Referral Link Goodness
The odds of stumbling across an incredible band by having them link you are not, I don't think, all that high. But these Decemberists are people everyone should be listening to. So go yonder, and enjoy:
Some MP3s available here.
The Decemberists. Official, oficially snazzy-looking site.
Buy their CD!
The odds of stumbling across an incredible band by having them link you are not, I don't think, all that high. But these Decemberists are people everyone should be listening to. So go yonder, and enjoy:
Some MP3s available here.
The Decemberists. Official, oficially snazzy-looking site.
Buy their CD!
SEVIS
So the first thing you should do is not get angry, or get angry but be very calm & smooth & reassuring & deep-voiced w/ the person on the phone -- this is assuming you are an international student who turned in everything that needed to be turned in for the new SEVIS I-20, w/o which the government assumes that you, the i.s., are a terrorist and will be kicked out of the country. You turned everything in four months ago. And two days ago you get a letter saying nothing's been turned in, and that you've got a day to turn everything in else you are s.o.l.
Stay calm. One thing you, mr. i.s., know, as a former worker-bee at a computer lab, is that angry people, even people who are righteously angry, specially people who are righteously angry, will not get help. Or not as much help as they could if they are calm & collected.
So yes: Stopped in, they were happy to see me even though they were closed, promised me that the new, hey-you're-not-a-terrorist I-20 would be waiting for me by Tuesday, all while the secretary said, "Hey, he doesn't have to do any of this. He did it like four months ago."
Which we all got a good laugh out of. Which, by the way, the thing to remember too is that the people you are dealing w/, when something is fucked, are not usually the people who fucked it up -- they are co-workers of whoever's responsible for the fuck-up. But even if they are, they don't think of themselves as the assholes who fucked it up, because few of us do -- no one's an asshole 100% of the time, it takes too much energy, and so they are right, in a way, to not think of themselves that way, because here they are helping you, the i.s., who had he not been cool and collected would have been thrown out of the country in the next few days. Which would have kind of sucked.
So the first thing you should do is not get angry, or get angry but be very calm & smooth & reassuring & deep-voiced w/ the person on the phone -- this is assuming you are an international student who turned in everything that needed to be turned in for the new SEVIS I-20, w/o which the government assumes that you, the i.s., are a terrorist and will be kicked out of the country. You turned everything in four months ago. And two days ago you get a letter saying nothing's been turned in, and that you've got a day to turn everything in else you are s.o.l.
Stay calm. One thing you, mr. i.s., know, as a former worker-bee at a computer lab, is that angry people, even people who are righteously angry, specially people who are righteously angry, will not get help. Or not as much help as they could if they are calm & collected.
So yes: Stopped in, they were happy to see me even though they were closed, promised me that the new, hey-you're-not-a-terrorist I-20 would be waiting for me by Tuesday, all while the secretary said, "Hey, he doesn't have to do any of this. He did it like four months ago."
Which we all got a good laugh out of. Which, by the way, the thing to remember too is that the people you are dealing w/, when something is fucked, are not usually the people who fucked it up -- they are co-workers of whoever's responsible for the fuck-up. But even if they are, they don't think of themselves as the assholes who fucked it up, because few of us do -- no one's an asshole 100% of the time, it takes too much energy, and so they are right, in a way, to not think of themselves that way, because here they are helping you, the i.s., who had he not been cool and collected would have been thrown out of the country in the next few days. Which would have kind of sucked.
Saturday Night's all right for Sharks
I spent the bulk of today cleaning the apartment. It isn't clean, but it is less dirty than before. Now I am watching a movie about sharks attacking people: Shark Attack 3. I have not seen 2 or 1. I may never get to them. I may never actually get to finish 3, for that matter, since there is also a rerun of South Park. But I did get to see the part about someone wanting to close the beach and someone else saying, No, you can' close it. Which I imagine is said in every movie involving sharks eating people on beaches.
There is a part of me that is determined to bore the living daylights out of the rest of me. I think that the part set on boring the other half is responsible for the shark movie. I do find myself so fascinated by this thing -- which is not only not good but not really awful either, so it's not exactly enjoyable on that level either. I suppose part of the fascination is knowing that all sorts of people are throwing money at a project involving sharks, not only once but three times. And this is probably because there is someone out there renting a movie, and his only criteria is whether or not there is a shark on the cover, or on the title, or every fifteen minutes on the screen. Not that I have been timing it.
