I tried to second Jacob’s nomination of Cooper’s Darfur: an unforgivable hell on earth for the Koufaxes but my URL–put in correctly wasn’t recognized. Cooper has made me very aware of issues that really hadn’t registered.. When I didn’t want to care, I began to because of her. And she’s multi-talented. Since she’s no longer no the queen of Courting moderation, I award her the first ever “she blogs too many places to keep up with” Courting award.
I give myself the first ever I love Frank Rich for his mind and want his mind award. Being a Times Select customer I feel it important to share his mind.
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If you’re new to Courting we were a cover story last spring. A good blogging friend says that it does a great job of explaining me. Do I really need to explain myself? 🙂 Rather, does it take a newspaper article?
We might never have met G if not for this article, so it has served one great tangible purpose already, and many many intangible ones
I put in a fiction page. It amazes me that I spent my entire life afraid of writing fiction when it’s so much fun. This is probably due to the “D” content “F” grammar I received on a 20 page short story I wrote in Fourth Grade about a woman mopping her kitchen floor as she imagined the things she and her husband would do when he came home from a war. It wasn’t sexual. Even I knew enough to not write about sex while in Fourth Grade
My parents were on vacation. It was the first week during a school year they had been away, but my family needs its vacations and I guess tax season had just ended. In the years before computers and extensions, everything had to be done by April 15th. Computers and extensions made my father and thus our family very happy.
Not that he ever learned how to use a computer. He was scared that he would get lost in the netherland of computers and never be seen again. My father could spot trends. I’m even better, but lacked the confidence probably because my parents weren’t home some week in 1960 to tell me that my subject matter was inappropriate. Though I don’t think they would have but just proofed the damn story. They probably would have thought it cute, told every friend and family member and embarrassed me to death. I died often as a child.
This is frigging amazing. I can blame every problem I have ever had in life on my parents not being home when I had the biggest assignment in school to date, in fourth grade.
I don’t believe in assigning blame. I don’t believe in blaming parents. It’s okay for a teenager but unseemly after the teens. My parents had nothing to do with me not writing fiction, and the fourth grade assignment affected it minimally.
I feared fiction. Brilliant people write good fiction. Most fiction is mediocre because the authors are. Good plots are essential but without great characters meaningless. I mistakenly put Stephen King down for years until I read his memoir/writing book, and realized how important character was to his stories.
Fiction that grabs me has great characters. I have been writing great characters for years, even if they were admission summaries in the nursing home. In grad school my professors eagerly awaited my papers, especially the ones that were character sketches or had character sketches woven through them. I have always told myself stories for my own amusement. I might as well write them.
I think in my continuing need to be construed as Parker Posey I can be the Parker Posey of fiction. Now that she’s been on Boston Legal, my admiration for her, of course, has grown.
I’m not putting everything in. Nor am I going into a big explanation. A friend told me about something really funny she had read in a newspaper blog that sounded like me. They were my lines and I neither was linked nor acknowledged, but I posted it first so….I don’t have the creative commons license up as when I read it, it said nothing more than I can say. My work belongs to me. If you use it acknowledge me through a link or my name, Pia Savage, and my blog name and url, courtingdestiny.com â„¢
I do have faith that nobody will or can accuse me of imitating styles. If they do, this blog, and my prior published writing in MSM work proves….Steal my lines and you will suffer, maybe not now, but someday, somehow. Remember I have a newfound love for Stephen King, and some of his characters…
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I can’t really explain it yet but I think two years some months of blogging has helped me understand, not only my own self better, but other people. More importantly, what people I would want to read my work relates to, because so many of you do.
I can’t thank you all enough for believing even when I sometimes don’t. The past few months have been too action packed in my own mind, and bloggers helped me get through it. I have been privileged to know amazing unselfish bloggers. It makes me believe in the goodness of people and all that.
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I’m about to embark on an adventure. Not the vacation as much as not bringing a laptop with me. It’s mind boggling. Just being in an airport and not having to take the laptop out and put it back in is exciting.
I have enough other toys with me and will bring a few notebooks for different projects and a journal to take on the beach. I’m going to see if writing by hand really helps as many people claim it to.
I’m taking some books and magazines that I haven’t had time to read.
I just want to walk on the beach and relax on my terrace that overlooks the Caribbean.
Then I’m going to come home and write something fierce. Or somethings fierce.
