Memoirous

What might be: King Charles III, a meta play As readers of this blog might have already guessed I’m intrigued by meta literature. One reason I’ve also been loving McSweeney ’s lately. It’s a sort of meta comedy or satire when a journal decides to run Trump’s Black History Month speech in its entirety—as humor. The whole meta thing seems to fit into what’s going on right now. I mean a reality TV star becomes president. He says something is fake or declares suddenly top-secret intel is now declassified. Climate change is a hoax, as also is his campaigns involvement with Russia. Up is down and down is up. When people talk about surreal, then I immediately think they’re talking about this administration. I’ve told a few close friends this: I grew up with an illogical mother. It was hard on a day to day basis to ever know what she might do. One might think it was a mother/daughter thing—I know I tried to believe this—but through the years I saw that at times her thinking was di

Check out a brand new story at Watershed Review Delivery Man by Jane Hertenstein A couple of summers ago I delivered pizzas. I came home from college and, rather than doing my normal camp counselor job, I drove pizzas all over town for Joe’s, in order to be there for my mom who was battling end-stage breast cancer. Overall it was a shitty job, but someone had to do it. And it seems for as long as I’ve been in this family, on this earth, it’s fallen to me. How do I know this? Let me tell you. I think it was my first week on the job, a dumb-fuck job that Joe the manager always acted like I should be lucky to have. I mean, yeah, it was last minute, but that’s because every other driver who’s worked for him has quit. I should have too. There were some nights when all I wanted to do was make it back alive. At least no one tried to rob me. So this one particular night I came in around 7 p.m. and picked up two orders. None of them to the greatest part of town. Understand: no tip.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid Book Review I’ve read The Reluctant Fundamentalist and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia , the latter a bit tongue-in-cheek, very self-conscious of the global economy, and man’s place in the universe of commerce. In fact many of his stories play with contemporary history—not through the eyes of a romantic, but a pragmatist. The world is basically screwed—which is why I loved his latest novel because moving instinctively with this premise he gently leads us into a dystopia, something not unlike what “could be.” Yet, the novels I’ve mentioned and this latest addition all are love stories. So maybe he is a romantic. Maybe there is hope after all. Exit West is about doors, doors that connect us other lives, just as his books are portals into the lives of others—mostly what might be considered third-world, whatever that means because these definitions are quickly shifting. The US used to be a world leader, used to stand for democracy. How q

I've written here now numerous times about life post-Trump, and my frustration with how the world of words has turned inside out. A recent article by M asha Gesson, " The Autocrat’s Language", speaks to this phenomena. Specifically how language was manipulated in the Soviet Union and now in Putin's Russia--how the very word for something now means the opposite.  I experienced this first under George Bush.  In her piece, Gesson analyzes a recent interview with Trump, what she calls word piles or what David Brooks describes in a New York Times editorial : " We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar." For example, "fake news" refers to the press pool and anything printed about him that he objects to. Or how the head of the EPA is working against environmental protections. Et cetera

So far this year feels a lot like the end of 2016=filled with loss. Though a death of a different kind, the closing of my favorite tea shop makes me mourn. Pars is run by a reverent Iranian gentleman. I remember stopping in there the morning of the British vote to leave the EU. The owner and his friend, perhaps a retiree because he was often there, were streaming the news on their computer. Together we watched. What could we say to each other? Things come to an end. Always after my purchase he would look me in the eye and say God bless you. I felt as if I’d entered a confessional and was given forgiveness. I know, I know, it’s just tea, but it means everything to me. I begged him to stay, to arrange for some else to manage the shop, but he said, no, it’s time. I scanned the shelves, already they were emptying. I quickly filled a baggie with Monk tea, an aromatic mixture of orange peel with hints of vanilla and a spring garden. Where will I now go—on a winter’s day to fee

My friend Tammy Perlmutter has a poem in this anthology. Tammy is a persistent blogger and founder of The Mudroom , a blogging alliance. From her blog: In 2009 Zadie Smith wrote a piece called “The Rise of the Essay.”  She writes about the problems of even the highest-regarded classical literary fiction and the arguments that “all plots are ‘conventional’ and all characters sentimental and bourgeois, and all settings bad theatrical backdrops, wooden and painted.”  Instead of mourning the demise of the perfect novel, she poses an important question: “Will the ‘lyrical essay,’ be the answer to the novel’s problems? Is the very idea of plot, character and setting in the novel to be abandoned, no longer fit for our new purposes, and all ground ceded to the coolly superior, aphoristic essay?”   Virginia Woolf herself wrote an essay on essays called “The Modern Essay”  in which she wrote. “There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay. The essay must be pure—pure

I usually don’t dream. I think it comes from being sleep-deprived. Once I hit the pillow, I’m gone. They come before the alarm. And now with the daylights savings time—or whatever place we’re in, ordinary time—it’s getting light earlier. I awake panicky, thinking I’ve overslept. Anyway, I remember 2 dreams from this week. One was PTS. Post-Trump Syndrome. I must’ve been watching the news before bed because I dreamed ICE was pursuing me. Ironically, I was a dreamer. So in my dream, I dreamed I was a dreamer—my dream about to disappear. Then the alarm went off. The second dream took a little longer. I remember setting it up. It took awhile to get everything into place for the dream or fantasy/story to begin. In fact, I remember thinking in the dream that this reminds me of Grace, my daughter. She’d get out all her Fissher-Price peoples, get them set up, get the drama ready and—lo and behold—it was time to clean up, time for bed, dinner, bath. Some impending interruption that

