The War on Describing Stuff

If you happen to be a grammar fiend like myself, or have anything approaching an interest in linguistics or the craft of writing sentences that will not be scorned by present and/or future generations, I suggest moseying on over to the NY Times Sunday Book Review and perusing the "first chapter" of When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It by Ben Yagoda. The book promises to do one the disservice of making me uber-conscientious of my use of adjectives (why aren't my nouns strong enough? why not use an adjectival phrase instead -- or better, a verb that says what the adjective only pokes at? Blast!). Speaking of which, I wonder if Ben's book will address the use of foreign adjectives in English language (example: uber), which is equal parts annoying and addictive. Yet another book I have to get and read.

Aside from the books I should be studying as I "work" on my thesis and that whale book, which teems with choice adjectives, the current lit awaiting my attention here in Sarasota, FL (all of which, I might add, are recent acquisitions -- though the Doctorow's just a loan) are as follows:

A Fine Line by Rohinton Mistry
The March by EL Doctorow
My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey
Baudolino by Umberto Eco
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

By the way, Saul Bellow's a big-time adjective abuser, though deployed with experience, skill, and wisdom, such adjectivism happily manages to buoy up prose already supple and sensuous (or something).

Also, I had something else to write about... I've forgotten now, so I'll add it in later. Now I am off to take a walk and circulate my blood un poquito.

Eat, Pray, Love, Get the Hell Outta Here

Elizabeth Gilbert's book is kind of self-absorbed, but she's a fine prose writer and it's pretty damn entertaining. Rather than inspire me to find inner peace, though, I now want to go Ubud (in Bali, in Indonesia). It's all distraction, though, from writing my novel...

Anyone have any other ideas of how to distract myself??

Or an extra ticket to Ubud??

Peru, Where are You?

Foreignness and familiarity: you can find them anywhere. In your own country. Par exemple, Florida. I've been here before. I get Florida. It has the same chain stores as the Northeast, the geckos and little iguanas have long since stopped surprising me, and the genetic makeup of the people, while further along in years, hasn't radically changed.

But what's strange is living in a gated community. Gated communities do not thrive in the north, and I really don't understand their existence in the south, except as an extension of the "club." The neighborhood doesn't just "happen" to have a golf course; the golf course just happens to have a neighborhood. This is a state in which residences are designed around the attractions (golf courses, Disney World, swamps, and so on) to maximize the amount of money they can suck dry from the elderly. And I don't think the retirees would want it any other way.

I love so many kinds of writing, but my dream, my absolute dream, is to write-on-the-go. I wasn't being cute when I called this blog, littlemissnomad (OK, a little). That's the goal, to get moving and to write from there. Moscow, Australia, Argentina, Hawaii, Berlin, hell, Antarctica, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, so on and so forth, until I get tired and have to retire in London.

I'm trying to write this part of my novel that's set in Peru, but it's hard to write when I can't see it in my head. If I don't see it in my head, I generalize, and that makes for crap writing.

In other words, I'm getting restless and worried about how much writing I'm getting done, and if it's any good. Moreover, I'm going back North in early April, finishing up what I need to finish up, and then after Easter, I have two months before my dad's wedding and my summer job commences. What am I going to do and where am I going to do it? That's the question. If anyone knows a cheap place for me to go that ain't on the eastern seaboard, I am all ears.

under siege

The bird is gone, and I was able to take a shower. I don't know what the hell that was about.

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Some crazy-ass bird (looks like a giant hummingbird to my mind) keeps flying up and slamming its beak into the wire-mesh window above my shower. It's been doing this for about 20 minutes now, for no known reason, but it's scaring the crap out of me. So I'm hiding in my bedroom, unclean, waiting for the madness to end.

Also, trying to think up an 80s power ballad for www.barrelhousemag.com.

Also, trying to work on my thesis...

Can you write a great short story before March 16th?

We'll see. Guardian Unlimited's online books section doesn't really have anything comparable in America as far as I am concerned.

and their major short story contest
http://bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=2975157300

You KNOW I'll be entering this bad boy.

the longest train ride

There's a Simpsons' sky, cool cartoon blue, innocuously white puffy clouds. Every so often, the landscape looks dry, brown, parched. I want to dig down and find salvation, but someone's already beaten me to it. Piles and piles of gravel, sand, dirt, clay, who knows what. There's construction too, so the train crawls, and I get impatient because it reached us a half hour late, and it's now an hour and a half behind schedule. I won't get off the train til 4, and I didn't bring any food with me -- the last thing I had to eat was half of a day-old tuna sandwich at 9:30 this morning. I feel like hell.

A busted tin shack straight out of the Cape Flats or maybe Rio with volcanoes of trash studding the backyard like fire ant hills -- they're contagious. A ghetto-fabulous girl (gold winter jacket, gold and black purse, highlights on already-dyed hair, a Superbowl baseball cap) sitting behind me has two CDs, the first one is Toni Brazton, the other a constant a hip-hop techno beat that she decides to keep cranked up so all can hear. Thump-thump-thump. I consider homicide.

And those orange trees! We pass by endless orange groves, pruned into meticulous hedge-like columns.There may be nothing nature gives us that is better than a beautiful ripe navel Florida orange. It should not be infected with the smell of melon, like the one I took from Smita's this morning and had to junk at the station.

But she gave me Eat, Pray, Love, so all is forgiven.

Funnyman Jim Gaffigan

Right now I'm watching the Jim Gaffigan stand-up special on Comedy Central. I think my facial pores produce some organic makeup that make my eyes sting when I laugh so hard I cry. Furreal.