Nullifidian

        I came across the word “nullifidian” in George Eliot’s Middlemarch.  I don’t believe I’d ever heard it before.  It sounded charmingly Victorian and rather insulting and I had to look it up. Turns out a nullifidian is a religious skeptic, a person with no faith or belief.  Basically an archaic version of “atheist.”  A spectacular word and, in my opinion, closer to an endearment than an insult.

Horror Décor

Contrary to what one might assume, contrary to may of its fans, I do not love horror movies for the blood and gore and shocking violence (this despite the fact that I’m partial to European horror, which tends to include more of these than its American brethren).  The adrenaline rush one gets from a good horror movie can certainly be stimulating, but the grisly violence leaves me pretty cold (in a desensitized way). 

I love horror for the atmosphere, akin to fairy tales and cautionary tales.  I love it for its transparency as a cultural marker: horror serves as a magnifying mirror for society’s desires and, particularly, its anxieties.  And I love Euro Horror for the interior design.  

Equivalent Aura

         The glowing dash becomes a spangled pulsating ring.  It grows until it fills my entire scope of vision with its crazy multicolored lights, then keeps expanding outward ’til it grows so large my eye can’t contain it anymore.

My migraines are mere hallucinations.  Well, actually, they’re migraine auras.  But, at least in the last year, they have ceased to be accompanied by any pain.  Apparently this is called a migraine equivalent.

My first sign of these neurological occurrences, when I was18, was a blind spot and a halo; I can’t remember if I had a headache or not.  In the years after that I had all the classic migraine symptoms, headache and vomiting.  The thing was, this horror was always preceded by a visual aura: a big jagged firework circle with moving lights; always the warning sign, harbinger of the pain.  I discovered that if I took painkillers at the first sign of this glowing brain aberration I could stop the full migraine from coming.  This was my routine for years, and I only got 1-2 of these auras a year anyway.

Then, a little more then a year ago, having moved from Los Angeles to my peaceful home town in coastal Maine, I started to get a migraine aura a month, sometimes more.  I proceeded as normal: two Advil at the first sign of flashing lights.  After about six months of this, one evening I got an aura late at night while I was folding my laundry.  I was tired and I didn’t feel like eating food so I could take Advil (never on an empty stomach!), so I just lay down and waited for the migraine to play out, hoping I’d fall asleep before the pain came.  But I didn’t fall asleep and the pain never came.  Possibly they had simply been migraine equivalents for years, and I’d ingested all that unnecessary Advil! 

I’ve still been getting the auras.  There’s no pain, though they leave me feeling slightly weak for an hour or two.  If I’m home I just lie down and wait for the hallucination to pass.  If I’m at work or writing or reading or socializing, they are much more disorienting; but still, no pain. 

A speck of light in my eye grows into a glowing ring that expands to fill my entire vision.  I can see through the ring (and around it, depending on its size - but it is not comfortable to try and look).  All I can see are lights, moving lights, and the circle keeps getting bigger and bigger until it departs my field of vision and is gone.

peril of promotion

         When I was in Los Angeles, I sold my first mystery novel Gossip Kills (originally titled “Planned Obsolescence”!) to someone who was starting (or, as it turns out, intending to start) a small publishing house.  I was very excited at first but then, as months and then even years went by and nothing happened, I finally caught on that nothing was going to happen.  Meanwhile, the manuscript had reverted to my ownership.

         I was working on my second novel Split Screen, which I am close to finishing now (I don’t even, at this point, want to think about how long this one has taken me so far).  I got majorly sidetracked with personal upheavals plus my own insecurity about being a novelist (in L.A.), and I moved home to coastal Maine.

         I couldn’t decide what to do about Gossip Kills.  It had been over five years since I completed it.  I’m proud of it, particularly as a first novel.  But I just didn’t feel like putting the (extreme) effort into trying to find an agent and publisher.  So I decided to put it out myself, with what was once called a vanity press but is now known as subsidy publishing (or something like that).  I used AuthorHouse, and my book is available on Amazon and other places, and for digital download as well.  With no effort from me (just money).

         As I get closer to completion of Split Screen, I am thinking I’m going to put it out the same way.  I find I still don’t feel like trying to get an agent and seeing years go by before the book is available.  I found AuthorHouse wonderful and easy to deal with.  But if I put the new book out myself, I absolutely have to make some effort at promotion this time.  Should I start by trying to actually promote Gossip Kills?  This is terrifying.

