Quote of the Day

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
- Marilyn Monroe

Been thinking about this one today...could it be that it's not about what I deserve but what deserves me? That I am deserving of everything I want, that I am good as I am and as good as I should be already?

Kind of radical thinking...

On to the next one.

Getting Loopy

Uh oh, the warm weather is setting in and I'm getting a little...you know. Full of ideas. This class, that trip, this boy, that party, this job, that book, this style, that mindfulness, this idiocy, that carelessness.

The other day I was feeling moody, bratty and alone. I have so much and still I was being such a little jerk about it, wanting more without giving more, staring at my phone and bemoaning why it wasn't ringing when really, I hadn't rung anyone. Mad at a boy for not calling and another for calling.

I peeled myself off the chaise, grabbed the book I'm supposed to be reading for my own book to fix the first fifty pages, and took the subway out of my neighborhood. I also put on some eyeliner and a new necklace, because...I don't know. I had some romantic notion I would end somewhere romantic or interesting.

To be interesting, you must be interested. I was not interested and therefore not interesting. I wasn't interested in myself or the world. I was just curled up in a blanket.

So I took the subway to a neighborhood I never go to. I took my book. I took my pen. I was going to get some good dialogue out of it at least, I hoped. One or two great lines would make the process of bringing the notebook worthwhile.


I went into get a coffee and left on a seven hour date. There was an insane art exhibit with sound hard-wiring. There was gourmet pizza. There was a crazy dance party and a hilariously shaped luge for people to take shots. There was a farm. There were hipsters. I danced really hard. I left and when I came home, he'd emailed already that what had happened was rather wonderful.

It actually was.

I'm still pissy about a few things. But not about deciding not to be pissy. Not about deciding instead to be grateful, and get the hell up, and go somewhere and say hi to someone and make a joke and to say yes, just say yes, when someone, anyone remotely worthwhile invites you anywhere remotely worthwhile.

Because then you are remotely worthwhile. Even more than that some might say.

And because I am getting loopy with possibility and less numb to joy, and more numb to say, meanness or bad form or what-have-you, and more inclined to just ask if I can come or to just show up and if anyone wants me there declare it a victory. If not, I can go home, to where I already was. But no one has asked me to go home yet. If you do the same for them, I think they ask you to stay. I want to stay interesting. I want to stay interested. I want to say yes. I will say yes. I do say yes.

And I will quote, I will blather. It feels good. Do what feels good and don't do what feels bad if you can, whenever you can. I think. I think that is enough today. That, and a quote. Always a quote.

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”— Sir Isaac Newton

Quote of the Day

Be strong, saith my heart.

I am a solider; I have seen sights worse than this.

-Homer, The Illiad

Quote of the Day

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm (misspelled). The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond what you know.

-Ernest Hemingway, 1952

Quote of the Day

Girl: I've got a thing for a drummer who looks like an Alaskan lesbian and I can't tell from his emails if he's asking me out.

Boy: That should be the name of the new LCD Soundsystem album or something.

HA!

Unbelievable and Truly Offensive Quote of the Day

Courtesy of my best friend from boarding school...her husband's name is Greg.

Warning: You will most likely be offended if you are a human being.

------
"One of Greg's coworkers has a mentally disabled 20 year old cousin. One day he called his mom at work and told her he had caught a troll. Statements like this were pretty typical, so she told him that she would check it out when she got home. He called again a few hours later still excited about the troll he had caught, and she again said he could show her when she came home. So, she came home and immediately he told her he had the troll in his closet. He took her to his room and there was a chair jammed under the closet handle. He opened up the closet and he had a midget Jehovah's witness in there. I could not stop laughing when Greg told me this. I think this is the funniest true story I have ever heard."

I know I can't laugh at this, but I can't stop.