There's the shark again.
Good night.
I spent the bulk of today cleaning the apartment. It isn't clean, but it is less dirty than before. Now I am watching a movie about sharks attacking people: Shark Attack 3. I have not seen 2 or 1. I may never get to them. I may never actually get to finish 3, for that matter, since there is also a rerun of South Park. But I did get to see the part about someone wanting to close the beach and someone else saying, No, you can' close it. Which I imagine is said in every movie involving sharks eating people on beaches.
There is a part of me that is determined to bore the living daylights out of the rest of me. I think that the part set on boring the other half is responsible for the shark movie. I do find myself so fascinated by this thing -- which is not only not good but not really awful either, so it's not exactly enjoyable on that level either. I suppose part of the fascination is knowing that all sorts of people are throwing money at a project involving sharks, not only once but three times. And this is probably because there is someone out there renting a movie, and his only criteria is whether or not there is a shark on the cover, or on the title, or every fifteen minutes on the screen. Not that I have been timing it.
There's the shark again.
Good night.
Memo
Nothing memorable has happenend this Memorial Day: I've been watching Sesame Street, reading some terrific comic books (I have been recently introduced to Milligan's X-Force and Lapham's Stray Bullets), drinking coffee, making toast... There is, in fact, some required reading that needs attending to -- it's for a class on teaching. I'll be teaching a composition course in the fall as part of the assistantship.
I don't get summer, although I like it. Here's the thing: I have quite a bit of free time (reduced work- and courseload), but have managed to do nothing w/ it: it's not as though it's time spent in front of the TV or anything. It's more like I've slowed down all essential activities, inserting pockets of inactivity in-between, so that I'll do a set of push-ups, say, and stare into space for ten minutes immediately afterwards, or write a paragraph, step away from the computer, and pour coffee into the mug, step away from the mug, stare into space, return a few minutes later to add milk & aspartame. Another example: I'm usually out of the gym by nine at the latest. I'm probably firing this off and going to work out immediately (or "immediately" in summer terms) afterwards, but I haven't really prepared much of a breakfast.
This lassitude is not exactly unwelcome. I'm happy it's here at the time it is. Better now than when stuff needs doing. But it's frustrating, because I have a stack of books I mean to get to and have not even touched. And the plans for my domination of the 18-35 demographic across all markets have been put on hold. And the kitchen is a mess. And my bedroom is tidy if you ignore the various piles of papers and bound media scattered all over my desk and the bookshelves. At least the floor is uncluttered.
Nothing memorable has happenend this Memorial Day: I've been watching Sesame Street, reading some terrific comic books (I have been recently introduced to Milligan's X-Force and Lapham's Stray Bullets), drinking coffee, making toast... There is, in fact, some required reading that needs attending to -- it's for a class on teaching. I'll be teaching a composition course in the fall as part of the assistantship.
I don't get summer, although I like it. Here's the thing: I have quite a bit of free time (reduced work- and courseload), but have managed to do nothing w/ it: it's not as though it's time spent in front of the TV or anything. It's more like I've slowed down all essential activities, inserting pockets of inactivity in-between, so that I'll do a set of push-ups, say, and stare into space for ten minutes immediately afterwards, or write a paragraph, step away from the computer, and pour coffee into the mug, step away from the mug, stare into space, return a few minutes later to add milk & aspartame. Another example: I'm usually out of the gym by nine at the latest. I'm probably firing this off and going to work out immediately (or "immediately" in summer terms) afterwards, but I haven't really prepared much of a breakfast.
This lassitude is not exactly unwelcome. I'm happy it's here at the time it is. Better now than when stuff needs doing. But it's frustrating, because I have a stack of books I mean to get to and have not even touched. And the plans for my domination of the 18-35 demographic across all markets have been put on hold. And the kitchen is a mess. And my bedroom is tidy if you ignore the various piles of papers and bound media scattered all over my desk and the bookshelves. At least the floor is uncluttered.