Liminal

         A month or two ago I came across the word liminal, and I looked it up.  As an adjective, liminal means “situated at a sensory threshold, hence barely perceptible.” The noun, limen, is a threshold point of physiological or psychological response, the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect.  More prosaically, it can also mean the sill of a doorway or an entranceway. 

         I became slightly fascinated with this word, though, other than as the doorway threshold, I’ve been a bit stumped on how to use it in a sentence or even an idea.  Psychological threshold?  Amazing.  How about, “I feel I’m on the limen of a mental breakthrough today,” or, “The internet has made modern life so culturally liminal.”

         After musing a month on this interesting word it occurred to me to find the original context in which I came across it.  I remembered seeing the word in The Cult Film Reader, but in which of the many essays?  I thought I’d seen it in an essay about director Jesus (Jess) Franco, and my recall was right on: I quickly located it in Joan Hawkins’ essay "The anxiety of influence: Georges Franju and the medical horrorshows of Jess Franco." 

So here is the context: The demanding nature of the jazz score in The Awful Dr. Orlof helps to situate the film in the same kind of liminal space occupied by Franju’s Les Yeux Sans Visage.  Invoking both the cerebral work and reception associated with high culture and the physical affect and response associated with low sex-horror, the film seems permanently poised between high and low genres, belonging to both of them simultaneously. 

So, liminal space.  Cultural limens.  I like it, but it is, I thought, an academic word not a conversational one.  Who wants to use a word in a sentence that only snobby academics will get?

         Then something occurred to me: SUBLIMINAL.  Obviously, I thought, I know what this one means, but I decided to look it up anyway.  Subliminal means “below the threshold of consciousness.” 

         Isn’t that funny that liminal should be an obscure word, difficult to use or even make sense of, but we all know what subliminal means.  The evolution of our language is ever fascinating.

Attention Span Opera

         The internet is obviously the big assassin in the slow death of the soap opera, striking a fatal blow to attention span and focus.  Soap operas were never something most people would be proud to give their attention to, perhaps, but think how much attention it was: everyday an appointment with the show, then a measured wait until the drama returned the next day.  Does anyone have this level of commitment and focus any more?  Think how slow soap operas are, a stretched-out series of moments that you watch for a whole hour then wait the ritualistic period to watch the next chapter.  Incredible.  I know the soaps have tried to modernize as best they could but, really, I’m surprised they made it into the 80s with this demand on the attention span.  It’s been a long collapse, with their death throes as slow and measured out as the genre itself.

Elastic Perception

Time is an abstract force.  True, biologically we are undeniably moving forward, going somewhere, growing and aging and dying.  Biologically we obviously live in time’s grip.  Yet our perception of time is elastic. 

         Different people may perceive time differently.  But even for one person, time perception varies.  It’s practically a cliché, but don’t the good times fly by too fast and the bad or boring times too slowly?  This is the time perception issue that really snags me.  Any job I’ve ever had (usually, I must admit, in the service industry with a low hourly wage), I’m watching the clock like any other worker out there.  I’m thinking, “ok, two and a half hours left, I hope that passes quickly.”  I’m willing the time to rush by, begging it to.  Yeah, fine, I’m at work; don’t we all do this?  But when I’m home or off work - say I have two and a half hours before work or before I have to go to bed – I want that time to pass as slowly as possible.  Wishing the time to speed at this point would be an anathema.

         Sometimes when I’m at work wanting time to sprint by I get a superstitious feeling like this is wrong: if I wish time to quicken when I’m at work, might that make it go more quickly when I’m not at work?  This might be silly or, given the interpretive, changeable nature of time, maybe it’s a reasonable concern.  So how do I reconcile this?  TIME is so sacred, mysterious and precious.  It seems wrong to want it to move faster.  But it’s pretty hard to envision being at work and hoping time would move more slowly.  How to reconcile this difference in desired time perception?

I Heart Reading

It would not be an exaggeration to say that books are my favorite thing in the world (defining “thing” as something nonliving and non-digestible of course).  This has been so since I’ve been able to read, certainly since I’ve been reading “chapter books” in first or second grade.  I don’t know why this is.  I don’t remember there being a choice; I just loved books, and I love them now. 

