Rebecca Wolff

A Few of the Great Ideas I’ve Had

1) I got the alphabet tattooed around my right ankle in 1990. This is just one of those things that, once seen, seems so inevitable, or obvious, it’s like “why aren’t there hundreds and even thousands of people walking around with the alphabet tattooed around various limbs and joints?” Often I am asked, by someone who thinks they are being very clever, if I am a teacher of small children. I suppose this seems a great teaching tool. “No,” I think, “I’m a person who uses words.” At a poetry reading the other day I saw a much younger woman with the letters of the alphabet, writ very small, scattered to random effect all over her body. She was showing a lot of skin.

2) Sushi at interstate rest stops. If they can do it at supermarkets . . .

3) A t-shirt that reads: “Soho Gives Me Hives”; another that reads: “Why Are You Dressed Like A Hooker?” (This first one is pertinent mostly for native New Yorkers; the second may have passed its moment of application, which I think was the early 2000s.)

4) Virtual graveyards, and a searchable database of gravesites, so you could go and visit whomever, whenever.

08.04.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (9)

Rebecca Wolff

Freak Flag

I was a little big hungover this morning after a wonderfully friendly reading in Williamsburg last night, after which I reconvened with some batshit crazy friend of mind from high school who I nomered “The Unlikeliest Attorney.” I mean, fifteen years ago this guy was growing hydroponic in a warehouse in Brooklyn and next thing you know he’s a public defender. This morning I woke up on the floor (intentionally) of my parents’ apartment, where they had kindly laid out the spare mattress in what they call “the library”–which really is a room lined with books. Among these books I noticed three copies in a row of my dad’s only one, published in 1973 by the Sierra Club. It’s called Unreal Estate, (har har, and that’s the point of this post) and it’s an expose of a certain bunch of real estate scams going down at the time. Knowing my dad, it’s probably a pretty dry read, but unfailingly accurate and even-handed. He’s a Libra. Right there and then, with my right temple alternately on fire and impaled by an ice pick I had a revelation: EVERYTHING is genetic. Or let me rephrase that as a question: IS Everything Genetic? Did even my helpless and unremitting fondness for punny or just jokey titles (”Laconic Parkway”; “The World Is My Cloister”; “Autobiographia Copularia”–these are just a few of my gems) come to me the same way my large hands and skinny ankles did? God knows my dad didn’t walk around the house punning or even just being humorous with any regularity. He’s a Libra.

07.31.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Rebecca Wolff

On my way to work today

I saw a dead cat on the side of the road and it reminded me of my intention to write about Jennifer Moxley’s new book, Clampdown. Actually first it reminded me of the book itself, and then it reminded me of my intention. So I’ll do that later.

07.29.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (4)

Rebecca Wolff

Poet Writes Novel

This morning I’ve set about finishing my novel for the dozenth time. It keeps being finished and then adjustments need to be made, and I make them, and then it goes out into the world again for feedback, and then it comes back to me, and so on and so forth. My hope is that it will go out this time and not come back, and instead will be made directly into a fantastic teen sex/longing movie by the genius who made the movie Twilight. Or by Eric Rohmer. I think Europeans (even dead ones)(actually he’s not dead! even better) will get my novel better than Americans. An undead European would be ideal.

07.28.09 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Rebecca Wolff

Transparency

Did you all catch the Colbert Rapport last night? Or the rerun tonight. I do rely on Colbert to voice my inner rantings, and he did beautifully slicing and dicing and ripping-the-mask-off of and otherwise sending up the concept of “neutrality” as it relates to “heritage” in the case of Judge Sotomayor vs whitey, i.e., confirmation hearings.

07.17.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (11)

Rebecca Wolff

Paid to Blog

It seems that the medium of the blog has come full circle or full bloom and one is now solicited, and renumerated, for one’s formerly private or random or sketchy thoughts. In this venue, in the next few weeks, I’ll be publicly thinking about: my new gray kitten, Myshka (that’s Russian-in-English for “little mouse”); the imminent homebirth of my oldest, dearest friend’s first child (a single mom at 42 and I’m going to be the “birth partner,” ie, hand-crusher); Jennifer Moxley’s new book Clampdown; some great private ideas I’ve had over the years; and some of the joys and woes of being a one-woman publishing house—I’m the editor and publisher of Fence, a literary journal, and Fence Books. I’ll start in soon on the woes.

07.10.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (14)