Chaosbogey @chaosbogey - Tumblr Blog

Visit Original Link

My friend Juliet got married today. We met almost six years ago at a poetry group, and fell out of touch until she wrote me about two years ago to say she had wooed Amy— then her lover, now her wife— with Phillp Larkin’s “When First We Faced,” which happens to be one of my favorite poems. When they got engaged, she made me promise to release a poem into the wild on their wedding day. Nobody reads like you din, she said then, an empirically true statement that her generous personality turned into one of the kindest compliments I’ve ever received. She knew she wanted a poem by e.e.cummings, but I’ve been in such a mood that it took us eight months to settle on a poem that she didn’t think was too sad and I didn’t think was too sappy (I comprehensively lost that fight, but that’s only as it ought to be.)

We ultimately chose perhaps an obvious poem, but one that for all its brevity (inshallah) captures the depth of their passion and their commitment— and since Alaska in February isn’t meant for the tropical likes of me, I can only hope they know I’m celebrating with all my heart tonight. I closed this blog in a forsaken moment, and I am so glad the final post is now a testament to happiness.

For Juliet and Amy, as they set sail together, a poem and a prayer: may you bear gentle witness to one another forever.

Kynmaw

from Cascando by Beckett, another mislaid beloved.

saying again if you do not teach me I shall not learn saying again there is a last even of last times last times of loving of knowing not knowing pretending a last even of last times of saying if you do not love me I shall not be loved if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again love love love thud of the old plunger pestling the unalterable whey of words

terrified again of not loving of loving and not you of being loved and not by you of knowing not knowing pretending pretending

I and all the others that will love you If they love you

unless they love you.

Goodbye, tumblr. This has been a season for farewells, and I shall close as once we began, though we never understood one another, did we, in our strange and snuffling affair. Tó ái ba yn ym ïeit ia nga.

oneweekoneband

Do You

Tipriti is often compared to Janis Joplin in barstool conversations. If this seems obvious to the point of banal, that’s because it is, but on songs like this one it’s pretty easy to see why. I imagine she must resent (or atleast dislike) the analogy – anyone would get tired of other folks constantly invoking the spirit of a dead, white, iconically fucked up woman when they aren’t any of those things.

Then again, perhaps she should quit singing “Summertime”

chaosbogey

Remember how I did this FOUR years and an entire life-cycle ago?

The best thing about Shillong is remembering the person I was back then.

Lean In, Spinster.

This morning I was flirting sleepily with E, because really, what else is there to do on a fucking Thursday morning. In an effort (presumably, who even knows with me and mornings) to be coy, I said “you do know I have a boyfriend” and his instant, deadpan response basically sums up why we’re together: “yeah. I have a spinster.”

I haven’t stopped giggling at that for twelve hours.

Anyway. Earlier this week, PB published my second (!!) essay of the year, a short rumination (”ruminating” being thinking without a day job) on life lived at the margins of the (more successful and better dressed) Lean In spinsterhood. Some days, I wanted to say, it feels a lot like this:

(Chitra Ganesh)

BUT on other days, it can be all cool blue Anna Akhmatova (who was married, but not really; it’s complicated)

(Nathan Altman)

... and that’s it, really.* I hope to be better at this writing thing over the summer. I even inaugurated a new journal this week, called “Trains of Thought” because, hey, if they were good enough for Einstein.

In other news, The US destroyed its own delusions some more this week, but I’m both far too ignorant and far too depressed to dwell on that. I wrote this essay the week the big protest rally in Union Square became all about white people taking selfies and I suppose I will keep twittering on about single ladies until the world collapses in fiery flames around me.

*I should note, though, that one day I aspire to the angry (half-) Tamil spinster like Subashini here instead of my waffly dippy resentful-but-resigned self.

