Author: paulattinello
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In praise of Joan Didion
I have always loved Joan Didion’s books, especially the essays. In some cases, such as Slouching towards Bethlehem, or The White Album, I care about the subject of the essay; but in Miami, or Salvador, I don’t – yet it’s the sentences that are always so amazing, so eerily short and blunt, yet so utterly…
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Stumbling [and] Rhetorician [and] Aftermath [and] Ready
Writing this paper: pleased at a sentence, frustrated at a page; gratified when a point comes clear, dismayed when it blows up into something aggressive and nonsensical. Read what I had for V–, and was surprised at how mad and rambling and repetitive and polemical and… well, you get the idea – how overdone, how…
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Another life
After working on the paper in fits and starts all day – the starts are quite productive but short, the fits just useless time-wasting – and going through lists and lists of Simpsons and Buffy shows… I think about LA and wonder, if things had gone differently, if I might have fallen into another life…
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Loot
Pleasant birthday lunch with friends – a bit quiet for some reason (which is odd for our bunch, we usually all chatter like magpies), but everyone seemed in a good mood, just less talkative than usual. Much loot. Felt pretty much like a twelve-year-old on Christmas morning – ooh look chocolates from A., Lush bath…
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50
This is it… 3 am Eastern Standard time, which is 8 am here. Huh. Well, I’m having neither the "it’s only a number" (i.e. it doesn’t matter) nor any miserable "oh no I’m old" feelings. Best articulated as: Boy, am I fifty. (I do remember telling my mother, when she turned fifty and was clearly…
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Monk!
Meredith, I mean. Although I have complained several times about the presentation I’m doing in half an hour – silly timing to do any presentation at all, thrown together out of scraps of previous work, doesn’t even fit the Theme Word of the seminar (which they picked after I volunteered, thanks much) – the truth…
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Exaltation
Perhaps (he said cautiously, looking around to make sure nothing was about to fall on his head) nothing bad will happen around this birthday at all. It doesn’t always; it’s just something I keep as a reassurance in reserve for the Bad Birthdays – which, for me, mostly mean the ones where nothing happens, where…
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Strength
On the other hand… The past few posts have been very much about reflecting broadly on my life – as I frequently do anyway (sorry if that gets boring, but there you are). It all makes sense in a context of turning fifty – yet another real turn in my life, from the chaotic turn…
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Taking a meeting
Today I chaired a meeting; it went well enough, as several of the meetings I’ve chaired over the past year. The interesting bits, though – and it’s not the first time I’ve noticed them, but they seemed exceptionally present today – were the moments when I had a relatively smooth, helpful, mature relationship with everyone…
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The Idiot
I have, unfortunately, volunteered to do a presentation on Friday on some materials and a paper I’ve written on Meredith Monk – foolishly, insanely foolishly, given that I must finish the Buffy article for presentation in Liverpool Tuesday, given that part of Saturday is lost to a birthday lunch, given that it was entirely and…
Paul Attinello 