BLOG: For some weird reason, my blog has suddenly become a destination for people from all over the world, I have no idea what that’s about:

visitors in the last 24 hours

The searches that bring people to my blog are varied; ~50% are about knitting, and the rest are about such a mish-mash I wonder what the searchers think when they get to my blog and see that perhaps I used one word in their search somewhere in my whole site.  Anyway, it’s new, this global deal. I have a reliable cluster of visitors from the UK and from Paris, and then usually just a random one here and there. Late last week I had a flurry from Africa, which was particularly startling because I never have African visitors and I’ve wondered why.

KNITTING: I finally finished the body of Marnie’s sweater and have started a sleeve, which is going pretty quickly:

whee! starting sleeve #1

I think today I’m going to go ahead and soak and block the body of the sweater, so I can seam the shoulders and do the turtleneck. I worry about hitting a slump with the second sleeve, so I want to have something else to do, and I also want to see it so close to finished that it pulls me forward. It’s been such a mild winter I really hope she gets to wear it.

READING: If you’re the same kind of nerd as me, you might like the book I read yesterday (Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, by Mark Garvey). It’s a loving look at The Elements of Style, at E. B. White and Harold Ross and The New Yorker, and the world of people who are passionate about this little book including a host of famous writers who talk about their relationship with the little book. It’s a quick read (about as quick as The Elements of Style, for that matter), and you may — like me — read it with a silly grin on your face. Since I didn’t go online yesterday, I read that book, I read this week’s issue of The New York Review of Books, I pulled everything off my bookshelves and reorganized (and found of bunch of surprises, wowie), I cleaned the bathroom top to bottom, I did some shopping, and I spent a lot of time keeping my husband company. We watched Thirteen Days, that 2000 movie about the Cuban missile crisis — much more his kind of movie than mine, and I was only 3 when it happened. But when the spy planes flew low over the Cuban stockpiles, my heart raced and that surprised me.

HELP: A friend here in Manhattan is heading up a project called Legal Aid Society Trafficking Victims Legal Defense & Advocacy Project (she’s a lawyer for Legal Aid). Victims of sex trafficking are removed from their circumstances and hidden away in safety; she has organized a number of small knitting groups for them and is seeking donations of yarn and needles. Many of these women are from other countries, but some are US citizens. Their larger needs are more urgent, of course, but the knitting efforts are designed to help their spirits, and we know how well this works. The women have nothing and the woman at Legal Aid who is organizing this for them has no specific wish list. Just think about what any new knitter might need/want — yarn, needles/hooks, a nice project bag maybe, notions, anything at all. Others are organizing clothing and coat drives for the women, so we’re the lucky ones who get to give them this kind of joy. If you have any interest in helping, just let me know and I’ll give you the mailing address for the woman at Legal Aid. I posted a note in a couple of Ravelry forums and several knitters are sending boxes, but [unfortunately] there’s a steady stream of women so the need doesn’t stop.

Have a wonderful Sunday, whatever you’re up to! I’m looking forward to spending a few hours with a certain humpbacked wicked king.

Over the years, my subscribing habits have reflected ongoing passions. A few years ago, when I was a very-involved food blogger, I rabidly consumed other food blogs; now, if I don’t have much time, I just mark everything as read in the food blog folder and don’t bother. Now, if I don’t have much time, I limit my reading to the personal blogs, followed by the knitting blogs, followed by the reading blogs. Actually, it depends on my mood, the specific order, but I generally try to make time to at least scan through those categories.

Today I thought I’d share the reading sites with you, in case you find something of interest. In some cases the site offers criticism, in other cases it provides longform reading. At any rate, these are sites I really love for one reason or another, and share them gladly:

A.V. Club — this site is run by the people behind The Onion, but there’s nothing fake or jokey about it. I particularly love the tv and film criticism (here’s a post about the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad), which is always thoughtful, even if I don’t always [necessarily] agree.

