2016.05.20
If I could be didactic about just one thing (though I hope to God that limit is never imposed upon me), it would be my belief that young people, young women in particular, must commit their experiences to paper. If for no other reason than this: only you will ever have these particular experiences and we won’t want to have lost them after you go, or forget, or grow up and get terrible snow boots.(this after mentioning her moms Oscar Wilde-ish penchant for the devastating bon mot, like when she told her shrink she could never take advice from someone with such awful snow boots)
It's a good mandate. Here were some of my favorite pieces of the book:
This was the first time I’m realizing that snowflakes are actually shaped like snowflakes. I always thought it was an abstract thing like drawings of hearts.
A boy shared his umbrella with me and I got his name wrong and I loved being able to feel powerful in those two ways.
I've taken to walking around the dorm in slips.
Its terrible to ride a bike in the cold.
we’re dunk on the floor in the dark. I say “your breath smells like babies.” You say “that’s because I just ate a baby.”
I’m learning that just because someone is smart, funny and good in bed, it doesn’t mean they’re nice
ocean meeting shore and the wet spot between
the French word he messaged her has a very specific meaning: to patch something up, but quickly and probably badly
we’ve nearly nicknamed him “hey, you can’t just throw my legs over your shoulders or wherever you please.”I'm really fond of this genre... young and precocious and observant, mostly in the present tense, and usually romantically longing, so often written to an absent "you". I think of a spiral bound journal with a red cover a friend let me post excerpts from once upon a time, also some of Sandra Bernhard's books ("Lips kissed for the first time are kissed forever." is a good line, and once the entire content of a chapter was "I wish you had, but I'm glad you didn't.")
I guess I kind of dabbled in that form in my "Palm Pilot Journal" in the late 90s, http://kirk.is/khftcea/ , especially the early entries. I hadn't set out for it to be public, but EB kind of barged into, and my hope for attention or posterity has always been stronger than my sense of privacy. (I have a visceral memory of the device, transcribing that romantic moping and of course quotes from all over, using the scrawny little stylus on the spinach green monochrome screen.) In retrospect the 3 or 4 years I spent on it are dwarfed by the time I've been blogging since, but there was something beautiful in writing that way, and I kind of miss it, or maybe miss being the person who would do that.
I am glad the new Ghostbusters trailer seem so solid... the old one got such guff, I think for sexist reason.
But I am totally onboard the Kate McKinnon fan club. So many expressions.
Man, I can't even do a proper riffle shuffle.
Actually I can't think of anything I do as well as these guys do card manipulations.