Jewelry design (?!?)

One email, with the subject line **VL-JUNK** Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real, contained this passage:

shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife's last act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation. "I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going," he said, getting up. "No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown up everything, I would myself.... But I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on.... I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!" Alexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill, loud voice:-- "Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!" he said, with tones of hatred in his voice. "Love those that hate you...." Darya Alexandrovna whispered timorously. Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago, but it could not be applied to his case.

The one bad grammer tic that I find really peevish is misusing "literally" so that it means its opposite-- "figuratively" or "metaphorically." Actually, I don't think I think anything of it when someone uses it conversationally-- in telling a story, say. Like I said, I give people more leeway with the things that come directly out of their mouths on the ground that one just has to take for granted that 99.98% of anything that anyone says, self included, at any given time is likely to be just unbearably stupid. The chances for anything coherent coming out at all are amazing. People are literally just making stuff up as they are talking. But it really, really bothers me when I see the misuse in print. In that case, we can infer that time has elapsed since the author made stuff up and the offending phrase is reaching the reader's eyes and mind. There is less excuse, especially if editors and publishers were involved. I remember Alex getting really worked up over a specific example of this-- I can't remember what it was exactly-- that he found in a book he'd just bought in Kepler's. We were sitting outside at sundown and I was wearing my green skirt from Prague, I remember for some reason, that was the Spring Onion Slayer was abroad. Tess and Brett were browsing inside. Alex and I were outside, smoking and egging each other on to get really bitchy and pissed off about absurd grammer.

All this is the long of saying, I really, really love this weblog.

Patricia Highsmith wrote The Price of Salt in 1950 and published it in 1951 under the pen name Clare Morgan. It is a strange, beautiful novel; a romance about two women, and a suspence novel, too. It is deliciously moody and strange. I wrote a blurb about Price of Salt on Wikipedia, if you'd like more background info (be kind-- I wrote it either right after or right before I was finishing my thesis, so I was totally cracked out and my spelling is totally cracked out. Also, I just checked that outside link-- which I so did not add-- and it leads to the dumbest review/ essay I have ever read ever. Please don't read it. It will only discourage you/ make you sad.) There are no murderers, but there is a private detective and a cross-country chase and all kinds of issues about identity.

The Price of Salt is one of the four novels I covered in my thesis on lesbian pulps (the other three were Spring Fire, Odd Girl Out, and The Girls in 3-B). This sounds really corny, but I got really attached to Carol and Therese. I lived with them day in and day out for so very long. I miss them.

On a side note, the article Maud linked to I found to be very, very strange. It's titled, first of all, "Patricia Highsmith's secret life revealed." And then there's this:

"We didn't know until now how intense or excessive her love life was when she was young," Ulrich Weber, the curator in charge of the author's literary archive, told swissinfo.

"She experienced her homosexuality and didn't suppress it, as was the case for her fictitious hero, Tom Ripley."

"Excessive"? I find that to be a rather odd remark for a biographer to make about a subject. Or anyone. In any event, Highsmith made no secret of her sexual preferences. In the introduction Highsmith wrote to the Naiad Press reissue of The Price of Salt in 1986 that comes across pretty clearly (I don't know if this essay is included in the 2004 WW Norton reissue of the Price of Salt, which was released under the name Patricia Highsmith, because I don't own and haven't had a chance to take a look, but if not try to get your hand on the old Naiad edition. They're still around in used bookshops and they have that essay which provides some interesting publication history.) Descripitions of her in her youth paint her as a WASPish, butch lesbian. She lived in Greenwich Village, frequented dyke bars, and vacationed on Fire Island. I once heard a radio interview in which Marijane Meaker, a lover of Highsmith's and the author of the lesbian pulp Spring Fire, the memoir Highsmith: A Romance of the Fifties, described Pat as looking like Prince Valiant. It's hard for me to understand what the curator is finding so surprising unless it just never occured to him that even in the 1950s lesbians had lesbian sex.

The article also says nothing about her rabid anti-semitism and racism. I love Highsmith's writing. I think she is a fascinating artist, but she was, by all accounts a very difficult person.

But she also loved her cats.

"It's really accelerated in the past year to the point where there is a ton of bad information out there," said Robert Massa, the vice president of enrollment at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. "People need to realize that anybody can say anything on the Internet."

