Paul Attinello

Category: On writing

  • Ideal

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    paulattinello
    in

    The truth is, for all my complaining, I have an ideal situation here. The big middle room, all the walls covered with useful and intelligent books (the ‘attractive nuisances’ are in the front room, with the television of course). Comfortable, warm; big chair, good lighting. It’s raining outside, which makes it all cozier – pleasant,…

  • Stumbling [and] Rhetorician [and] Aftermath [and] Ready

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    paulattinello
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    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…

  • Workshopping

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    paulattinello
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    Today I co-presented a workshop on writing about AIDS for the local gay and lesbian writer’s festival. During the months of arranging for this workshop, I’d worried that the overlap between the HIV and writing communities here was small or nonexistent – which is probably true; but we managed to guilt some of our friends…

  • The way it spozed to be

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    paulattinello
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    Well, today I actually completed the editing on two articles of mine for publication – in addition to handling a number of e-mail requests with dispatch, and making a healthy breakfast (oatmeal with chopped apple and dried cranberries). And all without wearing myself out or staying up until four a.m. Doesn’t sound like much, does…

  • Dementia Poets

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    paulattinello
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    From 1987 to 1992, I was part of an HIV+ writing workshop in Los Angeles run by the wonderful Terry Wolverton. My main partners in crime were Gil Cuadros (the most successful of the lot, who published his powerful poetry collection City of God with City Lights before he died in 1996), Kevin Martin, and…

  • Interspersed

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    paulattinello
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    Overlapping experiences: • have had a cold for three days, groggy and sniffling (sniveling? – that always seemed to be a different sound of course); every once in a while my face crinkles up, I mumble ‘damn’, and sneeze to one side or the other. • the weather is gray and increasingly wintry, but •…

  • Dim / reflections

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    paulattinello
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    Positions… different ways of viewing life – my life, my life as it is now, my life in my imagination, or if you prefer, life generally…. (a) Resistance to writing is a neurotic symptom, related to being a rigid and immature judgmental personality, constellated with various feelings/strategies of fear/laziness/self-justification, etc. My anxious reactions to the…

  • Failed

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    paulattinello
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    Last night I saw A Scanner Darkly, which was quite wonderful. On my way out, I bumped into Jonathan, the handsome and successful young doctor who has helped me on some of the HIV presentations, who was headed into another movie; I was in enough of a daze that it was actually rather difficult to…

  • Entangled in the blankets

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    paulattinello
    in

    I woke shortly before my 8:30 pills, turned off the alarm, went out to the couch to lie for a bit more: engaged in an interesting (to me) psychological game, which had a depth that only gradually became evident – imagining myself differently, as someone who was going to get some things done today (marking…

  • The whole point

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    paulattinello
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    I’m enjoying this blog. It’s not a big deal, I know – mostly just small, casual writing, with the address shared with a few friends – but it is succeeding in exactly what I wanted it to do, that is, helping me to get into the habits of writing, communicating, thinking, making sentences. Even at…