Alison profile picture

Alison

alisonlmiller

About Me

A rich creamy blend of clown and silent film star, with a dollop of cartoon, and just a dash of Debbie Reynolds mixed in at the last possible moment. Maybe a little I don't know what on the side.Oh, and my favorite words are flummox and plumb bob.

Enticing Quote:

"All I know is Love,
And I find my heart infite
And Everywhere!"

- Hafiz, Sufi poet

My Interests

Always: Love, compassion, respect, sincerity, forgiveness (the hardest one), faith (also hard), kindness, gratitude, but not hope (I'm building on rocks from now on). Walking the talk. Failing a lot. Living passionately. Moxie. Gumption. Verve. Feminism.

Right now: Decorating, exploring my neighborhood, living poorly (but creatively!), thumbing through cookbooks for recipes for dinner parties, tea parties, pizza parties, un-birthday parties. "Upcycling." Box/community/urban gardens.

In general: reading and writing (especially hyperfiction, nonlinear fiction, short fiction and essays), making things, learning things, aspects of time, photo-based art, performance art, Total Artwork, paper, intense conversation, laughing heartily/listening to laughter, systems, cognitive science, augmented humans/cyborgs, haptics, the body, specimens/specimen-making, trees and bark and branches and leaves, ice, swarms, thunderstorms, walking for entertainment, health and meditative purposes, thrift stores and flea markets and garage sales (the pursuit of the undiscovered!), the ecstatic, systemic thinking, growth, renewal, cycles, etc.

I'd like to meet:

Tortoises and people worth trusting. Those who treat you like they mean it. Also, sheer brilliance, Artificial Linguistic Entities, visionaries, artists, scientists, someone who will walk me to my car, and anyone who looks good in a skinny tie. Oh, yeah, and a man who listens.

Music:

In general: Pre-disco soul, r&b and funk, singer-songwriters, angsty girl groups of the '60s, rockabilly, psychobilly, alt-country, old country, honky-tonk, swampy backwoods stuff, and folk.

In particular: Cowboy Junkies, Joni Mitchell, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Tanya Tucker, Miles Davis, Devil Doll, Royal Trux, Woody Guthrie, Jude, Sinead O'Connor, K.D. Lang, X, Bob Dylan, John Prine, The Carpenters, Laura Nyro, Carole King, James Taylor, Dolly Parton, Beth Orton, Kasey Chambers, Kristin Hersh, Gillian Welch, Juliana Hatfield, Marvin Gaye, Solomon Burke, Stevie Wonder, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Frank Zappa, Cheap Trick, The Fifth Dimension, The Jackson Five, Dave Brubeck, Sam Cooke, Aimee Mann, Kate Bush, spirituals, Dusty Springfield, Rush (shut up), anything nostalgic (lots of grunge and Janis Joplin), and many others.

Movies:

Old movies, Funny movies, Quirky movies, Pretty Movies
Some movies:
The Science of Sleep
The Women
T he Cooler
Marty
Anything with Gene Wilder
Danny DeVito movies
Rebel Without a Cause
West Side Story
Singing in the Rain
Other musicals
Scoop
Qui etes-vous, Polly Maggoo?
Run Lola Run
I Heart Huckabees
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Singles
Amelie
Secretary
The Driver's Seat
Saved!
Some Like It Hot
200 Cigarettes
The Nutty Professor (w/ Jerry Lewis)
The Last Unicorn
Beetlejuice
V for Vendetta
Network
It Happened One Night
Silent films like Nosferatu and Daddy-Long-Legs
The Strange Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Adventures in Babysitting
Gaslight!
The Ladies' Man (w/ Jerry Lewis)
Etc. And more.
And does anyone else agree that Gene Hackman is completely underrated as a comedic actor?

Television:

On Boston Legal - This show is so refreshingly absurd, sweetly neurotic, politically prescient, and astonishingly irreverent that it is worth an hour of your time each week. Plus, the character acting is phenomenal (and bizarre)!

Books:

Currently Reading: Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag.

Involved With:

    Virginia Woolf Dave Eggers Frankenstein Jane Austen A Room with a View William Faulkner (especially As I Lay Dying) Ernest Hemingway Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Vladimir Nabokov Gertrude Stein Julia Kristeva Anita Brookner Written on the Body (Jeanette Winterson) Anais Nin Steve Tomasula Marguerite Duras (especially The Malady of Death) Georges Bataille Arthur Rimbaud Ralph Berry Catch-22 Margaret Atwood (so brilliant) The House on Mango Street (Cisneros) Blueberries for Sal (of course I say Al) Haruki Murakami Zilpha Keatley Snyder

...and more, always more.

Heroes:

Believers, "smart and well-informed" women, Gertrude Stein, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dolly Parton, Jane Austen, Miss Piggy, Sacagawea.

My Blog

black tuesday

It is actually Monday, but pay that no nevermind... I have noticed an energy this election season that did not exist during the past two presidential elections.*  Hope emanates fro...
Posted by Alison on Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:44:00 PST

bumber sticker

While waiting at a stoplight, I noticed an obnoxious bumber sticker on the car ahead of me.  It read, "God is Pro-Life."  It’s not the first time I’ve seen this particular phrase...
Posted by Alison on Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:33:00 PST

i can make the river (what i overheard)

Tested like never before - Through shark’s teeth and heavy cloud cover, I spot a break in the clouds. Bust through the ceiling; Find some way! Pull into a high G climb, And make a split-s...
Posted by Alison on Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:02:00 PST

red headed stranger

Desire:  To start a Willie Nelson tribute band.
Posted by Alison on Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:55:00 PST

yes

I am.        &n bsp;         &n bsp;         &n bsp;  &nbs...
Posted by Alison on Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:22:00 PST

today

The world is a roughly shaken snowglobe.
Posted by Alison on Tue, 29 Jan 2008 02:20:00 PST

logic of dreams

Upon waking, I lie in private reverie, intoxicated by the memory of my dreams.  I am often astounded by the absurdity, the randomness, the sheer madness of them.  La...
Posted by Alison on Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:03:00 PST

letter to the editor update

Hey, my letter was printed in the Saturday, January 19 edition of the KC Star.  It's not quite the same as getting a story accepted to a well-respected writing journal, but I'm still excited.
Posted by Alison on Mon, 21 Jan 2008 08:02:00 PST

letter to the editor - kc star

I sent a slightly different version of the blog I wrote about Hillary's tears to the Kansas City Star this week, as a letter to the editor.  I don't know if it was printed, but it was p...
Posted by Alison on Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:19:00 PST

things that irritate me

1. Women who say they don't like other women.  Girls, we have to care about and support each other, c'mon!! 2.  When people refer to their eyes as shit brown.  ...
Posted by Alison on Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:52:00 PST