Memoirous gets about 10,000 hits a month! I want to say thank you and encourage all my readers to BUY my books. If just one in 100 of you buy a book (or books), then I will . . . I was never good at math, but I like the sound of 1 in 100!  I'm about to release FLASH MEMOIR: WRITING PROMPTS TO GET YOU FLASHING. Until then  . . . Freeze Frame  is available as an eBook for 2.99.  Many of us are looking to write memories—either in the form of literary memoir or simply to record family history. This how-to book looks at memoir in small, bite-size pieces, helping the writer to isolate or freeze-frame a moment and then distill it onto paper. 365 Affirmations for the Writer , an eBook for 3.99. Writing is a journey. Every time we sit down to begin a piece or write the first chapter or the first line we are venturing into uncharted territory. 365 Affirmations for the Writer is about listening to those who have gone before us and letting them guide us with their insight, their own tri

Book Review Vietnam: The History of the War Russell Freedman I’ve been on a Russell Freedman kick lately. I love his histories filled with interesting pictures. The books might be classified as picture books for young adults. Indeed, his Lincoln: A Photobiography won the Newbery Award. A few years back I read his book on the Wright Brothers—probably because I’m from Dayton, Ohio and as a schoolchild I visited many of the historic sites where the brothers lived and practiced flying. (Though their bike shop is in Greenfield Village, scooped up by Henry Ford and displaced to Dearborn, Michigan). Anyway, it is somewhat a miracle that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. Of course, I always feel like that when boarding a plane. How does this work! What keep this thing from falling from the sky?! Only one of the brothers bothered finishing high school. They started first with the printing press, selling broadsides etc. Then saw the rage for bicycling and moved on to

I have thunder thighs. Always have. Albeit there have been times when I’ve been thinner (than I am now). But, still, nothing deserving a double XL. I’m talking here about rain pants. Last weekend I rode my bike back from Kalamazoo, MI. Yes, that weekend. The one with all the rain and flash flooding. I took along with me some L.L. Bean wind pants that I’d coated with water repellant. And also a pair of PVC rain pants acquired new 30 years ago. During a milky downpour I was amazed at the breathability of the PVC pants. I looked down to see that the seams had opened. ALL the seams. Basically I was riding in rubberized flaps. I changed into the Bean pants that after 5 minutes stuck to my skin, soaking wet. Some readers might remember before my JOGLE, riding from the top of the UK to Land’s End, I’d purchased a fairly pricey pair of Showerspass rain pants. These were advertised to be waterproof and breathable—to a point. For instance not when riding a bike, what they were

NEW BOOK COMING!! CLICK ON FOLLOW BUTTON  over on the right hand side AND RECEIVE FREE  AN ADVANCE PDF OF FLASH MEMOIR: WRITING PROMPTS TO GET YOU FLASHING

Memoirous gets about 10,000 hits a month! I want to say thank you and encourage all my readers to BUY my books. If just one in 100 of you buy a book (or books), then I will . . . I was never good at math, but I like the sound of 1 in 100!  I'm about to release FLASH MEMOIR: WRITING PROMPTS TO GET YOU FLASHING. Until then  . . . Freeze Frame is available as an eBook for 2.99. Many of us are looking to write memories—either in the form of literary memoir or simply to record family history. This how-to book looks at memoir in small, bite-size pieces, helping the writer to isolate or freeze-frame a moment and then distill it onto paper. 365 Affirmations for the Writer , an eBook for 3.99. Writing is a journey. Every time we sit down to begin a piece or write the first chapter or the first line we are venturing into uncharted territory. 365 Affirmations for the Writer is about listening to those who have gone before us and letting them guide us with their insight, their own t

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Attention Equals Life Andrew Epstein I’m more than halfway through Attention Equals Life by Andrew Epstein, also the blogmaster at https://newyorkschoolpoets.wordpress.com/ , where he explores the connections between poetry, attention, and the everyday/period between the 1950s and 1970s. The first few pages are devoted to distractions. Today, more than ever, it is almost impossible to focus because of the influx of media and advertising. Yeah, I hate it too. The technology I turned to a few years ago to avoid commercials is now saturated with them. Pandora, YouTube, Facebook. And, what’s worse, the commercials look like content! So even if you are paying attention it does almost no good. We’re faked out by fake news, alt facts, and reality TV stars in the White House. Andrew specializes on the New York School (of poets) where—and I think he’ll agree with me—the poets of the New School were easily unashamedly distracted. Here is one of my favorite pictures: F

You see I’m in such a hurry to get it over with I’m already speculating on what a post-Trump age will look like. Philosophically speaking, because all that carnage he eluded to in his inauguration speech will be the world post-Trump ie bad laws, bad water, bad leaders, people afraid, hiding, stockpiling=all these descriptions might actually apply to a Trump administration. Some people are coping by tuning out—ie avoiding the news, the Internet (which might be good since Trump wants to rip it out: Dec 8, 2015 - Donald Trump has called for a shutdown of the Internet in certain areas to stop the spread of terror. ... He recommended a discussion with Bill Gates to shut off parts of the Internet.) I have friends who range on the scale of Internet use from Neanderthal to Little House on the Prairie. They simply have decided they’re going to have nothing to do with Facebook, the news, the TV, radio . . . . and go live in the woods of New Hampshire—where I’m sure they still can get the