Big Think — this site focuses on a range of topics including arts and culture, belief, ethics, history, identity, life and death, and a bunch of others. It’s not my favorite site in the list, but there are gems now and then, like this interview with Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist who talks about the mysteries of her own brain, and making it as a lady scientist (my words, not hers!).

Brain Pickings — I mentioned this site at the end of last year as my favorite (new to me) website. The posts are always interesting, and the blogger seems to have an endless supply of ideas and topics to explore. I’m very eager to read this post recommending 9 books on reading and writing. In addition to great information, I love the site design, which is fresh and clean.

Gangrey — the site’s subtitle is “prolonging the slow death of newspapers,” which makes me smile. Each post presents a newspaper article the blogger appreciates for one reason or another; s/he provides the link and a small bit of context, so it’s really a curated set of links but I often really enjoy the pieces and might not have found them, otherwise. For instance, this piece titled Salt is “a tale of Texas justice and mysterious salt poisoning.” Well, I want to read that one!

McNalley Jackson Bookmongers — this is a book shop’s tumblr, so the posts are very brief….often just a literary quote, or a link to a post from another site, but I enjoy it often enough to keep it in my list.

Melville House — the Moby Lives site, if you know it by that name. I can’t wait to check out the books on the Man Asia Prize shortlist. The site offers literary criticism, insider-publishing posts, interviews with authors, everything you might expect from a smart publisher.

Pageviews — the books blog on the NY Daily News website. The Daily News isn’t a hotbed of intellectual rigor, but this blog is consistently thoughtful and takes on interesting books and writers.

This Recording — very new to me, so I don’t know much about the site except that I tend to love it. You can just follow the posts on books if you like, but the posts on tv and film have been quite good, so I just follow the whole site.

The New York Review of Ideas – a digital magazine of NYU’s graduate ‘Journalism of Ideas’ class of 2011. Another new-to-me site, but I’ve enjoyed it so far.

To Be Shelved – with the subtitle “judging books by their covers since 2010″, this blog is written by a woman who really loves books, and who works in news design. I bookmarked this post she wrote last November about John Updike, and just haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

Longreads — along with Brain Pickings, my favorite site in this collection. With word counts greater than 1,500 words, these are the articles you want to read when you have a bit of time. It’s another curated collection of writing found around the web, and I count on this site to collect stuff I want to read. They never let me down.

Obit Magazine — bear with me on this one. It’s about death, yeah, so it’s really about life, of course. There are book reviews and a blog, and I consistently enjoy the pieces that grab my attention.

If I’m in a rush, I just focus my attention on Brain Pickings and Longreads and let the rest go, but they’re all worth a look!

***

Just a couple more things to share and then I’ve got to get busy; this Gandhi manuscript isn’t going to edit itself!

it snowed our last night in Atlantic City, making the sad, worn-out place seem even sadder and worner-outer.

the lobby of Caesar's -- a little something for everyone! Fake Roman ruins, a Chinese New Year tree of lanterns, and a giant snowflake hanging just off to the left. They're taking no chances.

for Veera Välimäki's new shawl, Color Affection, I just received these three skeins from The Plucky Knitter (MC Fingering -- top to bottom: elegant elephant, Sammy Samerson, and flannel). Too much knitting, too little time, man!

And on that note, I say ta-ta! (for now, of course)

• a brief essay by a man who believes that Walt Whitman saved his life. Whitman saves mine now and then, and this essay resonated with me.
• this uber-collection of the best long reads on the internet this year, curated by a whole bunch of smart and interesting people
• I’m fascinated by and intensely drawn to David Foster Wallace and read nearly everything by and about him I can find. This piece is loosely about the marginalia found in his collection of self-help books.
• This beautiful piece is another about David Foster Wallace, his new book, and his legacy.
• I read this over and over: 30 things to stop doing to yourself. Some are brilliant, especially (for me) #s 12 and 24.
• This gorgeous illustrated view of what happens in a second is pure delight.
• I’m kind of a sucker for lists of people’s favorite books; if someone lists one of my favorites (especially an oddball favorite of mine, or especially if they say something specific and wonderful about it), then I trust the other books on their list. This piece pulls together the faves of a dozen or so writers and editors, and includes often-funny commentary about why the books are their favorites. One writer said Another Bullshit Night in Suck City will “knock you on your ass” — and yes, dear reader, it will; another said this about Nabokov’s Pale Fire:  ”You know what? Fuck Lolita. I take that back, don’t fuck Lolita, she’s too young, plus I loved that book. I loved this one more, though. The poem makes me disintegrate with feelings.”