Edit, from a little later:

A friend texted me about my automatic, even intuitive, reaching for a white woman when I wanted to portray the more soothing aspects of being a marginal spinster. “It seemed to me,” she pointed out gently, “that that’s what you’re arguing against. I don’t want to argue some idiotic idea that white women are inherently awful or that you have a responsibility to !REPRESENT! but we have to be careful of the symbols we choose.” She’s very right, of course, so I went back to my desktop (which serves as my gallery for pictures I currently like) and found me some Nina Simone. She, too, was married, and then was not, and it cost her, but she was always incredibly fucking fierce.

And I have no idea if this lady is married (probably) but fuck, that smile.

(PARI)

Of Revivals and Resolutions.

This was a deep and slow-burning year. I've been feeling all oh lost youth a lot lately, and I wish 2014 had lasted even longer, yet on the whole I'm satisfied with it. Which is, well, unexpected, especially when you consider the reality that I have no fucking idea how 2015 will unfold.

So let us not consider that.

The last full week of 2014 saw the stuttering revival of my publishing life* and while I both loved and needed the years I took off, I'm glad to be back. I miss the finality, the exasperation, the moving-on-already of writing for publication.

*well, I did publish that ONE thing this year about The House of Mirth.

This month, the Strange Horizons Book Club discussed Ghalib Islam's Fire in the Unnameable Country— the most fiendish, annoying, rewarding, brilliant, all-round bizarre novel I read this year. I spent weeks thinking about it, but it still baffles me like a dictionary does a howler monkey.

I've started constructing a bibliography around it (some of which is in the discussion) so I'm pretty sure I'm not done being mesmerized by FITUC quite yet. That bibliography will show up here eventually (another 2015 resolution is to attempt a monthly reading diary again, heh) but there were a few online-things that helped me puzzle through aspects of our discussion, and I think you should read them too:

Lewis West interviewing Jasbir Puar about regimes of surveillance. (h/t Gabe)

Sofia Samatar's post about the Symposium for African Writers, heavily referenced in the discussion. (h/t Aisha)

Eric Gurevitch's essay about the violence of naming. (h/t Eric)

Michael Swanwick reading Farah Mendelsohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy (I was trying to map FITUC into genre, and while it could be done easily for SF, I thought fantasy might provide a richer perspective. I might need to read the actual book for that)

Jordy Dakin interviewing Matthew Gavin Frank about squid (just trust me)

Mostly, though, read Fire in the Unnameable Country.

"hai tumhaara dil toh fucking awaara"

"Hey, you know that band you kept making me go see?"

[we saw them once, but I was going through a spotify phase]

"just heard that song you like... in the new Spiderman movie."

I.. I'm just glad it wasn't "The Quotidian Beasts"

also, I give up on everything.

The ten people who read this blog already know I watch Almost Famous when I get heartsore. Each time I get obsessed with a different song

(usually, yes, a Zep song; that's the way).

It's not christmas, but it's getting on that time I have to make a decision about christmas, and this is my song this weekend.

(If you think this means the decision has been made, you'd not be wrong, but I'm not ready to admit this yet)

Bite Me

There was time when, for professional reasons, I read a lot of romance. I’ve read, thus, every genre that contemporary romance has to offer, and disliked them all. I don’t hate them—I can’t summon enough passion for that, so let’s just say it was a phase of my life that was spent extremely stoned. I think people allot themselves a certain quota for mawkish sentimentality, and mine is reserved for music. Very rarely in my life have I been moved by love-letters, for instance, whereas I'm always floored by even the most amateur serenading. The only sub-genre I’ve never read are regencies; the job didn’t call for any. Last weekend I read seven and skimmed a dozen more. I was sober. It was excruciating. I didn’t like Feisty Virgins even when I was one, which was so long ago and so much pain ago that it's not a time I want to revisit. I’ve never seen the appeal of a dashing rake (ok, lie, but I certainly don’t see the appeal of a reforming a rake.) It angers me that the genre allows writers to hide behind the era and indulge in the most appalling politics. I suspect the only regency romance I might enjoy will have to feature one of those faceless women that the rakes are forever fucking while they fantasize about the virgins.

But I am trying to suspend judgement and read at least one. This is a version of love, however twisted it seems to me, that appeals to generations of women. Eventually one must prevail. Right? Right?

