Dear Internet,
When I come up to the cabin alone, one of my favorite rituals is to sit on the front deck, regardless of time. Morning, noon, or witching hour, doesn’t matter. How a tiny prism of the world, a thousandth of a second, can make me feel so whole I will never puzzle out. But this is not a puzzle I want to complete and I leave it alone in its whole messiness.
I slept about five hours this morning before waking to the sounds of trees rustling against the A-frame. I’ve been alternating between completing my chores before the gaggle of females arrive and sitting on the front deck steps, while even as music has been playing cranked up to 11, there is still a silence that cannot be broken.
You can write things down, you can think deep thoughts, but hearing those same words spoken low to yourself is a whole nother beast. I said few things, to reassure myself of my thoughts. I side-eyed the chipmunks playing tag in the leaves and haltingly went on. I poured forth on secrets and loves, and thought for the briefest of moments to grab my phone to record this sunlight confession and immediately killed that thought dead. No, no evidence. Some rituals need to be completed without verification of proof for the masses. Once those secrets are let loose on the wind, only the gods can hear me. Only they can heed my prayers.
As I spoke, the wind started picking up amongst the treetops, the leaves rustled in agreement which gave me the confidence to go on. Yes, the gods are listening. I closed my eyes and smiled into the sunlight, the shadows moving like a fast forwarded film across my eyelids.
And I continued, I don’t know how long. I offered up a lot of prayers, requests, and pleas, the wind picking up in agreement with each of my punctuations. I poured forth love back into the world and love was returned back to me.
I stopped and opened my eyes, at the moment a particular song had ended. The treetops bowed to my requests and as the wind whirled around me, I knew my prayers had been heard and would be answered.
My ritual now complete, I came inside with the sunlight guiding me back towards life.
xoxo,
Lisa
Month: July 2014
swallowing me whole
Dear Internet,
It is oh so very late. But is this not the perfect time, my friends, for confessions and madness? Is this not the perfect time for moving back the veil and saying hello to the little man who controls us all?
Yes, yes it is.
Whenever I come up to the cabin, I am always expectant to see a bear lounging on the front deck, a deer moving near the fire pit, some kind of animal making its presence known. I never see those things and I’m almost always somewhat disappointed by the lack of fauna. But today, today was different. Today I saw a lump in a chair and upon closer inspection, it was a dead bird. A robin to be exact. Fresh enough there was no maggots, still full bodied and bright red chest. I called TheHusband in a panic. What the fuck am I supposed to do? This was never covered in Girl Scouts. “Dump it in the woods and wash your hands,” he replies logically. I will, I said. Soon, I promised myself. But the night got carried away with long talks and friends coming round. The bird lays still, untouched by any predator, waiting for its final place of rest to be chosen by me.
So here we are, at 4:30AM and I’m on the front deck listening to the silence. The wind is not rustling, there is no movement within the trees. The driveway leads up to a road, which buttresses up to a t-section. I stared intently into the darkness. There was no light, not even from the stars, and there was no sound. It was utterly still and I thought this is what death must be like. No light at the end of the tunnel, only the ever present darkness that envelopes you into its embrace.
When I was 10, maybe 11 or 12, I decided to write a book about suicide. I began the research at the local library, a small offering in a town of 20K souls, many whom would never leave beyond the confines of the city limits. I can still see myself of the then so clearly, biking to the library, checking out my books, and then riding out to a cove I had found, packed lunch in tow, that was on a shaded embankment on the St. Clair River. I would read for hours, the river rolling by and Sarnia nearly in my grasp, then pack up my things and come home.
Thinking about it now, all these years later, I remember no one knew what I was doing. This quest of mine to find an answer, a string, a hope that things could change. I was determined then, oh so very young, that I could puzzle it all out. That even the complex and academic texts I was reading would not deter me. I envisioned the book being published when I was 15, I was very adamant about this, and the book was going to be my ticket out that place. I would win awards, accolades, and scholarships. Everything would turn out fine.
So no one knew, and thus, no one stopped me. The librarians left me alone — they were tired of my incessant questions, reading above my pay grade, and winning the summer reading program every year without fail. How does one kid read so many books? But it never occurred to any of them, why is this child checking out books on suicide? Why did no one contact my family? Or take me aside to talk? Why did no one care?
I think of me then – what drove me to do this? What was the seed planted that lead me on that path? Why couldn’t I just enjoy my Barbies like all the other girls my age?
I was so solemn in my youth and so alone. There are flashes of insight of the then. A birthday party here, slumber party there. But I was almost always alone. Every adventure I took, ever place I cycled to, every ice cream bar I ate, every fort I built – alone. What was I protecting myself from? Why did I always feel so isolated from the world? What drove me, at the age of 10, 11 or 12, to want to write a book on suicide?
Tonight I peeled back layers of my armor and let myself wallow in music. I began with the 2007 remaster of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, followed by Interpol’s first two albums, Antics and Turn on the Bright Lights, and decided why the fuck not? And hustled on with Elbow’s first disk Asleep in the Back, moved on to their second disk, and made half-way through their third before finally saying enough.
I cried. I never reached the point of ugly crying, but I did get close. I understood I was grieving; grieving for my father, whose been dead for over a decade. Grieving for that lost soul of my youth, wandering around trying to find answers to questions that were too big to be asked. I grieved for the could have beens, the missed connections, and alternate universes that would never come to be. My heart felt raw and exposed, but I knew I had to push on, to not keep it contained. If not now, it would never happen. To find joy, you have to feel the pureness of sorrow. Fuck, that sounds so cliched, but perhaps because it is a universally accepted truth.
Was the book ever finished? No. I don’t know what happened to the now abandoned project. At some point I must have stopped. But when? And why?
