pennyscientist

[pennyscientist]

A draft…

Metadata from a snapshot of a former lover

St. Patrick’s Day, 2009.

The sun was like a cold beer

against the back. Winter took its time

taking its leave. He took me by the hand.

Outside King’s Chapel, tourists gathered,

taking pictures of the burial grounds.

We all want to keep something of the moment—

aware, how memory disintegrates,

becomes a scatter plot, sky full of stars,

and disperses into gaseous recollections,

over and over, until, what really happened—

we can no longer say.

I picture myself disappearing

into the used book store behind him.

Even now, the curling pages

and cracked spines still beckon, the loam

of all that old literature still smells

like palm and lime.

He kissed me, pinned me lightly

against the shelves, like a butterfly

stilled in a collector’s book.

Reaching under my skirt,

he made soft, slow circles.

Then, quick.

In a gasp, the moment flashed past—

slipped between the pages of biography and mystery.

The present is an imperative: Change! I did.

Shoots of green appeared on branches; a neon sign blinked.

What was vivid softens in the half-light,

becomes static, archived, and stored away.

[pennyscientist]

I am blank with new experiences,

erased and still unwritten.

The wind moves through me.

The light shines through me.

[pennyscientist]

"She had begun to think about Los Angeles, to dream about the West and a different kind of light the way New Yorkers sometimes do, especially in winter, then again in summer, and there's nothing you can do for them, they just have to go and see it for themselves. Sometimes the light is in Paris and sometimes it's in Los Angeles. No matter where it is people have to go find it and when they're gone the streets at home feel different and quiet."

-- An Honest Living, Dwyer Murphy

[pennyscientist]

An Accounting of the Past 3 Years of My Writing Practice

13 personal essay drafts

22 short story drafts

38 poem drafts

1 novel draft + copious notes and alternative directions

Plus scads of random notes and material

What’s most bonkers to me is that I thought I had nothing. Like, really believed I had nothing to show for these past 3 years of writing. And I mean, I don’t have anything to SHOW, sure. But I have a ton of work to read and revise. If I had continued to plow through the second draft of the novel without looking backwards, I might have missed all this. I don’t know what this next phase of writing (revision!) will look like, but I must trust that I will find my process. Already, I have been reading draft 1 and find that it is not all drivel. There’s actually quite a lot that I shouldn’t burn—I just need to reshape it and place it differently within the story. There’s some beautiful stuff, there’s some compelling stuff. It’s not all lost. Muse, please help me with this next phase, please show me the way!

I’d love to have a total word count for everything, that would be a neat stat, but I don’t think that’s possible on Scrivner for iPad.

[pennyscientist]

The “organize my writing” project continues. I will give a count soon, but let me just say, the output of these past couple years is astounding. Maybe all the more so, considering I feel as though I don’t have anything to show for it. Maybe I don’t. We shall have to see how the revision process goes—a process I don’t really have a map for, will need to learn and create and discover on my own.

In any case, I found this little note from January 2021, and it seemed right for Tumblr, so I will share it here:

January 6, 2021

How many historic days have passed now? And which ones will be the hinge described to school children in future curriculums, the moment from which there was no return?

Maybe that is today. Today, they stormed the capitol. I know I am supposed to be shocked, dismayed, or even afraid, but I don’t feel anything. All I know is what I glean from the screens of my electronic devices. These events feel unreal, abstract. They have nothing to do with me. I am ensconced in the coziness of our Vermont getaway. Outside there is snow on the ground and in the distance blue mountains loom. Soon, Rahul may ask me to marry.

This year, I want to recede further from the world of my devices so that I may in turn give more of myself to the world. The real world. Whatever that is. I want to believe I have something to give. I have something to give. But on days like this I wonder to what end. Everything moves so fast. I would like to give stillness. I would like, for a moment, to woo someone into stillness with my words.

[pennyscientist]

In the dream, we drove through the windswept neighborhood spackled with wet and reddened leaves. We made love in the backseat. You wept for not loving me sooner. I turned my face to the window and in it, recognized the old familiar disappointment: wanting what I cannot have.

[pennyscientist]

Like everything, i have a chaotic relationship with objects; they are either attaching themselves to me or disappearing, never to be found again.

[pennyscientist]

- Sylvia Plath, from the 'Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath'

[pennyscientist]

joycraft

Joy is a craft; light is the material.

