Blah Blah Blog

Russian novelists are my favorite. They are the most boring and long winded.

You have to be patient to read Tolstoy, or Gogol. If you are easily bored (or distracted by shinny things), these fellows are not for you. If you need a quick and easy feel good slogan that you can get to giggling through cute phrases and antidotes, you are probably to shallow to really achieve the rapture of the heart that occurs when you stand with Alyosha at the young boy’s grave. And this rapture, for all the pretty words, and clever phrases, and catchy lyrics a skilled pop writer of today can craft, is nothing you will feel at the end of a shorter more thrilling ride.
I would never dare compare my ramblings to masterpieces that have ripped open my soul. If I am a student of Dostoevsky, then my studies are in how to think, and feel, and bleed, but on no level can I claim to have learned anything from him about how to write except that because of him, most of the rest of what I read seems to hold so little realness or weight. It’s all Dickens to me. Modernist, since the term was coined and up till now, are nothing more to me than actors looking for a cheap tear as a compliment to them that must mean they have depth.

I am writing this because I know my posts are long and droney. I know most of you blog surfers, children of the top ten list age, probably skim most of what I write, and you skip three or four paragraphs just to see if I have a point. Don’t deny it, and I am not ashamed to be boring. I know the world has evolved way past the style I prefer and try to mimic, and I don’t think I will ever be a writer on anyone’s radar. I readily admit I have not seen anything of this world that has not already been written better than I could write it.

I write for myself. I am learning. I am remembering. I am trying to express what I am seeing and who it is making me.

I know there are a few out there that read me word for word: one because for some reason she has always been there to make me feel like I am good enough, another because she loves me despite the miles and not wanting to, one because he is obligated to do so, and one because he’s a communist who love’s Dostoevsky too.

To you folks, I have one thing to say:

Do you have nothing better to do with your time?

Things are Getting Better All the Time

I saw something in my car the other day that I have not seen for months.



It was soooooooooooo exciting:

I'm Young, and I Love to be Young

I get every other Friday off from work these days, so every other Thursday night is my Friday night. And I love Thursday/Friday nights, and the feeling of freedom and infinite possibilities that either something amazing will happen over the weekend, or that I will catch up on some sleep!

I picked up Elsa after work on Thursday and on the way home, I was (as is my custom) blasting my burned CD, which is a hodge podge of random songs I like and then a few that I figured would amuse Elsa while we were driving.

This song came on, the one in the video above (it’s a video, because blogger won’t upload a music file, so you have to make it a video to get it on there). I started singing it, because when I first burnt it to the CD I was thinking Elsa might get a kick out of it (the words actually say, “don’t tell me what to do” and that has Elsa all over it!) I like to sing it because in the last few months, with the crap that happens and the memories of why I walked out the door, and all the …stuff…ok, well let’s just say the song was used in the movie for a reason. It’s a great divorce anthem, but not really even divorce. It’s a great, “I am a girl, but that doesn’t mean I am going to forget who I am and lose myself for you (again) kind of song.” I mean, think about it, this song came out in 1963…one year after my least favorite pop song “Johnny Get Angry” (lyric sample: Johnny get angry, Johnny get mad, give me the biggest lecture I’ve ever had, I need a brave man, I need a cave man!) so…well thank you Feminine Mystique!

The song was on and the line “And when I go out with you, don’t put me on display.” And Elsa asked me what it meant. I tripped over the explanation, and I will spare you the details, but I told her as accurately as I could. And when the song was over, not only did she ask if I would play it again, so told me (as if she had to, I would have anyway) to sing. And when that song was over, she insisted I sing again. And again. I think we went through it four times.

I was in a particularly light mood, with it being Thursday and all, and so I was vocally blasting and dancing as much as one can while holding a steering wheel steady. And every time I happened to look in my rearview mirror, I saw my daughter leaning her head back and staring out an open car window, smiling, while the wind blew her hair back.