A list of scary things (according to me)

In honor of Hallowe’en I would like to offer you the following list of things that scare me.  Please do not use this list in order to inflict emotional torture on me, that would be an abuse of the unspoken trust we bestow upon each other as users of the internet

Things that scare me (in no particular order)

1. The old HBO theme music – when I was a kid I used to go over to my friend Amy’s and we would sleep on the sofa bed in her living room.  Late at night after we were supposed to be asleep we would turn on HBO to watch whatever forbidden movie (almost always The Blue Lagoon) happened to be on with the sound turned low.  No matter how quiet we tried to be the HBO theme music at the beginning of each new movie would blare and make us jump.  As a result, I still flinch whenever I hear this music.
2. The theme form the Exorcist – I have never seen, nor do I intend to ever see, The Exorcist.  I do know, however, that this music is creepy. This was the sign off music for the college radio station, WSGR,  in Port Huron.   I would always stay up late reading books by Christopher Pike and listening to said radio station.  WSGR would sign off at different times each night because they couldn’t always get people to stay really late therefore this horrible creepy song would waft out of my radio at random hours, usually while I was reading some horrible gruesome portion of whatever book I was reading.  Later I became a DJ on WSGR realising an adolescent dream, and was given the 12am – whenever slot on Saturdays.  I loved it because I could get away with playing just about anything I wanted, but I also hated it because it meant having to play that horrible sign off music in the deserted basement of the deserted library in the wee small hours of the morning. 
3. Spiders – My dad hates spiders, I hate spiders, sadly Jeremy is more scared of them than I am so I can’t girl out about it and refuse to kill them.  This means I must confront this fear on a regular and horrifying basis.
4. Hannibal Lector – When I was 15 I read Silence of the Lambs thinking if I read it I would be able to watch it.  So I read the stupid book (as loaned to me by the boy I had a massive crush on) and then I watched the stupid movie with my friends.  I still have nightmares about stupid Hannibal Lector.
5. All scary movies – See number 4.  I am clearly not cut out for scary movies.  Gremlins gave me nightmares for Christ’s sake!  I watched the Blair Witch Project on one of my early dates with Jeremy and was then forced to take many, many precautions in order to turn on my basement light and do laundry at the house where I was living because I was half convinced the Blair Witch had moved to Hamtramck.
6. Psycho Killers – Just you know, in general, because they are everywhere.  They are quiet and keep to themselves so you don’t notice them until it’s too late.
7. Teenagers on the bus – They are loud and mean and they listen to horrible music.  They could turn at any moment.
8. Earwigs and Cockroaches – They are disgusting and gross me out.  Especially the mommoth cockroach that crawled onto my leg in Palermo
9. Sicillian taxi drivers – There should be a horror movie (that  I would not watch) about them

 

Five Twelthes

As of today, it has been five months since I have touched a cigraette.  Wait.  I take that back.  There was one night when I held on to an unlit cigarette just to let my hands have the sensation. I did not light it, I did not smoke it, but I did touch it.  Except for that, I have not touched a cigarette in five months.  I have attended parties and gone dancing and hung out at the pub, but have not bummed a single, solitary social cigarette in all that time.

Five months, in case you weren’t aware, is very close to six months.  And six months is half a year.  Half a year, I tell myself, might as well be a whole year.

It’s not that I was smoking heavily, not all the time, just when particularly stressed out or particularly tipsy, but it was still bad for me.  It made me cough and exacerbated my already sickly nature.  I still miss them.  I liked smoking.  I liked the break from the day it gave me, I liked the chance it gave me to just think quietly, I liked the instant comraderie it gave me with other smokers. 

But I am better for not doing it anymore.  My health is better, my teeth are better, my sense of smell is shockingly better.  So there you are.  Five months done.  Be proud of me.

Poetry, for a change

I know it is Autumn and this poem is about the spring, but I thought of it today while I was walking across the park to my bus stop.  I think because the trees were bright reds and golds and that made me think about William Blake seeing angels (which he did in the park I was crossing) and then I thought of this because it is a poem that I love and it talks about trees in full colour.  Even if Williams is talking about the colour of the flowers rather than their last days before winter.

Anyhow, I love this poem even though (or maybe because) it always makes me sad. 

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime – William Carlos Williams

Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.

More romance, yo

A new book has been covered at 365 Days of Heaving Bosoms.

Coming soon, a pirate book.

Avast.

Search Terms and Literary Help

Today someone found this very site with the following search terms:

is he a reliable narrator – on the road

Here’s a little free help for you, friend.

Oh my god, dude, no, he’s not.  He’s drunk for, like, the whole book.  Probably high too.  Sal Paradise is maybe the least reliable narrator ever.  Happily this does not stop him from being entertaining and insightful and saying many beautiful things.  His lack of reliability is all part of the fun.  Now get off the internet and go climb a mountain, or steal some groceries or meet a girl on the bus.  Stop worrying about books and live life.