U.S. troops opened fire on anti-American demonstrators for the second time this week as Iraqis marched Wednesday to protest the previous shooting.There is a kind of nightmare logic operating policy these days. It will only get more nightmarish and less logical. Or, put another way, po-tweet.
At the student awards luncheon
I'm the one in black, holding the contraband coffee. I was supposed to read something, so I read my little Nabokov festshrift thingie, whose chief virtue was that it was short -- they announced lunch right before I headed to the podium, and everyone seemed self-conscious about stepping out and loading up while I read, so I told them to go ahead and do it, go eat, which resulted in no one moving, which sucked because it meant that I couldn't go eat after I was done reading, because there were other readers.
The other people on the table? An exceptional bunch of people, and fun to hang out with -- the person to my immediate right (with the gray shirt and the blocked face) is a frequent tennis partner and a cook of formidable qualities and a good friend. Also: 67% of the table is involved in waching more Buffy than anyone would think humanly possible, but is.
The actual path to the photos is through here, by going to "English Photo Gallery" and clicking on "English Events," then "2003 Awards Luncheon."
Also: here is the main page for the VN celebration -- the other contributions are fantastic: there are chess problems, poems, other prose pieces, and a wonderful gift from Dmitri Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov's son.
I'm the one in black, holding the contraband coffee. I was supposed to read something, so I read my little Nabokov festshrift thingie, whose chief virtue was that it was short -- they announced lunch right before I headed to the podium, and everyone seemed self-conscious about stepping out and loading up while I read, so I told them to go ahead and do it, go eat, which resulted in no one moving, which sucked because it meant that I couldn't go eat after I was done reading, because there were other readers.
The other people on the table? An exceptional bunch of people, and fun to hang out with -- the person to my immediate right (with the gray shirt and the blocked face) is a frequent tennis partner and a cook of formidable qualities and a good friend. Also: 67% of the table is involved in waching more Buffy than anyone would think humanly possible, but is.
The actual path to the photos is through here, by going to "English Photo Gallery" and clicking on "English Events," then "2003 Awards Luncheon."
Also: here is the main page for the VN celebration -- the other contributions are fantastic: there are chess problems, poems, other prose pieces, and a wonderful gift from Dmitri Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov's son.
"You spend half your life trying to turn the other half around."
You do. I do, at at any rate, and learn slowly what needs turning around and what doesn't. I'm amazed, right now, by how little turning is required. If there was any wood to knock I'd knock it.
So: Holes is a remarkable movie, and a strange one, and nothing like what the ad campaigns and the trailer suggest it will be. The roommate and I saw it yesterday, and dad called today to talk and as it turned out he saw it too, in Texas. We were all surprised and charmed and caught up in detangling the causality of the universe: how it's not just Stanley's last name (Yelnats) that works as a mirror image, but the girls (Mary, Mary Lou, Myrah -- I think... I should really check) themselves, plus the similarity of these M-names to the word "mirror," plus everything else: the world falls apart if you try to explain it, but it flies on charm and on its own internal logic while you're watching, and suggests that the universe and fate are bored and need to set up elaborate schemes to keep themselves amused, much like death in Final Destination, which this movie is much better than.
Here's the thing: I hadn't even heard of Holes till one of the remarkable people mentioned on 4/12/03 showed me the trailer, and asked if it didn't look awful (it did: it looked like any number of generic Disney movies about kids doing shit), and said that the book was obviously being horribly adapted. And then she said that she didn't think that the book was that great, but that it was still a shame to make a generic adaptation of an okay book regardless. Which I understood: Print must be defended. (Although, while waiting for the movie to start, I walked to the children's section of the Barnes & Noble to look at LM Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, and lo, there were a whole bunch of kids reading. So print was in good hands. I'm actually not all that fond of children in the abstract (loud, cutesy) but they are okay and cheer me up when I see them around: they're short and not all that bright so we have a lot in common.)
You do. I do, at at any rate, and learn slowly what needs turning around and what doesn't. I'm amazed, right now, by how little turning is required. If there was any wood to knock I'd knock it.
