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facts vs. truth

February 3rd, 2010

Today I spent hours creating a timeline of my life over the past ten years.

That was before I got to this passage in Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf, which I just started yesterday. Actually, I’ve been meaning to read this bio for a while but what prompted me to finally undertake it was Joan Schenkar’s biography of Patricia Highsmith, which I’m also reading. Schenkar begins her effort to describe Highsmith’s life by referencing Hermione Lee quoting Woolf on the impossibility of writing biography. Here’s Woolf:

” Facts have their importance—But that is where the biography comes to grief. The biographer cannot extract the atom. He gives us the husk. Therefore as things are, the best method would be to separate the two kinds of truth. Let the biographer print fully completely, accurately, the known facts without comment; Then let him write the life as fiction.”

I feel very dedicated to the project of writing my own biography as nonfiction. But she’s right. Trying to convey the facts AND the true story at the same time is not for the faint of heart.

timber

January 24th, 2010

I think that I shall never see
a poem lovely as a tree.
But please give me HDTV.

We had to take these two trees down today in order to get HDTV satellite reception. Well. And also because they were too close to the house, and shaded the garden. They were indeed lovely, but so is the open space. And so, I hope, will Rachel Maddow be in 1080p.

the deep element

January 20th, 2010

Well I’ll be goldanged. Why am I paying for therapy when I can get analyzed here quite brilliantly for free? Thank you to Alex K who identified Diving Into The Wreck as my dream association in the last post. Right down to the “body armor of black rubber,” “the grave and awkward mask.”

Adrienne Rich figures rather prominently in the memoir I’m writing, and clearly this poem has lodged itself somewhere deep in my psyche. Here’s a site that lists comments from various writers and critics about Rich’s 1972 poem. Margaret Atwood said about it in the NYT Book Review:

“This quest–the quest for something beyond myths, for the truths about men and women, about the “I” and the “You,” the He and the She, or more generally (in the references to wars and persecutions of various kinds) about the powerless and the powerful–is presented throughout the book through a sharp, clear style and through metaphors which become their own myths. At their most successful the poems move like dreams, simultaneously revealing and alluding, disguising and concealing. The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.”

I won’t say any more about what I’m working on. I often feel like blogging is a kind of “spilling my seed,” a dispersal of my thoughts before they’re fully formed. Kinda like that puddle of ink in the last post.

Hey, are there any readers in the Twin Cities who might be interested in earning a few bucks to look up a Star Tribune article for me at the library on microfilm? Contact me here!

subconscious

January 18th, 2010

Thanks to everyone for all the discussion on the last post about Prop 8 and Haiti. I’m sorry I’ve been so absent. I’ve been lost in my own subterranean murk and it’s hard to surface.

I had this dream the other night that I was in a cave full of water. I had a wetsuit on, and I was adjusting my mask because I knew that I had to dive down into the water and swim underneath this big ledge. When I surfaced on the other side, I’d be out under the open sky. Some other people had already successfully done it. But I was really anxious. It was scary to dive down there without really being able to see the way out—I just had to trust that I’d find it. I was having a really hard time psyching myself up. Finally, I got my mask sealed tightly around my face and was about to jump when…I woke up.

I drew you this picture of it. Then I ran upstairs to get my ink wash, to shade the drawing, and on my way back into the office I dropped all five of my jars of watered down ink on the floor.

What could it all mean?

happy new year

January 3rd, 2010

vermont cat circus

December 23rd, 2009

No animals were harmed in the making of this video, but one was moderately annoyed.

Dear “Mark”

December 20th, 2009

[All: Please forgive me for a brief blog-hijack, but if you are not our resident Troll, you should probably just skip the following. –Mentor]

Dear “Mark”:

Look, it’s like this: I don’t know what the problem is here, and I don’t really particularly care. But despite you’re having been quite active lately, it’s the holiday season, and I’m in jolly mood, so let’s proceed in that way.

First, I don’t know if your primary goal here is to annoy (or irritate or lecture) the regular readers of this blog. But the simple fact is that I’m reasonably good at what I do so and, as a result, virtually none of the readers here even see any of your “messages”.

On the other hand, if your goal is to annoy (or irritate or lecture) Alison Bechdel herself, then as you may have noticed she’s been pretty busy lately, and so far as I can tell she has not even been aware of any of the last couple dozen or so of your “messages”.

So that leaves just me as the only person who even sees your “messages”. And, to be clear, I don’t see the “message” long enough for any of the above to apply, i.e. only long enough to ensure that it is from you before I hit the delete link.

(In this last case you’ve actually made the work quite easy. As pointed out previously: 1) despite plenty of chances to the contrary you’re earned the unique honor of having *any* “message” banned from this site without further ado, something in all fairness I might point out that you’ve also managed to do on several other sites, as a quick Google search will demonstrate. And 2) on the chance that you ever do decide to seriously enter into the discussion here, it’s fully up to you to demonstrate that you’re capable of doing so in a remotely reasonable way. But a quick clue: The way to go about this is not to leave your messes around for someone, e.g. me, to clean up after.)

So my first seasonal gift here is to point out the obvious: “Mark”, whatever you’re trying to accomplish it’s just not working.

Second, so nearly as I can make out you seem to be working under the “notion” (again, both here and on other sites) that the only issue is with the content of your “messages”. That you are simply making reasonable points that, for some reason, the readers here “just don’t want to hear”.

Is it really possible that you don’t understand that the real issue is the name-calling, the obcenity, the insults, in short the ridiculous (for want of a better name) “tone” of your “messages?

So, my second seasonal gift here is to give you the benefit of the doubt; because I simply can’t believe that anyone can be that dense.

So in closing, I’ve really said all that can be said here. You’ll never hear from me again. But just look at things this way: Do you really have nothing better to do with your time?

However, if you really feel you must write these “messages”, here’s a bit of friendly advice: Go ahead and write it, but when you’ve finished just hit “Delete”. You’ll save everyone, including yourself, some work; and the final result will be the same.

Your pal,
Mentor

[We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog. –Mentor]

a great gift idea for the home office worker

December 18th, 2009

Ergonomic cat tray!

tips from grandma

December 15th, 2009

Today my friend Erin Bried’s book How To Sew A Button comes out.

She talked to grandmothers all over tarnation and compiled their very handy and wise instructions on how to do all sorts of things younger people either never learned, or forgot along the way. Making gravy, balancing your checkbook, how to waltz, all kinds of useful stuff. Check out the Nifty Button YouTube channel for delightful instructional videos shot by Erin’s girlfriend Holly Bemiss. My favorite is How To Fold A Fitted Sheet, a topological problem that has confounded me my whole life.

lists

December 12th, 2009

To my great delight and slight bewilderment, Fun Home has been making it onto all these best of the decade lists.

Salon: ten best nonfiction books of the decade.
Entertainment Weekly: Best Books of the Decade
The Onion AV Club: best comics of the ’00s
The London Times: top 100 books of the decade

My mom congratulated me on the Entertainment Weekly list, and said “You have a gay admirer there.” Most of the time I think like my mom–that I’ve managed to squeak into these things because of someone’s bias, or maybe even a clerical error. And god knows, lists are subjective and problematic undertakings. But you know what? I’m going to man up here and accept some credit. Maybe I’ll even start smoking a pipe.

Okay, “to man up.” Discuss.

Late breaking, 12/14: Jezebel.com’s 8 Awesome books by women published in the 00’s.