Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 37

CarrollBlog 3.9

The two women at lunch-- mother and daughter, obviously. The girl is beautiful, tall, eighteen or so. She can't sit still in her seat. She bounces around, tosses her hair, eats too fast, talks a mile a minute while looking all around just in case there is something interesting she hasn't seen yet. The mother is also beautiful, perhaps fifty, her eyes alone are a 500 page novel.Serene and smiling she is a total contrast to the young woman sitting across the table. How happy she is to be here with her daughter, how proud. Not many years ago this is the same child who frequently tried every bit of patience she had. The difficult student, the one with dyslexia or ADHD, or just wildly impatient about anything that didn't interest her. But now look at her-- this wonder, this young woman who is moving way too quickly out of my life and into her own. She has already set sail and I can only watch. But today she's generous enough to have lunch with Mom and talk about things that matter with her first, her greatest pal. She doesn't even know it is a gift. But Mom does.

CarrollBlog 3.8

"The Gold In Her"

by Kirsty Logan

She is your crowbar, your vodka chaser, the loudest fastest punk song you ever heard. She'd eat what you discard; she'd lick up your saliva, bathe in your sweat. She is a tick, thick on your blood, sickening on your scent. She'd drive across desert to get to you, even in this wet green land where she'd need a major detour to even find desert. She would, for you.

She is your mistake to make, and you know what you will do. You will detour around your life for a day, a week, a year. You will feed her on poetry, wine, engraved chocolates. You will let her grow fat on you.

You will consider staying. You will imagine life with this scattershot pillarbox muffin of a girl; you will wonder if she could fix the knife-edge cross-hair details of you. You will look for gold in her; scrounge through her insides for the glint of coins, so sure that there is treasure. You will find kidneys and anger and bent cogs and red blood cells and mixtapes and tarnished keys and bone marrow and everything except that glint of gold.

By then she will have scratched at your surface, pushed the dirt of your skin right under her fingernails. She will keep the bits of you there, pushed down with toothpicks so they won't wash away. You won't even notice that the dirt is gone, but she will. She will keep scraping that dirt away until your skins shines like apple-peel, until her face is reflected in it.

But then when she is too full to run, so gorged that she can only fumble around and grasp between her palms, you will let go. She will topple, this leech full to bursting. She will rupture like a glob of mercury.

Later, you will miss the taste of her: that sicksweet reek of lust and desperation. You will wonder if you could have glued the parts of her together; that cross-hair detail of yours would ensure that the cracks did not show. You could have made her softer, cooler, harder, hotter. You could have made her. You could.

But she wouldn't really be soft; she'd just be less hard. She wouldn't be hot; just thawed at the edges, frozen at her center. She'd memorise all the words, everything you ever said, and she'd twist it around so it sounded clean and new, so you'd think that she was.

So the sun and the snow will fall, and you will sleep along with the day. Before sleep you will think about stopping and you will think about running. Finally you will realise that you had fun; and end-of-a-chapter fun is what it's all about. You have a party, you take a photo, then everyone goes home and it's another thing to think about in the endless moments before sleep.

Of course, you will forget that your dirt is still under her fingernails. You will forget that the taste of her still sticks to the inside of your cheeks.

CarrollBlog 3.7

Late Poem

by Cynthia Zarin

" . . . a matter of changing a slide in a magic lantern."

I wish we were Indians and ate foie gras

and drove a gas-guzzler

and never wore seat belts

I'd have a baby, yours, cette fois,

and I'd smoke Parliaments

and we'd drink our way through the winter

in spring the baby would laugh at the moon

who is her father and her mother who is his pool

and we'd walk backwards and forwards

in lizard-skin cowboy boots

and read Gilgamesh and Tintin aloud

I'd wear only leather or feathers

plucked from endangered birds and silk

from exploited silkworms

we'd read The Economist

it would be before and after the internet

I'd send you letters by carrier pigeons

who would only fly from one window

to another in our drafty, gigantic house

with twenty-three uninsulated windows

and the dog would be always be

off his leash and always

find his way home as we will one day

and we'd feed small children

peanut butter and coffee in their milk

and I'd keep my hand glued under your belt

even while driving and cooking

and no one would have our number

except I would have yours where I've kept it

carved on the sole of my stiletto

which I would always wear when we walked

in the frozen and dusty wood

and we would keep warm by bickering

and falling into bed perpetually and

entirely unsafely as all the best things are

—your skin and my breath on it.

