PAULA WHYMAN

I will leave to others the discussion of what the iPad means for the future of books and publishing. Here's what concerns me about it...I tweeted this, but it bothers me so much that I've decided to preserve it here:

iPad = electronic feminine hygiene product through which you can listen to music.

Were there no women on the marketing team?

Hello?? Hello?? Mr. Jobs?

Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers of all time. Notice I didn't say "woman" writers... just "writers." I don't make the distinction, and it annoys me whenever I see it.* As if we aren't all humans writing about humans (or humans writing about dogs). But never mind that, for now. I'm curiously cranky today, it being Monday, and it raining when I wanted to run, and there being no school for the second Monday in a row...etc.

In the essay, "A Sketch of the Past," Woolf considers the problem of writing about what she calls "non-being" as opposed to "being":

Often when I have been writing one of my so-called novels I have been baffled by...how to describe what I call..."non-being." Every day includes much more non-being than being....A great part of every day is not lived consciously. One walks, eats, sees things, deals with what has to be done; the broken vacuum cleaner; ordering dinner; writing orders to Mabel; washing; cooking dinner; bookbinding. When it is a bad day the proportion of non-being is much larger.

Although I'm grateful not to have "bookbinding" as one of my concerns, I wonder what Virginia Woolf would have done with the internet and social media to contend with. Probably she would've left them alone. If time spent on Twitter is not "non-being," I don't know what is.

Woolf has her (well-documented) moments of severe self-doubt: "The real novelist can somehow convey both sorts of being...I have never been able to do both." She names Jane Austen as a fine example of one who can. But in my opinion one of the qualities that defines Woolf is that she writes primarily about these crystallizing moments and leaves the rest to others. Yet she didn't see herself as a "real" novelist. And I don't think she only meant that in the stylistic sense.

I've always thought I had the opposite problem: How to eliminate the "non-being" and cut to what's most critical, what's most deeply felt in a piece of work. Sometimes it means I cut ten pages and keep one. For the sake of verisimilitude, maybe we include both kinds of moments. But by its inclusion, each one becomes meaningful, doesn't it? If it's not, we take it out, right? Or if we don't, we should. So, do we create these moments of "being" by giving them weight?

It leads me to wonder, though, how much "being" can one person handle? Isn't it potentially overwhelming to be hyper-aware? Still, we could all probably do a little more of it. So, in honor of Woolf's birthday, I'm going to try for a day more of "being" than of "non-being," both in work and outside of it.

I'll keep you posted...
on Facebook...and Twitter...




*If only it were so simple, saying "writer" vs. "woman writer" and making it so... This leaves aside what also annoys me--the small number of writers who happen to be women who get nominated for and win awards... And yet, see the Book Critics Circle Award nominees--we are guardedly pleased.

The talented artist, and friend, Craig Cahoon, has artwork on display right now at The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery on U St. in DC, as part of a show called Traces. The show is a tribute to the memory of Jutta Phillipi Eigen, a longtime DC resident, composer, pianist, and physician who died of cancer in 2002. Traces includes work by artists Elise Wiarda (the curator), Daniel Brush, Renee Butler, Yvonne Pickering Carter, Joan Danziger, Sam Gilliam, Kitty Klaidman, Dale Loy, and Jean Meisel.





Craig is pictured below with Nebel 1, 2009, which he completed at the VCCA, with assistance from the Cafritz Foundation.



A photograph like this really isn't an adequate way to view this work. The paintings have a luminescent quality that's visually arresting in person.

All the art is for sale. The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery is a nonprofit gallery associated wtih the Smith Farm Center, an organization that provides therapeutic residential retreats for cancer patients.

The Gallery is open Wed-Friday 11-5, Sat, 11-3, and by appointment, 202.483.8600, and is located at 1632 U Street NW. The show runs through Jan. 30.

I can't remember the last time I got to sit in my car and go through a car wash. I forgot how much fun it is. I wanted to go back and do it again. (Hey, it's cheaper than a movie.)

There's a hint of danger, when the big rotating brush comes toward you.



And then there's that feeling of being in the middle of a storm, but you're perfectly dry (except the time you left the window open a crack by mistake...).

The sound of the water hitting the car, obliterating everything, and then the water cascading down the window-- it was almost a meditative experience.



Until the car behind me started honking.

I know, I know. I really need to get out more.

We got an air hockey table for the kids (okay, for me) this holiday season. They're enjoying it a lot, and as always, the box it came in has also been put to good use. My son the inventor and his friend were involved in an intensive basement project, which I avoided checking in on because I was sure I'd find Frankenstein's monster rising from the dead or final, irrefutable proof of cold fusion. When I did finally venture into the forbidden zone, I found that they'd built a giant-sized pinball machine out of the air hockey box-- approximately 7 ft by 4 ft, complete with flippers, trap doors, and tunnels, supported by feet of different heights so that it stands at an angle.

I also found that we are now out of duct tape.



The boy says it's not finished yet. But here's a close-up of the flipper mechanism:



And here the ball is about to drop into one of the trap doors:



It's worth noting that their creativity did not end with the pinball project. Inventor and friend succeeded in keeping the little brother out of the basement for this entire endeavor by bribing him with something of great value: Rubber bands. (Here, if you missed it, the original post on the Rubber Band Wars.)

If you thought today's children were too corrupted by computer games to do anything with their hands other than point and click, well, here is evidence to the contrary. And I like that "old-fashioned" pinball has some appeal for the DS generation. (Yeah, son, in the olden days, a game wasn't just a picture on a screen...how about that?)