So true.

As a wife, a mother of four and a symbol of female accomplishment who has served as the editor of Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Us Weekly, Marie Claire and other magazines, why would you stoop to writing a book like "The Joys of Much Too Much," which basically argues that greed is good?

Fuller's reply:

I think it is good to be greedy in terms of your dreams and in terms of trying to have everything you want out of life. The road to the richest life is one in which you partake of careerhood, lovehood, mommyhood — all of those things.

Wow, what a totally reasonable thing to say! Pursuing your dream of being a mother is no reason not to pursue your dream of being a firefighter! Being an award-winning journalist does NOT mean you'll become man-repellant; you can have a happy marraige and a thrilling career. It's OK to put your needs first. By the way, here's the Publisher's Weekly blurb:

If you still don't know how she does it, Fuller can tell you: don't sweat the small stuff (forget about organizing the sock drawer!), don't expect to be perfect and don't feel guilty. Fuller is a high-powered magazine editor, wife and mother of four, and in the upbeat, peppy style of Helen Gurley Brown, one of her mentors, she explains how you can have it all and enjoy getting it. Fuller is a believer in the power of positive thinking: push yourself forward, she says, and behave in a self-confident manner in order to get the job you want. You can balance marriage, family and career, she says, if your marriage is based on mutual unconditional love. Fuller has had a few hard knocks along the way and describes how she coped with the serious illnesses of two of her daughters, and a career crisis when she was fired from Glamour and had to struggle for months before getting another job. Failure is not a permanent condition, this optimist advises, and her pragmatic approach to a "jam-packed, maxed-out" life should inspire other women trying to have it all.

Not exactly The Fountainhead, is it?

But remember how wacky Bonnie Fuller who, oh yeah, just happened to raise with her husband their four children while accomplishing kind of everything in her field and writing about it, said it is possible to have a family and work? Solomon says no-no:

But we can't have everything. We're in a moment of postfeminist Realpolitik, when women are realizing that juggling a job and family life requires some sacrifices. It's impossible to do everything well all the time.

Which is why men are only dads or professionals, but never both. Because that would just be greedy. Greedy and Poseurpolitik so sacrifice, martyr!

Back to Bonnie:

I'm not suggesting that you do. In fact, I say it's O.K. — your house doesn't have to be clean. You don't have to have clean floors. Your drawers don't have to perfect, and dishes can pile up in the sink. That's part of my philosophy.

What philosophy is this? The philosophy of Dishevelism?

Oh, dis. Good one, Deboroh Solomon. Way to prove that you can't have everything. Sure, you may be a loving mother and an accomplished careerwoman but if your floors aren't pine fresh, you just fail. Fail. As a wife. As a mother. AND AS A HUMAN BEING.

You mention several times in your book that you are the main breadwinner in your family. Are you boasting?

I do like it. I don't mind it.

But how does your husband feel about that? You never even say what he does.

He is a self-employed architect. At one point, after we had our second child, he decided to take time off and stay home. I think he's happy that at least one person in our family is a breadwinner.

Deboroh Solomon, I expect if/ when you have children you'll stop writing at the Times and instead spend the days cleaning the floor till it shines. With your tongue.

Another expert/ psychologist/ scientist - authored pulp book. After novels with tragic/ punishing endings, this was the most popular format pulp publishers used for homosexual content. Dressing titillating material in a cloak-- ok, a skinny scarf-- of scientific and social value was a reliable strategy for getting their books through the mail without disturbance from the censors.

I think what I love best about this cover is the color scheme. Ouch. That so-called "normal" woman is like, totally modular, man. She's about to run away with someone named Spring Rayne she met in her pottery class. They think about going to California eventually; right now, they're just living on the road and the power of female-to-female love. If you move the book around, the women, like, totally, leave trails behind them, like, in the air. Whoa, dude. Those colors are, like, seriously intense. Love on.

Among the NASA films is Who's Out There? The lost masterpiece of Orson Welles, for serious. He's all gray-bearded and bloated and he narrates in his crazy voice. The camera work is full of weird zooms and there are all these random old people. It is totally out of control. Out of control. I mean, WTF? Orson Welles is making a freaking motion picture reel about freaking aliens for freaking NASA.

