Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's Magazine, in his September editorial, covers the Republican National Convention. Except for one thing-- it only starts tonight. Apparently big-time editors have special time travel powers.
I really don't understand this at all. Was it just an honest mistake, writing the whole thing in the past tense? Lapham isn't admitting much beyond the fact that is was a "serious mistake". I don't understand and my faith in Lapham's journalistic integrity won't let me think he purposefully was pretending to have witnessed the RNC. Was it an attempt at literary innovation? Was it a bit of creative writing, this futuristic editorial?
Wha?
8/29/2004
scenes from a chain bookstore
Sunday afternoon. Borders Books and Music. Somewhere on Long Island, NY
Two sisters sit at a table in the cafe drinking Chai Lattes. One works on an iBook, the other is meticulously copying out Latin conjugations onto small index cards attached to a keychain. I'm the one with the laptop. The other is my little sister, Caroline.
Caroline informs me that she is working on "the genitive of the whole. As in 'more of the money.'” Or something. I know, it sounds kinda dirty, right?
I’m writing a paper I started in December 2003. Don’t ask.
She slides a napkin toward me. It reads, “check out the guy and his hat at the table to your right. hmmm…”
I look. It’s a badass mo-fo of a safari hat. She’s holding her hand over her mouth; her eyes are giggling. I shrug my shoulders. “Wow,” I mouth. “Indoors?”
“at all??” she returns.
“if ever—but indoors?” feeling bad, excusing him.
“I’m gonna stick with—at all???”
I try to think of when it would be appropriate to wear such a hat. “In a canoe??”
She cracks up.
She begins reciting me the conjugations for the word “this," and she’s honking and hissing and hiking and god knows what else: “hunc, hanc, hoc. Huius huis huius.”
I think classicists must be born, not made. She surprised us all when she came home from her first year at UPenn rapturous about Roman history with a passion she'd previously reserved for makeup and the Yankees. We always knew she was smart...but she passed an intensive course in ancient greek with honors this summer. Don't let the pretty blond hair fool you. She's a grammar machine.
Two sisters sit at a table in the cafe drinking Chai Lattes. One works on an iBook, the other is meticulously copying out Latin conjugations onto small index cards attached to a keychain. I'm the one with the laptop. The other is my little sister, Caroline.
Caroline informs me that she is working on "the genitive of the whole. As in 'more of the money.'” Or something. I know, it sounds kinda dirty, right?
I’m writing a paper I started in December 2003. Don’t ask.
She slides a napkin toward me. It reads, “check out the guy and his hat at the table to your right. hmmm…”
I look. It’s a badass mo-fo of a safari hat. She’s holding her hand over her mouth; her eyes are giggling. I shrug my shoulders. “Wow,” I mouth. “Indoors?”
“at all??” she returns.
“if ever—but indoors?” feeling bad, excusing him.
“I’m gonna stick with—at all???”
I try to think of when it would be appropriate to wear such a hat. “In a canoe??”
She cracks up.
She begins reciting me the conjugations for the word “this," and she’s honking and hissing and hiking and god knows what else: “hunc, hanc, hoc. Huius huis huius.”
I think classicists must be born, not made. She surprised us all when she came home from her first year at UPenn rapturous about Roman history with a passion she'd previously reserved for makeup and the Yankees. We always knew she was smart...but she passed an intensive course in ancient greek with honors this summer. Don't let the pretty blond hair fool you. She's a grammar machine.
8/26/2004
Practical Criticism
In 1929, I.A. Richards published the results of an experiment in poetry he had been conducting for some years as a Lecturer at Cambridge. The game was this: he handed out a packet of four poems (minus their titles and authors), asking each student to comment freely upon them. The result: almost universal condemnation of each poem, explanations of why it is terrible, with wickedly funny lines attempting to pin down the author: "a spinster sentimentally inclined, or perhaps Wordsworth."
I'm sort of a novice at the whole poetry game, though, and I feel on much more solid ground when assessing novels. Take this guy. If offered his job I'm not sure if I'd cry with happiness or run away screaming-- it's that kind of job. As a judge for the Booker Prize, he has to read the 126 novels on the long list ("I simply spent a few months on a balcony in Budapest tanning and perusing"). He was most amazed by "the number of novels that were pointless."
I know exactly what he means. I'm presently reviewing several novels that fit that description. But on an analytic level, what exactly IS the point of a novel? What does it have to do to have a point?
Finally, one more link for you: the Mechanicals scene in "Midsummer Night's Dream" wins for the funniest scene in all of Shakespeare.
