Tag: flexibility

Times Change

And here we are on Monday morning yet again–the world keeps turning and revolving around the sun, bringing the endless cycle of night and day we’ve become accustomed to as perhaps one of the few things in this life we can reliably depend upon; things which, alas, are in far too short a supply these days.

I worked on the book yesterday–I wasn’t feeling especially motivated, to be honest, and decided to try not to force anything, but I did get some things done with it, which was necessary, so I don’t feel like the day was entirely lost, either. Paul slept late and I went to the gym, getting home before he got up and left for the office. I was in bed (damned six a.m. alarm anyway) by the time he got home, so I am not even entirely sure when he got home, to be honest. I think I woke up and glanced at the clock around midnight when he was getting into bed–but I may have dreamed that. After I was finished with the bare minimum of the work I got done yesterday, I started watching a documentary series about Egypt–Planet Egypt–but when I was getting going on the second episode, I realized you’ve already seen this–they jump from Narmer to basically the 18th Dynasty and so decided to find something else to watch. I wound up landing on Visible, the documentary about queer representation on television through the decades, and I managed to get through the first two episodes. Ironically, I remember the bad representation on screen from mostly the 70’s (they also didn’t mention another notorious queer killer–John Davidson played a cross-dressing murderer on The Streets of San Francisco to some serious critical acclaim. I didn’t watch it, but it was yet another early representation of queer as psycho killer, so I was a bit surprised they skipped it–and if you think about it, it’s really strange that of all television shows, The Streets of San Francisco wasn’t loaded with queer representation….then again, Arthur Hailey’s Hotel was an 80’s show set in San Francisco with nary a queer in sight; which tells you everything about the times). It also has reminded me that I should probably let go of a lot of the shame I feel/felt about not really coming out until I was thirty in every aspect of my life…it was a very different time, and not everyone was able to escape to San Francisco or New York, which at the time were the only real options for queers.

One of the things that actually gives me hope for the future is seeing all the openly young queer people living their lives today in every part of the country, something that simply wasn’t really possible when I was a teenager or in my twenties.

Another takeaway from the documentary, which I will probably finish tonight–I never remembered Raymond Burr as being as sexy as he actually was–he had amazingly beautiful and expressive eyes. I wonder…are the original Perry Mason shows streaming anywhere? I loved the books, and I can remember watching the repeats when I was a kid. My grandmother loved Perry Mason, and she was really my gateway to mystery books and movies, as well as horror. I never finished watching the HBO reboot, which I was sort of enjoying while not enjoying it at the same time–I didn’t necessarily like the fleshing out of the character or giving him this angsty back story, an the plot was glacial and hard to follow, but it was extremely well done and well acted, and you can never go wrong with Tatiana Maslany, ever. But I’ve also not been driven to go back and finish it, either–the same with Penny Dreadful: City of Angels–although the two shows vaguely reminded me of each other. I had to stop watching that one because of the unrelenting racism against the Latinx community of Los Angeles–which, of course, is completely historically accurate, yet hard to watch because you also knew there would be no justice for them. Perhaps I should go back and watch them back-to-back? They seemed to be similar thematically….hmmm, it’s a thought, and of course, I love Natalie Dormer.

I also managed to read a few chapters of The Russia House, but wasn’t really able to focus the way I would have liked to, so I put it aside and started looking for documentaries.

And this coming weekend is the Tennessee Williams Festival, which means my first quarter of 2021 widowhood will be coming to an end relatively soon. I’m not sure I’ll know how to act, having to make dinner and pack lunches for Paul every day–I stopped doing that early in the pandemic, and am not entirely sure I’ll go back to it. Half the time he wouldn’t eat his sandwich until he came home at night, alleviating the need to make dinner, of course, but he has to carry so much with him as it is and if he wasn’t going to eat it most of the time during the day, why carry it along? I try to reduce everything I have to carry to and from work as much as I can–and I don’t walk, I drive.