So: Holes is a remarkable movie, and a strange one, and nothing like what the ad campaigns and the trailer suggest it will be. The roommate and I saw it yesterday, and dad called today to talk and as it turned out he saw it too, in Texas. We were all surprised and charmed and caught up in detangling the causality of the universe: how it's not just Stanley's last name (Yelnats) that works as a mirror image, but the girls (Mary, Mary Lou, Myrah -- I think... I should really check) themselves, plus the similarity of these M-names to the word "mirror," plus everything else: the world falls apart if you try to explain it, but it flies on charm and on its own internal logic while you're watching, and suggests that the universe and fate are bored and need to set up elaborate schemes to keep themselves amused, much like death in Final Destination, which this movie is much better than.
Here's the thing: I hadn't even heard of Holes till one of the remarkable people mentioned on 4/12/03 showed me the trailer, and asked if it didn't look awful (it did: it looked like any number of generic Disney movies about kids doing shit), and said that the book was obviously being horribly adapted. And then she said that she didn't think that the book was that great, but that it was still a shame to make a generic adaptation of an okay book regardless. Which I understood: Print must be defended. (Although, while waiting for the movie to start, I walked to the children's section of the Barnes & Noble to look at LM Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, and lo, there were a whole bunch of kids reading. So print was in good hands. I'm actually not all that fond of children in the abstract (loud, cutesy) but they are okay and cheer me up when I see them around: they're short and not all that bright so we have a lot in common.)
Biological Warfare & the Buffy Paradigm
See pp 4-5 if all you're really interested in is the latter.
Also, Teller talks about Enoch Soames. (Via CH.)
The semester is for all intents and purposes is over. Two portfolios to turn in. One revision still in the air. Not nearly enough sleep. The usual frustrations over the quality and quantity of the work have begun to seep in. Rushed from place to place yesterday, so missed out on treadmill time, and will make up later today after the stint here at the labs.
See pp 4-5 if all you're really interested in is the latter.
Also, Teller talks about Enoch Soames. (Via CH.)
The semester is for all intents and purposes is over. Two portfolios to turn in. One revision still in the air. Not nearly enough sleep. The usual frustrations over the quality and quantity of the work have begun to seep in. Rushed from place to place yesterday, so missed out on treadmill time, and will make up later today after the stint here at the labs.
Swell is Other People
I've been spending the past few weeks in remarkable company -- the semester's wrapping up, and there is stuff that needs attending to, but overall it's been less about that and more about a couple of good clumps of people. Today, after work, there'll be football w/ a whole bunch of girls, with I believe one other guy who I haven't asked if he thinks, as I do, that football with women is preferable to any other kind (he might disagree: I don't think any of us are bad players, but he can kick our collective asses), and later I'm being taken to see The Two Gentlemen of Verona (which reminds me that the Shakespeare project has stalled at As You Like It -- I'm halfway through the plays and have not picked up the next yet), and tomorrow there's more Buffy than is probably healthy for anyone. And yesterday and the day before there was the watching of some much-loved movies: three of us are rotating films the others have not seen.
There's a part of me that isn't wired at all for this: that part wants to stay in a room w/ printed material for many hours. I don't think there's anything wrong w/ that side of anyone. Everyone needs a bit of solitude. But it seems as though we're built to be around others, which should somehow be less surprising than it is, but there you go.
It's not just that it's fun. It's not just that these people are all wonderful and great to be around, and that there is comfort to be derived from small crowds. It's also that all of these people can cook -- we're talking about remarkable people making remarkable dishes.
Which, while on subject, here is an NPR story about a once-remarkable man making some very unremarkable work, work so unremarkable it's actually remarkably bad work.
I've been spending the past few weeks in remarkable company -- the semester's wrapping up, and there is stuff that needs attending to, but overall it's been less about that and more about a couple of good clumps of people. Today, after work, there'll be football w/ a whole bunch of girls, with I believe one other guy who I haven't asked if he thinks, as I do, that football with women is preferable to any other kind (he might disagree: I don't think any of us are bad players, but he can kick our collective asses), and later I'm being taken to see The Two Gentlemen of Verona (which reminds me that the Shakespeare project has stalled at As You Like It -- I'm halfway through the plays and have not picked up the next yet), and tomorrow there's more Buffy than is probably healthy for anyone. And yesterday and the day before there was the watching of some much-loved movies: three of us are rotating films the others have not seen.