Inspired Quote of The Day

"A future full of certain constant rejection doesn't mean that those feelings of hurt and inadequacy have to be stuffed and denied. We're all nervous and are finding comfort in commiseration. I think it's been said before on this board that we lose too many artists to finding their desperately needed comfort elsewhere--drugs, suicide, retail jobs. Here is community--take it or leave it. We hope you'll take it."

-Courtney, on the MFA Acceptance Blog, as we all cry ourselves sick about getting in or not getting in to school.

Pretty good quote about life too, now that I think of it...

Quote of the Day: You Just Got Fresh Princed

Quote of the Day

Music editor #1: Did you read that sure-to-be-obnoxious piece in NY Mag about Brooklyn music called...'Brooklyn Calling?'

Music editor #2: I tried...but I had to keep stopping.

Music editor #1: Why's that?

Music editor #2: Well, the problem wasn't that I kept rolling my eyes, it was when I brought them back down to the page, I'd invariably keep losing my place.

The Editor's Note: Quote of the Day

The line-editing is just about done, and now the story/character/big-picture editor is looking at the book.

She usually takes three weeks (which is incredibly fast) and said so for my 331 page novel. But now that she's reading it, I'm different. She got it last Friday, and she thinks she'll be done next Monday. That's just over a week! I'm tearing my hair out (she is an award-winning novelist and is always right on point) in anticipation of her notes.

But then...she emailed me a quick update and it was this:

"Just so you know, I'm reading and it's wonderful."

Be still my beating heart...

Let's not get too excited yet, she's still got over 200 pages to go...but if she likes that, then I'll make tweaks with her suggestion, and then...actually start submitting it to agents. My God!

Quote of the Day

Waiting for the F train to come on a very hot platform on this Labor Day...next to me is a beautiful Russian mother with a great tan that I would kill for, and her four year old son who has bright blonde hair and a buzz cut and the largest ears I've ever seen.

After 20 minutes.

Son: Where's the F train? I hate the F train!

Beautiful mother trying to placate him: Maybe F stands for Fantasy, yes? Because the F train will not come. F stands for Fantasy!

Son: F stands for Poop!

Beautiful mother: No, that is a 'P'.

Son: F stands for Vomit!

Beautiful mother: No, that is a 'V'.

Son: Well F stands for something stupid.

Beautiful mother: F train stands for something else, maybe? Something that you're not supposed to say. Something that starts with an 'F' and is four letters long and is something your body does. Hmm?

Son: Fuck! It's the Fuck train!

(At this point I have to leave because I'm laughing so hard. But apparently she was trying to get him to say it was the "Fart Train".)

Editing a book is hard

"The limitation of the great stylists--Henry James, say, or Hemingway, is that you remember their voices long after you've forgotten the voices of any of the people they wrote about. In one of the Psalms, God says, 'Be still and know that I am God.' I've always taken that to be good literary advice too. Be still the way Tolstoy is still, be still the way Anthony Trollope is still, so that your characters can become gods and speak for themselves and come alive in their own ways."

--Frederick Buechner

Quote of the Day

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -- Mark Twain



I have been lead twice to this quote today and it's not even 11 AM. This can't be just another gray, blustery Wednesday after that, now can it?

Quote of the Day

Deputy Editor: Listen to this band, and tell me what you think. There are no right or wrong answers.

(Shuffling of keys and iPod earbuds)

Me: Huh. I think I need to listen to them more to really get it, but I like the second track better.

(Pause)

Me: I feel like I'm watching the The Dark Crystal for the first time.

(Pause)

Me: This is like the soundtrack to all those 80s cartoons where ponies lived on barren moons or something.

Deputy Editor: You just got hired to write the piece if you want it. Seriously.

I. Love. This. Magazine.

Quote of the Day

Me: Well, that's the craziest story from Guatemala. Pretty insane and scary right? You ever had anything like that happen to you?

Enormous trainer, lifting his shirt, showing a scar: I got shot when I was fifteen and lost a kidney.

Me: Fine, you win.

Quote of the Day

Enormous trainer at the gym: "Next up we're going to do Donkey Kicks."