There was one novel, though, that moved me over into full disgust. It was a contemporary, called Bet Me. I finished it early this morning, went to work, went to a museum, even went shopping, and still it haunts me, a poltergeist in my ear cackling wildly. So here goes an exorcism.

There is a dumpy woman and a gorgeous man. They spend a month not fucking, cos the woman thinks the man bet her ex that they would. He hasn’t. At the end of this month they get engaged. She's insecure cos she's a woman in a romance novel and that's what women in romance novels do. His problem is he’s so devastating and so perfect and so rich that women keep falling for him and then he loses interest. He spends a lot of the novel avoiding one such woman. She’s completely starkers, which is supposed to make his behavior more acceptable, only, well, he did spend eight months with her so one could argue he’s why she lost her mind.

Anyway, misery must be distributed to be borne, and here is a (very truncated) list of quibbles:

The heroine is not fat. She can’t fit into a size eight corset. No one who is larger than a 34C can. I’m a big woman, but I have a reasonably slim torso. I wear size eight. The average american woman likely wears a ten, which is why it’s the medium size. So unless everyone in this novel lives in Vogue, Minerva Dobbs has a perfectly normal figure.

The guy, Calvin something, repeatedly tells Minerva that she’s “round.” He also tells her she’s the kind of woman who looks better naked that dressed. Both these statements are intended to be compliments. I'd sock someone who said either of these things to me, unless I am actually naked and not in full possession of my wits.

The fashion advice. Oh goddess the fashion advice. Min’s “makeover” chiefly consists of lace bras and flowing garments. I would wear La Perla everyday if I could afford it, so no argument there. But I am in awe of the sheer ineptitude of the latter. Assuming Min is actually fat, which is to say a size 8 top wouldn’t fit her like size 8 trousers wouldn’t fit me, surely by the age of 33 she knows the first rule of being big is “thou shalt not do diaphanous”? But then she’s a woman who wears furry heels, so maybe not.

A lot of Calvin’s so-called problems are attributed to dyslexia. One of the people I love most in the world is dyslexic. So I can tell you this for a surety: it does not make people ruthless bastards who con everyone into thinking they are sexy tortured empaths.

Min is called "man-hating", often and unironically. I didn’t know you were allowed to say that in the 21st century, let alone to a woman who french-kisses someone on a second non-date. Apparently calling a man on his crap, however feebly, means you detest the species.

The plot makes absolutely no sense, but Aisha has an excellent explanation for that. There is one honest scene with believable emotion. Predictably it entails serenading. (Min loves Elvis passionately, and her non-Calvin plan is to wait for him to, er, resurrect. I would totally read that novel, though only someone with Min's colossal nitwittery could possibly think he would make a good lover. Cal meanwhile likes the Costello Elvis, which, you know, he would, but neither of them seem to listen to any other bands.)

The obsession with chicken marsala, about which don't even.

There is bondage so bad it makes 50 Shades seem sexy.

And that is the dreadful thought I leave you to ponder.

(Ok, I’m not that cruel. Here is my maudlin song of the week to sublimate)

I'll just go bury myself in murder and mayhem then.

Re-Statement of Romance

equally, a lovesong for bogey

The night knows nothing of the chants of night. it is what it is as I am what I am: and in perceiving this I best perceive myself

And you. Only we two may interchange each in the other what each has to give. Only we two are one, not you and night,

Nor night and I, but you and I, alone, so much alone, so deeply by ourselves, so far beyond casual solitudes,

The night is only the background of our selves, supremely true each to its separate self, in the pale light that each upon the other throws.

-- Wallace Stevens.

how utterly marvellous this man is.

#Poems

nevver

Prayer to Persephone

chaosbogey

I was interviewed this week, by a young child who wears magenta jeans. It was disconcerting and extremely unpleasant (though the young child was very nice) and I hope to never have to do it again, which goes against my stated ambition of "being a great writer even if that means not always being a working writer" yeah, I was pompous, and then she asked me about social media and I admitted I did it entirely wrong and basically doomed myself.

