As you have probably guessed, I am a sucker for all things meta. At Greencine, they have an intriguing article that feeds my meta addiction (as opposed to a metaddiction, which would be what - an addiction to addictions? an addiction to talking about addiction? I might have a metaddiction too.). It discusses the nature of representations of authors and the writing process on/in film - how does one make gripping drama out one of the most introspective, solitary and contemplative of processes?

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Jackie Manuel, one of my favorite Carolina basketball players of yore, and co-captain of the 2005 Championship team, has been signed by the Celtics. Hurrah! Break out the "Jackie Manuel has a Posse" tee-shirts! (You think that D and I don't own one? Pshaw!)

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Today's poem is "There is no time, she writes" by D. Nurkse, from the August 6, 2007 New Yorker. The fascinating thing about it, for me at least, with my meta addiction, is its attempt to allow the speaker of the poem to occupy the place of both reader and author/recounter. In other words, the poem's primary speaker is in fact just reporting on a missive written by another:

writing this, I pressed so hard
she says, the words are embedded
in the grain of the desk
and it is dark but I sense you
listening, trying to frame an answer
there where the dark turns inward
and a small bell chimes
in the stupefying heat. (30)

We get only traces of our primary speaker, and of his/her relationship to the writer of the missive (the secondary, but much more "present" speaker, whose voice dominates the poem, but who is separated from us by an extra degree of writing/reading): a "she writes" here, a "she says" there. We are left to triangulate the tension of the poem between these traces and the missive-writer's speculation on how her writing will be received ("I sense you / listening, trying to frame an answer"). Is she addressing us, or the cryptic speaker?

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It is a quiet weekend for me and D, who has acquired a mysterious shoulder injury that limits his movement quite severely. So perhaps today will be a day of reading and DVD watching. We are on the third disc of The Shield's second season, and despite the delightful decision to give us a prequel to the pilot episode (thus resurrecting at least three dead characters, ever so briefly), the execution continues to be somewhat hollow and shoddy (for instance, the prequel episode implies that characters who seemed to be new to the precinct and naive as new lambs in the show's pilot had actually been around for several months, witnessing the corruption and violence. Hmm.)

I am still moving through Robinson Crusoe and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but the font of the latter is so minute for night-time reading that I decided to pick up Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs... from McSweeney's, which has proved to be light and witty - the perfect insomniac pastime.