Me, sniggering: "I was going to make a joke but, it's pretty inappropriate so I won't."

Enormous trainer at the gym: "No, go on."

Me, taking a deep breath. "Well, (pause), that's all fine and good but when are we going to do Donkey Punches?"

Pass the Dutchies

Dutch boy #1: Yah, you understand what I am saying to you? If you haven´t tried Holland man, then you don´t know what you miss. You have to try all the flavors, you see? Sometimes you get mushroom, sometimes you get strawberry. You like another drink now?

Dutch boy #2 (whispering): My friend, he likes you. But he has many STD.

Dutch boy #1: What you say, Chuck Norris?

Dutch boy #2: No-ting. I like to be architect.

Dutchies together: Ah hah hah hah hah!

Love. The. Dutch. In Nicaragua on chicken buses eating 50 cent food out of a plastic bag that will surely make me ill, in a far too party town, on surfing beaches, on world politics, meeting everyone in the world I never could have at home, wondering how I can possibly extend this, and finally, realizing that I have lost my phone and all of its numbers of course. If you´ve texted me in the past month and a half, I didn´t get it, so send me your number and an email please! And I will report more from the most beautiful trenches in the world soon...

This is why everyone hates Americans

Our two players enter. A good looking and yet extremely intense and creepy Israeli soldier aged 25 years and your intrepid reporter...our scene begins in a coed hostel bungalow in the rolling hills of Guatemala, overlooking a raging river, a happy community of hippies, and one of the most beautiful limestone pools ever known. It is now eleven PM.

Me, sleeping, drooling, having not showered in at least three days/ ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Israeli soldier/ Koi? Koi?

Me, sleeping/ Uh, are you talking to me?

Israeli soldier/ Yes, Koi, are you sleeping?

Me, sitting up/ My name is Kay, not Koi.

Israeli soldier/ I am being very brave to tell you this. I would like to give you many kisses. Your hair is a beautiful condition and your eyes are the big circles.

Me, trying not to laugh/ Uh, dude?

Israeli soldier/ Or we could talk perhaps. I just want to sit near you because you are so full of laughter.

20 minutes later...

Me/ So that's how, in my opinion, the actions immediately following Hurricane Katrina ended up being a microcosm of an overlying disease, one in hindsight that was nearly entirely preventable, within America's governmental infrastructure.

Israeli soldier, looking agitated, finally storming off to his own bed/ Yes, you are funny indeed. I come for kisses and you want to give speech about f$cking politics!!!

My apologies to you, dear Emmanuel. I didn't tell you of my hidden superhero ability to repel unwanted advances with an unending force of steely, boring US centric opinions...I am American, and this is the only way I know...

Panty Ripper Quote of the Day

There is a drink in Belize called the Panty Ripper. It is amazing, potent, always in great supply. Our sailing trip ended with the first mate hilariously making us some instead of driving the boat properly. He says we have to say it "PANTIE RIPPAH". That is all. Well also, this...

Two in the morning we awake on the deserted island to find that one of us is not in the tent. No, one of us is not in the tent at all.

I take a walk around the water; there are no floating bodies. There is also no electricity. I tear my foot on some rocks and then decide if she's dead, well, there's nothing that I can do. And then, the following morning:

Figure appears hangdoggedly walking in the distance towards us...

Me, shouting: Walk of shame!

REDACTED: Yeah, yeah, I slept on the boat.

Me: Uh huh. So...who was it?

REDACTED, laughing: Oh Captain, my Captain!

Me, laughing: Well?

REDACTED: Well...what?

Me (clearing throat): I think we deserve to know how big his mast is.
---------------

Panty Ripper indeed. Also for the rest of the sailing trip I was allowed to call the captain "Papasito".

Quote of the Day

Boy: I feel like all my emotions about everything were just more pronounced and greater when I was between 13 and 18.

Girl: They were, but you were full of hormones. Now you're just dead inside.