Spring Break Redux

(part of a mural on the corner of Madison/Cooper, Memphis)

Grizzles vs. Pacers (WIN!!)

Huey's (2 different locations)

Ghost River

Memphis Pizza Cafe

YoLo (frozen yogurt)

Second Editions

Two movies (Limitless, The Switch)

+home cooked meals by Mom

+snuggle time with Buttercup

+visiting with a variety of friends...

Guess Who?

+shopping at locations NOT available in Milledgeville.

All in all? It was way too short but quite amazing all the same.

~~J

Happy 86th Flannery!

(or at least it would've been)

(taken March, 26, 2010)

~~J

Meet Me on the Equinox...

Meet me half way.
When the sun is perched at

it's highest peek
in the middle of the day.

--Death Cab for Cutie

During the equinox, the length of night and day across the world is nearly, but not entirely, equal. This is because the day is slightly longer in places that are further away from the equator, and because the sun takes longer to rise and set in these locations. (source)

Anyway, it's here...Spring. And since my university is on "break" this week, I am home. Ironically LAST year around this time I was visiting the campus/program in Milledgeville. Don't worry though, I am busy with classwork and research paper construction.

Current reading material includes the following literary criticism:

"Classical Agents of Christian Grace in Flannery O'Connor's 'Greenleaf'"

"Flannery O'Connor's Inverted Saints Legend"

"'Greenleaf': A Story of Lent"

"Flannery O'Connor's 'Greenleaf' And the Myth of Europa and the Bull"

And the mythologies surrounding: Europa (and Zeus), Minos, Pasiphae, Ariadne, and Phaedra.

I'm also bringing Shakespeare into the mix--through Romeo & Juliet. As abstract as it all may sound right now, I hope to fashion this into 4,500 words of awesome.

But I still need a point, an outline, a thesis, a title...um. Everything.

What a lovely Spring Break, huh?

~~J

Memphis Memories:

The Switch, The Grizzlies, and Conversations under a Super Moon.

On the Road Again.

twins...
doubles...
doppelgängers...

Now add music.

What?

This is an explanation of just one way I keep myself sane whilst driving to and fro Memphis & Milledgeville (reverse it).

"Twin songs"

ACTIVATE!


Since I pass/travel/occupy four states on my trip, I like to see how many times I can hear the SAME song on a local radio station albeit in a different state.

What? If a song is playing on a random radio station in Georgia, am I going to hear it later in Alabama?

Boring? or Why am I listening to the radio in the first place?

It's fun and interesting. It really keeps me entertained (especially when I land on overly religious or conservative talk radio). Wooo Jesus.

But I have rules (as all games should):

It can't be a contemporary song or a recent Top 40.
It has to be during the same trip.
& be on a DIFFERENT radio station entirely.

If you cross the state line, listening to the same station with the same song playing--it does not count. If you call in to request a song--it does not count. Understood?

Gems from my own trip(s):

"Another One Bites the Dust" (Queen) Mississippi then Alabama
"Brass in Pocket" (The Pretenders) Georgia then Alabama
"Just What I Needed" (The Cars) Alabama then Mississippi
"Hotel California" (The Eagles) Tennessee then Mississippi
"Sweet Home Alabama" (Lynyrd Skynyrd) Georgia then Alabama

It's a rare occurrence, and I've yet to get a triple or quadruple song. Also, I've considered expanding my game to "twin artists." This past trip I heard the Rolling Stones in two states (Georgia and Alabama) but they were different songs (Paint it Black and Honky Tonk Woman).

I guess "classic rock" is the most prevalent choice for this game in the South.

~~J

Ironically, I haven't heard Willy Nelson on any of my trips...

Madness.

Just sayin'.

~~J

Perfect Endings:

A few days ago I posted a list of great beginnings from several novels. Now here is a partial list of my favorite endings. Again, this was inspired by an assignment in my Prose Forms class.

(Woman, reading. Renoir c.1900, oil on canvas)

He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. –Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

...I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. –James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision. –Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)

"Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day." -Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)

She sat staring with her eyes shut, into his eyes, and felt as if she had finally got to the beginning of something she couldn’t begin, and she saw him moving farther and farther away, farther and farther into the darkness until he was the pin point of light. –Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood (1952)

The old man was dreaming about the lions. –Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Are there any questions? –Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1986)

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See if you can find your favorites on THIS list from American Book Review.

~~J

Truman says:

(one of the fountains on campus; I took this last semester)

"When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult

and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique

I may have I owe entirely to my training in this medium." --Capote

And as if I needed another reason to love him, I found this little gem of a "quote" via an interview in the Paris Review from 1957. But in all honesty, I have only read In Cold Blood (and one short story for class). I probably need to obtain some Capote and start reading, STAT!

I've been thinking a lot about literature (novels, short stories), writers (dead, alive), and writing (theirs, my own). Which is what the whole MFA experience is about (partially). It's an atmosphere that can foster amazing thoughts.

I mean, look at the fountain--the light coming from the corner...great atmosphere, right?

The problem may be my ability to "write" everything that I come up with down. I know some consider thinking as a form of writing because our thoughts are written onto our brains--but they can get lost or muddled.

I have a yellow legal pad (I've given up on "regular" notebook paper) with all sorts of thoughts scrawled across it. But just yesterday I couldn't "find" something I knew I had written down, and then I did--on the very first page!

Whoops!

My learning "face" is working (I had a professor come up to me after class last night because I had "had the most obvious reaction" during his lecture).

And my classmates keep reminding me about my learning "noises" too. They're often imitated for emphasis (legendary at this point).

(Have you noticed all of my Asides? It's like Shakespeare up in here!) As long as I don't lose my mind over the next 2.9 years, I'll survive. Party Up!

~~J

Great Beginnings:

Inspired by an assignment in my Prose Forms class in which we discussed great endings, I submit to you great beginnings/opening sentences from literature. (I will also do an endings entry in the near future, don't worry.)

(Jove Decadent! Ramon Casas, 1899)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1873-7)

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. - Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. - Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

You better not never tell nobody but God. - Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

It was love at first sight. - Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. - Garbriel Garcia Marques, Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

It was a pleasure to burn. - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. - D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. - Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)

124 was spiteful. - Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

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And while picking some of my favorites, I came across this website. Novel idea, huh?

~~J

Freud Says?

Avoidance Tactic #342: I have a paper due tomorrow.

illustrated.
The obsession is more about keeping things together,
it has nothing to do with keeping myself from falling apart.

~~J