New Blog, Old Look

You all must check out my new blog at www.welfle.com/writereason and let me know if there is anything familiar about it.

More about Joan Didion and how she is daunting and amazing and how sometimes it seems like she's speaking right to me

I was reading Joan Didion's essay "Why I Write" again tonight. She describes in it this feeling she had as an undergrad at Berkeley as "hopeless late adolescent energy," and I think I have that, too. She talks also about amateur ideas and being "interested" in things (like marine biology, or in my case, American politics). These are not issues about which we are experts, although I suspect Joan Didion knows more about marine biology than I will ever know about anything. She claims that she doesn't think in abstracts, but I think that it's all abstract in the end. She says she isn't an intellectual, that when people call her that, she reaches for her gun, but then in the next paragraph she refers to the "Hegelian dialectic" and hell if I know what is. It sure sounds intellectual to me. Anyway, she talks at the end of the essay about "A Book of Common Prayer" and the questions she has about it. There are always questions, after all. This I already knew. Then, after she explains about the questions, she tells it so well that I will just quote it:

"Let me tell you something about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel."

All Good Things...

No more free Showtime.

Sleepy to IPFW

I saw Liz Murray (of "Homeless to Harvard" fame) tonight and she talked a lot about the daily choice between what we're supposed to do and what we want to do. For me, this manifests itself lately between going to work and sleeping. The earliest class I have is at 3pm, and usually I'm ready to get up by then. It's not that I don't like my job. It's simple and easy and my bosses are lifelong family friends. It's an ideal situation. I honestly don't know why it's so hard for me to get out of bed and go there, but I do recognize that I am not like Liz Murray. Faced with her situation, I have no doubt that I would be dead. I don't have that internal motivation, that thing that makes you go forward. I suppose that's how I ended up at IPFW, a place even my mother puts down and calls "Bypass High." I've been making a lot of noise lately about grad school, but who knows if I'll really do it. If I manage to motivate myself to apply, that will be a major accomplishment. I can blame my thyroid and remind people that depression and fatigue are common symptoms and since Dr. Beyer took me off the medication, there is nothing standing between me and these symptoms. But the fact remains that we need money and I am so racked with guilt when I call in sick that I can't sleep anyway. If Lifetime made my life into a movie, it would be called "Sleepy to IPFW" and it would be about half an hour long and someone superglamorous would play my sister, the foil who provides the comparison so that viewers get just how stagnant I am.

If Tina Fey ruled the world...

I watched "Mean Girls" tonight, and even though it was predictably predictable, it was, as everyone has told me, better than it could've been. There ends the review and begins my confusion at Rachel McAdams playing someone who is a junior in high school. Rachel McAdams is 29, and she was 27 or 28 when she made "Mean Girls," in which she plays Regina George. What made her want this role? A little imdb.com investigating yielded the info that pretty much everyone in this movie was too old for their roles. The actor playing Aaron is my age and it has been a long time since I was 17. By the by, both that guy and the actress playing Karen were on "All My Children." (Aaron was that J.R. who always needed chapstick and Karen was this girl named Joni whom Jamie dated for a summer.)

The math teacher was the best character. I don't know if it's Tina Fey or the writing but I suspect it's the former. I want to give that character her own movie. Heck, I want to give Tina Fey her own country.

All roads lead to grad school...

I was struck, in the middle of the night, by the notion that I should apply to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, even if it's just wishful-thinking. I think I was inspired by Jordan getting into Stanford and Yale. The Iowa Writers' Workshop is my Yale. If I could get an MFA anywhere, it would be there, but I haven't ever said this out loud. So, in the middle of the night, I went to my laptop and googled. I discovered that my GPA is indeed high enough to get in and I also need to submit two manuscripts. I don't think I need any letters of recommendation. So I have until Jan. 3, 2007 to write something worthy to send to the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Which brings me to Mary Ann.

Iowa will accept 18 credits for transfer and I want very desperately to take more writing classes. I haven't taken one in almost two years. That's a long time to be on my own, writing duds like "Utter Despair," which I realized this morning totally sucks as a story. This fall, Mary Ann is teaching a class called "Composing the Self." It's a writing class that looks at identity. It's almost a surreal coincidence because I have recently been doing independent research on this notion, and it is a perfect way to connect women's studies and writing. If I could take one class each semester next school year, I would be better prepared mentally for an MFA program.

Of course, I am putting the cart before the horse—the horse being acceptance to a program at all. I do not assume I will get into Iowa. It is quite possibly the most prestigious program in the country. But even if I did, why would I expect Andy and Sachen to want to move to Iowa? What is in Iowa City outside Big Ten basketball and this writing program?

Queer as THAT?!?!

At the risk of seeming simultaneously like a homophobe and a stater-of-the-obvious, I am compelled to admit that, immediately following my virgin "Queer as Folk" experience, I said aloud to my cat, "Wow, that is a GAY show."

I am person who has been wanting Showtime for as long as I can remember. When I was in high school, I wanted to watch R-rated movies with the good parts that regular cable cuts out, and now I am interested in the original programming, the so-called "groundbreaking" series, documentaries, and movies—like "Weeds" and "Huff," and of course "Queer as Folk." Well, my time has finally come. We have a free Showtime preview and I am as happy as any TV enthusiast could ever be.

I watched "Huff" Sunday night and tonight, I'm watching "Weeds." Last night, I skipped the end of the NCAA men's basketball championship game and stayed up past my bedtime to watch "Queer as Folk." It struck me initially as a gay, uncensored "Melrose Place." There was a lot of sex and also something happening at an ad agency. "Queer as Folk" is, of course, better acted and better written than "Melrose" and the comparison waned as I became more interested in the characters. I remained shocked by all the naked men because I am used to mainstream cinema and, therefore, ubiquitous naked women. (I am working on getting used to naked men, though.) One of my points is, however, why does there need to be nakedness at all? Can't we tell a story about the complexity of human relationships without boobs and asses all over the place? This is a beef I have with everything, really. The entire world. Not just "Queer as Folk."

I liked the show. I don't know if I've made that clear. I don't know whether or not it is an accurate representation of being young and gay in Pittsburg, but I am willing to bet that "Friends" isn't an accurate representation of being young and straight in Manhattan. We don't want TV that is 100% accurate. We just want it to reflect the way we are and the way we feel. We don't want it to ignore us, and we want it to be entertaining. I think "Queer as Folk" accomplishes that. I'm going to watch it again tonight. As a straight woman who supports the LGBTQ movement, this show represents kind of a "put your money where your mouth is" situation for me because I love TV. If I can support, appreciate, and like this kind of show on my TV, I will allow myself to feel good about that, but I won't tell myself that I know what it's like to be gay because I watch "Queer as Folk" anymore than I know what it's like to be African-American because I watch "Soul Food." (And I do watch "Soul Food" and I do love it.)