The Weekly Atticus (02/03/2018)

Claim Your Poetic License to Ill | The Weekly Atticus

A recap of the week at Atticus Review, along with some extras.

Dear ,This week, I fell ill with some kind of virus situation, possibly that newest flu craze to hit the streets. It came on suddenly. Cold extremities, chills, headache, feeling of vertigo, off stomach. Despite all the outward signs, it didn't really sink in what was going on at first. Power of denial, innit. I drove to an appointment, zombied my way through it, and on the way back home finally began to accept what was happening. I stopped at CVS and bought Gatorade and water. When I got home, I cranked up the heat, and buried myself under three heavy blankets. I turned myself off. I shut down.It would be stupid to say I like being sick. Nobody likes being sick. And yet, there's a strange comfort in it. It's the way life takes on a stunning simplicity. The fundamentals—they come back into focus. Breathing. Huddling. Staying warm.And with a mind preoccupied with that stuff (breathing, not vomiting), the proprietor of that mind has no time to worry about bills, or grocery lists, or burned out car headlights. Or whether or not the thing he's writing is a symptom of his fetid white male privilege, which surely rains forth from him like sweat from David Foster Wallace's forehead. Or will he make it to 60, let alone 80, and even if he does, how many more surgeries is it going to require to get there, and is that shit even worth it just so he can play bingo with that 72-year-old firecracker Marjorie on Tuesday nights after Cialis-and-ice-cream sundaes in the dining hall at the Sunrise retirement community?Look, there's a special kind of focus that comes over your mind when your body is busy struggling to regulate its own temperature. The sickness calms the chatter, and it lets you see connections in things you didn't see before. Maybe you finally realize how that plot twist you introduced in chapter two of your novel-in-progress can be resolved in chapter eight.  Virginia Woolf knew about the transformative power of being ill, how it makes us see things differently, how it can even make us use language differently. She writes about this in a beautiful essay called "On Being Ill."

'I am in bed with influenza'—but what does that convey of the great experience; how the world has changed its shape; the tools of business grown remote; the sounds of festival become romantic like a merry-go-round heard across far fields; and friends have changed, some putting on a strange beauty, others deformed to the squatness of toads, while the whole landscape of life lies remote and fair, like the shore seen from a ship far out at sea...

The key is getting out of your normal state of mind and quieting the roar of everyday life. Of course, you don't need to get sick in order to do it. You can drink your way into it (which used to be my personal favorite). You can smoke your way into it. You can roll your way into it. Or you can choose a healthier alternative: meditate, walk in nature, drive someplace you've never been. Have sex in your car in a PATCO parking lot. Be scared. Do things to help you forget the things you're supposed to say and the ways you're supposed to say them. Make words like paint that you flick at a canvas. Invent neologisms. Be wiling to change. Speaking of, here's another bit of wisdom from Woolf: "A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living." (Sub "living" with "writing.")

I've always made words better when moderately out of my mind. It's entirely possible that this is only a story I tell myself, that in fact my ability to make words is neither aided nor diminished by being out of my mind. It might all simply have to do with how I feel about what I'm writing. Maybe being out of my mind just makes me appreciate the things that spew out of my mouth more. Still, it's a story my mind believes to be true and, as with most things involving my mind, I have a difficult time convincing it otherwise. It's a fine line, though, this out-of-mind business. Go too far into the sickness rabbit-hole and you end up firing off text messages to people with several not-so-great ideas. Not that I did that …from my overheated bedroom ... last Wednesday … at approximately 7pm.

Enjoy this week's stories. We're glad you're here.

David OlimpioPublisher and Editor-in-Chief

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THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam Gustavson

POETRY: PLANNED OBSOLESCENCEby C. Wade Bentely"Nature meant us to have just a few decades, time enoughfor puberty and propagation and seeing the kids safelyonto a soccer team before we were eaten by a giant kangaroo, saber-toothed cat, or fellow primate, or more slowly felledby dengue fever or gingivitis."READ ON

CNF: WISHING WELLby Elizabeth O’Brien*Part of our series Superunknown: Stories About Songs"The well is his safe, secret space, free of overstimulating complications, but it’s also a punishment he imposes upon himself. This is what I do, I sometimes think: I crawl down into wells, and then I’m never sure how—or if—I’ll be able to get out of them again."READ ON

FICTION: THE OLD WOMAN AND HER DOGby Bunkong Tuon"When Aunt Bonavary saw the policeman at the door, she burst in tears. With his dark uniform and a gun strapped to his waist, he was the authority figure, and for my aunt, authority meant Angkar, the Khmer Rouge government that took away her uncle and brother and starved to death her sister, murdered her friends and neighbors."READ ON

BOOK REVIEW: THE BEAUTY OF OBJECTS, TOUGH WOMEN, AND BLUEA review of DRUGSTORE BLUE by Susana H. CaseReview by Anya Silver"Drugstore Blue is a book for goddesses and the men who love them: women who are gritty, imperfect, no doubt infuriating, but soaked through with exuberance and the never-ending search for pleasure."READ ON

FILM REVIEW: POWER WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECT ITA review of PHANTOM THREAD from Paul Thomas AndersonReview by Alison Lanier"If you drained all the healthy trust from Professor Marston and the Wonder Women and cranked the art direction up ten notches, you might end up with the uneasy, fascinating balance of Phantom Thread. It isn’t a progressive movie or a movie with a historically-thrilling insight or message, as Oscar movies are wont to be. Instead it’s quite simply an extremely well-made movie crafted with care, passion, and startling turns."READ ON

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