Heard it on stage, maybe once? Maybe not even then, just the weird radio. Reckless Kelly, from if I recall, San Marcos.
“Still, we hit the jackpot, baby, you and me
We were born in North America in the twentieth century”
It’s the chorus to the song, “North American Jackpot” from the album, American Jackpot/American Girls.
Album date suggests I never heard it live, just on the radio.
Dark, comedic set-up.
“The line between surveillance and communion is thin but strong: not a knife’s edge but a discernible, navigable border.” Page 22.
Starts with that as a point.
The relentless need to bring minutiae of life into focus for everyone, a post-modern spin?
”There’s an intimacy to streaming, like inviting people not into your home but into your brain.” Page 104.
Really, more like false intimacy, implied, but not for real. The short novel is a post-modern spin from inside the head of a 20-something who can’t et it together in NYC. Kicked out of a food-service job, she starts a live stream to help raise money to keep her brain-dead baby-sister alive on life support.
Told first-person, peppered with the literary equivalent of screen shots to show what the audience of her live stream thinks.
It’s a darkly comic voice that tells a tale of death, redemption, and friendship — real friendship — against the backdrop of the of the post-modern, interconnected world, now streaming live.
As the title suggests?
“Was there a connection between notebooks and creativity?” Page 14.
I am unsure. Saw the title and blurb on a book list. Checked out the library copy. Read the first page. Bought a copy from the bookstore. Stuck a bookmark in it. Then checked out a different copy from the other library because I like the book-reading software better.
The opening gambit sucked me right in with the brief narrative thread about the rebirth of the legendary line of Moleskine line of notebooks.
“The Romans, when they eventually succeeded the Bronze Age and Hellenic civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean, adopted small Ulu Burun-style tablets, which they called pugillares or ‘handhelds’.” Page 19.
PDAs gave way to smart phones, and yet, the concept isn’t so new?
pugillares
Really, think it through, that’s the name that should be applied to all my handheld devices, over the years. Or?
zibaldoni
Weblogs. Blogs. Daily written diaries. The profane, profound, and mundane.
“The basic principle was simple: when you found a piece of writing that you liked, or found useful, you copied it out into your personal notebook.” Page 53.
Or, what would probably become, a commonplace book — my own spin on that, Pink Cake — its working title was “quotidian,” as a play on words. It’s a collection of useful quotes, my collations and curation.
While, ostensibly, about the history of notebooks, The Notebook also traces the history of thought, and how we think on paper, the transmission of ideas, and as noted, the common place book. Towards that end, better than any class notes I ever took, I did record quotes and such, and I’ve long since used a commonplace book as source material, but in recent decades days, almost exclusively with nothing but digital. Still, it’s how I learned. Continue to learn.
“Melville kept a small notebook in his pocket at all times, and wrote up a more formal journal each night.” Page 155.
Studying Sir Isaac Newton’s notebooks?
“The apple story, in other words, was a deliberate myth-building exercise; and it was one of many.” Page 175.
Thought so. The notebooks proved it thus.
Travel journals, based on older logbooks, those were a source, all done on notebooks. Then there was Ruffian Dick — the way I recall, that story was based on Sir Richard Burton’s notebooks from an American excursion.
Half Price Books used to sell blank books, $3.95, maybe even $2.98, my records are a little dated, and that was the perfect price point. I remember walking over to the South Lamar Half-Price and fetching up several of the blank books. Each year I’d get some for my sister. Became a thing. She claimed she loved the blank books as a starting point, and she carried one at all times, think she still does. I have a few leftover in my library, flipping through one, I found some of my original study of the tarot, the symbolism, the various cards and the interpreted meaning. Really dated material, but that was also how notebooks worked.
Other chapters include what we know to be true, at least, my own, empirical evidence suggests that this works, but an active kind of journaling, detailing thoughts and feelings around personal trauma helps relieve the complications, moral, physical, the mental aliments that derive from trauma. Not new information, but interesting to see the validations. Science in a notebook.
The points used for illustration — the data the author selected craft a careful narrative thread about the accumulation, curation, and dissemination of knowledge via notebooks.
• Notes:
Moleskine
Canvas Journal Covers
Ruffian Dick
Field Notes
Typical Goal Setting
A Couple of Take Aways
Old family friend, former neighbor, Libra, if I recall correctly, published author, noted local columnist? She left me with two or three important points, mostly gathered from casual interaction, as she’s another one of the greats from East Texas.
The connection, for me, goes much deeper, though, as I recollected. I was at school in Arizona, and a lonely winter’s night, temperature in the 70s? I hiked over to a Scholtzsky’s by campus, got a sandwich, and leafed through the tired, out-of-date magazines. One of them was a Texas Monthly, and that had one of her columns, and in it, a reference to Chaucer.