On the drive up, I obsessively listened to two songs. 12 tracks between them. For a 100 miles, before I swapped over to another band, only to pick back up on my quest on the last 20 miles to the cabin. Even now I cannot stop myself from listening to those two songs as I write; as if they had the power to change the past.
I knew what I was doing. The songs themselves didn’t, but the behavior does. It matters to watch patterns. I need to be aware, but the exhaustion of constantly being ON to function within society can wear thin some days. I gave myself goals. I can make it to Big Rapids. Now I can make it to Cadillac. Now I can make it to Kingsley. Now I can make it to Cedar. Just a few more steps, then you are at the cabin. Now you can turn off. But the music still plays on repeat in my head, even when there is silence.
I stopped listening to music a few years back because I couldn’t to bear what it was doing to me. Music was once the surest ways I could feel, but then I stopped feeling and I thought, what was the point? But now, I need to always feel. I need to always feel the needle marking its way across my heart. I need to let the ghosts go free.
It is oh so very late. I am not afraid for I can feel the weight of all that love that surrounds me, keeping me upright and ready; it is what propels me to go forward even when all I want to do is disappear. I wish I could live in a world where all those I love could be always near and not hundreds or thousands of miles away, so that they will never leave.
I have so many people to love! So many of them love me back! I would put weights in all of their hearts and marry them to my charm and grace.
xoxo,
Lisa
gilded tongues and pretty words
Dear Internet,
It’s been a hellauva week.
There are two things I cannot discuss just yet, but many of you are aware of at least one of them. So let us trip up instead on good news instead of navel gazing on the bad.
Earlier this week, I posted on various social spheres that a present arrived on my doorstep, courtesy of TheBassist:
And when I mentioned in the posting the book took 8 years to get to me, questions were raised about why and how. It’s simple: TheBassist and I dated. We broke up. He had gotten the book signed for me at some point. The book had been lost, and then refound. So against his promise to never get in touch with me again, he did reach out because a promise made to me superseded a promise made to himself.
(Yes, the same person I mentioned almost a year ago about finding his coded messages to me on various Internet places and he clarified as to why he did it. The promise he made to himself to never get in touch was because he knew he had hurt me so badly, he didn’t think anything he could ever say would ever help ease the hurt of what he did.)
Complicated? Absolutely. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
After our stilted feeling out dance around each other, we became Facebook friends, laid down some boundaries, and started to get reaquainted with the other. In a very strange way, it is not like eight years has passed between us as conversation picked as if we had only spoken last week. You have to understand when we were dating, we used to text, talk, and email the other all day long. Literally, from the time we woke up to the time we went to bed.
(TheHusband and I have a similar relationship, which is one of the reasons why I married him.)
Really, what is kind of awesome about this new forged friendship between TheBassist and I is that he’s given me carte blanche on getting the answers about what happened between us, what has happened to him, and what is going to happen to his future. It’s intoxicating and overwhelming at the same time.
It is a heady power, one I will not use for ill will either.
(Plus he states on the reasoning on why we broke up, he says in honesty yet it will come out sounding cliched, it really was him and not me.)
Last year, I said
- He splintered my heart the first time that when he came sniffing around the second time, about six months after our first tussle, I showed him my partially fixed heart which he took a sledgehammer to. Again.
- While the connection between us when we were together was insane, he routinely lied to me on just about everything
- I could never trust him again, even in a platonic manner
1 is absolutely true. 2, he clarified and filled in the missing details, which were easily verifiable. So a lot of his actions are much clearer now on what happened and why, so it was not so much as lying as things were withheld. 3, perhaps is not wholly true because unlike some people from my past, I don’t feel like he’s creeping on me for the sake of creeping nor do I feel he has ulterior motives. (We’re both happily partnered up and I don’t think I would ever leave TheHusband for even Alexander Skarsgard. Maybeee James McAvoy.)
In my long storied history, TheBassist is one of my top five exes. And I’m really thrilled we were able to get closure on a lot of things that happened in the past, which apparently has freed up some unintentional emotional baggage because TheHusband said I’ve been really happy these last few days. (But I think the happiness has more to do we had really good shawarma for dinner, which precluded to me making happy noises while we ate.)
(When I broke this all down for my therapist last week, Dr. P. said this was not going to end well. When I asked why, Dr. P. seemed to be of the mindset that men and women can’t be friends once they have a romantic relationship because doing so brings up all the old feelings which can only lead to no good. I vehemently disagree with this because I am still in contact with many of my exes, the bad and the good, and some I’m quite close to. Just because we’ve seen each other naked and inserted things into orifices does not eradicate the bond we shared long after the romance was over.)
Time to switch gears and talk about a project I’ve been working on for the last few days as part of my writing schedule for July which is the get Vol 1 of secret Kindle project completed and online. The purpose of this project was to test out the ease and flexibility of selling stories via Amazon’s Kindle publishing platform. I don’t wholly expect to make millions off this, but it’s nice to figure out a new tech and make it work for me.
This project is turning out to be much bigger than I planned. I was originally anticipating that about a years worth of content would roughly translate into 200 pages after being formatted for the Kindle, but I’m four months in and already at 50 pages with the formating. So this may turn out to be one big, glorious mess. Hooray!
As part of the project also coincides with getting more of my old content on the websites, I’ve spent the last two days curating, uploading, mildly editing, and publishing stuff from the mid-late 90s and up to mid-00s. All of the existing prose pieces that used to reside here at EPbaB were moved over to my author site. About 50% of what’s on that page is “new.”
