What I Love Right Now: PIRATE TALK OR MERMALADE

I’ve seen boats as big as this whale. I’ve seen gryphons the same size, with teeth growing in even as they were taking their last breath.


My friends always know about the coolest things first. Better still, they are usually involved. Lauren directed me (and the rest of Twitter) to an excerpt of Terese Svoboda's newest novel, Pirate Talk or Mermalade. I read it and now, many minutes later, I am still sighing at the beauty of it.

Pirate Talk is a "novel in voices." It reads like poetry set to pirate-speak (like that option on Facebook). I was immediately reminded of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, another book that left me breathless. The excerpt, the dialogue-instead-of-narration, left out just enough to make me wonder what might be coming next. As if the word "mermalade" wasn't enough to pique my interest.

Pirate Talk or Mermalade comes out on Talk Like a Pirate Day. Read this book.

Pencil It IN

Some days, okay--most days, I look in the mirror and can barely recognize myself.
I mean that in the best way.

But, really, who am I? (by the way, the picture above is from about 3 years ago)

Today, for example, I am wearing a pencil skirt, and a blousy shirt tucked in.

The point of this is, basically, that my bffl (no, seriously, we've been besties since 8th grade and are still going strong), Suzy is a fabulous graphic-novellista and everyone and their sister ought to be talking about how effing clever she is.

Suzy X. in Paris perfectly captures the homesickness, the bummed-about-money-ness, the learning-to-love-the-shit-out-of-the-time-your-having and the this-could-only-happen-here-ness of a summer in Paris.

I adore Suzy, I adore this lil' book. And you should all go give it a long, lingering glance and know that some day, she's going to be a Big Deal. At which point, you can thank your lucky stars (and Me) that you got to see her "when."

And, PS--go check out her blog. It's wonderful, too!

That Girl Was a One-Time Teenage Drama Queen

This picture was taken last night, hair still wet, before I met up with some AMAZING people at St. Mark's. I don't think I look like myself.

I bought Revlon's "Cherries in the Snow" lipstick--prompted by a sort-of suggestion on Lux Lotus--and, for just a second, turned into That Girl.

I was more confident than usual.

Maybe my mother, who hardly ever wore any makeup besides lipstick, was right.

If you will, and I think you will.

Allow me to pause for a minute and tell you about all the Really Big Things that are happening to me. I should preface this post by saying that, for the past couple of years (since graduation, really), I've felt so static. Yes, I moved to New York. Yes, I started college. Yes, I went to London by myself. And on and on and on. INCREDIBLE things have always happened to me, or around me, and I'm certainly not trying to downplay my good fortune or anything like that.

But.

I have been stuck. I have the occasional great class, a wonderful advisor and an off-and-on appreciation of just about everything I see. But still, I've always felt like nothing was happening. Despite all my efforts to be proactive and get things going, I could never pick the thing (or things) that I was good at. I could never get busy enough, or care enough, to really push myself. As much as I stressed, I was totally taking it easy and not even exploring my potential. Gosh, that sounds egotistical. Here's another bit of ego: I'm good at publicity. I'm a good writer and, with time, I'll be understanding obscure literary references with the best of them.

Now, though, I am ecstatic. My life is moving so fast, and I have at least the next few months FULL of things to keep me occupied. My plane for home leaves in about five hours, and I'm planning to see a lot of friends, some old teachers, and talk to my daddy about money (scary). There will also be LOTS of reading (Lee and Gruber, specifically), and a fair amount of writing (outlining the 4 or so Woolf papers that sprung into my head at the Conference, publicity write-ups, and some data searches).

I have so much to say about the Woolf Conference. It was my first one, and I'm SO SO SO SO grateful that I had the opportunity to attend, to give a paper (a little one, but still), and to meet so many amazing people. If anyone would have told me even a month ago that I would have met the Woolfs, Katherine Lanpher, many random Woolf scholars and been able to use the phrase "on lock" and mean it---I would've laughed. Actually, I would've rolled my eyes, but whatever. I'm trying to not go into too much detail, because I'll just start gushing in a completely not-cute way. BUT--it was my first semi-independent publicity endeavor and it went AMAZINGLY well (how well? check back soon.).

As bummed as I am that it's over, I'm completely jazzed and ready for my junior year (scary) of college, for study abroad, for Woolf 2010, for EVERYTHING--even the bad stuff.