pjthompson | Entries tagged with avoidance

Random quote of the day:

“Forget about what you are escaping from. Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to.”

—Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

—Helen Keller, The Open Door

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.”

—Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (tr. Richard Zenith)

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Only by avoiding the beginning of things can we escape their end.”

—Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. The number of alcoholic writers makes a lot of sense because if you’re going to be face to face with yourself, maybe it’s better that you don’t recognize that person.”

—Fran Lebowitz, quoted in “AT LUNCH WITH: Fran Lebowitz; Words Are Easy, Books Are Not,” by Bob Morris, New York Times, August 10, 1994

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Mar 12
I love this man: http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/10981269.html

Mar 13
Some days I miss hanging out with my characters so much it hurts. Some of them were running though my mind a lot today. Maybe I’ll be able to use all this to write a really profound book one day. Either that, or croak early.

Mar 16
Always glad to see Jenny McCarthy slammed for her unscientific and harmful beliefs on vaccines. Can we start on Gwyneth Paltrow now? Oh wait, she’s just criminally elitist and stupid, not a murderer.

Mar 23
I feel bad that you feel badly. Perhaps your doctor should examine your hands.

Mar 24
The dream factory isn’t dead: it keeps supplying me with good ideas I haven’t got time to write.

Mar 25
I like the idea (from The Caliph’s House by Tahir Shah) that the Jinns decide whether or not we’re going to believe in them.

Mar 28
A working mom’s open letter to Gwyneth http://nyp.st/1eVO22J

Could this woman be any more blinkered and entitled? Yeah. I don’t think she’s bottomed out yet.

Mar 28
My cat is sad because she wanted to seek enlightenment but all the other cats cared for was tuna.

pic.twitter.com/fQMG2efc5w

Mar 29
Louis CK: “I got a white noise machine. You know what that is? It’s a machine that allows white people to sleep.”

Apr 3
Pro-tip: Don’t ask an animal activist the old joke question, “Do you know how to get down off a duck?” You’ll never get to the punchline.

Pro-tip2: Use a ladder.

Apr 3
Duty vs. personal aspirations, that’s my conflict. Most days sublimated, some days excruciating.

ETA: Love is also in the mix, making things more confused.

Apr 4
Walmart’s false argument: RT If Walmart Paid Employees a Living Wage, How Much Would Prices Go Up? http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/04/walmart_living_wage_if_the_company_paid_its_employees_more_how_much_would.html …

Apr 4
I believe in science and I believe in spirit. This doesn’t have to be a dichotomy or a contradiction. It just is.

Apr 4
While eating chips I read, “Every bite of food you eat alters your daily metabolism, electrolyte balance, and proportion of fat to muscle.”

Apr 7
And my mother turned 93 today. Happy birthday, Mam!

Apr 8
Dear Nekkid Girl Posing In An Abandoned Warehouse: it isn’t arty. You’re still just a nekkid girl.

Apr 10
Penn & Teller decimating the anti-vaccination brigade in under two minutes. http://youtu.be/lhk7-5eBCrs

Apr 10
When did “alone” become synonymous with “lonely”? The two are quite distinct.

Apr 11
The transport company that takes Mom to dialysis two days a week just called to say that in May they’ll charge $70 a ride not $30. I don’t know what we’re going to do. We can’t afford that, and the alternative is me missing a lot more work.

Apr 13
Potentially hopeful news from the social worker yesterday about transportation for Mom to dialysis. Don’t want to say much for fear of jinxing.

No, I never engage in magical thinking, why do you ask?

Apr 14
Let go and let the Universe. I now have three possible solutions to my mother’s dialysis transportation problems.

Apr 15
I’m so old I remember having to get up and walk over to the TV to change channels.

Apr 18
Me at the cafeteria: This morning I need a whisky muffin. Hold the muffin.

Apr 23
A hornet’s nest found in an abandoned shed. The head is a part of a wooden statue it fused with.

pic.twitter.com/rL1xLzXLLB [Warning: may cause the wiggins.]

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Apr 24
3 judges sided with Verizon and decided to let ISPs censor the internet. Tell the FCC to restore net neutrality! http://cms.fightforthefuture.org/tellfcc/

Apr 24
Maybe I should do as my spam suggests and get myself a Russian Bride. Of course, I might not be able to fulfill all her expectations. Too bad they don’t have a green card program for “domestic assistants.”

Apr 25
What Hitchens got wrong: Abolishing religion won’t fix anything http://www.salon.com/2013/12/07/what_hitchens_got_wrong_abolishing_religion_wont_fix_anything/ …

Apr 29
Avoidance seems to be the chief management style of many organizations.

Apr 30
I’m thinking of starting a company called Clusterf*cks R Us. Probably wouldn’t get much business, though.