If you follow the weekly round up I do every Saturday, I typically list out these “new” entries that I put up for that week, but I often don’t give them summaries. I was pretty pleased with few of the pieces I found today, and was passing them around various social spheres, so here they are:
- sassy skirt seeks alliterative ally
This is my personal ad I put on match.com circa 2006. I’m pretty sure if I were single today and looking for fresh meat, I’d use this same ad with some minor edits. - rock*star
I wrote this piece in my undergrad for a creative writing class and I’m pretty proud of it. I blend together The Afghan Whigs lyrics, the time before a concert begins, and finding my high school love after nearly a decade. - popular suicide
I wrote this in 2004, documenting my 1989 suicide attempt and the advice my mother gave me after it happened. - Tripping on Stars
This was a lit ‘zine project some of my friend and I did in the summer of 1999 that lasted for an entire month! The few pieces I created for the project are not half bad.
Word to the wise: If you do decide to go down the Lisa of yore, be prepared for lots of angst, self-loathing, frank discussions about sex, and more.
xoxo,
Lisa
Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes for July 26, 2014
During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
You can follow me on Pinterest on what I’m reading, watching, and listening.
Reading
Finished
Sick of Shadows: Edwardian Murder Mysteries #3 by Marion Chesney
(Amazon | WorldCat | GoodReads)
Our Lady of Pain: Edwardian Murder Mysteries #4 by Marion Chesney
(Amazon | WorldCat | GoodReads)
(Reviews for book #1 and book #2)
There is no stretch in the research or imagination here, and if I had not been well attuned to Ms. Chesney/Beaton’s writing style from before, I would probably like the book even less but you know, at the end of the day, it’s a frippery of a read that while it may not have educated me, it did keep me entertained.
The Edwardian Mystery series provided a borderline dull, and often choppy, story arc of boy meets stubborn girl, boy handles his feelings badly, girl saves the day plotline that went three books longer than it should have. As I said in the review for the first book,
Books #3 and #4 were almost identical to books #1 and #2. There is really nothing I can say here that would be so markedly different from previous attempts to review the series other than to reiterate Beaton’s research prowess because that is where she shines.
If you’re looking for a story of substance, thought provoking, and full of win – this is not your series.
A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller
(Amazon | WorldCat | GoodReads)
Something is missing from this novel. It could have been a lot more and yet, it played it safe. You knew what was going to happen in the very end, because the author made it all painfully clear this is what is going to happen through the entire book. There was no twist. No surprises. Not even a really original thought going into this book given the author’s history (she lived in England for nearly a decade and had access to primary sources) and the fairly nice bibliography at the end of the book. The book is just mediocre and a let down, but it gets 3 stars because technically it is well written, even if the storyline seems meh.
The author could have made this really beguiling and filled with wonder, but instead she made it feel tightly corseted and maybe a titch overedited.
Pros
Story was fast paced and read quickly
Plot was pretty well organized and was linear
There was not an abundance of useless characters
When the author was on point about a scene, she got it brilliantly well (but this was more rare than one would hope)
Cons
Use of language: Edwardian England is a class filled society, yet everyone spoke the same: Her parents, Will, the French boys at the atelier, and so forth. She could have least tried to make an effort, but instead, this seems sloppy and lazy.
Colloquialisms: Example: In the beginning, she had her parents say “Oxford University,” despite no one actually calls it that. She would often fob Vicky’s use of American colloquialisms onto Lucy, Vicky’s best friend from America. Considering Vicky and Lucy are not BFFs for first half of the book, this doesn’t make sense.
Flavor of the period: Despite her meticulous research, you don’t feel like you’re in Edwardian England. Something is just off when she tries inject something that would give it a hint of realism, so then it feels stilted.
Character development: Other than Will or Vicky, you don’t really get a sense of who these people are. Even Vicky’s mother, whom we find out has a connection to Vicky’s choice in life, seems to be absently shallow.
Watching
- The Bridge
The unbearable hotness of Demian Bichir is baaacccckkk! This time with more depressing topics. In the few episodes shown thus far, the storyline feels tighter and better thought out; there is less a million sub plots thrown against the wall to see what sticks and turning it into a hot mess. This show has grown on me but we cannot watch it every week because it’s just far too depressing. - Project Runway
It’s pretty clear the series doesn’t work without Heidi Klum. Tim Gunn’s Under the Gunn was an interesting twist to the format, but it seemed stilted. Project Runway – All Stars, which is sans Klum, also doesn’t have the same appeal. Klum just cannot leave. The End. Can we also request that Michael Kors not ever leave? Zac Pozen is no where Near Kors’ brilliance or bitchiness and Pozen feels overwrought half the time when he starts critiquing. TheHusband has already picked out who will win season 13 based on the very first episode. I wonder if he is right. - The Almighty Johnsons
NZ show that is now being carried on SyFy here in the States; the premise is four brothers who become gods on their 21st birthdays, in reincarnated forms of the old Norse gods. Throw in destiny, some goddesses out to destroy, and half-hearted prophecy and boom, TV show. Interesting concept, not terribly well executed, but is loads better than what is available on most channels.
Weekly watching: The Leftovers, True Blood, Rectify, Halt and Catch Fire, A Place To Call Home, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, Elementary
What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
lisa
Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes for July 19, 2014
During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
You can follow me on Pinterest on what I’m reading, watching, and listening.
Reading
Finished
Raising Steam by Sir Terry Pratchett
(Amazon | Worldcat | GoodReads)
What I love most about Pratchett is his fantastical ability to create a Discworldian history over the probable cause of a “thing” that we have always accepted as part of our reality. The history of rock and roll, banks, postal service, newspapers (to name a few), and now the steam revolution have all been given a history with a very Pratchett twist to them.