Remember! Our resources for joy

are infinite. For even though we wander

into black holes--or are pushed there

by the currents of fate--we can recall

that the vacuum, the endless darkness,

was once a star. And within it lives

the memory of light.

[pennyscientist]

1.8.2023

A survey of parks (incomplete):

Madison Square Park: babies and nannies on the lawn, tech workers on their lunch breaks

Union Square Park: farmers and merchants, chess players, skate boarders, commuters emerging from the subways,

Washington Square Park: NYU kids, pop up cannabis merchants, artists with TikTok accounts

Thompson Square Park: artists without TikTok accounts, community food service workers, people down on their luck or high on their supply

[pennyscientist]

1.7.2023

Looking out on Lady Liberty

On a silt gray January day

[pennyscientist]

The morning, its sculptural light—

how, with every sunrise, it carves

the buildings out from the stars.

[pennyscientist]

Fever to the Form

Another sleepless night in New York City. Somewhere in the small hours I did manage to drift off, but the slumber wasn’t deep enough to be impervious to Rahul rising at 7am and crashing around the kitchen.

In my wakeful midnight moments, one of the thoughts that occurred to me is that this isn’t working. Specifically, my approach to this tumblr. Perhaps the term “record” is too broad. It’s resulting in a sort of cursory glance at the day, that sometimes rests prettily here and there, but often flits from one same old subject to the next—the weather, exercise, what I made for dinner—without any real purpose.

Which is fine, in theory. That is how records can function and often they reveal patterns, or even serve as time capsules. These kind of records are beloved by historians and can be insightful. You get things like Thomas Jefferson noting his meetings with revolutionary leaders one day and then selling three slaves the next.

But that’s not what I’m trying to accomplish here. I’m not a former president of the United States and even if I were, few people want to read pages of notes on the daily upkeep of the Monticello estate. That's why we have historians, to curate and bring to light the most salient bits of information.

Otherwise, we'd be bored. I'm bored. And so, I presume, are you, Olivia Rose, Noelle, Kimber, and Paige (yes, I have a modest following within the adult entertainment community). The point of starting this was that I wanted to write daily something other than my projects, and something more outward-facing than a journal—something that is conscious of at least a possible audience.

In my secret heart, I had hoped these words might begin to transform into poems. I haven’t written one in a while. I feel like I’ve forgotten how.

So, it’s time to impose some parameters. From here on out, the post must accomplish one of these things:

1. Record an observation or an image

2. Explore a concept or feeling

3. Engage with a piece of culture, such as art, a play, a book, television show, etc.

It doesn’t have to be fully thought out or complete, of course, but it does have to be contained to some degree as a blog post. If I want to write something longer, but find I can’t do it within the span of the day, then I should keep writing that and post something short for the day, like a line of poetry, until I can post the longer piece.

OK, them’s the rules for now. Let’s see how tomorrow goes :)

[pennyscientist]

12/4/2023

Today a recruiter asked me “and what have you been doing since October?” Well, Jamie. I reactivated my tumblr, which is public, but secret, in that no one knows about it. There, I’ve mostly been processing the death of my friend by suicide, but also circling mundanities such as fear of aging, fear of death, winter weather, and crushing on fitness instructors. These rather bleak thought spirals may or may not be precipitated by going off my lovely antidepressants which I miss but can’t take if I want to have a baby. Oh, did I say I want to have a baby? No, I definitely don’t, definitely won’t be angling for maternity leave as soon as the offer letter is signed. I don’t even believe in sex, or think about it. These days, I only think about networking and content. HBU?

The weather isn’t winter though. It’s a disturbing spring mix. Warm sixty degree days interspersed with showers. Turning the heat on and off in our apartment requires sticking your hand in not one, but two, dark fearful holes and hoping that they aren’t also the domain of an evil poisonous spider. So the heat remains on and the upstairs, already stuffy, gets ever warmer. Last night I slept on the couch, where at least I could catch the damp, cool breeze coming through the screen to the balcony.

I returned to my draft today only to realize that I’ve moved too fast. I need to step back and try to rescue what I can from the wreckage of the first draft. In fact, all of my writing could use an organizational system. It had one once, but that has fallen into disrepair. Now, I have a stew of Google docs just swimming around in the cloud. I downloaded a new app, Scrivener, to help me with this task. Maybe I will find in these past few years of lots of writing but little to show for it that there is something useful after all.

For dinner? Salmon with green curried spinach. A rich dish, but easy to make. I watched Ms. Scarlet and the Duke and cleaned as I went.