There's a part of me that isn't wired at all for this: that part wants to stay in a room w/ printed material for many hours. I don't think there's anything wrong w/ that side of anyone. Everyone needs a bit of solitude. But it seems as though we're built to be around others, which should somehow be less surprising than it is, but there you go.
It's not just that it's fun. It's not just that these people are all wonderful and great to be around, and that there is comfort to be derived from small crowds. It's also that all of these people can cook -- we're talking about remarkable people making remarkable dishes.
Which, while on subject, here is an NPR story about a once-remarkable man making some very unremarkable work, work so unremarkable it's actually remarkably bad work.
Dictation
Secretary is not a great movie, but it's sweet and unusual and worth watching: it's a very good small movie -- at heart it's a romantic comedy, but with a disturbing beginning involving self-mutilation (which yes, of course, is a disturbing subject, but made all the more unsettling, and all the sadder, because the girl has a little kit w/ knives, and iodine, and this little kit has been decorated w/ butterfly decals), followed by an unexpectedly sunny take on s&m (the usual disclaimer is that it's handled tastefully, but tact & taste, in these matters, seems overrated -- tone, on the other hand, strikes me as far more important, where the pitfalls are ponderous, pretentious, bombastic junk on the one hand, fluffy and harmless farce on the other).
The movie is based on a Mary Gaitskill short story, and I was surprised to find Frederick Exley singing her praises (not because Gaitskill isn't great, but because I had not thought of Exley in a while), which made me think of another hard-drinking man, James Agee, whose one original screenplay was the movie I watched earlier this week: Night of the Hunter.
So where am I going w/ this? OK, the people I was watching Night of the Hunter with liked it, kind of, which has always been my reaction to the movie -- I wasn't sure if it was good, but I was absolutely sure that I had never seen anything quite like it, and probably wouldn't ever again. Nothing could match it for weirdness. And it was a kind of cumulative weirdness, with Laughton, a first-time director, helping out considerably.
So there is Agee, and there is Exley, and there is also Southern -- all producing works unmatched in strangeness, some of which are both brilliant and strange, and some just strange. And all living piecemeal lives -- shorter than they could have been, strewn with wreckage, rife with wounded passersby, filled w/ long stretches of inactivity.
So where am I going w/ this? I don't know. Part of it is wishing that anyone who produces anything worthwhile live the kind of life wished upon by the narrator of The Lovely Bones in the last line of the novel, which by the way you should really read.
Secretary is not a great movie, but it's sweet and unusual and worth watching: it's a very good small movie -- at heart it's a romantic comedy, but with a disturbing beginning involving self-mutilation (which yes, of course, is a disturbing subject, but made all the more unsettling, and all the sadder, because the girl has a little kit w/ knives, and iodine, and this little kit has been decorated w/ butterfly decals), followed by an unexpectedly sunny take on s&m (the usual disclaimer is that it's handled tastefully, but tact & taste, in these matters, seems overrated -- tone, on the other hand, strikes me as far more important, where the pitfalls are ponderous, pretentious, bombastic junk on the one hand, fluffy and harmless farce on the other).
The movie is based on a Mary Gaitskill short story, and I was surprised to find Frederick Exley singing her praises (not because Gaitskill isn't great, but because I had not thought of Exley in a while), which made me think of another hard-drinking man, James Agee, whose one original screenplay was the movie I watched earlier this week: Night of the Hunter.
So where am I going w/ this? OK, the people I was watching Night of the Hunter with liked it, kind of, which has always been my reaction to the movie -- I wasn't sure if it was good, but I was absolutely sure that I had never seen anything quite like it, and probably wouldn't ever again. Nothing could match it for weirdness. And it was a kind of cumulative weirdness, with Laughton, a first-time director, helping out considerably.
So there is Agee, and there is Exley, and there is also Southern -- all producing works unmatched in strangeness, some of which are both brilliant and strange, and some just strange. And all living piecemeal lives -- shorter than they could have been, strewn with wreckage, rife with wounded passersby, filled w/ long stretches of inactivity.
So where am I going w/ this? I don't know. Part of it is wishing that anyone who produces anything worthwhile live the kind of life wished upon by the narrator of The Lovely Bones in the last line of the novel, which by the way you should really read.