But here’s the thing that finally dawned on me as I read Raising Steam – PTerry has always, ALWAYS been a shower, not a teller. Witty dialogue, great character development, fantastic descriptions, and footnotes that would melt your heart are the reasons why he is one of the few authors I continue to pre-order their books. But something is shifting now — I noticed it in Dodger where things didn’t seem quite on the up and up with his writing but I couldn’t figure out WHY. And the more I got into Raising Steam, the more I realised what was missing — PTerry is becoming a teller. Less on the witty dialogue and character development, more on a “here is a few paragraphs to cover what is needed for this particular scene.” PTerry’s “embuggerance,” as he calls it, is starting to show its mettle.
There is enough soul of the man who writes to make the words fly in the way they need, and to make the story come alive. But it is a little less shiny. Little less bright. A little less, well, him.
Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
(Amazon | Worldcat | GoodReads)
tl;dr Cakes and Ale is proof in the pudding dead white dudes could write whatever the fuck they want and have it hailed as literary masterpiece, even when it is utterly beyond crap.
Review
I picked this book up a couple of months ago and it has been the bane of my existence as the more I read, the more I hated it. It is poorly written and badly edited, with random thoughts dropped into the middle of scenes that do not make any sense to the story or plot. For example, near the end of the book while discussing the character, Rosie Driffield, in question, the narrator suddenly decides this would be a good time to go on a two page bender on the withal of telling a story in first person narrative. Then as suddenly as he leapt into that thought, he leaps back into his discourse of Rosie’s admirable/questionable qualities.
The book is littered with jumps like this. There was 30 pages leveled on the discourse of beauty, what it meant, how it was applicable to life, who got it, and who didn’t. Another 10 pages on the virtues of a secondary minor character who doesn’t show up until near the end of the book. Roughly 20 pages was spent discussing the attributes of a another character who never actually shows up later in the story.
Maugham name checks of the day famous literary talent, real and imaginary. He draws comparison between his protagonist, William Ashenden, and these literary giants and whom you realise is really a stand in for him. He fangirls over so many famous people, it gets kind of embarrassing.
The crux of the story is William Ashenden, the narrator, is asked by Alroy Kear, another London literary snob, to help him with his research on writing a biography of recently deceased late-Victorian author, Edward Driffield. Driffield’s wife, the second Mrs. Driffield, wants any mention of the first Mrs. Driffield, our supposed heroine Rosie, to be erased from Edward’s history for she was an amoral character to the ninth degree and whose influence over poor dear Edward nearly killed him.
With this set up, one would think the whole of the story would be the bringing to life, discussion, and telling of Rosie Driffield’s relationship with Edward. Rosie is mentioned in the beginning of the book briefly and then it’s not until another 200 pages later she’s brought into focus again and then carried out. It was as if someone had said to Maugham, “Yo. You are far off plot here buddy, rein it in!” And he did.
The whole of the book is to examine the snobbery and the often absurd social mores of the late Victorians and later, the Edwardians, and how these attitudes were affected and perceived. I get that, I do. But in that vein, the book is so poorly executed I spent a lot of time wondering what the fuck I was reading. I checked the synopsis on the back of the book so often to verify that what it said was actually what I was reading and not something else entirely.
It is well documented Maugham had issues with women, as he often saw them as his sexual and affection competitors, so his women are often described and treated as if they scum on shoes because of their sex. It is also well established Maugham, despite impressive number of novels under his belt, is at his best as a short story writer. With that in mind, I would recommend you stay the hell away from Cakes and Ale. I cannot in good conscious even conceive how this book gets so much love because of how flawed it is from start to finish. It is not even coherent, and yet! Yet, the mere existence proves that a dead white dude could write anything and have it called a literary masterpiece.
Watching
- You, Me, & Them
An adorable and quirky show staring Anthony Head (Giles from Buffy) and Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper on Torchwood) as a May-December couple who have recently moved in together and struggling with the demands not only of their relationship, but also the demands of their respective families. Frothy and fun, I was pleasantly surprised by the series. Series 2 is coming soon!
Weekly watching: The Leftovers, True Blood, Rectify, Halt and Catch Fire, A Place To Call Home, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, Elementary
What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
lisa
This day in Lisa-Universe in:
daily walk: sugar maple drive
Dear Internet,
I’ve long known I’ve had a fairly flat ass. It is not so flat as there is no shape, but the shape of my ass does not match the width of my hips. This became even more obvious this week as I found myself, after sitting in one place too long, walking around the cabin doing high knee bends and massaging my bottom. Today I had been inside all the day, working on my book, and around 4PM decided to do a walk around the neighborhood to get some muscle tone back.
Throbbing Cabin is situated in the old chalets that were used to support Sugar Loaf, a ski resort that was one of the best skiing areas in Michigan but has since been shuttered since 2000 due to bad property management and unpaid taxes. About 65-70% of the homes in my neck of the woods are seasonal, mainly trunk slammers, who come in the summer months for the views, wines, and beaches. With the area being named one of the most beautiful in the country, and Traverse City within spitting distance, we know how fortunate we are to have landed this place at the time that we did. Even more poignantly without the ski resort for support, many of the chalets have gone vacant and were falling into disrepair.
So while we’re in a tiny, sparsely populated subdivision, it’s insanely quiet here. The sub is surrounded on two sides by cherry orchards and forests, the third side is the old ski resort, the fourth is wide open field that is used for crops.
It’s a strange juxtaposition of seasonal and yearly homes that make this place unique. You’ll have places like ours, A-frame or similar cabins built to mimic Alpine styling, then WHAM! A more modern home shows up in your view complete with paved driveway, satellite dish, and siding.
Distance: 1.07 miles
Walk time: Roughly 22 minutes
Pace: 17:14/mile
What is most remarkable to me is the stillness. I can count on one hand the number of cars I hear drive by every day and at night, the stillness is broken by the creatures of the forest. So I admired the tree tops, and the odd mailbox, and thought how can you capture silence in a picture? Can you capture silence at all?