Whatever you’re doing this week, I hope you’re winding down the year in style. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend from poetry group; tonight I’m going to a knitting group; tomorrow is lunch with the daughter who just returned from Israel; Thursday evening is dinner with friends; in between is lots of work, some knitting (ready to do the sleeves on my Audrey sweater, which is gorgeous!), some eating, and some movie-watching. Happy strange week, y’all!

For the month of January, 2012, on Saturdays I will not open my laptop at all, and I won’t knit.

I KNOW!! Isn’t that a terrifying idea? And honestly, I don’t know which part is scarier, the computer or the knitting. Can I really do it? Why should I? Would you attempt such a crazy stunt? I may need to think this through a little more; I may want to write (and in fact I do want to write), so should I instead say that I will not be online for that month of Saturdays? But if my computer is open and on my lap, how could I not just do one little email check, just take one little glance at facebook? Am I a woman, or a mouse?! [in fact, i am a mouse. a woman mouse.]

What would I do, instead? Well, actually, there’s quite a long list:

• take a walk
• do yoga
• write by hand
• read (read, read, read!)
• watch a movie
• go to a museum
• paint
• sew
• housework
• go to Central Park
• go out for coffee or brunch
• cook / bake
• meditate

And that’s just what comes to mind right off the top of my head, things I always want to do but end up not doing because instead I knit and poke around online the whole day. I think I’ll be a little bit of a weenie and just challenge myself to one Saturday, for starters. But let me take a kinder stance to myself: rather than seeing it as my being a weenie, I’ll decide to give myself the best possible chance to succeed! Yeah! Saturday, January 7, I will not open my laptop, and I won’t knit. I make this promise to myself, to encourage myself to explore more of what interests me.

Do you think I’m nuts?

what a lovely menu!

Michael Cerveris

Of course the best part is sitting in the dark listening to the stories, and that’s worth the price of admission. But it’s also just fascinating watching the performers, some of whom perform. Some act the hell of out the piece. Some read it. Some are overly precise in their diction, some are loose and jangly. Michael Cerveris threw himself into reading the chapter from A Confederacy of Dunces, giving Ignatius a deep, slow booming voice, and the other characters quite different voices. He has a lot of familiarity with New Orleans (real being-there familiarity) and got the accents just right. There’s more than one accent there, and he nailed them, which gave me a lot of pleasure.

Patricia Clarkson, so luscious

Patricia Clarkson’s mother “runs New Orleans,” she said, and she grew up there. She’s got that deep, lush, drawly accent, you know, so I figured her readings would be great. She’s one who acted the hell out of it. Before she started, she suddenly took a wide, firm stance as if facing the microphone for a fight. When she started to read the Bukowski, she shifted her stance entirely. She was quite dramatic (big surprise there), raising and lowering the volume of her voice quite a bit, and her facial expressions were fluid and exaggerated. Sometimes I liked it, sometimes it felt a bit much, but I was definitely engaged. I just love hearing her accent, no matter what.

Clarke Peters -- loved him in The Wire, and also in Treme

Clarke Peters was gorgeous, elegant, and with such a deep beautiful voice it was a joy listening to him. I thought he was the best of the night. He really just stood there and told the story of the man trying to teach New Orleans kids how to play jazz, acting out what was necessary, singing the singing bits. He wasn’t flamboyant but he was in it.  He also really nailed the accents, and I could close my eyes and listen to him and feel like I was back there. I could hear things that he wasn’t putting into the story, because what he did put into the story was so full. I wish he’d been the last reader of the night, it would’ve been such a lovely place to end. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.

