PaperGirl Blog by Mary Fons

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12 Jan 2014

The PaperGirl 10-Point Pledge.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Work | 18

I promise this, on an airplane, so you know I'm serious. — I promise this, on an airplane, so you know I’m serious.

This blog has a purpose. It’s had the same purpose since 2006, though there was a year I didn’t write at all, though all the entries from the old site are lost on a dusty server someplace. (If I didn’t have a hard copy of every last one of those entries I might not stop crying till I drowned — it’s not that they’re that great, it’s that they are a record of my life and what else do I have?)

John Dewey, the 20th century American philosopher, once said, “If you are deeply moved by some experience, write a letter to your grandmother. It will help you to better understand the experience, and it will bring great pleasure to your grandmother.”

That’s why I make this. Dewey nailed the best reason to write anything. PaperGirl is me, deeply moved by the experience of life, writing to you, my hypothetical grandmother. You look fabulous, gramma!

But how to do it right? How to balance my privacy and your interest? How to wisely navigate my public job (decorum = critical) with my desire to tell the truth about absolutely everything? (Good writing must tell the truth, but the whole truth? I refuse to speak of my lingerie preferences, much as I’d like to.) How to make sure you stay? Images? Guest posts? Advertisements? All these questions are valid and because they are innumerable, the best way to form the form of the blog is to make a pledge.

And so.

The PaperGirl 10-Point Pledge:

1. I pledge to deliver a fresh paper at least six times a week.

2. I pledge no clickable links, save for references to previous PaperGirl posts. When you’re here, you’re safe from outside tugs. We’ll have a moment, you and I. There is one exception: should I reference an artist, a piece of art, or the work of a writer that ethically must be attached to the post, I will do so — judiciously.

3. I pledge one image per post.

4. I pledge honesty. See No. 5.

5. I pledge class. Details including (but not limited to) my menstrual cycle, my sexual exploits, business matters, or other people’s matters will not be published. Oblique references can and will be made to the above.

6. I pledge to ask anyone mentioned in the blog if I may use their name. If they do not give permission, I will change their name. Direct quotes published in print or online are, by journalistic standards, fair game. See this post about mean people on the Internet. Suckas!

7. I pledge to give you a nice mix of heartfelt, funny, and weird. I will vary the posts so that you will never say, “Geez, that blog is a real drag” or — perhaps worse — “That blog used to be honest and like, sincere, and now it’s just goofy.”

8. I pledge to share what I learn. Poetry, sage words I come across, recommendations for places, people, art, and life choices, etc. — if I learn it, you’ll know it.

9. I pledge to value my readers. Every last one. Even if they don’t ever comment or say hi on Facebook.

10. I pledge to love writing today as much as I did when I was six.

Love,
Your PaperGirl

11 Jan 2014

On Tori Amos.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Paean, Poetry | 8

Tori, from a series of photographs taken for the 1998 album "From the Choirgirl Hotel." The art was created by artist Katarina Webb, who puts her subjects on huge photocopiers. — From a series of photographs taken for Tori’s 1998 album, “From the Choirgirl Hotel.” The art was created by artist Katarina Webb; she places her subjects on photocopiers.

I need to talk about Tori Amos.

Those who were listening to music coined as “alternative” in the 1990s are likely familiar with Tori Amos. I was in high school when her first album, Little Earthquakes, was released. With the first notes of “Silent All These Years,” I fell deeply in love with her piano-based music: a blend of superb melodies and straight-up rock n’ roll. Her cryptic lyrics allowed for endless interpretation, which meant I could insert my angsty high-school self into every song and claim them all as unique expressions of my complex and yearning soul. (Oh, how complex and yearning I was!) Most Tori Amos fans do this, which is a testament to Tori’s music: good writers make you feel like they’re speaking directly to you and no one else. Perhaps this is why Tori fans call her by her first name. We really do feel close enough to be on a first-name basis.

If that sounds a little creepy, buckle up.

My Tori fandom wasn’t a mild case. I amassed mountains of Tori memorabilia in high school, spending the majority of the money I made as a waitress at the local Pizza Hut (help) on such merchandise as 7” UK vinyl pressings of singles not released in the states. Note: I did not own a record player. Terrible bootleg CDs of her concerts fetched $30 bucks at the record store in Des Moines but I happily forked it over to hear the same songs I had already; but as Tori is a master improvisor, you never knew what she’d do within the songs, so you had to have it all. It was a treasure hunt and a pastime I lived for. I clipped articles. I bought t-shirts, and in what was perhaps the geekiest, most cringe-inducing moment of my adolescence, I created a Tori Amos board game for me and my friends, who were as nuts about her as I was.