As a writer, though, and through her successes, I listened.
One offhand comment, discussing books, literature, what we were reading, the craft of writing, I think I was fixing her computer that time, and other topics for writers? She had a three-book deal, really just re-publishing three of her works as a package, what she made in that deal, up front?
“I just spoke at (something) and the honorarium for 20 minutes of talking was more than three times what I got in that book deal.”
The speaking, talking, ancillary fame pays better than the selling of books.
I see how that works. Last few years, my annual amazon royalties aren’t enough to trigger a 1099. I still report the pittance because that’s how I roll.
(See musical footnote1.)
There was another, End-Of-Life example, I’ll always cherish. Her 90+ year-old father was tucked away in a garage apartment, just a temporary setting for him, but he had gotten kicked out of hospice because he wasn’t dying fast enough. I think we shared a meal at the kitchen table, and I listened, he was an old newspaper man from East Texas, and while he was near-dead, as an editor emeritus? He was still writing a weekly column. I don’t know what it was, news, gossip, commentary?
The last time I saw him, he was in the narrow confines of the back apartment, kind of an architectual afterthought as a studio, living space, with plumbing and family cars parked on the other side of the wall.
He was broadly grinning, working away on a manuscript-looking page, still writing. He had an idea for his column, as it was stilling running, and this was after being “kicked out of hospice” — for not dying soon enough.
Still writing, in his case, on a typewriter, but we all use whatever tools suit us best.
How to get paid, what pays, what doesn’t pay as well, and then, still working at the craft, right up until the grave.
Used before?
“Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
Mercutio 3.1.61
Where is Kramer Wetzel: astrofish.net/travel.
The Strongest Steel is forged in the fire of the dumpster.
43:2 “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.” (Isaiah)
Knew I’d seen it before.
Excerpt From
The King James Version of the Bible
#Bible
Looked at a buddy, he was wrestling an issue, pointlessly, arguing with me, himself, and others. To no avail.
I looked at him, “Were you breast fed or bottle fed?”
He snapped his answer? “Yeah, I know your analogy and it doesn’t hold up, this is different.”
Tough titty, my question stands.
It’s not about his upbringing, nor his genetics, or, for that matter, the elements in his astrology chart. It’s about making decisions based upon the best information available at this time, and then? Moving forward. No languishing and bemoaning the past.
It’s a simple question, binary, breast-fed as a child or bottle-fed?
The answer doesn’t matter.
If one was breast-fed, well, obviously, they should’ve been bottle-fed, and if bottle-fed? Should’ve been breast-fed. There is no right answer.
This is about deep, psychological-type of questions, and then, Jungian, Freudian, Placidus, whatever model one espouses? Digging in on that question, looking for the root of the problem.
Part of my message, over and over? It doesn’t matter.
We are what we are.
“It is what it is.”
Deal with it. Move on.
As noted from Shakespeare?
“Great lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms”
Queen Margaret in Shakespeare’s 3 Henry 6 (V.iv.1)
The question is binary, again.
Been many long years since I’ve made political or economic gestures, commentary. As divisive as it can be, I try to steer clear, not wishing to offend anyone. Recently, though I got to where I needed to purchase a garden hose. The old one has spent too much time in the sun and was rotten at the ends, spending more time spewing and less time directing a steady stream.
Happens with age.
So that meant I stepped into a local box-box retail giant, possibly the largest retailer in the world. Looked in the outdoor section, no luck, asked where the garden hoses were, “Inside, row three, righthand side.”
Sure enough.
But walking out? I passed an aisle display of personal toiletry items. Small deodorant sticks, tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner, little bars of soap, and assorted sundry items, all in “travel size.” All on sale, $4 each.
I used to buy such stuff at the dollar store, and not so much, the days. I used up a fairly large stash of such travel products during the pandemic lock-down, and I never really replaced much. I’ve been using a regular size toothpaste, shampoo, and assorted other toiletries in their normal containers, just easier these days. Besides, I don’t travel as much.
I leave a bag packed — in case.
Those are purely convenience items, first-world price point problem. But cost has increased, quadrupled, over the last year. Was a dollar, now costs $4.
Inflation.
All of this, I wouldn’t even be there, but I needed a hose. Graphic illustration of how prices have skyrocketed.
One of my fishing buddies was busy texting me images from the coast, him posing with a number of undersized fish. I was looking for a hose.
Like Shakespeare said?
9:13 “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Excerpt from The King James Version of the Bible
#Bible
Parenthetical? The prompt is here. Parenthetical to that note? I looked on gutenberg.org to see what was out of copyright. You know, dealing with “classics” or just books that are close to a hunnert years old.
Firesign Theatre — odd reference? Not to be elliptical.
Then, I took French in school. Finally paid off, parsing some of the text.