jonathancarroll

http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/2009/11/carrollblog_1128_4.html

Vienna is a city of plaques. All over town you see them on the sides of buildings announcing Mozart lived in this house on Blutgasse (Blood Lane), or Beethoven composed the Heiligenstadt symphony here. Of course there is a large one at Berggasse 19, the office of Sigmund Freud. Further down the fame ladder you have impressively sized plaques that announce the film director Fritz Lang lived in a dark unprepossessing building near an equally anonymous place where Billy Wilder stayed before migrating to the US before WW2. Another plaque I’ve seen is in the middle of a beautiful wine vineyard on the edge of the Vienna Woods. It is for the dramatist Ferdinand Raimund and announces he proposed to his fiancee on that very spot in the early 19th century. Raimund committed suicide three years later in his forties after being bitten by what he believed was a rabid dog. Apparently he was more terrified of dying THAT way than by his own hand. My favorite plaques are for people you've never heard of with names like Egon Wolfclick or Alfred Dingl. They lived here too and to some authority figure in this town, they rated a permanent commemoration in stone or brass. It's like a treasure hunt finding these announcements-- you're always looking when out for a walk. Now and then you spy one for a Socialist politician from the early 1900’s, or the brothers who in their time, were famous graphic artists and lived in this building until both were sent to Auschwitz. Recently the city has even started putting small square brass plaques on the sidewalk in front of doorways all over town that announce that so and so—no ones really—lived at this address until being arrested by the Nazis and deported to various concentration camps around Europe. As you can imagine, there are a great many of these plaques everywhere you go in Vienna. The wonderful American novelist Stanley Elkin said all he dreamed of as far as artistic success was to have a big beautiful plaque on the side of his suburban St. Louis house saying Stanley Elkin lived there and the dates. Before he died a few years ago, his wife surprised him on a birthday with just such a plaque. Elkin said all kidding aside, he was surprisingly moved by it.

On another subject, the uncollected short stories of JD Salinger have been posted online. If you’re interested I’d download them fast. Salinger is notoriously litigious and it would not be surprising if he didn’t sue the site to stop. The link is:

http://www.deadcaulfields.com/UncollectedList.html

thirstyhippo

I don't believe in love anymore. & I'm fine with it. I'm tired of all the drama that nobody intends to cause but it happens anyway. I seriously, SERIOUSLY don't care if I'm single for the rest of my life... (& on a side note I'm starting to doubt my parenting abilities anyway)

So if that's the case why do I feel moronic when I look at photos of friends & boyfriends, of birthdays of holidays of random prata suppers together, where the guy is smiling so happily, genuinely, without a hint of tiredness in his eyes?

It must be because I'm a moron, that's why.

thirstyhippo

No offense if you're one of those who do it but why do some girls take multiple photos of people's legs/footwear & then TAG the feet on Facebook? (& it's not as if your footwear is that nice to begin with lor.)

Ok stop being so bitchy lah....

jonathancarroll

http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/2009/11/carrollblog_1128_3.html

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.
The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

Frederick Buechner

“Do you know a cure for me?”
“Why yes,” he said, “I know a cure for everything. Salt water.”
“Salt water?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, “In one form or another; sweat, tears or the salt sea.”

Isak Dinesen

jonathancarroll

http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/2009/11/carrollblog_1127_2.html

Part of the act of creating is letting go. I remember very vividly when writing The Land of Laughs that I reached the part in the story where the dog speaks for the first time. I wrote the passage and stopped. I thought-- the *dog* just spoke-- that's crazy. But a moment later I said okay, let's just see where that goes. In an essential way it was the turning point of all writing I have done since then. My paradigm moment came about because I simply let go, accepted the nutty for fact, and kept moving. The Germans have a nice phrase about trust in romance-- 'fall back and I'll catch you.' The same could be applied to writing or any art, as far as I can see: If you believe you have it in you, write whatever it is you want and stop thinking about approaches or limitations or or or... Just *write* it. Clear your mind of hesitation and everything other than the sentence you are trying to write and do it. Then write the next one. The more you think about it, the less well you do it. Start with a phrase or a character you like or who intrigues you. Then begin to spin a spider's web out from that center point. But don't *think* about it. Very often when I begin a book or story, I only have a single line or image which I put down and then think--who is this? What are they like? 'Haden was in trouble again' is the beginning of GLASS SOUP only because I liked that line. After writing it I thought-- who's this Haden? He's a handsome asshole. Okay, what does he do? He’s a tour guide. Where does he do it? Etcetera. Don't think about it-- just be a spider and spin the web only you can design.