A board game. With pieces and question cards.

For years, my pie-in-the-sky dream was to open for Tori as a poet. I thought a 20-minute set of killer spoken word would be a perfect compliment to her show, and I’d be happy just being the opener to the opener. I never sent my materials to her management company, which is lame but understandable. I was broke. The prospect of creating a dazzling media/audition kit that would get past the garbage can of her management company was beyond my abilities. I was 22, barely making ends meet, and too busy drinking vodka cranberries with my poet friends. But maybe I’ll do it now becauseI still think it’s a good idea. Tori, if this post should come over the transom, do think about it. You will like my poems. Your audience will, too. It could be perfect. And fear not: the board game is long, long gone.

I made an extensive playlist for a friend who was going on a long drive in California. Halfway through putting it together, I got caught on my collection of Tori. For several hours, while sewing patchwork, I sank into each track, remembering my old interpretation and forging a new one.

Good music should grow with you.

9 Jan 2014

Losing The Punishment — But Keeping My Figure.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Story, Tips | 3

"And lift! And lift!" — “And lift! And lift!”

On and off (mostly on) for three years or so, I was a Bikram yogini. Bikram yoga is the hottest of the so-called “hot yoga” practices. The room is heated to 105 degrees. For 90-straight minutes you stand in very little clothing in front of full-length mirrors with the rest of the class. The twenty-one poses in the practice are always the same. And it’s as hard as it sounds, which means that it feels fantastic. Exercise is like that: the tougher the better — at least when it’s over.

But I got a little too into Bikram. The practice is advertised (!) as being most effective when it’s done daily; I jumped onboard with the fervor of a new cult recruit. I would frequently take two classes in one day. Two classes a day! Once, just to prove I could — I’m hesitant to admit this — I did three. Three Bikram yoga classes in a single day. But why?

Subconsciously or consciously, I thought Bikram yoga could fix me, cure me, make me acceptable as a person. Acceptable to whom, I do not know. I spent much of my twenties, I see now, concerned about everything that I felt was wrong with me. I don’t do that anymore. There’s plenty wrong and I haven’t given up aspiring to be more happy, more helpful, etc., but rather than seeing myself as a damaged, cute-but-junky heap in need of major renovations, I simply make tweaks and modifications to a person that I actually like pretty well. Dammit, I’m not broken. You’re not either. That’s the key to the lock.

Bikram drifted away, eventually. At some point, there came some peace; I needed it less. But to tell the truth, there was also a traumatic event that helped me let go: my ostomy bag leaked in class. Oh, yes. Yes, it did. If you’d like to live a nightmare, I recommend that one. The combination of feeling like I didn’t have to kill myself in class everyday and the desire to actually die when that happened put me off my yoga.

To keep my figure these days, I do dance aerobics because I love to dance. I mean I love to dance, though I’m hopeless in classes. In classes, I have two left feet. My dancing is best when I’m at a club or in my living room. Even in the construction, my condo becomes my dance floor. I put on legwarmers and short-shorts and pull my hair into a ponytail and hop around like a bunny rabbit, leaping and twirling and whipping my hair all around.

When I’m dancing, it’s fun. It’s not punishment. It’s not obligatory. I don’t do it three times in one day for 90-minutes a pop. Dancing like this comes from a place of spontaneous joy: it doesn’t work, otherwise. I sweat, I keep my figure, I smile. And I hope the neighbors in the mid-rise building across the street can see me. I do better with an audience. Always have.

8 Jan 2014

Arizoned.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life | 2

Photo of Bisbee, AZ. (c) The Mudflats, 2013. — Bisbee, AZ. Look at the hills up in the middle distance. We lived sorta up there. Photo (c) The Mudflats, 2013.

My trip to Las Vegas turned into a trip to Arizona. These things happen.

I have feelings about Arizona. I don’t have feelings about every state in the union. I have no feelings about North Carolina, for example. I’m neutral on North Carolina. I’m sure she’s lovely, but I’ve never been, so I can’t say. Arizona is not a state I’m neutral about because I actually lived in Arizona for a minute and that time was rather remarkable. I lived in Bisbee, an old copper mining town nearish to Tucson. I went to a rodeo. I wrote a play. And I was married back then.