I'm sort of a novice at the whole poetry game, though, and I feel on much more solid ground when assessing novels. Take this guy. If offered his job I'm not sure if I'd cry with happiness or run away screaming-- it's that kind of job. As a judge for the Booker Prize, he has to read the 126 novels on the long list ("I simply spent a few months on a balcony in Budapest tanning and perusing"). He was most amazed by "the number of novels that were pointless."
I know exactly what he means. I'm presently reviewing several novels that fit that description. But on an analytic level, what exactly IS the point of a novel? What does it have to do to have a point?
Finally, one more link for you: the Mechanicals scene in "Midsummer Night's Dream" wins for the funniest scene in all of Shakespeare.
8/21/2004
Lost in translation
The controversy over the Parshley/Knopf translation of The Second Sex wages on in the NY Times...
8/18/2004
Walter Benjamin, 'Post No Bills':
The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses
I. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.
II. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.
III. In your working conditions, avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an étude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction simple enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.
IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indespensible.
V. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.
VI. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.
VII. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honor requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.
VIII. Fill the lacunae in your inspiration by tidily copying out what you have already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.
IX. Nulla dies sine linea - but there may well be weeks.
X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.
XI. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.
XII. Stages of composition: idea - style - writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration; style fetters the idea; writing pays off style.
XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.
I. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.
II. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.
III. In your working conditions, avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an étude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction simple enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.
IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indespensible.
V. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.
VI. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.
VII. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honor requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.
VIII. Fill the lacunae in your inspiration by tidily copying out what you have already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.
IX. Nulla dies sine linea - but there may well be weeks.
X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.
XI. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.
XII. Stages of composition: idea - style - writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration; style fetters the idea; writing pays off style.
XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.
8/17/2004
in case you're interested, the polite yet disappointed review I mentioned I was writing last month has just run in Consciousness, Literature, and the Arts.
8/16/2004
passport essay
the draft of my introduction for the paper I have to write to get into the comprehensive examination I'm taking on friday:
Pride and Prejudice gracefully lends itself to a variety of critical readings; for the purposes of this paper I have chosen to use the methodologies associated with Marxist, deconstructionist, and feminist schools of critical theory. In a novel seemingly so occupied with love and matrimony, I am concerned with the way the text stands in relation to “history,” and through my readings I aim to expose the social and financial anxieties driving the narrative. These three critical approaches provide contrasting systems of uncovering these anxieties, and each yields its own nuanced, destabilizing reading of the text.
how bout that, huh? you're gonna see P&P in an entirely new light by the time I'm through with it!
Pride and Prejudice gracefully lends itself to a variety of critical readings; for the purposes of this paper I have chosen to use the methodologies associated with Marxist, deconstructionist, and feminist schools of critical theory. In a novel seemingly so occupied with love and matrimony, I am concerned with the way the text stands in relation to “history,” and through my readings I aim to expose the social and financial anxieties driving the narrative. These three critical approaches provide contrasting systems of uncovering these anxieties, and each yields its own nuanced, destabilizing reading of the text.
how bout that, huh? you're gonna see P&P in an entirely new light by the time I'm through with it!
8/15/2004
Song of Solomon redux
from chapter 5:
5. I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
6. I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
7. The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
8. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.
9. What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?
5. I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
6. I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
7. The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
8. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.
9. What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?
8/13/2004
through the ADL down the well
...for having no fucking sense of humor!
The Jewish Week reports that members of the American Jewish community and their watchdog counterparts at the ADL were "horrified" at a scene featured on Da Ali G Show two weeks ago, in which Borat the Kazakhastani sings a song at an open mike night in some backwoods bar in Bumblefuck, USA called "Throw the Jew Down the Well."
[Ed. I have since had it on authority that "Bumblefuck, USA" is actually none other than Tuscon, AZ! Go figure!]
It was hilarious! The red-neck patrons of said establishment at first looked somewhat skeptical but mainly joined in with gusto, hooting and hollering and whooping it up with Borat.
The ADL lodged an official complaint with HBO: “While we understand this scene was an attempt to show how easily a group of ordinary people can be encouraged to join in an anti-Semitic chorus,” the letter read, “we are concerned that the irony may have been lost on some of your audience … in attempting to expose bigotry and prejudice you also bear a responsibility to be sensitive.”
Did you get that, Borat? you have to be sensitive, ok? otherwise people's feelings might get hurt.
Watch the skit here.