I’m an only child who never had a speck of interest (or skill) in athletics.  I was always imaginative and I guess it was easy and fun for me to imagine what I was reading about.  My father died suddenly when I was twelve, and in my grief and confusion, books were my escape (this word sounds cheesy to me too).  I didn’t stop paying attention to life, but I did stop paying attention to school.  My avid reading had already reached new heights (in sixth grade I fell in love with Agatha Christie books which, at that age, I found to be very sophisticated and adult).  But the combination of grief and junior high school was enough to amplify the reading even more.  Escapism, diversion, suspense . . . As I got older I read more difficult, intellectual things.  I guess it was an experimental teenage phase.  Now, as a adult, I appreciate nothing more than a well-crafted page-turner.  Long past are the days when I, for instance, attempted to read Joyce’s Ulysses (I didn’t make it past page 200).

I once read something Stephen King said- I believe in was in Danse Macabre and, as I read this over a decade ago, I may be poorly paraphrasing, but I don’t think I’m making it up.  He said that reading and writing is the closest thing he knows of to ESP.  One person thinks something, envisions something, and they put it in writing – these abstract symbols most of us can decipher – then someone else reads it and they transfer the symbols into visions, thoughts and images, in their head.  This obviously stayed with me, and I’ve thought about it over the years.  For me it crystallizes how magical books and writing can be.  The fascinating thing – this is true more of fiction perhaps than non-fiction – is that no two people reading a book will envision it (the world, the characters) alike (as far as we know).  We can never see what others pictured, even if we’ve read the same books.

It really is amazing: a writer fills pages with letters and words then a reader translates these abstract symbols in their brain into images, thoughts, worlds they may never forget.  And the writer has no control over the world the reader made and no two readers make the same world . . . to me it is MAGIC.

the skeleton key to people’s brains

I’m reading Freud on Madison Avenue by Lawrence R. Samuel.  It is an interesting, not-too-dry history of depth psychology and motivational research in advertising.  This is something I’ve long been fascinated with- the use of psychology in ads (at it’s height in the 1950s and 60s?), but I’ve never before come across a book devoted to it exclusively.

There was a phrase I liked in the introduction.  Samuel writes of (the common perception that) admen possessed “the skeleton key to people’s brains.”  The image this creates in my brain is striking.  I picture something graphic, black and white: a white head and an ornate black key.  Maybe it’s just that skeleton key is such a great expression I would like it any way it was used.  But mixed with 50s paranoia it’s phenomenal.

Singalong

         I can get really annoyed when people sing along to music.  This issue comes up in the store where I work: I’m trapped there, subjected to people’s musical stylings, with the retail-worker smile stuck on my face. 

When people sing along out loud who do not have good singing voices, of course that’s annoying.  But in my experience people who aren’t great singers do not force it on you; if they do sing aloud they keep it on the quiet side, at least.  The ones who really drive me crazy are the sing-alongers who have excellent voices and know it and think we all enjoy hearing them.  They do not keep it to themselves.  But just because they have good voices and perfect pitch does not necessarily mean the world wants to hear them.

“Let It Be” was playing in the store the other day and this customer was harmonizing loudly in her trained-soprano-sounding voice and it was driving me crazy.  I kept thinking, “This song is overplayed, old hat to all of us, but still, how do you know I’m not enjoying Paul singing it?  Maybe I want to hear him not you.”  I find it rude, like speaking loudly during a movie.  Can’t we all be allowed to experience life for ourselves?  Maybe I’m singing songs in my own head and yours are interrupting mine.  Maybe it’s rude and insensitive of you to assume I’m not . . .

Perhaps, yes, I’m a selfish curmudgeonly snob, inpatient and inflexible. I’m aware of this possibility.  But for these sing-alongers, it’s undeniably oblivious at the least to clog the air space and assume nobody minds.  Just because no one says anything does not mean they’re enjoying it.

dream scheme

I was actually having a cogent, connective dream this morning that I remembered upon rising.  Usually I remember in a half-conscious way at the moment of waking and then it is gone the next instant.  Through my life, obviously, I’ve had and recalled plenty of dreams.  But they’ve been happening less and less, the ones I remember anyway.  For the past year I’ve been virtually dreamless.  Oh, I know I’m having them, we all are, we have to.  But it’s as if a great distance has grown up between me and them.  Between my conscious and subconscious mind?  I hardly think of myself as someone not connected to my subconscious, so why would I have this gulf?