CarrollBlog 4.6

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.

Janet Fitch

CarrollBlog 4.5

A comment from a 2004 article by the New York Times about the loneliest whale in the world. Scientists have been tracking her since 1992 and they discovered the problem: She isn't like any other baleen whale. Unlike all other whales, she doesn't have friends. She doesn't have a family. She doesn't belong to any tribe, pack or gang. She doesn't have a lover. She never had one. Her songs come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25hz, she sings at 51.75hz. You see, that's precisely the problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And, with every lonely song, she becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by.

CarrollBlog 4.1

selections from Esquire Magazine's THE RULES:

Talk half as much as you listen

-------------------

A sandwich tastes exactly one-third better when

it's made by someone else.

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The only thing worse than words ending in "ly" are

words ending in "ize."

----------------------

When it comes to author photos, hands should be

at least eight inches from the face.

----------------------

Never Google old girlfriends

_____________

Never begin an essay with a quote from the Bible

-----------------------

Never name a child after a continent, a nation, or

a commonwealth.

-------------------

The people who elect to perform karaoke are

never the people you wish would perform karaoke

----------------------

Irony doesn't work on a tombstone

--------------------

The best religions have great hats

--------------------

The best looking musician is always the lead singer,

followed in descending order by the lead guitarist,

rhythm guitarist, drummer, and bass player.

--------------------

On any road trip, he who is driving gets control

of the radio. No exceptions.

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If you live long enough, you will resemble a gargoyle

CarrollBlog 3.31

Someone told me they read on a blog that two people had tattooed on their wrists the phrase "Hope gleams in the idiot heart," a line from the Russian poet Mayakovsky that they found in my novel THE MARRIAGE OF STICKS. I have always loved the permanence of tattoos, the conviction by the person who gets one that they will be happy to have this thing on their body ten, twenty, thirty years from now. But besides the stupid tattoos I see all over the place today, I have yet to see or think of anything I would want on my skin forever. However hearing about this tattoo today I thought, that's a pretty cool thing. A good permanent reminder that no matter what, there are almost always surprises around life's corners and we should keep our heads up to see them coming.

CarrollBlog 3.30

Writers, if you're having problems finding personalities or personality quirks for your characters, use Sleeping Beauty's seven dwarves as guides.

Sneezy

Sleepy

Dopey

Doc

Happy

Bashful

Grumpy

Sneezy is always sick-- a complainer, a hypochondriac who annoys people with never ending stories of his physical woes.

Sleepy is too buzzed out, stoned, or distracted to ever get the point or be taken seriously. He's the one in the crowd who always says "I don't get it" at the end of the joke or "Huh?" when something is described or explained to him. You like them but you wouldn't trust them with your credit card.

Dopey is the follower who does everything he's told because he knows he's not the sharpest pencil in the drawer.

Etcetera.

Do little personality sketches of these guys when you're stuck on your characterizations. Almost invariably you'll find all sorts of things in those sketches that you can assign to your own people and their stories.

CarrollBlog 3.29

It was very early in the morning and I was walking the dog in the park. Of course the place was empty because it's Sunday and who the hell else is up this early on Sunday morning in a park? The dog was sniffing around and my mind was elsewhere. Vaguely realizing someone was walking towards me, I focused on the young man in his middle twenties, decently dressed, holding his wallet in his hand and looking inside it for something. I looked away, not interested. When he passed me he said in English in a furious growl "I will kill you if it's the last thing I ever do on this earth." I looked at him, stunned. He stared right back, eyes furious. I pulled the dog's leash and moved on. As I was leaving the park he shouted "I swear to God I'll kill you!"

CarrollBlog 3.28

The old woman comes up to me on the street and says without hesitation "Paulie died."

I don't know what she's talking about, but a second later I recognize both her and what she means. She and her ancient dog Paulie used to walk around the neighborhood for what seemed like hours. He barely moved but she was all right with that. I'd see them out early in the morning and late at night always inching along, Paulie sniffing here and there, checking things out you know he had already checked out ten thousand times in his life.

"How old was he?"

"Eighteen. He just didn't wake up one morning."

I waited a moment and then said as gently as I could, "Well, eighteen is a good long life."

"He always liked you."

"He did?"

"Yes, I know he was always glad to see you. He thought of you as a friend."

I want to say something but don't know what. I manage a "thank you."

She nods and walks away.