Apr 30
Okay, maybe I’m a little panicky over how much I have to do before my surgery in two weeks. And maybe the surgery, too. And the recovery.

A little.

Verging on a lot.

May 1
My spam keeps sending me a “Notice to Appear.” I think I’ll send my Russian Bride instead.

May 1
The night air is full of jasmine crushed into luscious fragrance by the first heatwave of the year.

May 2
Even the most shining hero is a human being with feet of clay. If we’d just remember this, there would be less anger in this society.

May 3
The same government agency which made us prove my mom was married to my dad and that he had died needs us to prove it all over again 20 years later. Different department, you see. Apparently they’re unable to communicate with one another. Dealing with government agencies is a big component of caregiver fatigue. It wouldn’t be so bad except my dad’s death certificate has gone missing and L.A. County takes 4 weeks to get a new one.

May 3
Or maybe I won’t have surgery in 2 weeks. If I put it off this time, it will be 2 times.

May 4
Mom is home from the hospital. She’s doing okay.

May 6
I wonder if the superbuff guy on the cover of so many romance novels who’s face disappears past the top of the cover has a really ugly mug?

Or if, yanno, it’s supposed to be some artistic sh*t.

Or if, yanno, it’s so women can fantasize any man they want?

May 6
Abandoned mill from 1866 in Sorrento, Italy: Oh, the stories this conjures up!

pic.twitter.com/kHgXAnyRVV

May 6
I think “narcissistic loony toon” sums M. Lewinsky up quite nicely. She has wedged her way back into the public eye just like that string was wedged between her cheeks.

[Fortunately, it was a brief appearance and quickly faded from the public’s notice.

May 7
The Red Queen still rages. “The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.” —Harlan Ellison

pic.twitter.com/C0YNAXzclI

May 9
My surgery has been officially postponed. Mom had some minor setbacks that were major enough to warrant postponement.

I’m deeply ambivalent. I don’t fancy being a cripple for the rest of my life, however.

I think I’ll change my middle name to Ambivala.

May 11
THIS. Roz Chast on people wanting to live to be 120: “I feel like these are people who don’t really know anybody over 95.” http://n.pr/1nCUcrx

“The reality of old age,” she says, is that “people are not in good shape, and everything is falling apart.”

Everyone says, “It’ll be different for me. I’ve taken good care of myself.” But you NEVER know what life will throw at you.

That’s life’s sweet and cursed mystery.

“When you’re young you look at old people & just think they’re old people. It’s only later that you properly realise they’re ex-young people.” —Tom Cox, Twitterfeed 5/10/14

Everyone thinks they will be 30 until they’re 75. Until they hit 40, I guess.

May 15
RIP Lady Mary Stewart. You filled my Young Adulthood with many happy hours.

May 15
Ironic Twitter Juxtaposition: http://twitpic.com/e3vvhy

May 17
Ironic or psychosomatic? I wrenched my knee on the very day my surgery would have taken place. Not the one that would have been operated on, either. My other knee which has as many problems and will need its own surgery someday.

May 21
Ironic Twitter Juxtaposition: http://twitpic.com/e4drq1

May 21
I’m at the bargaining with the Universe stage. That can’t be good.

May 22
My friend and I were just saying that the next Survivor should feature an all-geriatric group of contestants.

“If your team all successfully completes your challenge, you will be given your meds as usual. If not…”

And complaint marathons to see who lasts the longest. That competition is expected to go on for days.

May 22
I can hear a train whistle every once in awhile late at night. It’s always wonderful. I don’t know where it comes from. There are no trains closer than five miles, but I guess that sound carries. Either that, or it’s the ghost of a train which once ran just down the hill from where I live.

When I was a kid I used to follow those tracks from Venice, once all the way into Culver City. The trains only ran once a month late at night to keep the access rights. Eventually, they gave those up but the rails remained for years afterwards, partially covered in blacktop in some places. They’re all gone now, alas.

There is so much that is gone. Venice is a highly urban place now but once was full of open fields, trains, horse stables. I’ve seen them all go in such a short span of time. A lifetime. Palimpsests. They’re everywhere I look, all over Venice.

Here’s one of my palimpsests: http://tinyurl.com/oa4z3mh

May 28
“It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.”

Maya Angelou seemed immortal, but it was her glowing humanity that made her seem that way. Alas, if only. RIP.

May 30
pic.twitter.com/OX9CqMctxV This picture reminded me to send a b-day card to a friend. I may inhabit this skull but I don’t always understand it.

Jun 3
Sexism kills (maybe): http://tinyurl.com/p5rkuta

Jun 3
It’s such a pain reading academic books on the Kindle that I’m going to order a paper copy and be done with it.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.”

