyurl.com/7n7yupb