July 31, 2022

I need to charge my computer all night, I think. I have it plugged in and it says it's actually draining battery. Mitch and I are at Kyle's house in Hamar, Norway! It's been a very chill time. We've been hanging out with his family (wife and two kids), eating brown cheese and a lot of berry products. We walked in the woods. They leave their door both unlocked and wide open. It's gorgeous -- something about being somewhere in full summer that gets very little summer. 

It's been relaxing. Like we're camping or something. Being away from the city, in the fresh air. It's Norway, so the summer air is CRISP. I've been sleeping a lot. They drink lots of coffee here, several times a day. I can get behind that. Norwegian is a funny language. I have to stop myself from talking in gibberish without thinking about it, a passive imitation. 

Here are some photos: 

July 28, 2022

In the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX. Mitch and I finally going on our tenth anniversary trip on the bring of our twelfth anniversary. I want to write a post everyday while we're gone. That seems like a good thing to do. 

To kick off, though, wanted to write a little bit about stuff that's happened in LA recently. 

First, I went to Courtney Pauroso's one-woman show called Gutterplum. She does clown. The frame of it was a woman's whole life starting out when she was a tomboy. She invites an audience member up to the stage to kick the can with her. (She's in the market for a new best friend.) Then she finds a backpack in the woods with beer and cigarettes and strippers heels. Low and behold, she's gotten her period. Her dark curls come off and her hair goes blonde. She's a teenager. She's at a party. She invites the audience member back on stage. She gets pregnant (from the teenage version of playing leapfrog.) And it continues. She becomes a woman, a butt doctor like her mom. The audience member comes back on stage and they get married. 

In that segment, as a grown stressed butt doctor, she goes nuts and gets topless -- "you want to see my tits??" -- and crawls around in a bridge using a deep growly voice like she's possessed. Then she scarily asks if we want to see her pussy. And the audience is like... ? The lights go all the way out. She gets naked and then runs to different parts of the stage and flashes a flashlight on her pussy. So you get these quick flashes of vaginal maw. Wild. 

Courtney and the audience member have their 25th wedding anniversary. He dies. 

Then she gets old, draws wrinkles on her face, has long grey hair (head, nipples, pubic). She dies. The audience member is there for her in heaven. They kiss. 

The thing was so nice. And sexy. And cringey. But the audience guy did so good, and by the end you could tell he felt real tenderness towards her. It reminds me of that short story I like (that I can't remember the name of, but I do know what book it's in and where that book is on my shelf) where two people meet at an airport. They don't know each other, but are making some kind of luggage transfer or drop for a friend. There's a wait and they talk. And they end up imagining a life together. It's like it actually happened. And then they leave, feeling old. 

It's like that Star Trek episode too. The one where Picard gets sucked into the artifact of the alien civilization and lives a life as if he were a member of that planet. The chance. The chance. The chance. 

The only other thing I wanted to say -- not about the show -- was that the other Saturday I went to the park to shoot around with some folks from my basketball team. It ended up being just me and two other guys in their fifties. We played Pig and Horse and did all the stupid shots you used to do in the driveway or on the playground. It was good. 

July 15, 2022

 The painters were in our apartment again yesterday. We really needed it. The ceiling paint was cracking and coming down in chunks. They did the main room, so I was sequestered in the bedroom. I guess I didn't really need to be there, but I felt better being around to make sure the cat didn't get out. 

It was taking longer than I thought, and the main room was cut off to me by white plastic tarps. I was supposed to go hiking with a friend. I pushed our start time back by an hour. The painters still weren't done. My friend suggested I climb out the window. Instead I just called out, announced that I had to leave. From deep within the sea of tarps, the painter emerged. It reminded me of the sheets scene in Romeo + Juliet, but instead of a young lover I was met with this middle-aged Latino man, covered - head to toe - in white paint dust and splatter. It was even on his glasses. 

He let me out of my apartment. 

