near wild heaven

This is now, this is here, this is me, this is what I wanted you to see.

I finished reading "Death in Venice" last week--highly, highly recommended. It's another of those books I had for years and always meant to read. And finally, 5+ years after I bought the story, I read it. Creepy; reminded me of Poe's work, both intricate and gothic. Real terror isn't blunt-force, I think; it's intelligent, and orderly. So it was with "Death in Venice." Then I read a Maupassant story ("Mother Savage" and a Dubus story, "Killings," which inspired the 2002 movie In the Bedroom. Wonderful, all of them--and terribly creepy and sad! And then I drove home and tried to convince my father to seek medical attention for his afflictions. But that is another story.  

 

posted by: zithereen at March 29, 2005 01:10 | link | comments (1) |

I don't think my blog is sassy enough to bring in big numbers of readers. I'm not very good at being sassy, it's true; whenever I try, I usually get called an asshole. But sassiness in the world of the blog is very stylized (may I use the words "sassy" and "milieu" in the same setence, like, beside each other?). Yes, that's right the sasy milieu is quite specific. As best as I can tell, a sassy blog has the following characteristics:

1) An obnoxiously long list of links. I'm talking about dozens, sometimes divided into precious sub-catgegories. I'm all like: wait! Have you been doing this in your spare time, really and truly? To impress total strangers?

2) A wit sandwhich. The sassy blog must demonstrate the dryest of wit at all moments; the more opportunity for displaying said wit (see #1), the better. Every sentence must be witty. The title must be witty. The links--yes, they must also be witty. 

3) "Hey, look at me!" The witty blog thrives on calling undue attention to itself, and to the writer of the blog in particular. Let's be honest, personal diaries of any kind are most often used to validate the perceptions of the writer. The sassy blog also needs this--needs it!--but the validation is turned outwards, just as many things gain the power to build and destroy when they are turned outwards.

4) They travel in packs. Like the attendants of an Ayn Rand Convention, sassy bloggers recognize each other on sight and band together, forming powerful webs of sassiness that can intimidate. They are heavily stylized. Perhaps they wear berets and smoke cigarettes. Most likely they are young, and yet somehow world-weary. They react to this weariness with cutting humor, incisive remarks, and kooky observations about life and stuff.

Then again, what do I know? I'm not sassy. If you've read this far you know it is true: I'm just an asshole.

posted by: zithereen at March 24, 2005 23:59 | link | comments (8) |

Currently reading: "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann

A funny story about that. I first heard of Thomas Mann in 1996, when I was taking a 20th century European history course at Wittenberg. We had to write one major seminar paper, due at the end, and at first I meant to write on Thomas Mann. And then I attempted to read The Magic Mountain. It was way over my head, I'll admit it. I didn't have the attention and focus, then, for such dense work. I still struggle with an attention span that needs constant exercise. Anyway, in 1999 I asked my mother to purchase for me a few of Mann's collected stories, including his most famous, see above. Only thing is, I never actually read the book. Until now. Today I cracked open Mann (as I've done before, of course, without gaining traction) and today it took. So I'm off. I plan to finish the story--it's over sixty pages, a novella by our standards--tomorrow. Then I move on to the following writers in my week of short fiction: Wallace Stegner, James Joyce, John Cheever, Thom Jones, Alice Munro, Flannery O'Connor (a favorite of mine already), Grace Paley, Amy Hempel.

Also, I've got 7 stories now for my collection, about which I feel pretty solid. That's 123 pages. I'm shooting for 10 stories, and I've got some legit prospects and rough drafts, so we will see what happens between now and June.

posted by: zithereen at March 23, 2005 23:11 | link | comments (3) |

Some of you know this, some of you don't, but I have a tracker attached to this blog, so I get a readout of where people visit from. It's not comprehensive--a la spyware--but it does show where people have linked to my site from. When people arrive at my blog, from, say, a Google search, I can actually see the search words and call up their search results. Today's hilarious search words:

"contortionist porn"

My re-writing this phrase ensures that more people crazy for contortionist porn will find their way here, to Near Wild Heavan, which has no contortionist porn. Oh well, contortionist porn lovers, all I can say is: keep looking. The internet is a big, crazy place, full of speakeasies, and I'm sure a few of them specialize in that which you seek.

posted by: zithereen at March 18, 2005 11:32 | link | comments (6) |

Currently reading: Immortality by Milan Kundera

A day from now I'll be on spring break, a big, fat twelve-day break that will give me ample time to finish the Kundera, read this Eudora Welty book we have around the house, spend several days poking around the many short story collections here in the apartment, and--and!--make big progress on some stories. I can see the end of the collection. I'm giving myself until mid-June to have the thing 90% finished. That sounds stupid, I know, but there is a logic underpinning all that silliness. Which I will share at some later date. But I'm thrilled that I am far enough along that I can impose deadlines that aren't artificial, which is basically every graduate school deadline.

posted by: zithereen at March 17, 2005 00:12 | link | comments (3) |

Zithereen Needs Your Help

Yesterday I mentioned that I was discovering the intricacies of saving my data on CD rather than the old floppy disk. Now I have reached a place of absolute, infuriating confusion about two matters. The secind one is minor, and I think I may have a solution to that, but for the first one, techies, I need your help.