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Oh I put an Allied Interstate page in because it is a company without a moral center and much power. It’s Courting’s biggest search, and continues to get rants and people who help other people. I just provide the place and the initial post. That’s blogging at its finest to me and I am very proud.
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My blog can be read reverse chrono, through categories and countless other ways.
I will have the second half of the girl meets detectives story. The detectives in this story have nothing in common with my one and only true affair. I do forsee trends and therefore had an affair with a winning senate candidates bodyguard who was a recently retired city detective, eighteen years older than me, I was 26, it was 1976, and I have the it was the 70’s excuse.
This was several years before Patricia Hearst married her bodyguard and long before body guards and rock divas became fashionable. It was a good trend. I had fun, but refused to ever have an affair again on the he’s another woman’s husband principle.
Sometimes it isn’t fun being so principled, but I don’t think my best friend, Rafe, would be my best friend if we had ever…Once we started to kiss and laughed so much we couldn’t go any further. It would have been incest something he claims, still, to love.
This is a classic Pia post because it’s Saturday night, and just feel like being loose. I have been so pseudo/philosophical that after I had a perfect pedicure, I began to equate life as I want it to be to a pedicure. Walk in with messy feet, and walk out with beautiful feet. So simple, so impossible to replicate in real life.
If you live in Manhattan, it’s The Trevi near the AMC/Loews. It puts Pinkys, our large a cut above chain, to shame. I used to get my manicures and pedicures from Joan who now does Bergdorf blondes, and have been floundering from place to place for much of the last decade. Finally finally found a good place. Lucia never heard me talk nicely about one before. Let alone talk as if I had found my lost love.
Jonathon and his wife are in the process of adopting a child or children. Wish them luck.
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It’s One AM and if I go to sleep now I won’t wake up or be totally exhausted. Staying up all night keeps me stimulated or something. I couldn’t do it in grad school. I needed three or so hours of sleep. When I became a reporter I began to pull all nighters again and they make me feel alive. It’s strange.
Lucia and I saw The Good Shepard. It’s excellent. I can’t understand why Matt Damon basically has one expression yet is both a great actor and weirdly hot. So different from Ben Affleck, it’s hard to believe that they were and/or great friends. But that’s what people say about me and Lucia when they don’t say we’re the Bobbsey twins.
I want to see it again but not for awhile. There were somethings that I just didn’t get. It’s a two view movie. There were somethings that I think they got wrong, but they cleverly covered the incidents.
My first vacation without a laptop in four years. I was a reporter and there was always a reason that I needed it. Not now. While I’m extravagant in many ways I’m cheap in others and believe that cells were invented so that people wouldn’t use hotel phones.
This does go back to childhood as we stayed in many hotels and the one sin was using a room phone, unless calling another room.
I told everybody that I wouldn’t call because I want one non-connected week. Though of course I have my cell.
I’m beginning to hit the French Roast big time.. I didn’t watch The Golden Globes. Award shows, even them and they’re the best I think turn me off more and more each year
When I come back from Cancun I will probably see a movie every other day because there are so many theatres so close to my apartment, and it’s the way I relax best.
I forgot that Mexico is a foreign country, and that I can’t print out my ticket here. Mexico was always the foreign of countries to me as I spent a summer in Oaxaca, and the next summer traveling through it in high school. My father thought I should know what the country next door was like before venturing further afield. He really wanted me to explore and understand the third world.
I bought a guidebook to the Yucatan which had harsh things to say about Cancun. I have never been there. I stayed in Isla de Mujeres and Merida which was unlike any city I had been in Mexico. It was very Spanish colonial, not that I knew Spain then.
I want to take a nap more than anything. I can’t sleep much on planes though I love plane rides and airports. Still, with all the security and changes. I have a thread of emails arranging a room to be ready at noon or so instead of three PM and while I was at managed to upgrade to a junior oceanfront suite. I know how to upgrade, and I know how to write flowery emails.
I shouldn’t have said that I was going to Cancun but an exotic Mexican locale or something. The thing is I am a New Yorker and feel most at home around though not necessarily in crowds.
I feel very self-indulgent and keep on telling myself that I don’t have kids to send to college, and need this time to regroup, and chill. I must check the weather in Cancun for the first time in thirteen hours.
Just checked it and they had showers every day, but the chance of precipitation was 20 to 30% usually. I can live with those odds
Can I stream my consciousness anymore than this?
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I’m working on my memoir more than ever. But since I began the novel, the memoir flows easily. It’s even kinda linear.