Anyway, this is what, if I had any presence of mind at all, I woulda said. I too was once proud and wild, until the world beat it out of me. (ha, right)

For K, without whom this might never have been written.

For C, without whom such an equal music would never have been sought

For M, without whom happiness might have had the last word

and for bogey, without whom I am a grifter in the wind, and who turned four earlier this week.

giganticworlds

chaosbogey

as complex as I am fictional: hardboiled murderous cyborg.

let's just say I'm having a very huffy watching-buffy-in-2004 month stuck in fucking new york.

(RIP)

People I know have been dying for a long time. But it’s only recently their deaths have accumulated urgency, like the end of their vitality was mine to share. Past a certain age, the death of each person you knew creates a void that you know will never fill, that you will never even seek to fill. Past that age, the death of a person you knew, even fleetingly, can feel, for a while, like the death of someone you loved. I met Matthew Power only thrice, and I communicated with him off-and-on for a few months. I can hardly imagine the loss that the people who shared his life have to endure. But to all mourning there is a public aspect, and to that I will add my respects. I owe his grace and his generosity that much. I will remember the hours we spent chatting amiably about sea turtles, and the kindness and encouragement he showed my writing. I will read his words, over and over, until I am numb. And I will hope that, in his final moments, he found peace.

The Inevitable Lightness.

The roads and everything on them fly up and dissolve a net rises from the world the cobweb in which it was dying and the earth breathes naked with its new scars and sky everywhere.

— W.S. Merwin.

The Fates of Sugar Hill.

This weekend, reading Subashini's masterful return-post, I started thinking about what it means to disrespect a blog. It struck me, for the first time, that perhaps it isn't bogey who refused me, but that I spurned her when I began questioning the value of the work we did together. Then the Doniger thing happened, and while I'm not quite ready to return to the Big Blog yet, this is my peace-offering. Of sorts.

In my time in the North East (gods I have grown to hate that imperial shorthand) only two memories became wholly, privately mine. One is the perfect day spent scrambling through Sohra. The other is the afternoon described below in what I called "a critical fairytale" in class.

It is, of course, nothing of the kind.

Once upon a time, in a faraway country, a woman went walking in a sacred forest. It was forbidden to tame the forest or to leave with anything—memories made here belong to the forest. Not a leaf nor a twig could be disturbed, on pain of enduring a dreary, loveless life chased by dread and lost things. In this country, love was not sought, like a river or a mountain, it was an ent within a vast wood. It would find you, if you left the paths of the civilised and ventured, bold and steadfast, into the heart of the forest. If you entered, and agreed to leave transformed and empty. As she ambled, the woman thought about all the things solitary people contemplate when they escape society: the approaching death of her ancient, wise dog; the three-hour drive through hillside that had been destroyed for coal and limestone; the fairytales and myths that this small patch of wild wood had inspired, the fairytale, indeed, of love itself. But mostly she thought about Harlem, to which she would return in a few weeks. Harlem, where she would have to find another refuge, because love, which had found her so lately, had abandoned her again.

Harlem is where Manhattan grows crooked. Some might argue Manhattan is born that way, the maze that is the city creeping out of the ocean like a splayed cephalopod, twisting this way and that, but the insular villages of the south make sense, if only to themselves. They inhabit their own logic: Chelsea is glitzy; Chinatown is kitschy; Alphabet City is schmaltzy. Harlem is a forest, trackless and depthless, a forest embroiled in a perennial argument with itself. So contested is the idea of Harlem that even its boundaries aren’t defined, in a borough otherwise devoted to borders.

At 135th Street, in the heart of Harlem’s Renaissance district, St Nicholas stretches along a park. To the west of this steep, ridged park is the City College of New York, the oldest public university in the United States. To the east is Strivers’ Row, where the woman was hoping to find a temporary home, away from the hostile memories of Sugar Hill. Finding your bearings in the neighbourhood around Strivers’ Row can be like orienting yourself in a gothic spaceship—a doughty dilapidated worlds-spanning vessel that witnessed a million generations of humanity— a brooding, hulking space made light by pixie-dust.

