the wasteland

August 1, 2011

so yesterday i went kind of nuts and made friend requests on facebook to a whole bunch of authors who don’t know me from adam, and one by one they have been kindly friending me back. Crazy to find your favorite authors on facebook and friend them. I got the sweetest note from Stephen McCauley after i wrote to tell him how inspiring he’d been to me, and he ended the note by saying he was going to check out my profile but that he doesn’t spend a lot of time on FB. And i thought that was such a great way to make it clear what all of us already know–that FB is ridiculous. But still it was fun to hear from him and it’s fun to see Joyce Maynard and Russell Banks and all of the others clicking to accept my friend request. But how humiliating, really.

enough of that. I’m trying to stay away from FB anyway, but Kenji just posted a few hundred more photos of me and now my little ego can’t help but take a peek to see what people think of my new hair cut. That boy is incorrigible, although i wish you all a boyfriend just like him because what is better than a boyfriend who can’t stop taking photographs of you and thinks they are all GOOD photographs, even the terrible ones? And believe me, a lot of them are really terrible.

So go out now and buy Ben Loory’s book Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day.

I move into my new house in one month, so it’s good bye to west hollywood and hello to north hollywood, which sounds so minor–changing west to north–but is really like saying goodbye paradise and hello wasteland, you pit of hell. But it’s my very own pit of hell and i plan on loving it there. I’m an urban pioneer!

that’s it.

yours, mary

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2 Responses to “the wasteland”

  1. Karen Perry Says:

    Just wanted you to know that I READ THIS and I liked it and I encourage you to write more here. weirdly, John also takes many photos of me and i find it strange because i have always been the one to take a million photos of everyone else and so he is reversing it on me and i can see how it could be kind of obnoxious, though i am sure i won’t stop. i don’t really like how i come off in a photographic depiction either! but since i do it to others, i can’t say “cut it out.” what goes around comes around. I think you are pretty photogenic for the most part…. everyone has a bad photo of themselves every now and then, especially the candid ones..

    I agree about FB but also check it because i have some dear friends that i only get to hear from once in awhile on FB so I am glad to have it. I think we should just not think too much about FB, pro or con, and put nothing there that could throw us into jail or under the watch of the watchers, and then just forget about it and utilize it for our own means.

    Very Sincerely,

    Karen Perry :]

    • mguterson Says:

      Hi karen perry!
      i love that you read my posts. You are the best!
      today i almost deleted my FB account. But that seems somewhat drastic. And besides, i love seeing what my kids are up to…..
      and karen perry, too!
      xoxoxo


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