My sister, bless her, is scared that somebody will steal the title Electric Haired Chick:but uh…
Wow! What’s that I see on the cover of the LI ppress? “50% Off at Michaels”? Wow, is that sale still on?
Ahem. But, seriously, Pia — aren’t you supposed to be on the beach? And, come to think of it, aren’t I?
Excellent post. I love the Long Island Press picture…
Loose is good.
You take care without that laptop now.
Nice words. I had my experience with a teacher like that, but it was in 15th grade. Stung bad. Oh well, made me better . . . I hope.
The notebook on the beach sounds like just the thing. I used to be anal about writing/typing every idea out in longhand, but now trust my brain a bit more.
Yes, fiction sounds like a perfect form for you. It can be a close cousin to the memoir, only you can tweak as much as you want. What freedom!
I hope you have a glorious time, Pia.
I thoroughly enjoy your blog. Keep up the great work. As an aspiring writer, you’re a true inspiration! 🙂
“Brilliant people write good fiction.” – Brilliant people who can write write good fiction…many brilliant people can’t write worth a damn.
“I have found my words before”
…digital fingerprint.. get one for this blog it is not an sure thing but it helps.
“Steal my lines and you will suffer, maybe not now, but someday, somehow. Remember I have a new found love for Stephen King, and some of his characters”
ha, ha – love it.
have a great vacation, pens and papers and all.
Well, Cliff Clavin said on Cheers that the secret to life was comfortable shoes. So maybe that’s closely related to beautiful feet.
Oh yeah, you didn’t know I knew nearly as much about Cheers as I do Seinfeld, did you? Now, my brain has little room left for anything else 🙂
Have a wonderful trip, Pia. Say hello to the ocean for me.
Can you explain why you don’t imitate styles?
It’ll wait until you get back. ¡Mucha allegria!
Good luck Jonathon!
Haha, I still have that LI Press in the credenza in my office. I’m keeping it too! It’s where I started and where I always come back for visits, kind of like home. Thanks for the sweet words. Have a great trip, rock, paper, scissors and all.
See you when you get back.
I’ve had calls from Allied Interstate on my machine everyday for the past two weeks or something. Have no idea why. Think they heard I read your blog 🙂
I hope that you have a fun and safe trip.
Never knew Cooper renounced the throne. I must be slipping.
I do not envy the poor fools who would anger you
Pia,those awards are very confusing.
If you really left with no computer, I will pray for you.
Have a fabulous time, and I’m sure you will come back and write even MORE of this fiercely good stuff.
have a good trip, soak up plenty of sun!
Excellent PR for your site! The pic is great. Congrats!
I hope you’re having fun in Cancun…and stay off the computer, while you’re there! 😛
OK, so are we going to write a story about Pia’s trip? I’ll start:
Arriving late at the airport, Pia leapt from the cab with a shoe on her left foot and one in her left hand. Hopping along, trying to get the right shoe on, she tripped over a stranger’s suitcase and fell against the stranger’s knees. The man crumpled on top of her, yelling “Good Golly, Miss Molly!”
Flashing the stranger a gorgeous smile, and blinding him in the process, Pia hurredly scooped up her belongings, along with a few of his, and continued to race towards the gate, reaching it just as the attendants were preparing to shut the doors leading to the jet-walk.
oy! not sure i can keep up with a story, Doug, my head is still spinning from this amazing post. even as my heart swells in gratitude that the very front page article featuring the one and only Pia is the reason G found her way to you, and me to her. or something like that… whatever — somehow i got a new best friend in the process, and the world gained another first rate blogger. i call that inspiration of the highest order! (Pia, if you’re sneaking a peek at your blog, i hope you’re having a perfect and lovely time on your vacation!) xox
“Hold the doors, hold the doors” Pia screamed frantically which the attendants didn’t seem to hear. Suddenly out of her mouth came a voice which seemed to come from outside of her “A wop bop a loo lah, a wop bam boo, Tutti Frutti, ah…” and with that the doors swung back open.
Pia looked a little confused but gratefully go on the plane and ordered a “what’s it called – Bloody Mary with out the blood. No, that’s not it – a bloody mary without the vodka. Yes! Virgin. Somehow that word eludes me.”
She settled in for what would be a bumpy flight.
Cancun is beautiful, really relax and enjoy. And Neva, I’m only too happy to have found my way to everybody. All because Pia came a Courtin!