art – Rasmenian Detritus

I Feel So Different

September 26, 2023August 29, 2024 by RasmeniaNo Comments

People crowd the street, most of them women with flecks of silver in their hair and lines on their face etching a map back to who they used to be: young women full of joy and anguish. Weird, creative girls trying to survive the constant pressure of what parents, friends, schools, and institutions said they couldn’t and shouldn’t do. Lonely girls who want to scream and dance and smash convention and patriarchy but feel powerless to do so.The music in the street gets louder and one woman in the crowd, a grandmother in leather and Doc Martens, pounds on her heart with her fist, eyes closed, oblivious to all those around her as she sings along with Sinéad:I'll remember it And Dublin in a rainstorm And sitting in the long grass in summer Keeping warm I'll remember it Every restless night We were so young then We thought that everything We could possibly do was right Then we moved Stolen...

That Shiny Newfangled Technology Can’t Do the Work for You

July 3, 2023August 29, 2024 by RasmeniaNo Comments

The venue reeks of cheap coffee. Creaks and groans of tables and chairs dragging on the hardwood floor echo, bouncing off the high ceiling. Barely audible beneath it all is the mumbling of socially awkward writers mingling in the early morning.The chipped folding tables are covered with cloths. Stacks of books and displays are propped up, tip over, then propped up again. Chatter and laughter rise in volume proportional to the increasing number of bodies.A quiet little man with a single stack of books stands next to his wife, who looks at no one and speaks to no one. He shows me his book. Shows me photos of himself with his book. Tells me how impressed people are with his work. And so on.This guy, my neighbor for the day, nods toward my carefully laid-out display of books. My short story trilogy, finally complete.“How long did these take you to write?”The way he asks this, it feels like a trick...

Nous Sommes Charlie

January 9, 2015January 9, 2015 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

Our little house in the French countryside sits somewhere between Paris and Chartres. Barely visible from the road, it hides in the middle of several tall pine trees where squirrels, pheasants and frogs bounce around doing things that busy animals do. Upstairs, in the attic of our house and in my husband Olivier's home office are several tall stacks of newspapers.Newspapers that look like this:When I moved to Paris in 2006, Olivier had these papers stacked all around our tiny apartment in Montmarte. "What's up with these?" I'd wondered. He told me they were a satirical newspaper, which didn't surprise me at all because he and I met through our mutual love of The Onion. One of the reasons we ended up as a married couple in the first place was due to our love of mockery and funny shit.As time went on, I realized he wasn't just a fan of the newspaper. He was fucking bonkers about it. He...

Self-Preservation Can Look the Same as Being a Dick. But It Isn’t.

October 10, 2013November 24, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

"Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are." -Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire "When you're struggling with something, look at all the people around you and realize that every single person you see is struggling with something, and to them, it's just as hard as what you're going through." -Nicholas Sparks * * * Some people think I'm mean. They don't always use that word. Sometimes they say "hardass." Other times, they say "cold," "callous" or "hard."It doesn't hurt my feelings. Not because I'm cold and unfeeling, but because they're wrong. The adjectives people use to describe us are usually inaccurate. I'll tell you a story from a few years ago about why that is.I know a couple of women. Let's call them Patty and Selma.I've known Patty and Selma for most of my life (though they aren't a part of my...