Here it is. For some reason, any data I save onto my CD-RWs become read-only. This means I can open them in Word at another computer, but I can't make any edits. I even go so far as to click off the read-only option, but as soon as I do that, and click "okay," it goes right back. Sometimes it says that I do not have access to change this option, to which I say: "What? Dude, I totally bought you. I own you, computer. Who are you to tell me what I cannot do to you? Believe me now, computer: you are mine. Now please let me do this. Pleeeeeeeeeeeease." I'vr tried a few different things, even fooled around with some administrative options, but nothing has worked. I'm stumped; it's difficult to admit that, because there must be something relatively easy, a switch somewhere that I can't find, hidden just out of view. Ideas?

posted by: zithereen at March 12, 2005 19:02 | link | comments (2) |

Winter just will not quit. Apparently it is 70 degrees in Cheyenne right now. That is the capital of Wyoming, people, where they fence off the interstates in the winter because the snow drifts are so large. They've slipped into spring just fine. Here, a cold air mass has planted its ass right above the state of Minnesota, and it won't move, not for another week, or two. Which brings us right to the brink of April, when I've always thought that spring should have sprung. At least there should be buds on the trees.

But look at me,  complaining about the cold. First of all, I asked for it by name. I'll bet it's about 70 in Long Beach right now. Also, I've heard growing cries about global warming, and it does worry me (since it does seem to be happening, after all). So I should take solace in these frigid temperatures and icy, unsafe driving conditions. Yes. Thank you, mother nature.

Burning question: will Zithereen spend another winter in Minnesota?

Other news. I bought a new computer today. Some time ago, perhaps back to my California posts, I told a story about the person who built my (now) old computer. I really wanted to finish my book on the computer he had built so poorly, which had been limping through its life with a terminal condition not unlike heart disease. It finally took a dramatic turn for the worse this week, and I decided to put it out tto pasture, which now renders a large amount of porn inaccessible to me. Oh well, I backed up my stories, and that's what matters. Right? Anyway, my old cpmputer will enjoy a long retirement, and I thank it for its service. It had many problems for which I blame the asshole who built it. I've spent a lot of today learning the intricacies of using a CD-RW to save and back up my data, rather than the old floppy drives I had been using. It's trickier than I had thought.

Also, Mr. Keillor is on vacation, and he told the producer of The Writer's Almanac that he may want to make some changes when he returns. This may mean the end of my little gig as a freelancer for them, which I suppose is about par for the course. These opportunities can open and close according to their own logic. The producer assures me that my writing isn't the reason why these changes are being considered. She's a nice woman, always telling us writers that we do good work, propping up our wretched writers' egos. I always considered this gig a net gain, nothing negative about it. Look: I got paid a hundred dollars per script, to learn about writers and try to make their lives sound interesting. And sometimes I even succeeded at that. I'm lucky to have had it. If I'm luckier still, I'll keep writing scripts. I'll let you know.

posted by: zithereen at March 11, 2005 19:11 | link | comments (2) |

I think I'm bored with teaching composition. There have been many times in the past when I have been bored by teaching comp, but now that boredom has swollen, taken on new characteristics. I don't particularly enjoy the relationships I have with composition students; very few seem to enjoy, and the best you can hope for is general tolerance. I dunno. It's not the end of the world, but it's also not why I want to teach. Nothing is worse than an inferior version of the thing you really want. 

I don't mean to be melodramatic. It's a good gig, for what it is--and for the duration I anticipate it lasting. What's funny is I never took freshman composition in college; I placed out. I remember thinking how badly I didn't want to take composition, how much I would resent it if I were made to take it. Look at me now!

I guess I've felt for awhile that something...else needs to happen now. I'd fit my life around graduate school. I was a contortionist, and it was worthwhile. Once you learn some postures, you can call their feeling to mind, if you've held the pose long enough, and rightly enough. I've spent much of my time since last June getting myself into shape, literally, financially, figuratively, and learning to think of reading and writing as private things, and locking in the gains of all that public discourse with words and words. Now that I'm halfway through this semester, and spring is about to spring, and I can see the light: I can see the end of my book--now that I've unwound myself like this, and relaxed into my growth (something I'm still doing), now all this, what next? It's a question I'll be addressing this spring.  

posted by: zithereen at March 08, 2005 20:48 | link | comments (3) |

 Recently finished reading: Harmony of the World by Charles Baxter

Currently reading: Housekeeping by Marylinne Robinson

Highly recommended, both. Back soon.

posted by: zithereen at March 04, 2005 23:10 | link | comments (3) |

Another schizophrenic day as a teacher. This semester, on the whole, has gone more smoothly than last. I'm more adjusted to the specific (lower) standards of students at my current university. I'm also teaching only two classes. I have 48 students; last semester I had 103, which is an insane number for a university teacher to have, at least in small classrooms (I'm no lecturer). It's nice to feel that I have the energy I need for my students. I can already tell I have more patience with the difficult ones.

Today I introduced the next paper assignment. In my 12:50 class, the reaction to the assignment was cool. The level of involvement in the activity I planned to give them familiarity with the assignment was scattershot; some students were involved, others were distratcted, and still others seemed to resent my very presence on this planet, for making them write anything. My 4:05 class couldn't have been more different. They were uncertain about the assignment at first, but they took the activity seriously. They produced some good writing in class today. They really seemed to learn what I hoped they would learn. It was a really good session.

It's just so strange to get different reactions from different classes. I was the same; the material was the same.

posted by: zithereen at March 03, 2005 20:59 | link | comments (3) |