The Jewish Week reports that members of the American Jewish community and their watchdog counterparts at the ADL were "horrified" at a scene featured on Da Ali G Show two weeks ago, in which Borat the Kazakhastani sings a song at an open mike night in some backwoods bar in Bumblefuck, USA called "Throw the Jew Down the Well."
[Ed. I have since had it on authority that "Bumblefuck, USA" is actually none other than Tuscon, AZ! Go figure!]
It was hilarious! The red-neck patrons of said establishment at first looked somewhat skeptical but mainly joined in with gusto, hooting and hollering and whooping it up with Borat.
The ADL lodged an official complaint with HBO: “While we understand this scene was an attempt to show how easily a group of ordinary people can be encouraged to join in an anti-Semitic chorus,” the letter read, “we are concerned that the irony may have been lost on some of your audience … in attempting to expose bigotry and prejudice you also bear a responsibility to be sensitive.”
Did you get that, Borat? you have to be sensitive, ok? otherwise people's feelings might get hurt.
Watch the skit here.
8/12/2004
thank you, hotmail!
oooooh. Now I have 2000 MB of storage in my Hotmail account, after years of making do with much less than that! Yahoo recently upgraded-- it was only a matter of tim before Hotmail followed suit! Now I's happy...I can hold onto all the messages I want to, hassle-free!
8/11/2004
"hey, are you a dreamer?
Wiley: Yeah.
Wanderer: I haven't seen too many of you around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers..."
(dialogue courtesy of this rocking site)
I'm trying to figure out what to make of the film "Waking Life," which I watched last week, and which has stayed with me. It's a wacky Richard Linklater film that was released, I believe, right after September 11th, and consequently I think it didn't get much notice...(that being an extremely tough time for dreamers--then again didn't we all feel like we were in some kind of incredibly wicked nightmare?).
Brief description: having first filmed with real actors and locations, linklater and his team of animators went back and colored over the film, creating a blend between live action and animation. No shot is stable at the onset of the film; everything seems sort of wavy (dare I say, dream-like?), but as the story goes forward, things become even more imperceptible and unstable. We are in the dream sequence of an unnamed college student (who we call wiley because that's the actor's name, who you might recognize from Linklater's 1995 "dazed and confused"). wiley is having the most awesome of dreams--he meets a succession of fascinating (and sometimes pretentious) people who share with him their existential and ontological philosophies. It's almost too much information to take in at one sitting; I watched the film incrementally over several days.
Here's my take off the top of my head... The film is clearly trying to blur the line between what is “reality” and what is a “dream,” maybe as consolation for the loneliness and alienation of “real” or “waking” life. Dreams, in general, and in this film, are an attempt to do fulfill E.M. Forster's famous commandment: “only connect.” No stranger to British Modernism, Wiley reveals himself to be a Lawrence fan, quoting him to a girl (who could only be described as his "dream girl" with tongue firmly in cheek) with medusa-like red hair, which flames into dreadlocks as she talks. Wiley likes her, but he can’t nail her, because she’s only a dream. All he can do is ask her what it’s like to be a character in a dream, as if she will be able to reveal something that him that is outside his subjectivity. This gesture is unfulfillable. It, along with the impossibility of consummating his attraction to her, indicates that there is a certain feeling of impotence at the heart of the film—perhaps it would not be out of place to read it as a masculine impotence, since the film depicts the fragments and figments of one male’s consciousness.
It’s ultimately a film about impossibilities; about frustrations; about disappointments (similar to Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” and its successor, “Before Sunset.”) In fact, the protagonists of “Before Sunrise” appear in this film, half-clothed in blankets, forever philosophizing in the bedroom (although there is no De Sade lurking nearby except the torture of time passing and the impossibility of their relationship in "reality").
The other dreamers in the film are equally frustrated. Political statements about, but they are all impossible political statements calling for total revolution and a Lawrentian destruction of society. In fact, Lawrence lurks everywhere, and that might be why the film sometimes feels too precious. I mean, I loved this film, and I love Lawrence, but I can't spend too much time with either of them without feeling like I'm being stifled.
I have a lot more to say on this but not much time... I'm trying to write a Marxist reading of Pride and Prejudice (stop laughing) for the comps. Let me know what you think of the film (or my reading of it); leave a comment!
Wanderer: I haven't seen too many of you around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers..."
(dialogue courtesy of this rocking site)
I'm trying to figure out what to make of the film "Waking Life," which I watched last week, and which has stayed with me. It's a wacky Richard Linklater film that was released, I believe, right after September 11th, and consequently I think it didn't get much notice...(that being an extremely tough time for dreamers--then again didn't we all feel like we were in some kind of incredibly wicked nightmare?).