It’s going to be in the 70’s this afternoon, which is lovely. It’s in the high fifties right now, which means I’ll have to take a jacket with me to work today, but it’s okay–a relatively small price to pay, really, for lovely weather later today. I did make it to the gym yesterday–even increased some weights–and my flexibility is slowly coming back. Oh, I know even now I am more flexible than most people, but I also can remember how flexible I used to be, and while I seriously doubt I can ever get back to that level at age sixty, the stretching does make my muscles feel better–they feel marvelous this morning, frankly–and what I really should do is stretch every morning when I get up here in the kitchen–doing it every day rather than three times a week would make the gains progress more rapidly, obviously–but that’s something I’ll have to gradually work myself up to. I am pleased with the progress I’ve made thus far–I’ve noticeably lost weight, and people are noticing; every week I get at least one mention from a client, or get asked have you been working out, which is always lovely to hear; positive reinforcement is always welcomed. I also know from experience that I will never really see the changes, or if I do, I won’t think it’s enough–I am so fucking critical of myself and I don’t think that is something I’ll ever be able to change at this late date; I’ve tried to stop being self-deprecating but it’s an on-going struggle, really.

And a particularly annoying one, I might add.

New Moon on Monday

I made it to the gym again yesterday, which felt fantastic–despite the fact that I added a set to everything, and upped the speed of the treadmill by .2 miles per hour. The stretching helps; I can’t believe I worked out all those years without bothering to ever take the time to stop and stretch (okay, yes, I was naturally flexible, but I wouldn’t have lost the level of flexibility I had if I’d been stretching all those years). I also organized a bit, did some chores around the house, and wrote the first draft of a story for an anthology with a deadline of February 15th. The story’s not quite there yet, but I think it’s not only a good idea but one that revisions and rewrites will only make stronger. Huzzah! And yay for me!

It was also in the seventies (!!!) yesterday; considering just three days ago we had a hard freeze…yeah, the weather in southeastern Louisiana might be a bit bipolar. I also had a breakthrough on how to revise the first chapter, not only of the WIP but of the Scotty as well. Hallelujah! I really think this focus and positivity mantra might actually be working. Granted, it’s still only January, but between the working out, and the writing…yeah, this is turning into a much better year already than last.

I also read some short stories!

First up was “Music for Chameleons.” by Truman Capote, from his collection Music for Chameleons:

She is tall and slender, perhaps seventy, silver-haired, soigne, neither black nor white, a pale golden rum color. She is a Martinique aristocrat who lives in Fort de France but also has an apartment in Paris. We are sitting on the terrace of her house, an airy, elegant house that looks as if it was made of wooden lace: it reminds me of certain old New Orleans houses. We are drinking iced mint tea slightly flavored with absinthe.

Three green chameleons race one another across the terrace; one pauses at Madame’s feet, flicking its forked tongue, and she comments: “Chameleons. Such exceptional creatures. The way they change color. Red. Yellow. Lime. Pink. Lavender. And did you know that are very fond of music?” She regards me with her fine black eyes. “You don’t believe me?”

During the course of the afternoon she had told me many curious things. How at night her garden with filled with mammoth night-flying moths. That her chauffeur, a dignified figure who had driven me to her house in a dark green Mercedes, was a wife-poisoner who had escaped from Devil’s Island. And she had described a village high in the norther mountains that is inhabited entirely by albinos: “Little pink-eyed people white as chalk. Occasionally one sees a few on the streets of Fort de France.”