Speaking about my marriage is something I don’t do on PaperGirl for a variety of reasons. These reasons include:

– valuing my and my former spouse’s privacy on the matter
– not wanting to be the chick who writes about her divorce
– ain’t nobody’s bidness, anyhoo

However, the facts are the facts: I was in Bisbee because my ex-husband, an Army Reservist, was stationed near there. Everyone thought time in warm Arizona would be good for my health: when I touched down in Tucson I was still skeletal from my illness, though by then I did have more hair, yay. We all thought Arizona would be smart for the marriage, also: my then-husband and I desperately needed face time that did not take place in a hospital. We rented a small house in Bisbee. We had a car. I read Great Expectations. We did okay.

The town of Bisbee was — and surely still is — full of aging hippies, recovering drug addicts, and aspiring artist-types. I liked everyone I met. And I liked my routine. Each morning very early, after [REDACTED] would get up and drive to the base, I would rise and pack a modest lunch. I would wrap myself in several layers, as it can be quite cold in the mountains before sunrise. Our little house was at the top of a long, alarmingly steep hill. I would make the slow trek down with my knapsack, lunch and notebook nestled inside. Through the small town I would go, for that was the only way to go. There’s just the one street in Bisbee (see photo.) The sun would glint off the windows and no one was about. It was just me and my busted body, my troubled relationship, and the desert.

And at the end of the street, there was a good coffee shop and across the street from the good coffee shop was The Copper Queen Library. I went there every day to work (a little) and write (a lot) and I wrote most of my one-woman show upstairs at one of the big reading tables. I swear, when I think of Bisbee, I taste copper, or iron, or blood. This is my Arizona.

I’ll be in Phoenix on Sunday.

6 Jan 2014

Freddy n’ Me.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Tips | 1

Frederich Nietzsche, lost in thought, AS USUAL.

I ain’t no philosopher.

But I like reading about the nature of existence and being, as long as the concepts are simplified for me by someone other than the philosopher him/herself. (Sorry, Kant, but I can’t.) Several years ago I caught an existential crisis which I have yet to kick. It’s like having chronic hiccups, except that we’re all gonna die. So I read philosophy stuff sometimes to try and sort all of this out.

Like so many before me (and countless souls to come), I found Nietzsche awhile back, my own private Nietzsche, a Nietzsche that ceased being a quip-machine or a bumper sticker punchline and became something like a friend from beyond the grave. It’s so odd to me now that the prevailing concept of Nietzsche (and I held this view once) is that of a dark, brooding fellow with a large mustachioed lip and a death obsession. The large mustache is correct, and he did brood about death, but only insofar as it was the end of life and life was his main concern.

Nietzsche could hardly be described as happy-go-lucky, but he was all about life-affirmation, in fact. This was a guy who said, “Without music, life would be a mistake” and whose concept of a person profoundly in love with life despite the constant suffering and struggle that attends it (the “overman” or Ubermensch) was arguably the tenderloin of his life’s work. It’s critical to note also that Nietzsche would’ve been horrified at how Hitler twisted his philosophy on the overman to suit his wicked Nazi ideology. Nietzsche spoke fearlessly of freedom and truth; he railed against racism, destruction, and dogma. He couldn’t stand politicians — he couldn’t even stand his home country (Germany) so anything you heard about Nietzsche being a Nazi, you can put that to bed.

Something terribly sad happened to Nietzsche in 1889. He was in Turin and not doing very well, suffering from nerves and dyspepsia and all those maladies that seemed to strike everyone in the late 1800s, usually in a parlor. Out his window, presumably while reclining on a fainting couch, Nietzsche saw a coachman on the street brutally beating an old mare. Overcome with grief at the sight, horrified at the cruelty he was seeing, Nietzsche ran out to the street and threw his body in front of the coachman. He gripped the horse around the neck and sobbed in the street at the inhumanity of it all.

After that, he wasn’t the same guy. He lived twelve more years, but he wasn’t well. Some say he had had syphilis for many years and that’s what melted his brain, in the end. Some say he was just fooling people about being nuts, that he was just eccentric and that was that. He died of pneumonia in 1900. And, because the truth is that the man really was a quip-machine, a few juicy aphorisms* from our pal Fred:

“Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.”

“A man’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.”

“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”

“Half-knowledge is more victorious than whole knowledge: it understands things as being more simple than they are and this renders its opinions more easily intelligible and more convincing.”

*Aphorism: a pithy observation that contains a general truth, such as, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

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