Brief description: having first filmed with real actors and locations, linklater and his team of animators went back and colored over the film, creating a blend between live action and animation. No shot is stable at the onset of the film; everything seems sort of wavy (dare I say, dream-like?), but as the story goes forward, things become even more imperceptible and unstable. We are in the dream sequence of an unnamed college student (who we call wiley because that's the actor's name, who you might recognize from Linklater's 1995 "dazed and confused"). wiley is having the most awesome of dreams--he meets a succession of fascinating (and sometimes pretentious) people who share with him their existential and ontological philosophies. It's almost too much information to take in at one sitting; I watched the film incrementally over several days.
Here's my take off the top of my head... The film is clearly trying to blur the line between what is “reality” and what is a “dream,” maybe as consolation for the loneliness and alienation of “real” or “waking” life. Dreams, in general, and in this film, are an attempt to do fulfill E.M. Forster's famous commandment: “only connect.” No stranger to British Modernism, Wiley reveals himself to be a Lawrence fan, quoting him to a girl (who could only be described as his "dream girl" with tongue firmly in cheek) with medusa-like red hair, which flames into dreadlocks as she talks. Wiley likes her, but he can’t nail her, because she’s only a dream. All he can do is ask her what it’s like to be a character in a dream, as if she will be able to reveal something that him that is outside his subjectivity. This gesture is unfulfillable. It, along with the impossibility of consummating his attraction to her, indicates that there is a certain feeling of impotence at the heart of the film—perhaps it would not be out of place to read it as a masculine impotence, since the film depicts the fragments and figments of one male’s consciousness.
It’s ultimately a film about impossibilities; about frustrations; about disappointments (similar to Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” and its successor, “Before Sunset.”) In fact, the protagonists of “Before Sunrise” appear in this film, half-clothed in blankets, forever philosophizing in the bedroom (although there is no De Sade lurking nearby except the torture of time passing and the impossibility of their relationship in "reality").
The other dreamers in the film are equally frustrated. Political statements about, but they are all impossible political statements calling for total revolution and a Lawrentian destruction of society. In fact, Lawrence lurks everywhere, and that might be why the film sometimes feels too precious. I mean, I loved this film, and I love Lawrence, but I can't spend too much time with either of them without feeling like I'm being stifled.
I have a lot more to say on this but not much time... I'm trying to write a Marxist reading of Pride and Prejudice (stop laughing) for the comps. Let me know what you think of the film (or my reading of it); leave a comment!
8/09/2004
girl in the bubble
ok... until someone told me I didn't know that "the manachurian candidate" was playing in movie theaters, that rick james died, or that apparently there is some kind of terrorist threat against NY. That's how out of the loop I am. I do start every morning by checking out www.nytimes.com, but somehow all the news that's fit to print isn't the kind of news that matters or that I need to know to get by in daily life.
however, I was aware, before the Times ran a story on it today, that the Village Voice scrapped half of its staff (reducing it, to approximate the words of the ever-adorable Choire Sicha, to "three interns and a dog"), including Adrian Brody's mom (photog Sylvia Plachy, not to be confused of course with poet Sylvia Plath) and GC professor Alisa Solomon and some other people whose names escape me (I've got comps on the brain, people, comps, I say, so cut me some slack).
Still and all...here's an interesting article by some chick who'll probably get canned soon too on "The changing notions of what students need to know." Some interesting points in here-- the issue with the Columbia core, in my opinion, having observed it firsthand from across the street at Barnard where--ha ha!-- we could construct our own classes to fulfill our core requirements, is not that they're not learning what they need to learn to be "informed global citizens," but rather that they're getting Norton Anthologies crammed down their throats. I'm not kidding, they actually get the physical books rammed down their throats til they choke on them.
CUNY gets mad props and a John Jay prof gets a soundbite in there-- but who is JJ to talk?? We don't even have an English major! (don't worry kids, I'm on it, there's a task force in position to propose one, and I am part of that historic effort). The english major at JJ was abolished something like 15 years ago...if not for the valuable service we provide in teaching the young 'uns to write papers, there'd be naught but tumbleweeds blowing through the halls of what used to be the english department.
however, I was aware, before the Times ran a story on it today, that the Village Voice scrapped half of its staff (reducing it, to approximate the words of the ever-adorable Choire Sicha, to "three interns and a dog"), including Adrian Brody's mom (photog Sylvia Plachy, not to be confused of course with poet Sylvia Plath) and GC professor Alisa Solomon and some other people whose names escape me (I've got comps on the brain, people, comps, I say, so cut me some slack).