Beer Flashback
Yes, we did this too. The highlight was always Norway, for the Grolsch on tap, which is the best beer ever. I don't drink at all anymore, alas, but once in a while I find that I do miss Grolsch, and of course Guiness. The not-drinking decision has stood since January of 2000. It hardly feels like it's been that long. Way too many many of my activies included, as an essential element, the drinking of way too much beer -- I'm not knocking the experience, but if it can't be done without going overboard continuously, which I did (go overboard cont., drinking way too much on nearly a daily basis, getting way too fat on it, not remembering the last third of most movies watched during that period), then it shouldn't be done.
(Via Dave Barry, not surprisingly.)
Yes, we did this too. The highlight was always Norway, for the Grolsch on tap, which is the best beer ever. I don't drink at all anymore, alas, but once in a while I find that I do miss Grolsch, and of course Guiness. The not-drinking decision has stood since January of 2000. It hardly feels like it's been that long. Way too many many of my activies included, as an essential element, the drinking of way too much beer -- I'm not knocking the experience, but if it can't be done without going overboard continuously, which I did (go overboard cont., drinking way too much on nearly a daily basis, getting way too fat on it, not remembering the last third of most movies watched during that period), then it shouldn't be done.
(Via Dave Barry, not surprisingly.)
Karma Police
Running on a worrisome streak of good luck: Dad & Maria are here, at the computer lab, while I finish up my shift. Then it's off for Cuban food. Then Spirited Away.
The assistantship for Fall 2003 has been secured. I'll be teaching a composition course & I'll continue to work at the Writing Center. There are also intimations of some kind of tuition waiver for summer, which would be good, as otherwise I'll be far more broke than I already am. And I'm the award winning graduate student writer this year, the department has decided. There aren't that many of us, so odds were pretty good for anyone, and they had to pick someone. I get a free lunch out of it.
This is how I feel about these things: I don't believe in awards unless I win them, in which case I would probably say that they're no big deal, that they mean little, while what I'm really wanting to say is, Hey, I won! I won! Me! Yay! Hooray for Zoydberg!
But I'm always worried about getting too many good things at once (family, waiver, awards, food) -- because I've yet to experience any of these things in the past year w/o the universe correcting itself and making sure that some kind of cartoon piano falls on my head, so as to keep everything in balance. But the piano is still in the air, and I can't make out its shadow on the field, and so yes, I'm happy: I'm buzzing like a fridge.
Running on a worrisome streak of good luck: Dad & Maria are here, at the computer lab, while I finish up my shift. Then it's off for Cuban food. Then Spirited Away.
The assistantship for Fall 2003 has been secured. I'll be teaching a composition course & I'll continue to work at the Writing Center. There are also intimations of some kind of tuition waiver for summer, which would be good, as otherwise I'll be far more broke than I already am. And I'm the award winning graduate student writer this year, the department has decided. There aren't that many of us, so odds were pretty good for anyone, and they had to pick someone. I get a free lunch out of it.
This is how I feel about these things: I don't believe in awards unless I win them, in which case I would probably say that they're no big deal, that they mean little, while what I'm really wanting to say is, Hey, I won! I won! Me! Yay! Hooray for Zoydberg!
But I'm always worried about getting too many good things at once (family, waiver, awards, food) -- because I've yet to experience any of these things in the past year w/o the universe correcting itself and making sure that some kind of cartoon piano falls on my head, so as to keep everything in balance. But the piano is still in the air, and I can't make out its shadow on the field, and so yes, I'm happy: I'm buzzing like a fridge.
Robot Parade
There is a real company called Mechanical Servants Incorporated, based off Melrose Park, IL. I have real news too, but am waiting on dad and the sister to drive in so don't have much time to relate. So instead, yes -- Mechanical Servants.
There is a real company called Mechanical Servants Incorporated, based off Melrose Park, IL. I have real news too, but am waiting on dad and the sister to drive in so don't have much time to relate. So instead, yes -- Mechanical Servants.
I attended an international student meeting a week and a half ago. The bad news: The US government pretty wants to know where I am most of the time. Since I am mostly taking naps, they should have no problem tracking me. The good news: We are now allowed a year of practical training per level, as opposed to one per lifetime. So after getting the MA (around summer of 2004, knock on wood), I'll be able to work for a full year. This is more than good news. The OPT visa is automatic and painless and pretty wonderful.