July 14, 2022

I read the screenplay for Gone Girl yesterday. So good. It's almost like Gillian Flynn is a good writer or something. I didn't want to put the screenplay down, and that's really unusual. The scene descriptions were good and funny. Sentence by sentence it was impressive. I feel like it almost might have been better than the movie, which I remember dragging a little and feeling long. The screenplay -- while long at 177 pages -- doesn't drag at all. And some of the joy in it is the sentences, the scene descriptions, which of course don't show up in the actual movie. Good for the actors to know, though. I feel like they'd be helpful for the creative team in general. 

Flynn does a good job of walking us through how this woman, Amy, might plausibly be this crazy. I've had a hard time with that in the past -- with Hell House for example. How do you put enough pressure on a person that you make them snap. Flynn pushes Amy up to that edge, so when she falls over it, we believe it. The sheer unlikeliness of the whole thing is forgiven. 

Gone Girl is also very convincingly about this marriage, about a fairly regular marriage. Something relatable. I remember feeling like the movie came across as a bit more Rah Rah Girl Power (could have been my frame of mind), while reading the script it feels more like Amy's not the hero here. Like she's a real nightmare. Of course she's a nightmare -- I guess I'm also saying that she's complicit in the thing she's raging against. We usually are, I guess. 

I read the script because I'm trying to crack a similar concept. The thing is about Amy -- Gone Girl -- but the POV is Nick. Maybe I need a stronger POV character. Maybe not though. Anyways, some of the power in Gone Girl is the fact that domestic violence is so prevalent that Amy's framing is entirely credible. The actual truth of the book is incredible, of course. 

Okay, the other thing I've been thinking about. I play basketball a lot, but I don't think I'm getting better at it at this point. My body aging is part of it probably. I'm also not practicing as hard/smart as I could. I'm just playing for fun. It goes against my theory of putting in the hours being a surefire way to improve. If I weren't playing regularly, I would be worse at it, though. 

Fascinating work, here, Amy. 

July 13, 2022

I got my hair cut the other day. I go to this woman on Westwood Blvd. She charges $20. She doesn't wash your hair. She doesn't really take appointments (you can call the day before or the day of). You pay her in cash. She's amazing. She's Persian and works in Persian Square, so I asked her what restaurants she recommended in the area. She told me "Fresh Corn Grill."  

July 11, 2022

I got a peek of my life this morning outside of my existential dread and it was pretty nice. Enviable even. I would like it, would be excited to live it, if you told me about it.  

July 10, 2022

 A) I wanted to take the weekend off from thinking about a Relationship. Mitch and I went down to San Diego to visit friends and his parents, who were visiting from Washington. Things were going pretty well. I was present with the people involved. I was enjoying myself. I was interested in the books I was reading. But Friday night, I went to bed early and was distracted with stress. Stress concerning the Relationship. I read from an essay collection on my kindle. I got bored with that. I turned to the complete collection of poems by Wislawa Szymborska, a move I pulled often when trying to go to sleep during the Spring and Summer of 2020. She wasn’t grabbing me, but at least the reading was wearing me down. (Feed the woodchipper.) I read: 

Vietnam

“Woman, what’s your name?” “I don’t know.” 

“How old are you? Where are you from?” “I don’t know.” 

“Why did you dig that burrow?” “I don’t know.” 

“How long have you been hiding?” “I don’t know.” 

“Why did you bite my finger?” “I don’t know.” 

“Don’t you know that we won’t hurt you?” “I don’t know.” 

“Whose side are you on?” “I don’t know.” 

“This is war, you’ve got to choose.” “I don’t know.” 

“Does your village still exist?” “I don’t know.” 

“Are those your children?” “Yes.” 

The next poem was too long, so I thought Well, I’m going to sleep.

B) We stayed with our friends Dan and Lynnea the first night. Dan cajoled a story out of Lynnea, about the last time they had visited London. She went to the Tate Modern by herself (Dan not liking art museums), and without telling anyone, took 15mg of THC. It turned out to be too much. She was having a great time until she came to a Rothko. It had a powerful impression on her. She was vibing, connecting, and then she realized that she was looking at a red square. She decided she was too high, having an unfounded reaction to this red square. She panicked. She tried to get out of the museum, but the layout was confusing, and she was too high. She tried to follow the exit signs, but she kept winding up back in front of the red Rothko. She eventually did get out of the Tate and made her way over to a nearby Starbucks. (There was no way she was finding her way back to the hotel.) She texted Daniel, saying that she was sick and needed help. Neglecting to say she was high. He had to rush all the way across London to help her. This was told as an embarrassing story. But I think that was the correct response to seeing a Rothko. She did it right. 