Still and all...here's an interesting article by some chick who'll probably get canned soon too on "The changing notions of what students need to know." Some interesting points in here-- the issue with the Columbia core, in my opinion, having observed it firsthand from across the street at Barnard where--ha ha!-- we could construct our own classes to fulfill our core requirements, is not that they're not learning what they need to learn to be "informed global citizens," but rather that they're getting Norton Anthologies crammed down their throats. I'm not kidding, they actually get the physical books rammed down their throats til they choke on them.
CUNY gets mad props and a John Jay prof gets a soundbite in there-- but who is JJ to talk?? We don't even have an English major! (don't worry kids, I'm on it, there's a task force in position to propose one, and I am part of that historic effort). The english major at JJ was abolished something like 15 years ago...if not for the valuable service we provide in teaching the young 'uns to write papers, there'd be naught but tumbleweeds blowing through the halls of what used to be the english department.
8/08/2004
no time for the haters
in case you didn't already see this on gawker or gothamist...tricia romano totally hates NYC. reading her rant about all that is wrong with this place made me:
a. glad to be leaving it
b. defensive and irritated
c. a little bit of both
if you answered c, I bet you're really good at standardized tests.
another question for you:
why am I blogging instead of writing my modernism paper?
a. yes
b. no
c. n/a
a. glad to be leaving it
b. defensive and irritated
c. a little bit of both
if you answered c, I bet you're really good at standardized tests.
another question for you:
why am I blogging instead of writing my modernism paper?
a. yes
b. no
c. n/a
pirates are cool
I've been reading "Benito Cereno" and feeling the lure of the open sea, me pretty, arrrr. I never really had a thing for Johnny Depp until he did "Pirates of the Caribbean." And that was always my favorite ride at Disney World. For your nautical titillation:
"Meantime Captain Delano hailed his own vessel, ordering the ports up, and the guns run out. But by this time the cable of the San Domick had been cut; and the fag-end, in lashing out, whipped away the canvas shroud about the beak, suddenly revealing, as the bleached hull swung round towards the open ocean, death for the figure-head, in a human skeleton; chalky comment on the chalked words below, 'Follow your leader.'
"At the sight, Don Benito, covering his face, wailed out: 'Tis he, Aranda! my murdered, unburied friend!'" (149)
(obviously, to say that "Benito Cereno" is a story about pirates is to be vastly reductive. homosocial racist pirates aren't as cool as just regular pirates)
[Ed.: having just finished reading the novella in its entirety, I would like to mention that I don't think it's about pirates at all. mutiny and a subversion of the master-slave dialectic, yes; pirates, not so much. but pirates are still cool. so's melville.]
"Meantime Captain Delano hailed his own vessel, ordering the ports up, and the guns run out. But by this time the cable of the San Domick had been cut; and the fag-end, in lashing out, whipped away the canvas shroud about the beak, suddenly revealing, as the bleached hull swung round towards the open ocean, death for the figure-head, in a human skeleton; chalky comment on the chalked words below, 'Follow your leader.'
"At the sight, Don Benito, covering his face, wailed out: 'Tis he, Aranda! my murdered, unburied friend!'" (149)
(obviously, to say that "Benito Cereno" is a story about pirates is to be vastly reductive. homosocial racist pirates aren't as cool as just regular pirates)
[Ed.: having just finished reading the novella in its entirety, I would like to mention that I don't think it's about pirates at all. mutiny and a subversion of the master-slave dialectic, yes; pirates, not so much. but pirates are still cool. so's melville.]
8/07/2004
Rudyard Kipling, yogi?
Does anyone else find it incongruous and somewhat ironic that there is a Rudyard Kipling poem ("If")tacked up on the bulletin board at my yoga center, all inspirational-like? "White Man's Burden" indeed!
8/06/2004
bocken und gruben, part deux
upon further analysis, I've now concluded that the phrase Harald Waiglein is singing (see "bocken und gruben," below) is actually:
feel my life/*pumping through me*
that makes more sense than "bopping and grooving"! It's still a phat song, yo.
feel my life/*pumping through me*
that makes more sense than "bopping and grooving"! It's still a phat song, yo.