Yes, the woman wheezed as she climbed the steep cliffs of Mawphlang grove in Meghalaya, that was where a home might be found. There she might walk again, and, beneath the filigree arches across minuscule Convent Avenue, she would find her rhythm, her eye, and herself. In that place, which has always welcomed people who arrive with nothing but the little money they’ve saved, a little money they trade for a dream: a dream of belonging and security, a dream of renewal.

Bilgewater

It has been a tempestuous few months. Heck, it has been a tempestuous year. For only the second time ever, emotional turbulence has utterly ruined my work life—and it is the first time it has done so in a manner I am wholly aware of. I watched my whole life whirl into chaos, and it was, in a perverse way, quite interesting. I saw it happen, and yet I couldn't stop it, not for love nor sanity. The only explanation I have is congruence. It happened because it had to happen. It happened not to teach me something (for life is not an illustration of principle) but to demonstrate something.

I am a solitary person, and it takes many leaps, short and long, for me to contemplate the considerable implications of being lonely. And I have been lonely. Is it my fault? Likely. Will I do anything about it, besides learn to live with it? Unlikely. For I am a profoundly lazy person, especially about exploring the deeper trenches of my humanity. I prefer to pretend they don’t exist, and for the most part that works well. I have what my mother once called emotional inertia. It takes ages for me to make decisions, and even longer to realise I have a decision to make, but once I do it is resolved speedily. I drift, I strike, I retreat, I close. Din the oyster monster. Sometimes, however, events outpace my ability to process them, and that happened a lot this year. It wrecked me.

But I finally find myself in the eye of the storm (quite literally, it is splash and flash and booming thunder outside as I write this). I will pay a price for it, of course, one always does, but it’s not a price I can foresee, and that’s not nothing.

And so I reread Jane Gardam’s Bilgewater, as I often do when I find myself at the crossroads of destiny. The first time I read it I was fourteen, and a far mathsier person than I am now. The revelation that fiction is truth, magnified and magnificent, gobsmacked me as it does her. The vagaries and cruelties of fate were, for me as they are for Bilgewater, an equation. That faith—that one’s emotions can be logically assembled (or dissembled)—has never left me, despite life’s many attempts to convince me otherwise. I am blinder than she is, but then I try harder.

Some of this has to do with intuition; when you perceive others’ emotions almost as strongly as your own, it is easier to abstract them than to endure them. Or, if you have that bent, to manipulate them. Envy, for instance—I notice it, but I don’t have the gene—which makes it laughably easy to engineer, given enough time and patience. Time and patience that I mercifully lack. Or rage, an emotion with which I am so intimate that we have domesticated each other. Oh, it would amazingly helpful to use people, but I'd need to be a great deal less interested in them to do so. And thus they become points on a graph. With my own emotions this is sometimes not the most efficient approach, and that’s when I turn to books like Bilgewater, which is funny and wise and barmy and has paragraphs like this one:

The next day was the general paper and I chose an essay called Coincidence. I wrote steadily, easily, fluently, unhesitatingly. I wrote of chess, relating it to mathematics, of the final appropriateness of events, of Shakespeare with reference to Hamlet, of the The Tempest with reference to Sycorax, of the Eumenides, the “Kindly Ones” with reference (veiled) to father, Mrs. Deering, and the Reverend Boakes. I wrote of truth, and the necessity of it not to be manipulated and veiled in white samite, veiled in black sables, of Terrapin, of Terrapin’s versatile father—in philosophical terms of course. I ended with a dissertation on the mathematical peace experienced in the realms of chess, in the pathways beyond accident, coincidence, or desire.

There is lot a person can do with Bilgewater, critically speaking. It is beautifully structured, so that the ending feels ordained without being in the least inevitable. The plot accelerates into such velocity towards the close that each sentence feels momentous. And the people, so subtly evoked. But analysing a book eventually ruins it, and I will need Bilgewater for many years to come. So, well, read it yourself.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Chaosbogey