Julie and Joe aren't cavedwellers.

He didn't want to fight in any war and she didn't want to have a child. They had been living together for three years and still didn't have a way to refer to each other that didn't sound stupid, false, or antiquated. Language follows change and there wasn't any language to use.

Partners in a pairbonded situation; that sounded neutral. Of course living with someone isn't a neutral situation. Julie and Joe aren't cavedwellers. They don't live together as lovers or as husband and wife.

How long would this century be called modern or, even, post-modern? Perhaps relationships between people in the l4th century were more equitable, less fantastic. Not that Julie would've wanted to have been the miller's wife, or Joe the miller.

-from "Living with Contradictions" by Lynne Tillman (1982). Hard to believe this story is as old as I am!

What I'm Doing in September

Co-curating: Sat 9/10 Gigantic Exquisite Corpse* featuring short readings from Lynne Tillman, Dan Bevacqua, Anelise Chen, and Mitchell S. Jackson
Home Sweet Home
131 Chrsytie Street, NY, NY
8-9pm

Reading: Tues 9/13 30 Under 30 Anthology Reading** w/ Rachel B. Glaser, Mike Young, Danielle Adair, and Michael Stewart
Center for Fiction
17 East 47th Street, NY, NY
7pm

Representing Gigantic: Fri 9/16 PEN Literary Pub Quiz w/ Lincoln Michel, Sasha Fletcher, and Skyler Balbus
St. Ann's Warehouse
38 Water Street, Brooklyn, NY
7-9pm

DJing: Fri 9/30 Kings County Society for Fitness, Science & Musical Merriment w/ Lincoln Michel
Manhattan Inn
632 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Midnight-last call

*Part of LitCrawl 2011.
**Part of The Brooklyn Book Festival.

Cage's birds, Tillman's birds, Kafka's watchman

"We are free as birds. Only the birds aren't free. We are as committed as birds, and identically."

-John Cage, A Year from Monday

--

"...their travails necessitated small, light brains; otherwise, with heavier, bigger brains, how could they manage flight and why would they go on living like that? If they could think, they might think, as many humans do, life is meaningless if all I do is fly back and forth."

-Lynne Tillman, "That's How Wrong My Love Is," Someday This Will All Be Funny

--

"I ran past the first watchman. Then I was horrified, ran back again and said to the watchman: 'I ran through here while you were looking the other way.' The watchman gazed in front of him and said nothing. 'I suppose I really oughtn't to have done it,' I said. The watchman still said nothing. 'Does your silence indicate permission to pass?' ..."

-Franz Kafka, "The Watchman," Parables and Paradoxes