(I will not tell a lie, I close the windows at night not because I think there may be a Jason Voorhees hanging around, but that a curious bear will rip off the extended panes, rip through the screens, and somehow squeeze their body through an area 3 feet high and 1 foot wide.
Yes, I do have an overactive imagination, thank you for noticing!)
The sub’s diameter is exactly one mile, which makes it perfect for my walk. I came across some people doing yard work but most of the homes sit closed up, as evident by the piling of old newspapers and weeds in their drives. I saw whom I assume to be a young father taking his dog, a toddler, and a baby out for a stroll. He seemed more startled to see me power walking with my earbuds in and determined face than I was of him — but I had seen him yesterday around the same time doing the same walk.
Slowly, as I continue to observe, I get the feel and the rhythm of the place.
xoxo,
Lisa
notes for cabinet particulier, part iv: draft of first chapter completed
Dear Internet,
It’s about 8:30PM and I’m sitting on the front deck, still in my jim jams from the night before. This is the second time today I have stepped foot out of the cabin, the first being this morning when after I woke and received a phone call from the Cedar postmaster telling me the post carrier had flagged where we can put our new mailbox and I had walked out to check to verify the location. After that, my butt was parked either at the island in the kitchen or in the chaise (so very chic) writing and researching.
My book takes place in 1907 London that revolves around an aging actress who is not terribly good but she is what matters most and that is she’s one of the most beautiful women of her age. I’m styling her looks after the famed American silent film actress from the same era, Maude Fealy.
As my character is an Edwardian London stage actress, I spent some time today gathering moar research on the theaters of the era and discovered a gem of a site that also had a handy Google map of theaters from the era, including play programs, photos, and loads more.
I also dipped into cosmetics and etiquette of the era, finding a boon of a book entitled Every Woman’s Encyclopedia, from 1910, which ran into a hefty 8 volumes and 6000 page. The book is intense. Here is a gem on how Edwardian lady should keep her eyes more becoming:
Yes, let us not weary our poor optic nerves, shall we ladies?
I had the idea of how I wanted the book to open and numerous first lines had already appeared, so instead of working out a vague outline of where I wanted the book to go, I just sat down and wrote instead. Several hours later, I had 2100 words in a pretty good first chapter under my belt with ideas of where I was going.
Tomorrow I was to go kayaking with Emili, but I just texted her to beg off since I’m in the zone and needed to continue plowing through with my work. Kristin is coming up tomorrow evening for the weekend and we’ll be busy and I’m heading back to Grand Rapids on Sunday (can’t miss my Sunday evening telly). Next week is going to be busy as John is coming into town on Tuesday evening to stay at Throbbing Manor and we are heading to the Code4Lib Midwest conference on Wednesday/Thursday. Since many of my favorite people are going to be at the conference as well, there will be lots of socializing. Friday I head to Mt. P to hang with Kristin for the weekend and we’re meeting up with some of our cmmrb pals and then it’s back to the grind on Monday when I head back to the cabin for MOAR writing for a week and then the cmmrb weekend will be here and then it will be August.
Jesus fucking Christ. In the four days I’ve been up here, between blog posts, writing the chapter, and research I’ve cranked out 10,000 words. I am a mutherfucking machine!
On that note, I’m getting off the laptop and calling it an early night. I’m going to brush the fuzz off my teeth, wash my filthy body, and make a bowl of popcorn. Yes, yes I did indeed bring my beloved hot air popper to the cabin with me. I’m then going to curl up around my ipad and watch Downton Abbey, for you know, research.
xoxo,
Lisa
Drunk Cabin Time
Dear Internet,
I decided to get drunk last night – because that is what writers do! They get drink and let it all fucking go and in that aspect of my career, I am sadly far, far behind.
TheHusband and I have a pretty well stocked bar at Throbbing Manor and we never, ever partake. Like ever. There are loads of reason for this, ranging from alcoholism in our individual family histories to my bipolar. Neither of us have cultivated a taste for alcohol “just because” we like the taste, it was always about getting drunk; this attitude ruled much of our 20s.
But I’m 42 now. Adult. Need to step up the game. Get serious about letting go and learning how to handle my alcohol much more responsibly than I did back then. That’s why I made sure to bring up some delights from home for my writing retreat.
So it was entirely in the realms of the possible I start mixing myself white russians while waiting for the 42 year old stove take 1023984102938 minutes to boil some goddamn pasta for my dinner.
(TheDrunk informed me last night via Facebook I made the amateur mistake of carbing up before drinking. One should only do that if they are planning on a day long binge, like beer fests.)
During all of this, I decided I really needed to hear Aphex Twin. Which turned into me mixing a 33 song set, while regaling people on the Internets of g-d nearly every song, lyric, and dance moves coupled with stories behind songs I was choosing. I even started ranting about TheEx for a bit with the thought if I ever saw him again, six years on now, I’d rip his testicles off and shove them down his throat.
I’ve totally grown up and gotten over my anger — I didn’t use the word “balls.”
[iframe src=”https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:user:quangola:playlist:32vfc6WvlldQnJqxU6Ze1N” width=”300″ height=”380″ frameborder=”0″ allowtransparency=”true”]
You will note Aphex Twin is not anywhere on the list.
I spent a lot of time “singing” and “dancing” around the cabin, with the blinds wide open on the and not giving two fucks. And I’m using quotes here because shit starts moving when in places you don’t expect when one dances. So I decided to tell the world that, and then this happened.
I sort of got clued in around 2AM that I was not the least bit tired, I was ready for yet another glass of my magic potion, and I could continue mixing my love song to the 90s tape for a few more hours.