I’ve considered the possibility that my dreams are more mundane, less significant-seeming and intense than they once were.  Not worth remembering.  Based on the flashes that I might recall through the day (if I’m lucky), there seems to be something to this: my dreams are both blah and abstract (little for the conscious mind to cling to).  It also occurs to me that I sleep less then I used to.  I wake up at five, I get maybe seven hours of sleep usually.  Maybe one has better dreams when they stay asleep longer.  I’d buy that.  But is there any way I can have significant dreams and remember them without staying in bed all morning?

fashion dragazine

         I was excited to get the October issue of Elle magazine- it’s their 25th anniversary issue, and has photos from the 80s, covers reproduced, pictures . . . I love vintage magazines so I was thrilled.  But “reading” it I was disappointed.  There was really nothing I would call interesting; nothing to grab me.  Maybe I really have gotten too old for fashion mags, though I don’t think it has to do with my age.  I should say too jaded for fashion mags.  I’ve seen too much, thought too many thoughts.  Been let down by the promise of the seductive, glossy, colorful cover too many times.

         I still subscribe to Elle because I can’t let that last thread go, and because I arguably like having an insight into current culture (though, as previously stated, I almost never care).  They have good articles on psychology, sex and health.  If you can get past the stinking perfume samples.  I used to subscribe to Vogue, but came to believe that magazine is an elitist fantasy produced by elitist snobs.  Elle is more democratic.  And I leave my old issues at the Laundromat for other people, so at least they get recycled. 

Surreally Subjective

         I really believe what is said about TIME, that it goes faster the older you get, being relative to how long you’ve been alive.  Think back to a week, a month, a year as a child compared to now.  This is proof positive of TIME being slave to subjective perception.  So if it’s to some extent controlled by the human mind, is there any way (besides drugs) we can master our perception?  Can you meditate to make it seem to go slower?  Maybe.  It’s such an abstract blur to me.  When I think back to any time recently I have a hard time distinguishing between two weeks ago and two months.  I could probably be more mindful and thoughtful and not live in such chaos of TIME.  It feels like my own choice, though, recognizing that it is so abstract and allowing it to be. 

         Interestingly, on a day to day basis, I’m organized.  I always know when I’m supposed to work and I always get there on time.  I don’t make plans with people and then get confused and forget.  I feel like day-to-day TIME exists on a different plane then recent-past TIME or even near-future TIME.  Just more evidence of how surreally subjective it is.  

toast

This is perhaps a morbid thought, but . . . Has anyone ever tried to commit suicide by sticking their head in an electric oven?  It has to have happened at least once before.

Inscrutable Gems

When I was a child I was fascinated with fashion (somewhat typical for a little girl, I guess).  This fascination continued into my young adult years, manifesting in a love of fashion history.  It has slowly faded since then, but the residue remains: I remain quite interested in reading about fashion, the fashion world, past and present.  I do not, however, particularly enjoy looking at current fashion. 

To me this verges on an interesting dichotomy.  I suppose it’s because my interest in learning information through text (my addiction to reading) has grown through my life, whereas my interest in looking at people’s outfits and making any kind of judgments based on appearances has certainly shrunk to near-nothing. 

Sometimes I like a spread in a fashion magazine, but what stands out to me is first the photography and styling, then maybe the model, and lastly the clothes themselves.  Very little impresses me in fashion.  I’m ambivalent, even jaded: you get to a certain point in life, and if you have any memory at all, you’ve seen most of it before (this, for me, is very true of movies and TV). 

One thing I do like in the fashion mags is the ads.  This connects to my intellect because I’m very interested in advertising in general.  Fashion ads, as far as I can tell, are the most deluxe, artistic, surreal and expensive ads to be found, and I love trying to decode these inscrutable gems of capitalism.

Writerly Anxiety

         Why would I want to be a writer?  It’s an anti-social life full of insecurities and uncertainties and most likely no money.   What would draw anyone to that?  Maybe I’m being melodramatic, but I actually feel I can’t help it.  I love reading more than most anything, been doing it since I was six, been forming opinions . . . I guess I just want to contribute to the art form I love.  But it’s been a hard thirteen or fourteen years.  At least three times I “quit” writing, hoping to use my talents and energies for something that made more sense to me and the world at large.  But I always go back.  So I say I can’t help it.