Amy Ryan, loved her in everything she's ever done

Still and all, it was a wonderful evening of intense story. Listening required great effort; it’s not at all a passive experience, even though it seems so. With each performer, the listener has to make a shift and learn how to hear. And listening to stories being read takes more effort, there’s a period of adjustment at the beginning where it doesn’t make sense — true of just reading short stories, too, sometimes.

And thus ends the first of my fantastic NY nights. Next up: Friday night’s Winter Solstice Concert at St John the Divine. It’s so delicious having such great things to look forward to.

I’m in a book club and I love it so much. Although the true number of members is much larger, there are 6-10 people who reliably show up. There’s no reason we don’t have men in our group, we just don’t. The women are mostly young; if I’m not the oldest, I’m second oldest, and there’s one woman a bit younger than me. Otherwise, they’re mostly in their late 20s, early 30s. They’re smart and accomplished — lawyers, writers, media producers, they work in publishing, big pharma, all with fancy careers. (And then there’s me, sitting on my couch freelancing in my jammies.)

We meet once a month, on a weeknight, at a member’s apartment; hosting duties rotate among us, though some of us can’t host for one reason or another. The host usually provides food, which ranges from chips and veggies to all-out sumptuous spreads. Then we each bring a bottle of wine. The host gets to select the book we read, and we all try to finish the book but usually only a few of us actually finish. In months past, it didn’t matter if anyone finished, because we talked about the book for a total of 2-3 minutes, and that was my real disappointment because I wanted to talk about the book. But the women are so great, and I really enjoy their company, so it was ok.

Last night we talked about the book the entire meeting, after we talked about our book swap/holiday party we’re having next week. I LOVED IT. We read The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. I didn’t like it; I haven’t been captured by any of Eugenides’ books yet, and this was no exception. I won’t go into it, since I’m not intending this post to be a book review. Some members liked it a lot, some asked questions none of us had thought about, some had insights, some just expressed their opinions, or asked questions, but all together it was a fun conversation.

Being with everyone definitely lifted me out of my blah, and made me realize anew just how important our connections are. I think in addition to feeling bad about not seeing my kids for Christmas, I was also feeling disconnected from friends, cast aside (not really) in some way (not really, but that kind of feeling), unimportant to anyone, etc. Sitting among those women last night, I got to feel the connections between us all, even though I don’t know them all to the same degree, a few I’m marginally comfortable with and others I adore.

I have so little time to read for fun, and I’m not always happy with the selected book, but I try to read it anyway. It’s usually the only book I read for fun, so the power of our monthly meeting is the real draw. I read an interesting story in the NYTimes this morning about a literary salon set up by a bunch of young literary kids — writers and editors and recent graduates  – and thought I’d love to be part of that too, but not at the expense of my monthly get-together with those great women. I almost always feel kind of high on my way home, and that’s something special.

IT’S DECEMBER, Y’ALL. It looks like this in my neighborhood now:

buying trees in Manhattan

trees decorated on the Columbia campus

How did this happen! Where did the year go……… Happy December! (And tell me about your book club, don’t forget. Also, p.s., don’t forget the giveaway in progress — see this post for details, and leave a comment there.)

I KNOW — Eileen, not Irene, but it’s in my head. Apologies if it’s in yours now. So far, at my place anyway, the hurricane is a big fat ‘meh.’ Some wind, sure, some rain, but really? Really? This is worth closing the subways, closing all the stores, evacuating thousands of people, taping up windows? There are leaves and small branches on the street in front of my apartment — see that often enough with regular storms, and frankly I often see worse — and that’s about it.

The worst part for me is having no voice, a shallow scraping non-stop cough, and goopy eyes. Yeah, that’s much worse. So no worries, loved ones who live far away and worry, it’s just a storm, and not even an interesting one.