So of course I was probably manic. Durr.
To wind the night down, I decided to make a Vine to prove the darkness of the night and in the background, you can hear the BZZZZZZZ of the cherry orchard equipment running at 2 goddamn in the AM. They are fertilizing and or picking cherries, according TheHusband.
(Sorry, the Vine autostarts!)
[iframe class=”vine-embed” src=”https://vine.co/v/MQ1udVrD3pT/embed/postcard” width=”600″ height=”600″ frameborder=”0″]
Hilarity: I had to google how to use Vine because I am old and forgetful.
There is something infinitely freeing about just letting it all the fuck go. Not getting sloppy drunk, or getting maudlin drunk (though that was close to happen there for a hot second, but I pulled out of it).
I woke up this morning with nary a trace of a hung over, while it was probably the carbs and the gallons of water I drunk before bed, I’m giving thanks to my Scottish ancestry for stepping up like woah, lassie.
Time for tea.
xoxo,
Lisa
notes for cabinet particulier, part iii: sorting the research
Dear Internet,
As planned, I got up early and headed into Traverse City to get Jeeves’ tires attended to. I called the local BMW dealership and was told, despite confirmation from MINI Grand Rapids and the TC BMW receptionist, they do NOT service MINIs. His suggestion? Take my car to MINI Grand Rapids. When I pointed out a 160 mile trek on possibly bad tires was not a wise move, he suggested I head to Discount Tire (as I had originally was leaning towards) and also gave me the name of a local TC shop that specialized in MINIs and other foreign cars.
Once you get off of M-72 and start heading into Cedar and then further on to Throbbing Cabin is some of the best driving roads around, barring M-22 of course. I love this part of the drive when we come up here as this is the kind of roads where Jeeves thrives and begs to be driven on. There is a stretch of about five miles after you leave Cedar that is hairpin straight and goes up some minor hills; when you hit the apex of each hill, you can see Lake Michigan beckoning in the distance.
Uncertain to the status of the my tires, I drove ever so slowly down to TC and who am I kidding here? I was probably white knuckling it the entire way, waiting for the supposedly bad tire to just fall off and planning in my head how I was going to handle each and every bad scenario that landed in my brain.
Discount Tire was busy for 10AM on a Wednesday morning — me and all the OAPs hanging out getting our tires issues sorted. The tires are fine and the TPMS is all normalized (again). Rationally, I knew this was going to be true, but anxiety eats away at all rationality. I spent time on the deck last night staring at Jeeves as if he was a monster because I could not stop thinking of worse case scenarios of having massive car issue 160 miles from home. THIS! Despite having insurance, an incredible maintenance and warranty plan, tow truck numbers programmed in my phone, and local numbers (now) for car repair, I could not let it go until the nice man at Discount Tire told me everything was going to be fine.
I got back to the cabin several hours later than intended as I ran a few errands since I was out and about. After having lunch, I started getting settled into doing research for the book around 4PM and here it is four hours later and fuck man, I am overwhelmed.
On Monday night I started culling all the random tidbits I had been collecting for the last 18 months and began to import them into Scrivener. I broke each thing down to its own category for easier sorting and updated the research page for the project in the process.
Today’s work was much of the same as I found more locales where I had stored bits and bobs. I think in my head I always fancied myself to keep things neat and simple, but apparently I keep trying to find the best product for everything, test it out, and ultimately forget it and all the content I stored there. Today the culprit was Pinboard, which while it seems to prove useful for many, I need visualization to organize.
(Still sitting on Pinboard is a good chunk of research I found for my viking and medieval lady boners which still needs to be imported over to their respective Scrivener projects. Marginalia for the win!)
Granted Scrivener has a learning curve, but once you get in the groove it starts to really make sense. Best thing I’ve ever done? Put all my notes, ideas, and everything into a single Scrivener project.
I’ve also been reading contemporary stories while I’m up here based in the Edwardian era – of which there is surprisingly not many. I suspected with the rise of Downton Abbey that there would have been a huge influx of lit based in the Edwardian era, but no, there really isn’t. I know of less than half a dozen mystery series based in that era and handful of fiction books written in the last five years but that’s shockingly about it. Since I’m having a hard time finding contemporary books of that era, I’m going to create a bibliography over on my author site for read alikes. Because librarian, yolo.
I’m also collecting titles of works written in the era to read to get a better sense of the period. so watch it Lawrence, Forster, Galsworthy, and the whole lot of you. I am on to you. And lucky me, most of their work is available in the open domain.
(I finally finished Maugham’s Cakes & Ale, though written in 1930 much of the book takes place in the Edwardian era. Holy fuck, do I hate this book. It was just so awful for a large list of reasons I will be discussing later.)
Additionally, there is only a handful of sites dedicated to the Edwardian era and some of them are dubious in nature while others tuck that period in as very-late Victorian without giving the period its proper due. I was distressed to find that one of the sites that I had considered, due to the breadth of research and writing, to be a fabulous resource was passing on debunked knowledge as fact.
Case in point: I am supremely disappointed to discover Edwardian women did NOT pierce their nipples to make them more pert. This is repeated over and over again in many legitimate sites but apparently there is no reference other than to a correspondence page in the back of a publication from 1899 that was more of fetishism than actual fact.
I have a draft started for a blog post quaintly entitled, Who the fuck are the Edwardians and why should we care?, which I hope to write tomorrow. Because we should care, dammit.
The mosquitos are eating me alive out here and it grows late. My treat for getting work done will be a vegan white russian, dinner, and a not so terrible book.
xoxo,
Lisa
3 More + 16 Years: The Chronicles Of A Girl Online
Dear Internet,
Pre-Tumblr (2007), pre-Twitter (2006), pre-Facebook (2004), pre-WordPress (2003), pre-Blogger (1999), pre-LiveJournal (1999), and even before the word “blog” (1999) became part of our everyday vocabulary, a twenty-something girl with lots of opinions and is an exhibitionist at heart started putting her life online in 1998 (1995).