Something Wonderful

Wow!

I was looking at Sweet Juniper to see if he had posted any new street urchins and that lead to the recently discovered work of Vivian Maier at that first link above. 

Look at it.  It’s so very worth it.  Some of these have made me lose my breath.  I absolutely can not wait to see more.

I don’t know why

but I signed up for Twitter this morning.  I’m blaming Tracy Morgan for starting up an account because I want to follow him and his thoughts. 

Tracy Morgan is funny.  This is a true fact of the highest order.

So you can follow me if you want.  I’m planning to use it mostly for lies, hence the login name thefakecarolyn.

Maybe I’ll even take you out behind the middle school and get you pregnant.

Well, hey

Look at me being timely without realising it:

Jack died 40 years ago today.

Guess that’s probably why the documentary and album are just now being released

Hey, Jack Kerouac

So yesterday I read this album review and then this morning I used Spotify to listen to the actual album by Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard.  It should surprise no one who knows me that I liked it for a variety of reasons. 

1. Songs based on a Kerouac novel?  Yes, please!
2. Folksy countryish songs based on a Kerouac novel?  With a cherry on top!
3. Folksy countryish songs sung by Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard based on a Kerouac novel? And some chocolate sauce.

This kind of beeswax is right up my alley.  Then I started hunting through my bookshelf for my copy of Big Sur (a much more productive way to spend my morning hour than editing a short story for a contest, obviously) and realised that I couldn’t find it because I don’t own a copy of Big Sur, horrors!  I was thinking of Dharma Bums and oh look right there, it is my beloved copy of On the Road! So On the Road came off the shelf and I started thinking about my history as a fan of Jack Kerouac and that book in particular.

Back in 1994 my friend J loaned me his copy of On the Road.  J would also go on to loan me a copy of The Basketball Diaries, make me the best birthday card ever in the history of the world, and introduce me to such bands as Nation of Ulysses, Cub, Tsunami, Pavement, Scrawl, and Bikini Kill.  J asked me to be the co-editor of the high school paper with him after knowing me for a grand total of two days (“It’s not hard, you just have to yell at people and make them do stuff.” Little did he know he was describing my future in to world of work for the rest of my life).  J was my prom date.  J was my friend.  J opened up my world and much of that started with the simple act of handing me a battered copy of On the Road. 

I fell in love with that book from the first dizzying paragraph.  I gave it back and bought my own copy.  I underlined and highlighted the important and beautiful bits.  I was enraptured.  I was, maybe, something of a cliche’.

Jeremy has actually asked me, after trying to read the book himself, what it was about On the Road that made me love it so very much.  Let me try to explain.  Imagine you are a young kid, about 16, who has grown up in the same small town your whole life.  Imagine you’ve traveled a little bit around the country, seen some cows, had your picture taken in front of the occasional Paul Bunyan statue, but really your life has centered around one house, one town, one place.  Then you read this book about people who have dropped everything and just driven off to have these mad adventures.  They aren’t just staring out at the lake and thinking about the adventures just over the horizon, they are full on tackling those adventures. And sure that was 50 years ago, but still!  Still!  It’s possible, it can be done and seen and lived.

And that, dear reader(s), is hope.  So I kept my book with me, I loaned it to a boy once and then berated him on the community college radio station and brought a girl he hated to his house party in order to get it back, I took it to Detroit, and Las Vegas (2 road trips, one following route 66), and then Chicago, and now London.  The pages are limp, the spine is cracked, there are dog ears that would make any librarian weep.  I still love it.  I love the exuberance in the prose.  I love the pace, I love the myth, I love the whole stupid thing.  I’m reading it again this week and just having it in my bag feels like a homecoming of sorts.  I’m looking forward to falling in love with new parts and finding exasperation in others.  I know it will make me homesick and make my fingers itch for car keys and open roads.  It’s okay.  It’s worth it.

And of course it will also make me miss the greatest cat in the world, the great sissified monster, Jean Louis Kerouac, he of the fluffy black fur, the 22 pound girth and the tiniest meow in the world.  He was not a smart cat or a tough cat, but he was an awesome cat and I miss him all the time.  I think he lives in Portland, Oregon now, so at least he’s kept moving.  Just like the original Jack he was something of a mama’s boy.  I don’t know how he felt about Buddhism though.

The Bounties of the Internet

So do you know what happens when you Google your dad’s HAM radio call?  Assuming your dad, like mine, is a HAM radio operator?  This is what happens, you find an awesome photo of your parents from 1978 when they were on vacation in Montserrat (She’s in the sun dress, he’s the one with the grey beard and the dapper plaid Bermuda shorts sitting next to her).  And you find it just in time to wish them a happy 39th anniversary.  Even though they abandoned you when you were a year old to gallivant off to the Caribbean.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

 

PS Thank goodness Dad isn’t the one in knee socks.