(Unless you are my sister or N., of course.)
After 3,300 posts, you’d think you know all there is to know about me. Well, guess again. I’m full of surprises, folks. Here are some fun and weird things about me you still don’t know. I think. Because who can remember everything they have written in 3,300 posts?
1. When I was 20 years old, I made a solemn vow never to do any ironing ever again no matter what happened. N. almost destroyed our relationship in its very first week by mentioning ironing to me. I still bring up this huge gaffe of his to bug him about once a week. To retaliate, he recently bought an ironing board.
2. I’m terrified that an airplane will fall on my head.
3. I am completely mesmerized by the opening lines of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men:
To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it. You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at and at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires. . .
I’ve been reading and re-reading this passage for over 20 years now and it is still magical.
4. I adore boiled eggs. Everything about them is hypnotic: their shape, their smell, their texture, their taste.
5. I was such a spoiled child that I would come from school at age 7, plop down on the couch, and raise my legs to let somebody remove my pants from me. The idea of changing my own clothes was alien to me. I also had no idea how to tie my shoe-laces because there was always somebody to do it. I actually started tying my own shoe-laces full-time at the age of 22, after I got divorced.
6. I almost never listen to music because I have such intense emotional response to it that I can’t function afterwards.
7. I have had mystical experiences. There were only two but they were very powerful. They were completely non-sexual in nature, in case there are annoying idiots who link mystical experiences to sex hanging around my blog. Also, if anybody wants to make an argument that they were induced by somebody’s propaganda, I will make you look like an idiot, so beware.
8. I used to write poetry in Russian, English, and Spanish. I think it was very bad but I once brought tears of appreciation to a reader’s eyes with a poem of mine. I wrote my last poem in 2006 and then destroyed them all as a personal tribute to good literature.
And there are many more.
Clarissa's Blog 
Interesting about the music. I was wondering why you almost never talk about it. Can you elaborate on the effects it has on you? What type of music do you get most emotional about?
LikeLike
It’s weird, I know. But I can’t even imagine how people listen to a music radio station in their cars and then just go on to work. I wouldn’t be able to. On me, it acts like alcohol. Would you go to work after a few shots of tequila?
And it’s even silly pop songs that do this to me. And my favorite opera arias often get me weeping and shaking. Oh, and rap. . . Oooooh, I get very unhinged.
I’m a very weird person.
LikeLike
I had an extremely talented relative that my mom talks about from the ‘old country’ (I met him only briefly once years later) who had a beautiful voice as a young man but was prevented from pursuing a music career because he became so emotional when he sang; she said tears would literally roll down his cheeks. He couldn’t control it so could not become a professional singer, though he did make some beautiful recordings. Maybe it was something similar!
LikeLike
Interesting! At least, I am not musically gifted in any way, so the world has lost nothing of value in me. 🙂
LikeLike
That’s awesome. I bet it makes life more interesting.
LikeLike
I only knew about #1 and 6!
LikeLike
OMG, I shared number 1 with you? Probably in some drunken moment. 🙂 🙂
LikeLike
Mystical experiences happen. Sometimes they have to do with sex, but most often, not.
I am sad that your poetry is lost to future literary scholars and readers generally.
I cannot drive listening to music unless it is very simple, such as country or filk. Or other kinds of folk, not just filk.
LikeLike
Filk? Is this a music trend that I have missed?
LikeLike
‘Filk’ is the kind of folk music sung at science fiction/fantasy literary conventions. Often the tunes are traditional folk tunes with new lyrics, but some filksingers write their own tunes as well as words. My absolute favorite song in the whole world is “Rocket Rider’s Prayer” which you may be able to listen to online somewhere. Leslie Fish and Tom Smith are a couple of excellent performers in the genre. Both of them write their own songs. Juanita Coulson is another whom I like.
LikeLike
I should have said that “Rocket Rider’s Prayer” was written by Steve Savitsky.
LikeLike
I have to say that Savitsky does not perform his songs as well as other people do.
LikeLike
Re: # 3 — I feel kinda the same way about the last stanza / sonnet of Yeats’ “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”. I repeat it in my head over and over for days on end. I guess it’s because though I am no poet I feel that my heart, too, is a foul rag-and-bone shop?
LikeLike
Is another song I like, written by Leslie Fish.
LikeLike
I really like this one. How cool!!
LikeLike