         Now that I finally put out my mystery novel Gossip Kills, people can read it if they want to.  At least there’s that.  But it took me to age 34 to get here.  Over ten years toiling with nothing to show for it.  I started to feel, when I saw myself from others’ eyes, like a bullshitter, a scammer.  All talk.  Trying to write a novel was my life.  But without something to show for it, it is just so much talk.  I’ve gotten over a lot of this discomfort now, but in the process, I may have become even more cynical than I was.   

Volume Control

I’ve learned this lesson, hopefully once and for all: when I’m in social situations where there’s noise, I should just keep my thoughts to myself and not even try to listen.  Attempting to hear and especially attempting to be heard just leave me in a bad mood.

I was at a party last night, a nice dinner party, the lovely restaurant rented out for one lucky girl’s 30^th birthday party.  It sounds divine and the food was good but it was so very loud.  It’s an inevitability: take a certain number of people, add alcohol, and the volume rises alongside the drinks consumed.  And this sounds fun and delightful and I don’t mean to be a judgmental prude.  It simply doesn’t work for me.

I am incapable of making my voice heard over any background noise.  I don’t know if it’s a quiet voice, but it’s like it doesn’t carry.  I’ve heard that one can train their voice, and I suppose that’s my problem: I’ve never projected and I don’t know how.  I’m an only child, and I think this might relate: growing up I never had to compete to be heard, never had to yell over other yellers.  Also I don’t drink.  I don’t not drink: I occasionally have one beer, but I’m not usually interested.  So you take a social situation where I have a hard time being heard to begin with, give everyone except me liberal doses of a social lubricant, and it’s a matter of minutes before I’m edged out of the conversation.  Oh, I try.  Me shut up and not have a point to make?  Not likely.  But then I find myself becoming strident and impatient, and then I feel like a bitch compared to the loosey goosey lubricated set, and I get annoyed by their drunkenness.  It’s just not good for anyone.  This is why I declare, next time I’m in a noisy social situation, to just shut up.

Moribund world of soaps

So the soap opera is dying for reasons we all get (the internet, an aging fan base, the internet).  Guiding Light and now As the World Turns, gone.  These were the oldest, most classic soaps so apparently they had to die first.  My questions are, a, is it possible that any of the still-existing soaps will be able to escape the death throes (and how?) and, b, why do I still see 'Soap Opera Digest' in the grocery store aisle? What is life like at that magazine's offices? Is it like a Hospice intervention?  Are they depressed?

Return of the Dark

I was interested, reading a recent issue of Rolling Stone, to discover that Katy Perry, a natural “dirty blonde”, chooses to dye her hair a dark brown.  She's fighting the status quo we’ve seen in pop culture for the past decade plus.  All the pop singers have been different shades of blonde.  This goes for the naturally fair, obvious brunettes (Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez) and the African American pop princesses (Beyonce, Rihanna, Mary J. Blige).  Everyone has Barbie hair.  Intellectually, I get the blonde appeal: it’s like a halo, this nimbus of light around the head drawing all eyes to the brightest thing.  It makes a lot of sense if you’re going for star appeal.  Practically, I think most people look best with a shade closer to what they have naturally, but I may be in the minority.  Is the culture finally transitioning toward brunette?  Probably not.  But Katy Perry may be cannily riding the pop culture cycles and standing out by her own opposition.  On her music, no comment.

I’d like to think that Katy’s brown locks and Lady Gaga’s noir artistry represent the dark state of the world, like people are finally waking up to the fact that we’re stuck in an endless war and can barely breathe in the clutches of corporate capitalism.  You know, subconsciously. . .

My Novel

My first novel is called Gossip Kills.  I think of it as a mystery/comedy/romance.  I’m inspired by vintage/golden age mysteries, though my book does not have a historical setting.  I don’t think there’s enough escapist literature out there nowadays that isn’t embarrassing- mediocre formula writing, often, and filled with graphic sex and violence, serial killers, profilers and forensics.  I don’t mean to judge.  I have no problem with this stuff existing or readers enjoying it.  I just happen to see a hole in the market where the kind of stuff I would like would be.  I’d like some escapist entertainment with a more interesting, artistic side, rooted in reality not fantasy.  I’m working on – nearing completion, I’d like to think – my second novel, Split Screen (another thriller/comedy/romance).