In those days, we did not style ourselves as “bloggers” but as online journalists, diarists, or memoirists. We banded together on mailing lists like Diary-L and went to JournalCon. We often kept not only our own sites, but also companion sites at LiveJournal and DiaryLand.
Things were different then. Vastly different. You weren’t a brand, you were a person. Some wrote anonymously, some wrote brazenly, others wrote somewhere in between. You wrote to explain, connect, bend, fabricate, conceal, and open. You wrote because if you didn’t, you would explode.
We were fearless. We gave no fucks. We were the voice of a generation who came to the Internets guileless and unafraid, knowing whatever transgressions would ultimately be forgiven. We knew anything and everything was possible and we wrote about it all with no pretense. There was an intimacy and an immediacy to the writing. It was also comforting, knowing, shocking, and absorbing.
It was all life unrestricted.
We were all Samuel Pepys, but with laptops and modems, not quills and parchment.
Jarring shift: Last week I found out that whomever now owns simunye.org now has set robots.txt to NOFOLLOW.
And boom, just like that 10 years of Lisa on the ‘net has been wiped out for good.
This becomes important because simunye.org was the first domain I ever purchased, and the first home of The Lisa Chronicles. Once that robots.txt file was changed, tangible proof of my historical online record are forever gone. Now all that is left, other than the local copies safely tucked away in the cloud, is a mention of my early work in an article in Wired from February 1999.
(The incredibly short version of how I lost access in 2010 to the domain registrar where the domain was registered, the domain expired, and I didn’t grab it in time when it was free to renew. Despite this, I was still able to link to the simunye.org archives that lived on via Wayback Machine, but with the new domain owners setting robots.txt to NOFOLLOW, this also effectively wiped out the entire history of the domain at Wayback Machine.)
(And if that doesn’t get you thinking about the so-called permanency of what the Wayback Machine was meant to be as a social history archive of the Internet, then why does it even exist?)
(And it was perhaps fortuitous of me knowing this day was coming? I’ve been steadily putting up the old archives, which is why everything pre-2010 is in spurts. In 2008 I said it would be done by the end of the summer. So.)
But let us not mourn too much about the past, or what it has become. But let us look at this world I’ve inhibited for nearly two decades and how it is starting to come full circle. I was one of the few writing about their whole lives online then and I’m one of the few doing it now.
Now, everyone has an agenda. A brand. A business. A sale. They have a schtick and job, with goal settings, social media analytics, and use phrases like “bounce rate” and “conversions.” They write to make money and hope their kitschy blog on a niche thing will turn into a book or a movie deal.
However I find for all these sites that tell you how to do something, solve your problem, or make you laugh under the banner of “personal blog,” seem to lack a certain soul. A certain personality. Sure, many include tidbits and trinkets about their life in the piece, but the piece is not about that tidbit or trinket; it’s about selling you something and getting you to keep on buying what they are dealing for every time you click a link or land on a page, they are somehow making money.
So we swing back and here we are on the 16th anniversary of my online diary, my journal, my memoirs.
The anniversary of my online journal has always been fluid. Things were put up on GeoCities as far back as 1995, but apparently it was not until July 16, 1998 that I made an executive decision to do this regularly and The Lisa Chronicles (and subsidies) were born.
After a very prolific period that lasted well into the 2000s, I started to write less sometime in 2006, and then almost never and to the point I thought I would never come back. Various forms of the site evolved in bursts and in August 2010, after finishing library school and floundering around for a bit, I decided to resurrect the site in its previous glory. I also explained why I kept my world online:
When I started keeping an online journal in 1998, the main reason I started chronicling my entire life online was for me to remember it. I have no memory of my childhood and most of my tween years up until the age of 13 and there are even spots of time in my 20s that are vacant. If personal recollections, photographs, handwritten letters and other realia were so incredibly fragile, were my words digitally constructed that much stronger? Could I not access them at anytime and any point with no fear of deprecation?2 Wasn’t this the whole point of the internets?
I became obsessed with chronicling my life because I wanted my imprint to last forever. And this is why my online journal was called, The Lisa Chronicles.
The 2010 resurrection did not breathe life to the site as I had hoped and I started thinking maybe it was time for a new domain and a new name. I had been The Lisa Chronicles for so long but it didn’t feel quite right anymore. I needed a change.
On a trip to England in 2012, I was at Shakespeare’s Globe browsing the gift shop when I saw a pin that said, “Exit, Pursued by a Bear,” referencing the stage direction from The Winter’s Tale. Almost immediately I googled to see if the name was being used and it was in various forms that seemed to be mostly defunct but definitely not as a blog.
This is where I needed to be.
The tag line, “A Most Unreliable Narrator,” is a spin of the literary term “unreliable narration” which refers mainly to first person narratives, typically in fiction, as they are often biased and filled with self-interest. You know, like life.
In 1998, I was an unmedicated bipolar living in sin with TheHusband in near dump in Oakland, working for a sleazy ISP in San Francisco, and with a borderline drinking problem. I also smoked like a chimney and got into a lot of trouble. In 2014, I’m still unmedicated bipolar living no longer in sin with TheHusband in a too big for us house in a historic district in Grand Rapids, working freelance life as a writer who can barely have a drink a month, no longer smokes, and finds staying up late on Friday nights to be worrisome.
Who the fuck knows what this site, and me, are going to look like in another twenty years?
But personally, I can’t wait.