I wish the archive had more. It's missing, for instance, what has to be one of the most frightening 9 minutes of film of all time. I mean, of course, the Duck and Cover film. No wonder our parents are so fucked up. It's seriously creepy. Watch the part about sunburns. Oh, and when all the children flee the yard, leaving their jump rope behind:

While we're on the subject of government propaganda, I also really love this:

Ok, it's the East German government, but whatevs. Here's the description:

Strange mixture of propaganda and advertising from former East Germany, late 1958. The first half celebrates the progress the communist country made promotes how fantastic the Christmas supply available at state-owned Konsum shops is.

No wonder I find it so soothing, so soothing.

Our nation's founders considered intellectual property important enough to include in the Constitution, but did not establish the system for the sake of the inventor. It exists for the sake of society, or, as it says in the Constitution, "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts."

Oh my freaking god, it's an honest-to-god miracle that the principle of the common good is being mentioned in an article about intellectual property, so thanks, Gray Lady, for bringing this up in regards to patent law.

But whenever the topic is copyright law why-- oh, for the sake of sick orphan kittens-- does no mainstream newsource seem capable of adding two and two to get to the forehead-smackingly, air-punchingly obvious point that copyright laws can and in fact have become stifling and not in the interest of society? Yargh, I say to ye. Yargh.

No, I'm not about to get fired again. Well, at least I hope not. God, I hope not. That would blow. I actually like the work I'm doing-- it's researchy work that I can do from home on my own schedule. Its not in a field I have intention of hoeing-- or whatever it is one does, metaphorically, in one's metaphoric field-- but that's ok. I dig up general-interest interesting info, which is pleasing enough in itself, and besides, I'm not interested in a jobby job job, if you know what I mean. Like, a career-track job. I just want work that will fund my writing time-- something that isn't so draining and time-consuming that I just want to smoke drugs and die when the I clock out. If I can use the time to learn about a world I don't spend a whole lot of time engaged with, all the better. Lately I have been under pressure from my employers to get the project done faster, which means working more hours. It's been cutting into my sleeping time (I'm too stupid/ stubborn to give up my writing time) and stressing me out. I'm going to have to step up and ask to cut back my hours. I hate to do this because I 1) feel like a shmoo and 2) need the money. But on the other hand, this was just the kind of job one takes to support things like writing and if it's stressing me out and cutting into my work time, then the situation probably needs to be reevaluated.

Oh, and writing. This is the best part of my life right now. I mean it always is-- I think this is how I know I'm going to always have to be writing. I just feel so useless when I'm not doing it. I'm so anxious all the time, worrying that I ought to be somewhere else, spending the time differently, living my life in a better way. When I'm writing well it's like I'm just doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It's just what I'm supposed to be doing (even when it's not. . . like, for instance, now. I should be working. Or sleeping. Or washing dishes.). I can't think of another activity I feel that way about.

Anyway, I've sort of gearing up to do more freelance writing over-- well, a long time-- but in the last month or so, I'd say steam has been gathering. That's another reason I want to cut back on my work hours. I know I was all about grad school last month. I still am, kind of. But I'm not going to be ready to apply until 2007 at the earliest. And I took my GREs in 2003 (don't ask)-- ha ha I am so going to have to take those again. It's not that I'm having any, like, material success as a writer. God, no. Nothing like that. Don't get the wrong idea. This is more just about how much time I'm doing to get my work out and how much I am putting out there and just being serious and committed and grown-up in the way I approach my work.

So in the meantime, I have bills to pay. If you happen to be planning on signing up for DSL with Speakeasy as your ISP (I actually do recommend them, esp. if you live in San Francisco and your alternative is crappy SBC), you can do me a kindness by clicking the Speakeasy button at the bottom of the page or telling them the refferal code. I'll get a credit towards my DSL. And if you happen to be signing up, or thinking about signing up for Backpack, it'd be neat if you'd use me as your referral. I spend $9 a month to keep my shit organized on that site, so a credit towards future bills would be cool, if it's no trouble to you and you happen to be signing up anyway. If I suddenly become filthy-- or even scuzzily-- rich I'll take down the ads.

I tried to make the ads as unobnoxious as possible, but if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them. Also, tell me if you have any issues in browsers other than Safari, since I'm lazy as hell and don't bother to check. Or, if you just feel like calling me a money-grubbing Jew, greedy whore, etc., feel free.