C) Mitch and I took the train to and from an LA Sparks game. The passengers in Los Angeles are spicier than those in Chicgao. Or at least there’s a higher density of spiciness. Mitch saw a tweaker get on with a hand under his shirt, clutching something. Mitch was afraid it was a gun, but it turned out to be a laptop, tucked into the front of the guy’s pants. On the way back, 10 o’clock at night, I saw a person (man? Woman?) get on dressed in a bright sweatsuit, hood up, black sunglasses on. They slouched into a seat behind us. Several stops later. A man got on pushing a red shopping cart. Inside were reusable bags of belongings. Fairly clean, but shopping cart on the train. He was also wearing shades. The person in the sweatsuit stood up and slouched past us. I was worried they might collide with the man and his shopping cart, causing an altercation. I wasn’t sure they even saw him. I realized the person was going for the empty sideways seat – and so was the man with the shopping car. This could be trouble. The two sat on the sideways seat, next to each other, in perfect unison. The person in the sweatsuit put their arm around the man’s shoulder. The man put his hand on the person’s knee. They were wearing matching sandals. Not a word was spoken. Not a look exchanged. 

What the fuck was that? 

July 8, 2022

I had made a date to go hiking with a friend so we could strategize getting represented. Business! I got to the parking lot, and she was running behind -- by like an hour. I parked in the shade and rolled down the windows, leaned the seat back and listened to Dune on audiobook. It was hot, but the breeze felt nice. I half dozed. 

I've been thinking about the concept of my experience being my responsibility. It's an extension on the idea that other people can't make you feel anything. They don't have that power over you unless you give it to them. Obviously, this only works so far. If someone is being cruel to you, that's going to feel bad. And people shouldn't act cruel. They should try to not act thoughtlessly. People should try to treat each other with care and respect. BUT but... with my friend, did I have to feel disrespected? Do I have to log what happened as, She disrespected me, and that's going on the ledger. If she keeps disrespecting me, then she's out? On the one hand, kind of yes. On the other... well, I had a nice time listening to my audiobook. Such a nice time that I was kind of hoping she all-out canceled on me, so I could listen/nap for a while and then go home. (We did end up hiking, and it was great.) 

(I'm confident that her lateness has way more to do with her and what's going on in her life than it has to do with me or how she feels about me.)

If my experience is my responsibility, then I can't count on other people making me happy. Or put my happiness entirely in their hands, I guess. If something falls through on somebody else's end, my job is to pivot, take care of myself. Use my energy to save my experience rather than sit there and fume. 

Whew, being alive is exhausting. 

July 4, 2022

I read a story in A Treasury of Science Fiction, an anthology from 1948 that I picked up in one of those free libraries. It's been sitting on my coffee table for months, you know how it is. The introduction had this part, which I thought was very good: 

"However, the great majority of the yarns you are about to read have been put down on paper solely to entertain you, and to provide you with some rugged exercises for your imagination. In the long run, those are the major purposes of the art. And if you do enjoy this book, if you get from it a few hours' relaxation from the tensions of modern living, its reasons for being will have been justified."  - Groff Conklin (1948)

I thought that was great. It reminds me of David Mamet's thing about the purpose of drama being the suspension of consciousness. It's similar to drugs I think, people have a hard time taking unmediated reality, unmediated consciousness, all the time. We need a break. 

It's nice, too, to have that be the goal of my writing. Just make it a little nice for people for a little bit! There's value in that. Loads of fucking value. I care enough about a nice time, I think, to make that my life's work. Or to try to make it that. Reminds me of my thinking when I posted this: 

no there's not lol https://t.co/mzUepLhA4T

— Amy Carver (@AngryBrownCarvr) April 4, 2022