I love Truman Capote’s work–I reread In Cold Blood every few years or so, and his short fiction is also pretty compelling. I started reading this story before, but never finished; but in reading it now I realize I kind of borrowed the opening of this one for the opening of a chapter of Garden District Gothic, when Scotty goes to see Vernita Godwin, who is sitting on her front gallery in the Garden District sipping absinthe. I really love that image, of two people on a gallery sipping absinthe while ceiling fans turn overhead. The story isn’t really a story, in the classic definition of what comprises a story; this is more of the slice of life school of short stories, because it’s really just about a conversation between two people after dinner, about life in Fort de France, Guadeloupe. Part of the conversation is about a homophobic hate crime that had occurred on the island in the past; surprisingly, justice was actually served because, as the lady puts it, ‘we don’t tolerate murder here.’ But the strongest image of this poetically written story is the lady, sitting at the piano playing classical music for the iguanas, who listen in the doorway to the terrace and bob their colored heads in time with the music. That’s what I read Capote for–those poetic images.

Next up was “The Intoxicated” by Shirley Jackson,  from The Lottery and Other Stories:

He was just tight enough and just familiar enough with the house to be able to go out into the kitchen alone, apparently to get ice, but actually to sober up a little; he was not quite enough a friend of the family to pass out on the living-room couch. He left the party behind without reluctance, the group by the piano singing “Stardust,” his hostess talking earnestly to a young man with thin clean glasses and a sullen mouth; he walked guardedly through the dining-room where a little group of four or five people sat on the stiff chairs reasoning something out carefully among themselves; the kitchen doors swung abruptly to his touch, and he sat down beside an enormous white enamel table, clean and cold under his hand. He put his glass on a good spot in the green pattern and looked up to find that a young girl was regarding him speculatively from across the table.

“Hello,” he said. “You the daughter?”

“I’m Eileen,” she said. “Yes.”

I’m also a huge fan of Shirley Jackson who, as Stephen King once said, ‘never had to raise her voice.’ This story, like the Capote, is a slice of life type story, with a bit of a bizarre twist to it. The drunk party guest and the teenaged daughter have a lengthy conversation about how his generation has ruined the world and how it is up to hers to burn everything to the ground so it can start over, and be the better for it. It’s unsettling, but the end–when he returns to the party a little more sober than when he left it–leaves you to wonder what is going to become of Eileen–and what that story would be like.

I haven’t read a lot of Jackson’s short fiction–I’ve not read “The Lottery,” although I’ve seen the short film made of it in grade school and in an Acting class in high school we did the play, but I intend to remedy this grave error and lack in my reading history during this Short Story Project.

The third story I read was “Pastorale” by James M. Cain,  included in Best American Noir of the Twentieth Century, by editors  James Ellroy and Otto Penzler;

Well, it looks like Burbie is going to get hung. And if he does; what he can lay it on is, he always figured he was so damned smart.

You see, Burbie, he left town when he was about sixteen years old. He run away with one of them traveling shows, “East Lynne” I think it was, and he stayed away about ten years. And when he came back he thought he knowed a lot. Burbie, he’d got them watery blue eyes what kind of stick out from his face, and how he killed the time was to sit around and listen to the boys talk down at the poolroom or over at the barber shop or a couple other places where he hung out, and then wink at you like they was all making a fool of theirself and nobody didn’t know it but him.

This was Cain’s first published story, and it is not only a macabre, dark little story but it also, as the editors point out, contains themes Cain would return to again and again in his short novels; amoral man has affair with beautiful woman and they plan together to kill her husband. “Pastorale” though, isn’t told from the point of view of the amoral man, like The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity; the story is told by a third party, someone who knows what happened and is telling the story to someone–the reader, but it’s told almost entirely in vernacular and in that man’s voice, which is arresting and very strong and very rural; the voice reminded me a lot of his Appalachian saga of incest and murder, The Butterfly, and it also reminded me of Faulkner. The tale teller passes no judgment on Burbie or his lady love for their adultery and murder; if anything, he thinks they were fools because Burbie’s own vanity is what wound up bringing them down. It also gave me some thoughts about voice, and point of view, and story-telling.

If you cannot tell, Constant Reader, I am greatly enjoying my self-education in The Art of the Short Story, and I hope you are enjoying following me on this path half as much as I am enjoying going down it.

And now, back to the spice mines.