The plan had been to go straight from the MA to some MFA in creative writing somewhere -- anywhere that would take me. The new plan is to use the OPT to go somewhere, anywhere -- by which I think I mean New York. Work whatever. Do whatever. But I think the year off from school will be good. I'll miss Orlando. I like it here. There's good people. But I really need to be elsewhere, to remember what the color of blank paper is, in a different town, to paraphrase in the most ungrammatical way possible David Byrne's bit in True Stories.
All's well here. But "here" needs to be changed to "there." I hope all is well with you.
Moments vs. Chains
(Quoted excerpt from Hands that Mold the Imagination, via Robot Wisdom.)
"But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day." (Dickens' Great Expectations)I've come to distrust causality. It exists, and most of what's important in our lives does happen as a result of some decision -- ours or someone else's. Nevertheless, the link between cause and effect never interests me as much as the moment -- its glow, its afterglow, knowing that it is happening as it's happening and knowing that it will be limited in duration, that it'll pass. There are always reasons. But to mull over reasons is to recollect the wrong thing. I find that my favorite memories are divorced from what led to them or what followed, the moment itself firmly impressed with durable pigments. There may well be a case against this type of memory -- in removing context, one learns little from experience or one turns reality into something else, to which I can only say that both learning and reality are overrated. Dickens, however, is rated pretty accurately: he is a hell of a writer and one can never say enough good things about his novels.
I like this passage for many reasons. It is, for one thing, a thoroughly Victorian moment - for a considerable driving force behind much Victorian fiction was the attempt to make sense of modern life precisely by tracing through it chains of causality and connection; and Dickens in particular was supremely good at excavating the submerged and sometimes fatal intimacies between people of different classes and clans. But there is also something here, I think, about the nature of fiction - for what is fiction but the following of imaginary lives along lines of possibility and hazard? - and, more importantly, a sort of enactment of the romance of storytelling itself.
(Quoted excerpt from Hands that Mold the Imagination, via Robot Wisdom.)
Ballpoint
I didn't watch enough of the Hussein/Rather interview to form much of an opinion. There's this much: yes, Hussein might be a loony, and he is a kind of distant, abstract threat, but this war thing is insane. From the interview itself all I gathered is that people who wear perfectly nice suits seem reluctant to appear, on camera, with perfectly nice pens. Both Hussein and Rather took notes with Bics. Or PaperMates. White stem, black cap. Humble and efficient and good enough -- yes. But are these Bic people? Are they? Really? I'm guessing they both own at least one half-decent fountain pen, the kind that doesn't require heavy presssing on the page.
So either Hussein and Rather are reverse writing utensil snobs or I am a fairly straightforward utensil snob. Else I should have been listening to what they were saying, as opposed to worrying about what they were writing with. And of course there's the surreal needs of the medium, which might have required that both Iraqui dictator and television personality appear with matching pens. So somebody had to hide his MontBlanc so as to not to appear as though he was putting on airs.
I didn't watch enough of the Hussein/Rather interview to form much of an opinion. There's this much: yes, Hussein might be a loony, and he is a kind of distant, abstract threat, but this war thing is insane. From the interview itself all I gathered is that people who wear perfectly nice suits seem reluctant to appear, on camera, with perfectly nice pens. Both Hussein and Rather took notes with Bics. Or PaperMates. White stem, black cap. Humble and efficient and good enough -- yes. But are these Bic people? Are they? Really? I'm guessing they both own at least one half-decent fountain pen, the kind that doesn't require heavy presssing on the page.
So either Hussein and Rather are reverse writing utensil snobs or I am a fairly straightforward utensil snob. Else I should have been listening to what they were saying, as opposed to worrying about what they were writing with. And of course there's the surreal needs of the medium, which might have required that both Iraqui dictator and television personality appear with matching pens. So somebody had to hide his MontBlanc so as to not to appear as though he was putting on airs.
Other, More Interesting Voices in Less Cluttered Rooms
Aimee's new site is up. Go visit http://www.poshlost.net/ for all the stripped down goodness. And may you bask in the glory of the Nabokovilian URL? You may.