Fun Facts
- Someone once made me The Lisa Chronicles ICQ skin
- I produced t-shirts for supporting the site (and still have one)
- Most of my oldest, and dearest, friends were met either via IRC or my online journal
- I have been signing all of my entries, “xoxo, Lisa” since the very beginning
- TheHusband figures prominently in the beginning since we were together when I began the journal
- After nearly a decade of not being in touch, TheHusband tracked me down via my journal and we picked up right up in 2008 where we left off in 1999
- I’ve had romantic and platonic relationships end and begin because of my journal
- My preferred disposable pen is still a Pentel RSVP in fine point blue
- I still love nachos (but I no longer smoke)
- I finally finished college and went on to grab two masters after just to be safe
Stats
Total Words: Over 1 million
Total Posts: 2000 and growing (Average 125 posts a year for 16 years)
Content managed by: By hand until 2004ish, then Moveable Type, Blogger, WordPress, Joomla, Indexhibit, and back to WordPress.
Domains: simunye.org, trippingonstars.org, pronstar.org, bitchasshoe.org, modgirl.net, shesgotplans.net, biblyotheke.net, and finally, exitpursuedbyabear.net.
Here is how the site looked in 2001, 2004, 2007, and 2011.
Here is what I looked like in 1998, 2003, 2006, 2012, 2014
2001 About Page
I’m 6′ tall in stocking feet. I don’t know what my natural hair color is. I was born in Toronto, Ontario Canada; I have a half-brother, my father is dead, I’m eight years older than my fiancé. I have a shoe, handbag and clothes fetish. I style myself as a voracious reader and I have had up to 14 piercings at any given time. I dropped out of highschool – twice. I have yet to finish college. I’ve driven cross-country solo and I chain-smoke like a sailor. I love music, literature, walks on the beach and torturing ants with a magnifying glass.
2001 About page alternate
this isn’t going to be some sort of deep psychological debate with myself. you can form your own opinions about me via reading what i write. but that is just the tip. the basics are as follows:
- I’m 6′ tall in stocking feet.
- I’ve driven cross country (san fran to dc) solo
- I’ve been engaged multiple times (but not all at once)
- my fiance is eight years younger than me
- my brother is 7’2
- i was born in Canada and raised in Michigan
- i was arts/entertainment editor on the college paper
- i’m obsessed about harry potter and Anita Blake books
- the first thing i do when i get up is: feed the dogs, make coffee, pee, smoke a cigarette and check my stocks in that exact order
- i make more snide comments than i do straight answers
- i’m obsessive /compulsive
- i’m a drew carey fanatic.
- i admit to owning albums by “Aqua” “Color Me Badd” and “Britney Spears”
- i have a purse/shoe fetish
- i only write with Pentel’s rsvp pens in fine point blue
- i also tape (via tivo) beverly hills 90210 every time it’s on
- i’m a zelda fanatic
- my favorite comedian is eddie izzard
- if i would, i would marry christian slater in a heartbeat.
- same thing for brendan fraser
- ahh hell, imhotep from “the mummy” would so be my bitch
- i cannot live without my cellphone or my visor
- or cigarettes, cawfee (from Barnies) and nachos
2004 About Page
Don’t know. I’m an exhibitionist at heart? Whatever the reason, I’ve been keeping an online journal since 1996, a written one since I was a kid. Yah, I’m an old-timer. Fuck this blog shit!
I decided one day to keep an online account of my life and my feelings. I wanted to see how much I have changed (or not) through the years. It is also much cheaper to write than to see a shrink or take drugs. 😉 It’s become some sort of personal project for me and I hope to continue working on it. I write about anything and everything that strikes my fancy. I’ve had partners break up with me over the journal and others fall in love with me because of it. Chances are, if you know me, you’re in here somewhere. I do not use last names or try to reveal identities too terribly much. I don’t have issues about people knowing who I am, but others do. I try to respect their privacy as much as possible. I don’t believe in being anonymous and I don’t believe in keeping secrets. I try to provide as much detail as possible. I’m very verbose — you’ve been warned.
2007 About Page
I first started keeping my journal on-line in 1996 at the age of 24, before the word “blog” was ever coined. And by that logic, I’ve never “blogged” but journaled. Old-schoolers will back me up on this.
The first incarnation of The Lisa Chronicles started on a now-defunct Freenet in my hometown, moved to GeoCities, and found its first permanent home at simunye.org. Various minor moves to other domains that I procured over the years before its final resting place here at modgirl.net.
And in the last decade plus of journaling my life on-line, I’ve met amazing people from all over the world, fell in and out of love, found employment, ranted about the things I despised and raved about the things I loved. It’s been my cheap therapy, my way of expressing myself, of often much needed ego boost, and I have often been humbled by those I’ve met simply by their sheer amazing selves.
2011 About page
In no discerning order: 30 something. Punk rock librarian and archivist. Sassy. Waffle. Pug owner. World traveler. Pierced. Tattooed. Tall. Music and book lover. Discriminating Guinness taster. Aging, alternative hipster. Eco-conscious. Geek. Equally in love with James Bond and Jane Austen.
2014 About page
I’m Lisa.
I am from the Internet.
You may know me as @pnkrcklibrarian, or from my previous online journal, The Lisa Chronicles. If we’re going to go back even farther to the days of Undernet IRC, as simunye or lisha.
You may also know me to a lesser extent from LiveJournal, Goodreads, Tumblr, and Pinterest and things I have created.
“Fuck” is my favorite word and I also have a lot of opinions.
I used to want to write for Rolling Stone but have worked everywhere from meat packing plant to a newspaper salesperson to a network engineer and then a librarian with multitude of stops along the way. Now I write full time and wave my cane at the kids on my lawn.
x0x0,
Lisa