Today I’m grateful for Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Well, grateful is one feeling I have about him. Others include envy, jealousy, awe, wonder, reader-love, and curiosity. This is a memoir about his father, really, who was a homeless alcoholic con man. His father wasn’t in his life growing up, except as a presence out there, a kind of vaguely menacing life lesson. His mother committed suicide when he was 22 — at least she didn’t leave a note blaming him, but like any suicide, it has a profound impact. He grew up to battle some of the same things his dad did, and he saw his life in parallel with his dad’s. If any of this is in your own history, I promise you’ll vibrate and cry with the way he describes things. If it’s not, you’ll read in the kind of awe people feel when they see a tragedy start to unfold and they can’t stop it. Here are some of my favorite passages:

I look at the photos, at Travis, look in his eyes as he speaks, somehow I’d learned to do that, like a tree learns to swallow barbed wire. (Travis is a homeless guy at the shelter where he works.)

“I was unable to throw myself in the ocean,” she writes, the handwriting more erratic as the painkillers seep into every cell, shutting out lights in empty rooms.

I see no end to being lost. You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn’t a station you reach but just the general state of going down. Once you make it back, if you make it back, you will stand before your long-lost friends but in some essential way they will no longer know you.

Then there is a whole chapter that’s nothing more than the euphemisms and synonyms for being drunk. I keep thinking that’s it, but then the next one in the list is the most common thing ever, and it just keeps going. Tight. Tiddly. Juiced. Plotzed. Potted. Pie-eyed. Inebriated. Stoned. High. Swimming. I say off the wagon. I say gone out. I say a slip. I say in my cups. I say riding the night train. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say the blood bank. I say drinkie-poo. I say a drink drink. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Faced. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Seeing double. Taking the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Looped. Lit. Pages and pages of it, it’s stunning.

Nick Flynn is a poet, primarily. His father always said he was a writer, always wanted to be a writer, and Flynn actually is. This book is heavy, definitely, but not grim, despite the content. There’s a way he writes about his parents that is compassionate without being overtly so — he doesn’t ever say things like “but she did the best she could,” it’s more his emotional stance in describing their lives. It’s a remarkable book, one of those that grabs you and reminds you that there are amazing surprises to be found in the world, and this is one. I am so enormously grateful for him and this book, and for the power of words and art to transform a single experience into a universal one.

the dreaded blank page

No one professes to love words more than I do, I’m pretty convinced about that. Not only am I paid to read and write all day long, my graduate research focused on the words we use and what that means about us psychologically, I’ve been a voracious reader since I was 3 years old and had my own library card, and I write a lot. Here, now and then, very long emails to friends, a bit of poetry, and some personal writing. Also: I say I am writing a memoir.

I believe in daily writing, and read The Artist’s Way back in the 80s and imagine that doing morning pages is a brilliant idea. And since I know the research  about the  striking power of doing regular stream-of-consciousness writing, I think it’s not just brilliant but great for you in every way, physically, emotionally, psychologically, creatively. I adore Anne Lamott’s exhortation to write shitty drafts, and think that’s so liberating. That’s right, this one is expected to be shitty! I can do that!

I want to be a writer, I think it’s the most exalted thing to do. Books saved my life as a young girl, giving me a way to imagine other possibilities than the life I was living. The Hunchback of Notre Dame gave me the idea of searching for sanctuary, even if you’re a hideous outcast. Life saving. No exaggeration. If I could write words that could give someone that kind of thing, well, I can’t even imagine that.

And now, reality:

“Tomorrow morning I’m going to do morning pages.”
I’ll just go through my Google Reader this morning and do that tomorrow.

“Just write a shitty draft of a few paragraphs and see where they go.”
I think I’ll make some tea and look at the NYTimes, I’m just not in the mood to do that right now.

And so on. And so forth. Etc, etc, etc. One of my clients has written a really incredible book, so exciting and vivid and creative, and I feel lucky to be working on it with him. I’m kind of in awe of how he came up with it. He tells me it’s a kind of job, it’s work, he doesn’t wait for ‘inspiration,’ he just works at it, keeps working on it. Another of my brilliant clients (interview with her here) says writing is misery, she does it every day. I read an interview with a writer this morning, who said the way you get better is by putting your butt in that writing chair every day and just writing. Of course I know that. And she made a little video of a song she wrote which includes the point that you just have to “push that c^*ksucking boulder up the motherf^*#king hill”. Go Nike and Just Do It.