—Paul Rudnick, quoted in The Writer’s Almanac, December 29, 2009

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

In yesterday's post I spoke of time being a writer's friend. I am reminded that we live in a society that doesn't value time—or rather, the natural rhythms of time, the slow pace of natural cycles. We're always spending time, faster and faster, filling it with occupations and quicker ways of doing things—largely, I suspect, to avoid thinking about what comes after when we run out of time.

I'm not an enemy of technology and instant gratification. Far from it. I think it's great to live in the future, and have so many resources at our fingertips, so much neat swag and cool gizmos. But sometimes the cost of all this speed and tech and stuff is too high. Anything of value takes time: time to learn, time to know, time to savor. We live in a time that makes us work hard to find the space and breath to savor anything. I have to constantly remind myself to stop, take a moment, breathe, look at the sky, smell the crisp air, feel the wind on my face. Savor the world. Let it savor you. You don't always have to run after it full tilt. Have patience that you will find it and it will find you.

"A soulless world encourages faster, quicker, thrashing about to find the one filament that seems to be the one that will burn forever and right now. However, the miracle we are seeking takes time: time to find it, time to bring it to life.

The modern search for a perpetual motion machine rivals the search for a perpetual love machine. It is not surprising that people trying to love become confused and harried, and as in Hans Christian Anderson's story 'The Red Shoes,' dance a mad dance, unable to stop the frantic jig, and whirl right past the things they, in their deepest hearts, cherish most."

—Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

But enough of the serious junk, here's the Bangles covering Simon & Garfunkel:

Watch on YouTube

Random quote of the day:

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

—Paul Valéry

( Illustrated version. )

This seems to be the most common variant of this quote, though I can't verify it's source. Billy Collins uses another version of this at the beginning of his poem, January in Paris: "Poems are never completed—they are only abandoned."

There are also other variants, attributed to other folk, none of which I can verify. The most common of these is attributed to Oscar Wilde: "Books are never finished, they are merely abandoned."

"Art is never finished, only abandoned." —Leonardo da Vinci

"A work of art is never finished, only abandoned." —Anonymous

It's a jungle out there is quote attribution land.

And yesterday, one of my "colleagues" at work critiqued the Truman Capote quote I recently posted. "Other Voices, Other Rooms is a story collection," he said.

"That's right."

"Then this isn't a very good attribution. You should have said which story it's from."

"Thank you for your input," I said. Although he had a point, I wanted to add, "I know concentrating on the message makes you uncomfortable and this is your way of avoiding letting it in." Whatevs. We all deal with things as we're able.

Random quote of the day:

"I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were rewritten so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out."

—Erica Jong, quoted in Writers on Writing

( Illustrated version. )

I hurt my knee...oh, about a month ago. (More, maybe, but I don't want to think about it.) I've been limping along, thinking it would get better, and it does, but then it gets worse again, then it gets better. Have I gone to the doctor? No, I'm an A-1 doctor-avoider, I am. Very dudelike.

Then Monday we had a fire alarm at work. I work on the third floor. I do not recommend walking down three flights of stairs with a bad knee. (Can't use the elevators in a fire alarm.) It turns out the fire alarm was caused by some asshat smoking a cigar in our smoke-free building, but that's another story.

Yesterday, the knee hurt quite a bit, but I was still hobbling along. This morning, however, when I crossed my leg to tie my shoe, something went ping! and ohmygod. I have to face the thing I've been running from: I need to go to the doctor.

Sitting at a desk is quite uncomfortable, so I left work half day and I can't spend much time at this desk, either, so if I'm not around much in the next few days you'll know why. I go to the doctor tomorrow. Long walk from the parking to the doc's office. That should be fun.

Oh well. It won't kill me, so it will only make me stronger, right? Except maybe my knee, of course.

I'm doing everything possible to avoid finishing my novel this weekend, including—gasp!—housework. I don't know why I'm so determined not to focus. I finished a rousing next-to-last or next-next-to-last chapter on Friday and was sure I'd finish the book over the three days I have off. But it just isn't happening. I had a little bit of insecurity about how I'd resolve a certain plot point, but in the shower this morning, I figured that one out. I'm not dreading the ending, it has a nice sweep (I think), my energy is good, its energy is good, all systems appear to be go, but...

Also in the shower this morning I came up with a name change for the novel. Charged with Folly referred to a plot point that has since been "overtaken by events" and isn't quite relevant anymore. I knew I'd probably have to change it but wasn't actively worrying about it at the moment. But the new name popped into my head and it is all about this book: A Rain of Angels.

If I can just get over myself and finish.

There's one or two chapters to go and if I allow for my normal chapter length, the book will clearly go over 120k, but there's a great deal that needs to be fixed and slimmed down in the early chapters, so I'm quite confident I can bring that total back down.