Also, my friend Godfrey needs someone to adopt Whip-It. Adopt, if you can.
Life over here is good and tranquil -- buckets of fiction and nonfiction writing going on. Some of it is good. Some of it is staying in the bucket.
There will be more in the way of updates later, but for now it's all more of the same, w/ perhaps more homesickness than usual -- tuned out NPR this week (pledge drive) to the Latin radio station for a salsa and merengue fix, and was pleased to hear an Aterciopelados tune amid all the trumpets and tales of romance gone wrong. The homesickness might have something to do w/ working on a piece that might be the beginning of something bigger. It's set in Bogota but cribs liberally from Nerval's Aurelia and from The Wizard of Oz. It needs to be messed with -- as it stands it just stands... It's static, though tight and strange w/o veering into freewheeling surrealism, which I've come to distrust. So it's better than average but still in need of major surgery. (Oh, the nonfiction piece mentioned on 2/2/3 was tremendously well received -- more well received than it deserved.)
I finished the Garcia Marquez memoirs a week ago but have not had a chance to open the next nonrequired book, Jonathan Carroll's Wooden Apples.
Aimee's new site is up. Go visit http://www.poshlost.net/ for all the stripped down goodness. And may you bask in the glory of the Nabokovilian URL? You may.
Also, my friend Godfrey needs someone to adopt Whip-It. Adopt, if you can.
Life over here is good and tranquil -- buckets of fiction and nonfiction writing going on. Some of it is good. Some of it is staying in the bucket.
There will be more in the way of updates later, but for now it's all more of the same, w/ perhaps more homesickness than usual -- tuned out NPR this week (pledge drive) to the Latin radio station for a salsa and merengue fix, and was pleased to hear an Aterciopelados tune amid all the trumpets and tales of romance gone wrong. The homesickness might have something to do w/ working on a piece that might be the beginning of something bigger. It's set in Bogota but cribs liberally from Nerval's Aurelia and from The Wizard of Oz. It needs to be messed with -- as it stands it just stands... It's static, though tight and strange w/o veering into freewheeling surrealism, which I've come to distrust. So it's better than average but still in need of major surgery. (Oh, the nonfiction piece mentioned on 2/2/3 was tremendously well received -- more well received than it deserved.)
I finished the Garcia Marquez memoirs a week ago but have not had a chance to open the next nonrequired book, Jonathan Carroll's Wooden Apples.
Concordance
So not a few hours after posting the link below the girl in question e-mails me for a Buffy marathon the next day. I had a great time -- there is of course no question of a re-hook-up, nor would I be all that keen on one, and besides the boy she's dating right now is an acquaintance and actually a very nice person.
Spent an ungodly amount of hours in the company of good people watching angsty vampires. We ate more bacon than we should have. I drank a pot of coffee.
I'm still, unfortunately, far too inarticulate when we're alone, but at my normal level of inarticulateness when more people are present. This is a problem. Here's someone I'm really just very grateful to, someone who has done more for me than any girl has in years, and it's simply a failure at a social-grace-level -- don't have much of an excuse either, other than this part of it is fairly new too, spotting someone and wishing them all the best in one's head, a desperate wish to see that this person is doing well, is happy. To carry a conversation with the thank-you-hope-you're-happy-thank-you reel running in the background is a little distracting.
So not a few hours after posting the link below the girl in question e-mails me for a Buffy marathon the next day. I had a great time -- there is of course no question of a re-hook-up, nor would I be all that keen on one, and besides the boy she's dating right now is an acquaintance and actually a very nice person.
Spent an ungodly amount of hours in the company of good people watching angsty vampires. We ate more bacon than we should have. I drank a pot of coffee.
I'm still, unfortunately, far too inarticulate when we're alone, but at my normal level of inarticulateness when more people are present. This is a problem. Here's someone I'm really just very grateful to, someone who has done more for me than any girl has in years, and it's simply a failure at a social-grace-level -- don't have much of an excuse either, other than this part of it is fairly new too, spotting someone and wishing them all the best in one's head, a desperate wish to see that this person is doing well, is happy. To carry a conversation with the thank-you-hope-you're-happy-thank-you reel running in the background is a little distracting.