8/05/2004
funny mommy
and now, a joke from my mom (this seems to be family week, doesn't it?)
my mother had to send me a copy of my birth certificate so I can go to the french consulate and get my long-stay visa. she stuck a post-it on the photocopy she mailed me, informing me that fyi, I was born on a wednesday at 5:34 am. "that was probably the last time you were up that early," she joked. yuk yuk yuk. thanks mom :) um...I think I had to wake up that early to catch a flight a couple of times...that's about it...
actually 5:30 am is one of my favorite times to be awake. everything is so quiet! going out onto the streets of manhattan-- there are a few cars, but for the most part it's quite still, and the slightest sound--a truck braking for a traffic light; a taxi passing by; the trunk of the car shutting as we load in our suitcases--is vast. the sky is silvery blue, run through with a trace of morning light here and there. the buildings, the stores--all sleeping. occasional joggers. peace prevails.
however, try to wake me up before 7:00 on an average morning and you might receive a black eye for your trouble.
my mother had to send me a copy of my birth certificate so I can go to the french consulate and get my long-stay visa. she stuck a post-it on the photocopy she mailed me, informing me that fyi, I was born on a wednesday at 5:34 am. "that was probably the last time you were up that early," she joked. yuk yuk yuk. thanks mom :) um...I think I had to wake up that early to catch a flight a couple of times...that's about it...
actually 5:30 am is one of my favorite times to be awake. everything is so quiet! going out onto the streets of manhattan-- there are a few cars, but for the most part it's quite still, and the slightest sound--a truck braking for a traffic light; a taxi passing by; the trunk of the car shutting as we load in our suitcases--is vast. the sky is silvery blue, run through with a trace of morning light here and there. the buildings, the stores--all sleeping. occasional joggers. peace prevails.
however, try to wake me up before 7:00 on an average morning and you might receive a black eye for your trouble.
8/04/2004
why paris is like yoga, reason #43
I leave for Paris in six and a half weeks. I can’t BELIEVE I’m going to paris for a year, and I'm beginning to get nervous. I’ve been feeling so blasé up 'til now….this is the third time I’ve picked up and gone to paris for a prolonged period of time, and it’s not a big deal at this point—not any scarier than going and living in California, say. But tonight I started thinking about the way I feel when I’m living over there… it feels so far away; it feels so thick. I love it beyond all rationality. And yet it’s so scary… kind of like doing a headstand in yoga class. You’re scared to death before you actually have to throw your legs up into the air—it’s a leap of faith that you take, and you assume you won't get killed in the process, but it's still scary. Once you’re up, you adjust, even though all the blood is rushing to your head and it’s difficult to learn how to breathe upside-down. And then you start to feel like a warrior, capable of anything. The adreneline is fantastic, and it leaves you energized, creative, flushed, and best of all—more alive than you were when you were scared. Some people bungee-jump. I move to Paris.
8/03/2004
your maitresse
in Hay-on-Wye, Wales...the secondhand book capital of the world! 50 book shops in one quaint Welsh village! More pictures to come.
8/02/2004
bocken und gruben?
disclaimer: if you've never seen "Before Sunrise" this post will not make sense.
so I bought the soundtrack to "Before Sunset" and was ridiculously pleased to find that the producers included the songs from "Before Sunrise" as well... for nine years I've been tracking down the tunes from that movie, and successfully got my hands on Kath Bloom's "Come Here" and Kathy McCarty's "Living Life." But for the life of me I couldn't figure out who the grunge dude was in that bar they go to...
and there he is on this new CD! He's none other than Harald Waiglein! An Austrian rocker! Wunderbar! and now I can listen to the "bopping and grooving" song whenever I want! I don't actually think "bopping and grooving" are the real lyrics but that's what it sounds like to me. maybe that part of the song is in german -- "bocken und gruben"??
alright I'm off to listen to purcell's "dido and aenas" overture...aka what's playing in the opening shots of the train moving through the Austrian countryside...
so I bought the soundtrack to "Before Sunset" and was ridiculously pleased to find that the producers included the songs from "Before Sunrise" as well... for nine years I've been tracking down the tunes from that movie, and successfully got my hands on Kath Bloom's "Come Here" and Kathy McCarty's "Living Life." But for the life of me I couldn't figure out who the grunge dude was in that bar they go to...
and there he is on this new CD! He's none other than Harald Waiglein! An Austrian rocker! Wunderbar! and now I can listen to the "bopping and grooving" song whenever I want! I don't actually think "bopping and grooving" are the real lyrics but that's what it sounds like to me. maybe that part of the song is in german -- "bocken und gruben"??
alright I'm off to listen to purcell's "dido and aenas" overture...aka what's playing in the opening shots of the train moving through the Austrian countryside...
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