I found a website called 750words (http://750words.com/) that presents you with a totally blank screen and your words are counted while you type, at the bottom of the screen. So of course I signed up and wrote today’s 750 words (which translates to about 3 pages). What did I write about today? This. My inability to write, and why I do this, by which I mean I don’t do this. We’ll see.

Do you stop yourself before you start, like I do? How do you make yourself do it anyway? I’m looking for ideas.

the sweetest baby

She’s here! Marnie arrived very late last night after a nearly-disastrous trip from Chicago — lots of people trying to leave Chicago had nearly-disastrous trips yesterday thanks to fog. Or so I hear. Anyway, Marnie’s here for the weekend and I am so glad to see her.

Marnie in India, in college

I’m not quite sure what we’ll do during her visit, but I know it’ll involve a lot of talking and sharing (our specialty) and probably some art-looking (her specialty) and eating good food (our family specialty). She’s also going to show me how to do some cute things with my currently uncute and extremely long (for me) hair. And maybe we’ll play Scrabble and watch movies. Lots of choices.

Depth, in the post title, refers both to Marnie, who swims in it, and The Pale King, the book that’s just come out by David Foster Wallace. Actually, his editor assembled the unfinished book, but it’s classic DFW, from the sound of it. I can’t wait to read it. The NYTimes book review made me want to cry, from missing DFW’s writing and spirit in the world. Infinite Jest was about our obsessive need for all-consuming entertainment, and The Pale King is about our boredom. From the NYTimes piece:

Perhaps, he writes, “dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there,” namely the existential knowledge “that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back.”

Happiness, Wallace suggests in a Kierkegaardian note at the end of this deeply sad, deeply philosophical book, is the ability to pay attention, to live in the present moment, to find “second-by-second joy + gratitude at the gift of being alive.”

Sigh. There aren’t that many people who talk like that, and people you can talk with about those concerns. Marnie sent me this link to a wonderful article about DFW’s papers, which are now collected at UT Austin. Of course I love seeing the notes people leave in books (as I wrote in this post), so reading his notes is a great experience.

It’s a gorgeous sunny spring day here in Manhattan — I hope you’re facing as wonderful a Saturday as I am! Pictures will be taken, that’s for sure.

Have you ever read something that just haunts you? Everyone has, probably, in one form or another. But this story truly haunts me, it hovers around the edges, it has even shown up in a dream. The Seventh Man, by Haruki Murakami, was read by John Shea at Symphony Space. I’ve attended the Selected Shorts readings at Symphony Space, and they’re almost always wonderful. I haven’t read this story, and even if I did, I heard it read first, and that reading may partially account for the haunting nature of it — but I suspect it’s deeply embedded in the story itself. John Shea’s reading of it is just magnificent – dramatic, loud, whispering, terrified, exhausted. It’s a relatively long listen – 40 minutes (I think….time just stops when I listen to it, which I’ve done 10 or 11 times).

I’ve typed and erased several attempts to introduce you to the story, to make you want to listen, but whatever I write just misses the boat enough to make me afraid you won’t. It’s really an incredible story. At Symphony Space, it was part of a program called “Deepening Insight” so it’s about the main character’s insight into the most terrible and affecting thing that ever happened to him. If you like to think about metaphor and meaning and transformation and life, please please please give it a try.

I won’t continue to tease; if you want to listen, here you go, and if you want to read it, click here. [note: don't be put off when you start listening - the program featured 2 stories, and this clip begins with a snippet of the 2nd story, followed by the introduction of John Shea, who will then start reading. Be patient, the story starts around a minute and a half.] If you want to keep listening, the 2nd story is included in the audio, too, after the Murakami.

Terrifying.